Quick Trip to Wadi Rum, Petra, and the Dead Sea

Last week was a busy week! We had a midterm holiday for the whole week, and I was traveling for most of it. Haider has been in Iraq for about a month for his brother's wedding, so he had brought some things from home for me. So he came to Jordan for a few days. Since it was his first time here, we took a short trip. We hired a driver and first went to Petra. Even though I had been already, and it was still pretty hot, it was nice to go again. We didn't have a tour guide this time, so when we got to the treasury, we had a drink and sat at the little cafe to take some time there looking at the rock carving.

After that, we went on to Wadi Rum. We got there a bit late, so they rushed us in a truck to see the sunset over the desert. The bedouin camp we stayed at was really nice this time. Our room not only had electricty, but also a private bathroom and air conditioning. The camp had a nice outdoor area, and the rock behind the camp had lights on it at night. There was a guy playing live music in the evening, and the groups of people there in the evening were really fun. There was a group of maybe twenty women in their 20s/30s, and they all were up and dancing and singing. And then there was a family next to us who had brought a cooler with food, and they were all dancing and having a good time. The grandpa was up and dancing and singing and having fun. Haider and I got up and tried to dance the dabke with them very briefly.

There was a cute cat sitting on the roof of a little booth that we kept trying to pet, but he was not at all interested. Haider even saved him some food for dinner, but he didn't want it. Finally, I guess the cat's owner came and got him down and put him on a bench and Haider swooped in and picked him and held him for a while. The next morning we left and drove to the dead sea. We went to a resort hotel on the Dead Sea (البحر الميت - eh -ba-Hr el-mayit) and ate lunch at the buffet. We hadn't originally planned to go there, so I hadn't brought a swim suit, but I would be going back later in the week. So I will talk more about that experience later. But since Haider was leaving, he wanted the opportunity to see it. He went out in the water for a little while, while I waited on the beach.

After that, we headed back to Amman, and we spent the next day seeing Amman. First, we visited the Cave of the Seven Sleepers. There is a story, a early Christian myth, that is also in the Qaran about seven Christian soldiers who were being by the Romans for their religion, so they fled and hid in a cave where they fell asleep. Some stories said they were sealed in the cave, but God preserved them so that they fell sleep for around 300 years. When they woke, Christianity was accepted, and people saw how God had protected them. (They died shortly after though). Some stories include a dog that guarded them. But anyway, they claim the cave is here in Amman. There is a mosque complex at the site now, so they gave me a robe to wear that had a hood to cover my head. I thought the cave was pretty cool actually; we had to sit outside it for a few minutes because it was closed during the call to prayer. Sitting in the rocky area outside the entrance under an olive tree really felt like you were back in Biblical times. When the cave was opened, we went it. There are seven tombs carved in the rock, and one has a little window where you can look in and see the bones.

After that we went to the roman amphiteater which is in the middle of the downtown/older part of the city called waSt el-beled, and we walked around the shops there, looking for gifts for Haider's family. There is a famous shop called Habiba that sells a famous sweet here, called kunafa. It has a sweet cheese on the bottom,and a crispy, crunchy buttery top. They have multiple shops around the city, but I like the one in the middle of wasat el-belled because it's a tiny shop and you have to wait in a line outside and pay at a little booth outside the shop. I think they only sell a few things at this shop, so you go in, get it, and go out the same door, so it's very crowded. There's a little plaza outside, and I like seeing all the people sitting around eating huge plates of kunafa. It was a nice way to end the short trip.

About Learning Arabic

So I want to talk a little about what it is actually like, day-to-day trying to learn and use Arabic here. Yesterday, I felt like I knew absolutely nothing. Honestly, I felt like a real dummy! We watched a short video in class, and I understood very little of it. Then I went to a store, and despite what I have learned, I couldn't communicate. Being in a place where you can't speak the language is really difficult, so the next time you see an immigrant struggling to communicate in English, keep this in mind! I have learned some of a handful of languages now, and without a doubt, Arabic is the hardest. So I'll talk about some reasons why this is. The US State Dept. categorizes languages by their difficulty for English speakers to learn and the number of hours to learn them. There are four levels - Spanish, French, and Italian are Level I, German is a level 2, Hindi is a level 3, and Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean are the level four languages. You probably already know that Arabic is written from right to left, which means that books in Arabic start from the "end" - back of the book per English and finish at the "beginning" - or the cover of English books, but that's not really a difficulty, just a difference. One thing that makes it difficult is the sounds. There are several sounds that exist in Arabic that don't exist in English. Additionally, there are sounds that in English that are different but are represented by the same letter/s. For example, the "th" in theater is a different sound than the "th" in that. Arabic has these sounds, but the are represented by different letters which could actually be considered something that makes Arabic easier. There are many times this happens in English, but native speakers never think about it, but this can be difficult for English learners. How do you know which "th" sound to use? For each Arabic letter, there are four forms, depending on where in a word the letter is. A stand-alone letter can look different when it is at the beginning, middle, or end of a word, and there are no capital letters.

Arabic doesn't typiclly write out short vowel sounds, unless it's the Quran or something like that. If you ever see fancy Arabic calligraphy with lots of little lines over the top, these usually represent short vowel sounds, or the lack of a short vowel after a consonant, or the doubling of a consonant sound. In most written Arabic - news articles, street signs, books, these aren't written. For native speakers, this isn't a problem, much like if you tk ot vwls n nglsh, u cld stl ndrstnd. However, if you are learning, that makes it more difficult to sound out and recognize words.

Here's a fun thing about Arabic - each noun has a singular and plural form like English, but it also has a dual to represent 2 things. So for 1 thing, you use the singular. For two, you use the dual, and then here's the fun part. From 3-10 things, you use the plural form, BUT for 11 to infinity things, you go back to using the singular form of a noun. So you probably know that Arabic is spoken across the Middle East. It is the official or co-official language in Saudi Arabia, Chad, Algeria, Comoros, Eritrea, Djibouti, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Bahrain, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. It is also spoken in parts of Turkey, Niger, Iran, Senegal, and Mali. HOWEVER, the Arabic spoken in Morocco, for example, is very different than the Arabic spoken in Iraq. Even native speakers might have some difficultly understanding if they aren't from the area. Most Arabic schools teach Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), also called foos-ha. Then you can also study classical Arabic like the Quran is written in, and then all the dialects spoken are called "ammiya." MSA is really not a spoken language, but it is often used in written things and the news and radio. This means that if you learn MSA, because it is taught in schools like our English classes, almost anyone in an Arabic speaking country will be able to understand you, BUT you may not be able to understand them because some words are completely different. Sometimes the grammar is different. There will probably be more differences as I continue learning. Some other interesting things: The Arabic language doesn't have the sound for the letter "P" so they usually substitue "B". There is also no letter "V", so they usually use "F". There is no present tense linking verb "to be" in Arabic. So if you want to say "My house is big" you say "My house big". Below is some of my writing for my homework.