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