Soccer and Smokin'

So last night was a great time. A student in the program's host brother arranged a soccer game with the SIT kids and some Arab folk. It was an amazing game; my team won and I scored four of the goals. By no means am I any good at soccer (my goals were either because of an amazing assist by Nick or because the goalie was out of the goal at the time), but I still played pretty well most of the time and it was a blast. After the game, Aamar wanted me to invite all my friends over for hookah. We had about 15 people over at my house smoking and hanging out and everyone who came over said they loved my family and my house. After most people left, Aamar made me put on my dish-desh, kafia, sirwal, and egal, and some of the kids took pictures. I'll be posting some of those up later. If I wasn't so blindingly white, I think I would look like a true Bedouin.

My Arabic is getting a lot better too. I can hold pretty decent conversations with taxi drivers about why I'm here and why I'm learning the Arabic language among other things. I'm also pretty confident with bargaining. Classes are pretty tough, we have midterms this week so that's not going to be very fun but then on Thursday, we head off to our Bedouin homestays. That's going to be about a week (each student with their own family) living in different parts of Jordan in Bedouin villages. Women are going to be doing mainly indoor work and serving the men while the men get to do outdoor work like herding and maybe riding horses and junk. I'm extremely pumped for that and I can't wait to show them my traditional Bedouin garb and my khunjar (the traditional Bedouin knife). The one I bought is really beautiful with a goat horn handle and the artist's signature on the blade itself. I'll be posting once or twice more before I head out but they don't really have internet connection in the desert so you won't be hearing from me for a week or so, just a head's up. All for now, ma salaama.