At 12:09 AM the night before I depart, I sit on my bed and think, “What do I write?” At the start of summer my initial self doubts of whether I was introspective or eloquent enough to blog or document my study abroad experiences rampaged. I mean, while researching how other people wrote their blogs, I was overwhelmed not only by their writing, but even their website design! But when the time came to make a decision about blogging, those self doubts were pushed aside by the possibilites of the unknown. What would happen if I just wrote, didn’t care how I came across and just told it how I felt it? That is something I don’t normally do, but something I think would be extremely beneficial while abroad. It would not only help sort out the cultural and historical differences I encountered, but also the personal adjustments to simply living abroad in a place I barely know anything about. So it was decided, I am going to blog, and gosh darn it, I’m gonna stick with it and it in itself will be one hell of a journey.
But for the actual traveling journey, here’s some info! For the next 3.5 months I will be studying in, prepare yourself, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (simply known as Jordan). The program I am attending is through the organization CIEE (Council on International Educational Exchange), and I will be living and studying in the country’s capital, Amman. Classes and where I will be living (fingers crossed for a home stay) are still somewhat mysteries to me that will be resolved hopefully soon after I arrive on Sunday. More information about my program can be found here! I will officially be a student at the University of Jordan but all of my classes will be with other study abroad students. I know that I will be taking a Modern Standard Arabic and a Colloquial Jordanian Arabic course, as well as two area-studies courses (more info later!).
When I say I am going to Jordan I get a variety of looks. I get the, “THE MIDDLE EAST!!?!!!” dumbfounded look, I get the “where….?” confused eye brow raise, and my favorite, “ooooooooooooook then…” pretend like you didn’t actually say that grimace. But I power through all these comments on my sanity because I know that buried under all the preconceived notions of this country lies a culture, a history, and a people that I aspire to know more about. I want to learn Arabic. I want to live in a society where Christianity is not its backbone. I want to eat falafel and hummus! Why you might ask? Well, Elizabeth Gilbert, author of an enlightening book called Eat Pray Love, says it no better.
“But is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few months of one’s life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than that it pleases your ear to hear it? Or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favourite fountain? And then to do it again the next day?”
I don’t think so. And thus begins my journeys.
