أخيرا، نحن في اربد

In Irbid, my home for the next two months. Yarmouk University is huge population wise, but the campus is small. The people are all very friendly. They love nice Americans, i.e. me.

Using Arabis has not been too much of a challenge so far. After we got situated and slept in Amman, we explored the city and had awesome conversations in Arabic with several Jordanians (although they were, admittedly former Palestinians). Yusef our first cab driver for the day was from Bethlehem originally and spoke to us in his kind, slow Arabic that we could all understand with ease. Zayed, a man we met on the street showed us around, and his Arabic was strange but we were able to communicate. And a tour guide on the top of Jebel Amman gave us the tour in Arabic at our request. I understood 70-75% of it.

From Jebel Amman

We arrived in Irbid at 2am last night and got situated in our apartments. My roommate is Mr. Chase Pinson (formerly single). He is okay. The apartment is way sweeter than I was expecting with a kitchen, fridge, washer/dryer combo, internet, a roomy bathroom, fans, and two pallets that serve as beds. Not bad eh? Eh? Eh?

We have approximately 300 channels on the tv. Most have the name Al-Nafa or Ar-Riyada or Al-Mesjid. They all are portrait shots of Arabs reading from papers or a teleprompter. It is quite entertaining.