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