I am horrible...

I really am. I'm terrible at keeping up with this blog! I keep telling myself that I need to get my act together and write every other night, and I keep saying I'm going to do it and I never do! So I'm sorry, I am now just resorting to making sure I write as much as possible, giving my workload and cultural activities :)

Okayyy, so technically yesterday was "Friday" - today was suddenly made a national holiday (for an Islamic religious holiday
). In addition to that, we are taking our Jumbo Trip starting tomorrow to see a little bit of the rest of Oman (including Jabal Akhdar, one of the largest mountains in the Middle East, and camping in Sharqia, the edge of the Sahara desert), and won't be getting back until Saturday afternoon. Therefore, we have a nice four-day weekend this weekend, aka a nice little break mid-way through the program.

So before the trip, which I'm sure is going to be extremely fun and busy and therefore require it's very own blog post, I wanted to write about a few of the awesome experiences we had this week, of which there were a few!

Saturday, after classes, Rosha, Shannon (another girl in our little PF group), Kat and I spent our two hours of PF time cooking. We made a special Egyptian cake (using semolina, coconut, milk, and a LOT of sugar) called Basbousa, and a basic Omani staple dish, rice and chicken. The food was absolutely amazing, we shared of course and everyone seemed to really enjoy it. Plus we had an awesome time doing it and have now made it a weekly activity, one that anyone else can partake in of course! We even almost got two of the boys from the SALAM program (who are also American students studying at the center, for a program funded by the Omani government, but who don't really mix with us since the Center has put us purposefully on separate schedules) to help out, though they wimped out and just requested a taste when we finished. It was a nice change of pace from the rest of the day, and just a really fun thing all around.

After school, after doing some homework, Kat, Lili and I went out with Travis and his friend Mohammed, who studies at Penn State. We met up with three of Mohammed's friends, who happened to be girls! It was three sisters, Amal, Eman and Kawther (two of which go to Penn State and the third hopes to get the same scholarship for next year), who were all the sweetest and nicest girls! We spoke a good mix of Arabic and English, and explored this beautiful park with a huge fountain and beautiful walkways. They brought us food to eat of course, which was incredibly nice of them, but of course made us incredibly full. It was a really fun time, Lili and Kat even ended up riding a horse up and down a path haha. The three sisters invited us to visit them in their house, and set up a time for Monday (which I'll go into in a minute). It was a great change of pace from the normal classes and was so refreshing for us to be able to go out and have a fun time with Omani girls, something that has kind of been difficult here. It showed that, even though girls have to really find connections (often through guys), we can still have the same instant friendships that seem so common in Oman, especially for men.

Sunday we made another trip to Lulu's - I was completely out of food, so I was in desperate need. Then we just came back and had a pretty chill night, homework and stumbleupon in Lili's suite, no big deal. We also ate at the Thai restaurant downstairs again, which was, again, really good. They have one of the best peanut sauces I've ever had... soooo yummy.

Monday we were picked up by Mohammed at around 7:30, who was also picking up Travis, to go visit the three sisters we had met on Saturday. As we drove up to there house, which was in a fairly deserted part of town, we were in awe of the size of this mansion we were approaching. It was literally, huge. Now, I had gotten the sense that the girls were fairly rich when they all had pulled out iPhones and had told us to bring swimsuits since they had a swimming pool (a veryyyy rare thing here), but the house we were approaching was incredible. They had about 4 cars out front, a huge wall and gate surrounding the house (though this is not unusual here) and then this three story house emerged. The house was beautiful, with marble and tile floors, elaborate but not over the top furniture, plush cushions and beautiful curtains, chandeliers and carpets. We were literally in awe. And we met a good portion of the family, all of which were incredibly kind and welcoming. They were so curious about us and how long we'd been studying and what we thought about Oman - we spoke a lot of Arabic, especially at dinner. We sat around the dinner table with a bunch of the sisters (there are 10 sisters and 8 brothers - we didn't meet all of them, since I'm not sure they all live in the house, but we met one of the sister's husband and her kids as well) and the mom and one of their cousins (who is set to be married in two months, so exciting!). They piled more and more food onto our plates and were such amazing hosts it was hard not to be overwhelmed by their generosity - we had only met these girls once and now their family members were piling food onto our plates! The only unfortunate thing was that basically every dish was loaded with gluten - and now that I've been doing the gluten free thing for about 2 months (or attempting to), I took a pretty bad hit for that one. After dinner, they gave us a tour of their beautiful house, we played pool and foosball (one of the little brothers, who was probably about 8-10 was amazing at foosball and gave me a royal whooping) and chatted with the family till about 11. It was such a fun experience, and they invited us back, and even mentioned that they wanted to bring us to visit their village about 2 hours away. It was so interesting to just really get such an intimate view of daily life and the famous generosity of Omanis - I am still amazed now thinking about how generous they were to complete strangers in their home.

Yesterday, I was super out of it - probably from the gluten overload the night before. My stomach was a mess, I was exhausted, my face was puffy, and I had a headache. It made class a bit difficult, though knowing that today was a day off made me get through it. We ended up going to an aerobics class again (Maggie, Julie, Kat and I) with Rahma, which was a ton of fun, and then Rahma brought us out shopping and to dinner which was so much fun. Rahma is such a sweet and funny lady, she is incredibly honest and kind, but has a great sense of humor. She told us she didn't understand the concept of sushi and said it was silly; so many funny quotes and stories.

Overall, it's been a great week. Half way done! It feels like it's gone both fast and slow, but either way, still one month down, one to go!

The internet is really slow today so unfortunately I can't upload any pictures - I will when we get back from the Jumbo Trip though I promise!!

Love and miss everyone at home,
xoxo

3 down, 5 to go

Ugh, so much to talk about! I have found that the problem with blogging is that it's especially hard to keep up when you are extremely busy, but then it's doubly hard to keep up because you end up having to write such long posts to cover all the things that have been keeping you so darn busy! But anyways, I'll try to summarize the last week as short as possible!!

All week, we had Pakistani food for lunch - each week they serve us a different kind of food from the local restaurants, so the first week was Turkish, followed by Zanzibari and then Pakistani this week. We'll see what they give us tomorrow :)

Saturday - We had a MCA test and a Media vocab quiz - luckily neither of them were too difficult. Standard PF time and had a grand old time in Media class after our quiz. Our teacher, Ishaq, is a hoot, sometimes we just laugh almost non-stop through the entire class. He always drops words in sentences and then acts super surprised when we don't know the word; it's happened several times and always leads to incessant laughter. And he has this giggle that he does. Oh and he's like maybe 5'2-4, around there, and has this fairly long beard. It's a fun and interesting class, though most of us are ready to peace out by the time we get to class.

Sunday - Another usual day of classes and then following classes, we had our interest group meetings. I'm not sure I explained these before, but every Sunday, we split into four groups (Economics, Religion, Women's Studies, or Poetry/Literature) and hear from an Omani expert in the field. I chose to be in the Economics group because I felt that, of all of the groups, I was least likely to ever have to opportunity to hear about Middle East economics from a Middle Eastern perspective. Unfortunately, our lecturer is a fairly good English speaker, and thus spends most of the time lecturing in English and then translating it to Arabic, and vice-versa, despite the fact that most of us are able to understand a good part of what he is saying. Were hoping that he gets the hang of it though and starts really focusing on speaking Arabic and teaching us about Omani economics. This seems to be a common problem with Omanis, one that I've experienced in other languages as well. Native speakers find it hard to speak Arabic to us because it feels strange to them - plus they feel like they need to dumb down their sentences, and that takes more effort than just speaking English to us. Here it is worse than it was for me when I was in France, where at least I could pull of looking like a French student, but here, as soon as people see me they immediately switch to English. I'm getting used to just trying to always respond in Arabic, no matter what language they speak to me. It's still difficult to speak very proficiently mostly because my vocab-knowledge still feels so limited, and I still need to work on pronunciation. It's always so funny and frustrating when you try to say a word that you know is correct but the native speaker can't understand you and then they figure out what your saying and they go "OH _____!" and it only sounds slightly different from what you said, but you realize you were still unintelligible.

Monday - Today, instead of the usual full PF-time, we met as a huge group to discuss how to effectively use the PF time to maximize our progress and learning. We discussed ways that we could improve our Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing abilities, including but not limited to things like learning and singing Arabic songs, watching Arabic movies, reading Arabic books or practicing Qu'ranic phrases in Calligraphy. Personally though, I thought the meeting was way too drawn out and somewhat silly. Much of language learning is being proactive as a student; there are tons of resources, and our PF's are one of the best possible ones. But they are young too, they don't know what we need or what we should practice; therefore it is our job to inform them of what we want to do and how they can help us. It is not their responsibility to read our minds. A lot of students were complaining because 1- they thought the day was too long and 2- the PF's weren't 'taking us out' enough. For me, the idea of 'going out' seems to be slightly culturally incorrect. Many times, I have talked to PF's about what they would normally be doing during the 3-5 time of the day, and normally the response is hanging out at their houses or napping. Life somewhat shuts down from 3-5 here, something that is also true in many other places, including many places in the US. I know even at school, from 3-5 is when people are chilling out after classes, napping, doing work, or working out - but it's still kind of a dead time. I agree that getting out into the community is important and super valuable, but I believe also that it should be stuff that is traditionally Omani - a trip to the souq or to the maktaba (bookstore) is perfect. But to be honest, the time is also a great opportunity to practice reading or speaking with a native speaker willing to correct you, something more difficult outside of a classroom environment.

Tuesday - Another normal day of classes and then we did a group activity with two other PF groups before our Calligraphy workshop. The workshop was awesome, the guy was super super talented and we all got these cool calligraphy pens so that we could practice. I'm not sure why we don't have more calligraphy workshops, considering it is such a cool part of the language (just look up arabic calligraphy on google and you'll see why). But we did find out from the visiting calligrapher that where he works, they do workshops as well, so were hopefully going to go and do another workshop. Unfortunately, calligraphy is somewhat difficult for me - writing the letters normally in a pretty way, not as difficult, but the idea of making the writing into shapes and sizes, that was just too much for my un-creative, un-artistic mind to manage :)

Wednesday - We had normal PF time today and I just ended up practicing reading aloud for most of my time. I also spent quite a bit of time on Facebook; I told myself last Friday at about this time, that I would go all week (school week mind you), without going on Facebook - for no strick reason, just to see if I could do it. What I found out is that it didn't necessarily make me more productive to be off Facebook, for there is far too many cool things online to prevent my procrastination. But I did realize that Facebook has become such an obsession for our generation. When people found out that I was going a week, just five simple days, without going onto Facebook, people kept saying they were impressed. And yes, it was pretty difficult. There's something about it, maybe its the comfort fact, aka knowing that even though I'm across the globe, I can still be connected somewhat to my friends and family back at home, that draws me back to it. But it was refreshing to kind of step away from everything for a bit. Made me appreciate it a little bit more.

Then Wednesday night, our OCA teacher Rahma took our class out to a movie, minus Maggie who went camping with Lili, Travis and Greg. We went to a cafe before hand and got to just sit and talk with her, and then we went and saw X-Men: First Class. Unfortunately and fortunately, it was in English, but it had Arabic subtitles. The movie itself was actually really good, I haven't seen any of the other X-Men movies, but it made me want to see the others actually. And Rahma is such a sweetheart, she was willing to do anything to make sure we were having a good time. Plus it was nice, because she spoke mostly Arabic with us so we got to practice.

Yesterday, Thursday - Kat, Julie and I decided to try this aerobic class that Samira (the student coordinator at the Learning Center) suggested we try. Luckily, we mentioned it to Rahma Wednesday night and she offered to drive us. We were a little late so decided to just wait and go to the 10:30 class; in the mean time, we went to a little grocery and bought juice and then stopped by Rahma's house for a few minutes - she lives about a 3 minute drive from the Sports Complex where the class was. She served us these awesome Samosa's and this sweet arabic bread and then, apologized for not having more for us. The class was so much fun, a mix of dancercise and belly dancing with music and a little bit of stretching at the end. The teacher was this Pilipino woman who was an absolute hoot. And the class was about 80 Omani women, all without abayas, since it was only women. It was an awesome experience, and quite a workout (though of course, no substitution for running, though I am pretty sore in my back today). After, Rahma invited us back to her house, where we met one of her sisters (who was absolutely gorgeous), one of her brothers, and one of her nieces. We hung out for a while just chatting among the three of us, and then chatted with her sister for a while and then had lunch (rice and chicken with some salad - I love how simple and delicious Omani food is). Omanis are so nice that they are always telling you to eat more and getting more food for you. Unfortunately this leads to overeating easily haha. We returned to the hotel and then the three of us went and tanned for a little on the balcony of the gym - its so bloody hot here though, so we could barely stay out there for 40 minutes, even at 3 in the afternoon. Then last night, Saleh, the head of the PF's, brought a bunch of us to the Olympic qualifying football (soccer as we call it in America) game between Oman and China. It was a great game, and since Oman beat China in China before, they had to play overtime even though China was ahead 1-0 at the end of 90 minutes. The overtime was sooo exciting resulting in Oman winning by 2 goals! We were sitting in the front row of the family section (all the men can sit in one section and then theres a separate section where 'families' sit, like in most parts of society here), and apparently had attracted some attention, because at the end of the game, three of the Omani players came over and threw their jerseys to us. It was a ton of fun, and I was sitting next to Saleh so I got to practice my Arabic a bit.

And our bus on the way back was totally tricked out and the driver was playing pretty good music, so we were just singing and dancing along occasionally, of course drawing a ton of attention to us. Towards the end of the ride, Akons "Right Now (Na Na Na)" came on, and all of us just started singing and dancing. It was all girls in the bus, minus Robert who was sitting in the front, and we were just having a ball. The driver even replayed the song since it was so hilarious how into it we were. It was so much fun and just a great ending to a fun night.

Today has just been a chill out day - probably gonna grab some Thai food for dinner tonight and get ready for our tests tomorrow (one in MSA and one on Media vocab - yay...), so I might be up late studying vocabulary tonight but oh well! Its crazy to think that were almost half-way done! Tomorrow I think Kat and I are going to cook during PF time with Rasha (our PF) and then next weekend we have a big jumbo trip to the Sharqia region I think - were camping and hopefully riding camels and seeing turtles! And we get next Saturday off, so next week is only a four day week. I think we only have one more free weekend before the end of the program! Time is starting to fly by, eek!

Love and miss everyone,
Liv xoxo

Week 2!

Sorry I've been so bad at posting this week!! It's hard to get enough time to just sit down and write a post because we have so much going on. I'll try to summarize the last week in somewhat concise form though!! No promises...

Other than another trip to LuLu's and an intro lecture on economics last Sunday, most of the academic stuff this week was the usual. But we did have a few adventures this week. Starting Tuesday: after school a few of the PF's brought a bunch of us girls to a mini-souq, benefitting the women's association of Seeb. We spent an hour there, talking to some of the women, looking around and shopping. They had some really cool stuff on sale for pretty cheap. I ended up buying an abaya, the traditional long black dress that women wear here. It's been somewhat difficult to find one that works for me since I'm so tall, but the one I found was only 7 Rial and just barely long enough so I figured I'd go for it. It's surprisingly flattering, and the Harry Potter nerd in me thinks it is reminiscent of wizard robes haha which is exciting :)

After the souq, Kat, Lili, and I decided to venture out of our immediate location (the neighborhood of our hotel) and go try to find this cafe with food and shisha called Kargene (not sure on the spelling), that a few of the other kids on the program had been to. Dressed in my new abaya with Kat and Lili both wearing hijabs as well, we went to the street to catch a taxi and work on our negotiating skills in Arabic. Several taxis passed us by, and just as we were beginning to think we would have to resort to walking to the main highway, one pulled up. Even though there was already an Omani man sitting in the front seat, we began negotiating a price for the ride to the cafe. Deciding on 2 Rials per person (somewhat high, but we figured good enough for our first time) we sat in the backseat and asked how the driver was in Arabic. Surprised, he asked if we spoke Arabic and we gan talking about how we were learning, etc. At one point, he asked if we were Muslim because we were covered and when we told him we weren't and that it was just because we wanted to respect the culture, he was very pleased and impressed. He actually didn't even guess we were from America initially! After getting a little lost, we eventually found our destination, paid and the driver, Said, gave us his number and told us to call him when we finished and he would drive us back. In the end, he gave us our return trip free because we spoke Arabic and we promised to call him again when we needed a taxi. Oh, and the restaurant was good, several expats so it wasn't awkward that we were there without a man, food was a bit expensive, but the shisha was pretty cheap and the Rose flavor was really nice.

Then Wednesday, after working out, Kat, Lili, Renee, Elyse and I decided to try a Moroccan restaurant, so we called up Said, he came and picked us up. Unfortunately, the restaurant wasn't serving actual food, so we just got really amazing Moroccan tea and hung out for an hour or so and watched part of "Sleeping with the Enemy". We then just returned to the area around the hotel and got Indian food for dinner. Upon returning, one of the workers at the hotel reminded us of the lunar eclipse, so we chilled outside talking while we watched the eclipse (which was super cool).

Then yesterday we went on one of our day trips to the town of Nakhl, where we visited a fort, a Helwa factory (Helwa is a sweet made specially in Oman of rose water, sugar, and dates) and a natural spring (which was really cool - the spring just fountained up out of a mountain, spurting out hot water). We then stopped at a traditional Omani restaurant, where we sat on the ground and ate with our hands from large bowls of rice and chicken. It was a pretty interesting day, but everyone was really tired and dehydrated from spending so much time outside in the brutal heat. We came back and all took naps and after a really great workout (I ran 5 kilometers!! It was exciting!!) I just came back and went to bed after doing a bit of homework.

Today we had some issues with the power in our apartment, but luckily it is back up and running (including the air conditioners, mashaallah). I worked out a bit, and have just hung out in the hotel for the rest of the day. I have a MSA test and a Media vocab quiz tomorrow so I've been doing A LOT of vocabulary studying. Sorry this has been such a long one! I'll try to keep up more regularly so they aren't so long!

Miss everyone back home!! xoxo

First Weekend

Greetings! I was originally using this as a source of procrastination, but then went to dinner for two hours and had to come back and actually do work. Thus, this post didn't get finished last night! Sorry! I'll try to make up for it in descriptions :)

So the last two days were the 'weekend' here, since Friday is the equivalent of Sunday in countries where Christianity molded the calendar. Wednesday night, a bunch of us hung out in one of the guys' rooms and chatted and watched some arabic television and then most of us called it an early night. Then, Thursday, I got up bright and early to meet one of the PF's, Amal, with three other girls, Renee (who just graduated from UCSD and we were on the plane together), Mor (who is going to be a senior at the Navel Academy), and Nina (who is going to be a junior and lives in my suite). The plan was to go and spend a day with Amal to get a better idea of what life is like for Omanis. We ended up going to Amal's house, which was absolutely gorgeous, talked about Oman for several hours, and got to cook Omani food with Amal's mother. We made a dish called Kabsa, which is rice and chicken mixed together with spices - it was sooo delicious. I really am starting to like Omani food, and were eating so much Middle Eastern food that it's going to be kind of weird being home at the end of the summer and not eating it everyday! After lunch, Amal's mother brought us traditional Omani clothes for us to try on and taught us how to actually wrap a hijab; we all tried on the outfits and it was so hilarious to see all of us dressed like Omanis - somehow it doesn't look quite right on us haha.

After that, Amal brought us to a salon near her house and we spent 2.5 hours watching and getting henna on our hands. Apparently, most Omani women remove all of their body hair - by way of waxing and threading. So when I went to get my henna, the woman full on asked me why I hadn't gotten the hair on my arms and hands removed before. She was so confused, and I just had no idea what to say - I have blonde hair, so it had never been a problem haha. I was just a little taken aback by how forward she was :) The henna looks awesome though, it got super dark on my hands for some reason - darker than the other three girls'. It's pretty strange to have it on my hands though; first of all its hard to concentrate, and I feel like I've been talking with my hands a lot more, and secondly, its weird to do stuff like wash my face when theres a brown designs all over my hands. Plus I don't want it to fade so I feel like I don't want to use my hands for stuff!

After henna, we went to one of the main malls, where we went to the cinema. Surprisingly, most of the movies were American - and looking at them, its no wonder people here have such a bad image of Americans. Pretty much every movie involved some sort of drinking, partying, sex, or violence, most of the time combining them. We went to the new Jason Statham movie Blitz, which was extremely violent and full of bad words, drinking and drug usage, and sexual innuendo. It was a fine movie, but I just felt some what ashamed that this was what Arabs were seeing as normal Western media.

Pretty much everyone slept in on Friday - few woke up before 11, even though most of us went to bed by 12 or 1 the night before. It was just proof that all of us are just exhausted from the pace of the program without even knowing it. Made some eggs, checked fb, worked out, and then just studied for the rest of the night. I didn't end up leaving the hotel at all haha; Kat and I tried the Thai restaurant in the hotel though, and it was awesome!!!

And then today we started classes up again. The schedule changed a little and we now have MSA for 1.5 hours in the morning, followed by only one hour of OCA, lunch and then 1.5 hours of Media class. After that we have peer facilitator/homework time till the bus comes. Today we had a little extra lecture from the US Embassy because another program, SALAM, which is sponsored by the Sultan and brings American students here to study, just arrived on Thursday, so they briefed us on safety and culture, so on, so forth. But we lucked out on teachers - we absolutely love our teachers, they are all so nice and genuine, and awesome teachers! I know I'm going to learn a ton because I feel like my Arabic is already getting much better.

After we got back, four other girls and I went to Tarboosh, the Lebanese restaurant which has amazing falafel, and got takeout which we brought down to the beach and just ended up hanging out down there for a while. About to go workout, and then gotta come back and get down to studying - we started a new chapter in Al-Kitaab AND we now have media homework. Luckily a few of us are going to study together, so hopefully it will get done faster! Fingers crossed!

Sorry this is kind of a long one! Hopefully I'll post more pictures later too! Miss everyone at home and hope everyone's doing well!
xoxo

One week down!

Hiiii! So were probably going to be pretty busy from now on because of class and homework, but I'm going to try to at least post every other day!!

So classes got switched up a little bit yesterday - one of the other girls, Kat, who is going to be a sophomore at Georgetown next year, and I were discussing how many chapters we are going to go through this summer because both of us need to get through enough to go into third year in the fall. Our class as it was, wouldn't have so we discussed with the academic director our mini-dilemma. Since three other girls who are already in our class wanted to move up a level already, he just moved our whole class to level A (we were already in B, so it wasn't a major jump). This means Kat and I have to go through the last two chapters that we are skipping on our own AND do all the work that our class is already doing to catch up with the other A class. Hence, I will be super busy for the next little while.

I have my first quiz on Saturday in colloquial Omani Arabic! I have no idea what it's going to be like since we've learned like 150 new vocab words, so we will see! Luckily we don't get grades for this :)

Two days ago, we also made a fun trip to one of the souqs; it was another fun cultural experience. It was kind of like the market that we shopped in Ecuador, except it was in a huge network of inside hallways. most of the shopkeepers were indian or Pakistani though, so we didn't end up practicing much Arabic with locals...

And we've now been here for a full week! It feels like soooo much longer!! The weirdest part is I keep forgetting what day it is and the weekends here are so strange, because they are Thursday/Friday! So tomorrow is the weekend!! YAYAYAY! I think were doing a movie night tonight, since a lot of us are pretty wiped out from the week, but I think were going to try to do some exploring over the next two days, particularly visiting the beach, so I'll hopefully have some fun stories to write about.

Oh and the picture above is of the Mosque! Isn't it beautiful??

Send me emails!! I'll have some time to answer this weekend so I'd love to hear from people :) ohipkins@middlebury.edu

Miss everyone! xoxoxo

Day 4

I know the last post was long, so I'll keep this one short :)

Today we had a lot of class, with an hour and a half of MSA and 2.5 hours of OCA, in addition to a great lecture on Omani/Arabic culture by well known lecturer Shaykh Khalfan al-Isiry. It's nice to be able to focus just on Arabic without worrying about other classes, something similar to the feeling from J-term. I just really enjoy studying Arabic - Tiny nerd-out, sorry. Apparently we are going to go through at least 7 chapters in the Al-Kitaab books, which should be awesome. May have to do a little studying on my own to get ready for 301 Arabic in the Fall haha but that's do-able :)

We also made another trip to Lulu's, which went substantially better. It was 10 times less crowded, and I covered, which made the world's difference. I finally learned how to actually put on the hijab - it looks a lot better haha. Hopefully were going to find some time to go to City Center, where there is a Toys R Us and a Borders; a bunch of us want to buy Arabic books, movies and games.

And one thing I've realized is that I am actually starting to like Middle Eastern food a lot! I was never really a fan until now, but the food here is great! Omani's love food, all of them are so excited to give us restaurant suggestions etc.. And they all love the American fast food chains here, specifically McDonald's, KFC, and Pizza Hut. Who knew?

Hope everyone is doing well!
xoxo

Day 2 and 3

So the last two days have been pretty jam-packed - all yesterday, until around 2, we had orientation, and then one of the academic directors, Soltan, took us on a bus tour of Muscat. The city is beautiful, and incredibly spread out. Soltan drew us a map of the city to try to describe the layout, with the sea on one side and the mountains on the other: the first picture shows his diagram. The architecture is awesome too; it's also amazing how much construction is going on throughout the city! It really shows how quickly the city is modernizing and changing. I was also surprised by all the mountains. The water is beautiful too. Oh and we saw the Sultan Qaboos's TWO yachts, which are hugeeee. We thought they were cruise ships haha. We later found out there is a movement to nominate the Sultan for the Nobel Peace Prize - you can follow him on twitter @ http://twitter.com/#!/nobpeacpzqaboos :)

After our tour, we came back to the hotel to cool off and relax before heading out again to one of the hypermarkets in town, Lulu's.

Now this was a cultural experience. Weekends here are Thursday and Friday instead of Saturday and Sunday like back home, so we should have expected the rush, since we were going at 6pm Friday night, when no one had work. But no one really knew what to expect, and the parking lot really didn't seem very full. Few of us even thought to cover. Honestly, it was one of the more uncomfortable moments in my life - not only were there little to no other white people in sight, there were certainly no other blonde young females walking around uncovered other than me and the other two blondes on the trip. We entered as a group - mistake number two. None of us knew where to go or where to start - this place was gigantic, two floors, literally aisles as far as the eyes could see. It was like a double-decker Costco, but Costco is never so crowded that you can barely move your cart along. To make a long story short, after two hours of negotiating a cart through masses of people who not only speak a foreign language but stare at you because you are so obviously out of place, we finally made it out into outside into the heat and humidity. Even at 8, the air is thick with moisture. But even though some of the other girls had an issue with one specific creepy Omani man (who asked a few girls if they wanted to marry him and then proceeded to show up at our hotel this morning), the experience wasn't a negative one - it was more a learning experience. As I spent more time in the store, I became more comfortable with the setting and realized that even if they stared, the random men weren't planning on harassing me at all - we were just some interesting and extremely unusual occurrence, and therefore solicited much more attention than usual. Its not unusual for Americans to stare at people who don't fit the stereotype of the local population so why should Arabs be held to any higher of a standard? In the future, I do plan to cover and dress as modestly as possible, in addition to speaking as much Arabic as possible, but not because I feel threatened, but because I want to respect the norms of the society that I am planning on living in for the next two months.

Today we saw another amazing aspect of the common culture here - we started bright and early at the Grand Mosque of Sultan Qaboos. From our tour yesterday, it was apparent how important mosques and the flowing architecture is. The Mosque was incredibly beautiful, from both the inside and the outside. The attention to detail, the engraving, the mosaics and just the general way that something so intricate and complex can be created to appear so simple and calming. The whole complex seemed so clean and organized. All of the girls had to be completely covered, neck to wrist to ankle as well as all of our hair, particularly to enter the main prayer room. Soltan told us that the Mosque has the second largest chandelier and the second largest rug, both of which were stunning but not overwhelming.

Finally, we returned to the World Learning Center to meet our teachers and have our first class. My class is only five people, all of us girls. It's pretty sweet :) Our teacher, Rahma, is super nice, switching fluidly from MSA to OCA and dropping in the occasional English when we reallyyyy had no idea what she was saying. Two sessions on OCA, with a short interlude for lunch (which were these tortilla things with french fries, meet and salad - slightly reminiscent of a good ole California burrito) and we were ready to go out and speak Omani. Except not really, as we found out when most of us were trying to use our new knowledge with our new Peer Facilitators. These too, are small groups of three students with one Omani young adult. My PF, Rasha, is such a sweet heart; she's 22 and is studying translation from Arabic to English at the University here in Muscat. We talked about food, dancing, music, sports, cooking... everything we could possibly think of in regards to the few words we know in Arabic at this point. By the time we got on the bus, all of us were exhausted and pretty worn out from about 4 hours of constant Arabic - switching between MSA and OCA. I know it will get easier as we go along, and thank god everyone is fine speaking a little English from time to time!

Another side note, if I wanted to get back into running, this is the place it will happen. Women generally don't really work out much here, especially not in public. So no running or exercising outside. And with all our work and full days, finding a bigger gym is probably just not going to happen. So I think my last resort for keeping sane will by the mini gym on the 5th floor of the hotel - it contains 2 treadmills, a weight machine, some free weights and 2 bosu balls. That's it. So I guess I'll be starting to run everyday from now on? Great....

Bedtime, got a full day of class tomorrow - Soltan is teaching our MSA class in the morning, and in addition to the two OCA classes before and after lunch, we have a lecture on Omani culture. I think were also venturing to Lulu's again, hopefully with more comfortable results! Goodnight all! Ma3-salaama

xoxo

So it begins...

I hate blogs normally because it's so difficult to keep them up. But since I'm sure I won't be able to write personalized emails to every person during this Oman trip, I figured I'd just bite the bullet and write a blog. I figure it might be a fun thing to look back on as well and an easy way of telling everyone that, GASP, I'm still alive.

So, after who knows how many hours of flying, we are finally settled in the Midan Hotel in Muscat. For one thing, no amount of walking around in East coast humidity can prepare you for the weather here - those of us wearing glasses as we exited the plane had trouble seeing because our glasses fogged up so much the second the hot air hit you. The hotel manager told us when he was welcoming us to the hotel that it might get up to 50 degrees Celsius, aka 120 Fahrenheit. We'll see how that goes, but since we have to cover up most of the time, I'm thinking were going to try to be inside as much as possible.

Luckily, we have orientation tomorrow, so we have a little break before the hard work starts; we start classes on Saturday (I can't believe tomorrow is Friday... I feel like I just left home like yesterday) and I'm assuming have class every day from then on. Unfortunately, we have to be ready to go by 8:30 tomorrow morning (it's already 1am here), and I doubt the rough sleep I got on the plane is enough to carry me through a full day.

On a side-note, our layover in Germany made me realize how much I miss Europe – I bought a pretzel in the airport and it brought back memories of when we used to get these amazing pretzel rolls in Lucerne. It just made me want to visit Europe again so much.

Alright, gonna get to bed, but I do have internet, so anyone who wants to talk just email me at liv.hipkins@gmail.com :) Oh and I don't think skype works, but iChat does!

xoxo