My Study Abroad Trip

This is my account of my study abroad trip to Jordan 2k16

[jumanaabroad]

The End of the trip

Well this blog didn’t work out as I wanted :/ oh well, i never was really all that good at keeping a diary before. 

Things to update you on now. (This is going to be long cuz i need to rant)

Tomorrow is my last full day in Jordan. There is some issue with my visa and apparently I got fined without my knowledge and now I’m stressed about going through customs. 

L, the girl who has some sort of anxiety disorder, has officially pissed me off. Usually when she gets freaked out I try to talk her down, calmly and softly, and it seems to help a lot of the time. But yesterday she was upset right before our final because she was handing something in and the professor hadn’t made what he wanted explicitly clear to anyone and we had all turned in different types of work. I tried my usual tactic of calm voice saying to take a deep breath. She fucking yelled at me to LEAVE HER ALONE CAUSE SHE CAN DO IT in front of the teacher and half of the class. I really want to be done helping her, because apparently because I knew her vaguely from class in Chicago and because I am the oldest on this trip it fell to me to deal with her freak outs, but I have gotten so fucking sick of her. It’s not my responsibility to make sure that you can deal with this trip. I know that no one should withhold an opportunity to study abroad from a student with disabilities BUT SHE DIDN’T EVEN TALK TO HER THERAPIST BEFORE SHE CAME HERE, like seriously, she should have at least mentioned it to them before she came OR EVEN SKYPED WITH THEM which for some stupid reason she refused to do. I think she heard “Study in Jordan” and applied without thinking about the issues that she would face when she got here or how she would be able to cope with them. As such it has fallen to me and K, another girl on this trip who was rooming with L until a month ago when she got sick of both L and their host mom and requested a change, to take care of her. 

Seriously it is not our responsibility to take care of this student who has these issues, it is her responsibility to realize that what she experiences here might be a trigger for her (Which seem to be everything from sitting down when someone offers her a chair to wandering off when we went to Jerash two weeks ago and she started saying how she should “just fucking die.”) And we were warned of this before we came here. Like we had an orientation in June and they told us that some things that might have been dealt with could resurface, and I know my depression has in some instances come back strongly but I managed to deal with it and when I couldn’t I called my mom who understands everything I have gone through my whole life and knows how to talk me down, even over the phone and the only time during my stay that I flipped, it was the second day and I didn’t have a converter for my phone or my laptop and I didn’t have the wifi connected and my host mom managed to get me calmed enough to figure out the wifi and call my parents. This girl doesn’t know how to deal with her issues or if she does she hasn’t shown it because she hasn’t been dealing with them, she’s been fluctuating between bad and worse whenever she interacts with someone (now it seems to be interacting with anyone because she freaked out after I said something the other day)

Like seriously, last week me and L went into Amman (she was planning on going alone without a working cellphone and that just wasn’t going to happen, like seriously) and she freaked out when trying to order a sandwich from the Shawarma guy and I tried to help her cause she seemed to be nonverbal, which happens sometimes, and then she just ran away and when I caught up to her she was very close to screaming at me that “She was an adult and she can do this on her own.” Okay I am sorry but when you are ten seconds from throwing your phone at the Shawarma guy who doesn’t speak much English and doesn’t understand what is going on with you and I try to placate you because you’re having a nervous breakdown in the middle of the street don’t yell at me that you can handle yourself. And tomorrow I have to stay the night with her because our flight leaves at 6am saturday morning and the taxi is just going to take us both to the airport from her host family’s place. 

I don’t even get a real break to recoup from this trip because we start the next quarter at DePaul in about a week. 

On a happier, note, the kids of my host family are in denial that I am going away. They are going to Karak tomorrow to visit their family for Christmas and the 5yo told me that I couldn’t go because Santa was coming to Karak. I had to tell him that Santa was going to stop by Chicago after he came here. 

Also speaking of Santa. Props to those people who wear the fake beards (or grow real beards) to play the part for kids at malls for days on end. That thing is hot as hell and and slips into your mouth all the time. For reference Santa came to visit the kids yesterday and bring some Pre-Christmas presents and guess who got to be Santa. 

Anyways, it’s been an interesting experience, I will most likely try to visit again in the future some time, and I have enjoyed missing the frigid white that is Chicago right now. But I have been homesick most of this trip and I can’t wait to get home and see all of my friends. 

[jumanaabroad]

This election

Okay,

i really have no words for what just happened. I am again sorry that I haven’t been able to post more regularly, I really want to but the internet is out at home. the last couple of weeks have been fun but today I just really need to vent about the election

this bullshit artist just became president. He became president and he has an entirely red congress behind him. 

I am legitimately scared for my self and my family back home. I am not sure exactly how much damage Trump can do on his own, but I am more afraid of the people who supported him and not only ignored his faults but encouraged them. I have already been called “isis bitch” and been hailed to as if I were Hitler. and that was months before this election was called. I am genuinely scared of what his supporters might do to me when I walk down the streets back home. 

I have had a number of people here in Jordan telling me that I am more than welcome to stay here if I want.

I miss Chicago, and I miss my home, but Idk what kind of home i will come back to in December. 

pray for everyone, 

[jumanaabroad]

Again sorry but this time it isn’t really my fault

Hey, I am so sorry again but the wifi has been out for the last couple of weeks, plus we went to Petra and Wadi Rum two days ago and I just got back today...

Anyways, I’m going to make two posts, one about the last two weeks at classes and one about the trip this weekend. and I will post pictures of everything today because I finally have time.

Okay here goes

the past three weeks we have started classes at AUM with the other students. it’s been challenging because of the fact that we are not at the same level and so they couldn’t just make a class for us specifically, but they put us with some local students for one class and with some other international students for the other, and we have another class taught in english, I’m taking history of Architecture. it’s been hard because the class with locals is somewhat close to my level in Arabic but the lecture is all given in Arabic, so i am just barely keeping up. and the second class is all students who don’t know a word of Arabic or cannot read arabic, and so we are there for half an hour going over things like This is  ف  this is how it sounds. which i’ve been doing since I was four years old so i quickly get bored of it. but she lets them out 45 minutes early so we can have something a bit more challenging. 

I also think we keep spending too much time together, and everyone is getting sick of each other. Idk why but the others in the group wont go out and make new friends with the locals, they wont even go out to the cafes in town. one of them is extremely mad that she cant binge drink like she would in the states -_-

they are all being childish and I’m apparently the only one who really understands exactly how conservative this culture can be. 

in addition to that one of the other girls has anxiety or autism or something serious like that and whenever someone speaks to her in arabic she shuts down completely or flips out. she begins shaking and hyperventilating. and then when she calms down she starts calling herself stupid and demanding to book a flight home, adamantly refusing to speak arabic ever again. and I totally understand what’s happening with her, i’ve taken classes with her for two years now, but at the same time she’s started getting snippy with me and sometimes downright bitchy at me when she doesn’t get a concept that I’ve been explaining calmly for the last twenty minutes. I totally understand that she has her issues but I am still being calm and understanding and she takes her frustration out on me. 

I’m the oldest person on this trip, and it seems that I have become the babysitter for these fucking grown ass adults. And to top it all off, i’m the only one who actively tries to speak arabic with any of the locals. The others speak a little when they see it written like on a menu or something, but outside of that they never speak arabic or try to understand what is spoken to them, and then i have to act like their personal translator. It’s getting old and I’m getting tired of babysitting them. 

Idk i knew that this would be challenging but I didn’t think i would have to be the only one who did anything or learned anything from this trip. 

anyways I will post the other one with pictures later, ttyl

[jumanaabroad]

another uber late post

Hey guys, 

i have a feeling that a lot of my posts will be late but this time i have a concrete reasoning for it being that my host family’s apartment hasn’t had wifi in the last week and a half. 

so what has happened in the last two? weeks. I started classes at the university here. So far it’s been good, the arabic classes are challenging enough for me, which is a good change, but the Architecture class is kinda boring (just a little too focused on details for me) idk 

one of the other girls in the Study abroad program who i’ve mentioned before is getting on my nerves. I understand that she has autism or anxiety, but it’s been six weeks and she only seems to be getting worse. not only that but she has become rude towards everyone around her for literally no reason whatsoever. i understand that she has issues and i respect that and i haven’t been rude or anything to her, but when she becomes rude and annoyed with me for not showing her something that I am clearly demonstrating and have been for the last twenty minutes it gets old. 

idk maybe i’m just getting homesick or something idk, I’m ready to go do somethings, I need to get going i will try to post pictures tomorrow but the internet is being finnicky so ugh 

[jumanaabroad]

Me again

hey,

I know it’s been a while, and in my defense i’ve been a little sick lately. but i will try to keep this updated more often now. I even decided to put it in my calendar to keep this up, but i’ve always been bad at diaries, so here’s hoping.

I’ll break down what’s happened in the last couple of weeks.

So far, I have managed not to fall asleep in our Arabic class, which is honestly a miracle considering i have not been sleeping in the evenings for several reasons. the biggest of which would be that this last tuesday (9/20) was the country’s elections. and now the entire country has been in a riot about the results. I have no clue who got elected and I don’t know any of their stances, but the people who supported them have been celebrating for the past three days, honking and fireworks and parties all through the night. and the people who oppose them have been burning tires in the city center in protest. we usually try to avoid those areas because we aren’t Jordanians and the election really has no weight on us, but it was interesting to see the results.

I did spend Eid here, which was not what i expected, but then again I am staying with a Christian family here so I didn’t really expect them to go to the mosque. I ended up going to a wedding and it was interesting but awkward af because it was so obvious that I wasn’t supposed to be there. I knew no one and I was wearing my hijab in the middle of a Greek Orthodox wedding. Z, one of the organizers from the university here asked me two days ago why I didn’t request a Muslim host family, which I did. I guess the request didn’t get put through on the DePaul side of things :/ but it’s really alright my host family isnt horrible or anything. It’s just a little weird because my host mom is only 7 years older than me and has a five year old and a two year old. And aside from that, I just have the feeling that we wouldn’t run in the same circles if we had gone to the same high school. you know? like her interests are very different from mine and her friend group is much like her, and nothing like me. idk, i get along with her but like tonight i was sitting in the living room reading Game of Thrones while she was doing her nails. Not that there is anything wrong with how she spends her time, it’s just another example of how we are really different people.

I have gone to a few historic places in the last couple of days . the first being the Roman Amphitheater in Amman. It was freaking huge and so freaking steep, like we were climbing up to the top on hands and knees steep.

it’s weird how close history is here. I grew up in Chicago and loved going to the museums. But there anything even remotely old was behind a rope or under glass with guards posted in every room. Here there is only a guard to take your ticket at the door and a sign saying “please don’t touch.” Z was with us when we went to the Amphitheater and she was saying how when she was growing up she and her siblings would play with little bits of mosaic they found in their backyard. They didn’t even realize they were important until they were adults and a group of archaeologists from the University of Toronto came to excavate the site. like seriously this is weird. 

I also went to Mt. Nebo and La Storia. Mt Nebo is the place where Moses was allowed a glimpse into Heaven. There’s a lot of ruins up there, I think at one point there was a monastery there. La Storia is a museum at the base of the mountain that shows life sized scenes of the stories of the prophets Moses and Jesus and John the Baptist (RAW) and part of the story of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW). they even have a gift show where you can watch them put together mosaics and sand art. We didn’t get anything because my host family knows a lot of the shop owners in town and they didn’t want me to have to pay tourist prices for what they could get me for half or less from their friends’ shops. 

We also went to the Church of St. John in Madaba. it was interesting to see the church because it was built over Byzantine ruins and we got to go up to the top of the bell tower and see the whole city. 

we went to the Amman Citadel too. it was the medieval fortified center of the city. well the ruins of it anyways. it was really interesting, and kinda bizarre to see ruins an a Skyscraper within the same space. I keep telling people that these things are super interesting to me for the simple reason that there is nothing like it in America. the oldest things there are around 600 years old, some stuff is older, but there isn’t as much of it as there is here. 

Yesterday me and my host family went to visit their family in Karak, and I got to see the castle there. it was really cool, we didn’t get to see the whole thing because we got there after the museum/mosaic bit was closed but even going to the exterior bits was interesting. we were mostly walking across the top level of it, aka where the archers would take their positions during assaults on the castle. it was pretty cool. It was the castle where Salahudin al Ayubi fought from. 

I’ll post the pics tomorrow but it’s been a long day and the internet is being stubborn :/

[jumanaabroad]

It’s been a while

Hello all,

I know it’s been a while since ive posted on here but i’ve been really busy this last week.

to summarize, I was in istanbul until thursday, Thursday night I arrived in Amman, and now i am with my host family. It’s been a bit weird being here. everything is desert and my host family doesnt speak too much english (but i guess that will help with my arabic). Idk 

My host family is a young couple, the mother works at the university I am going to attend when the semester officially starts in October. The father is an engineer and they have two kids, 5yo and a 2yo(who is still afraid of me). 

anyways, this week we started our intensive arabic class to help some of us get up to speed with the rest of the students before we begin the regular semester. and it’s just really annoying because of the five students who are here only me and one other girl have taken more than one year of arabic classes. I can’t really complain because they needed the numbers to make the trip possible, but really my arabic is probably at an elementary school level and i am still the best in the class and the only one who really understands what the teacher is saying most of the time. so i usually do the assignments within about three minutes and have been spending the rest of the class period trying to stay awake (im still a little jetlaged) and reading Game of Thrones (I’m at the part where Bran has his dream about what’s going on around him while he’s comatose)... 

Additionally the rest of them have already started relying on me to help them understand what our bus driver says, or our waiter, or random people we meet in the shops. it’s kinda annoying because I am not supposed to be their crutch but they really only know the language in the abstract sense and cant even begin with the colloquial dialect yet so im stuck with the job of interpreter -_- (one of the guys even said yesterday that to outsiders i probably looked like their tour guide)

we also started working at our internship with Caritas Jordan which was fun. they work with the huge refugee population here in Jordan (when i say huge i mean over the last 5 decades or so they have taken in Palestinians, Syrians, and Iraqis among others and have resettled them in Jordan). I was mostly working with the Syrian refugees who came in, mainly pointing them in the direction of the waiting area and photocopying their IDs, but it was still fun. I got to actually help out with something i’ve been passionate about for the last couple of years. My supervisor yesterday was telling me that working with them for a month will make me pretty fluent, so fingers crossed. 

We also keep getting lost, there’s so many winding streets and the buildings all look fairly similar to one another so it is going to take some time to get used to the routes. but i’ll figure it out soon enough... bye for now

[jumanaabroad]

This is where we went yesterday. Starting from the top left we have Sultan Ahmed Mosque (the Blue Mosque), then Aya Sofia (Hagia Sophia), and then the rest are pictures of the Topkapi Palace (palace of the Ottoman Sultans) 

[jumanaabroad]

This was my second day here we went out to have lunch along the black sea and saw the ruins of a Byzantine castle. It was super cool The bridge is the newest bridge between the European and Asian sides of Istanbul. It opened on Friday.

[jumanaabroad]

First day in Istanbul. we went out for breakfast at this little bakery near the house I’m staying at. Then we walked around the neighborhood :D THERE ARE SO MANY STRAY CATS AND DOGS HERE IT’S RIDICULOUS

[jumanaabroad]

Part 2 of my arrival to Istanbul. P.s. sorry if any of the snap chat videos overlap, i’ve been trying to save them regularly but idk if somethings get mixed up

[jumanaabroad]

Hey guys fifth times the charm it would seem. I couldn’t post earlier because the WiFi here’s been glitchy but anyways Here is my snapstory of my flight here. 10 hrs on the plane is supremely long and annoying and there was a thunder storm while we were over canada, but w/e. I’m here.

More to come if the WiFi holds :)

[jumanaabroad]

Moving Out

Hey guys,

Sorry this post is late but I’ve been so supremely busy getting ready for my trip which starts in 48 HRS. holy crap. 

so here are the events of the past few days

Aug 21st. My parents and I finished packing up my half of my apartment

here are some pictures

I also got to take my sweet petty revenge on my passive aggressive roommate :D

Hehe, yes I know this is petty and childish, But those were all my things and I wasnt going to be here at the end of the lease to move them out myself, so she now has to deal with the fact that she has no cups or shower curtain until she moves out of the apartment at the end of the month. (Hey this girl wouldn’t talk to me and then the other day she came home with her boyfriend while I was in the next room and I heard her talking smack about me while I was in my room (and she knew I was home). 

Side note: this was not the girl I was living with during the school year (who was AWESOME) this is the girl my roommate got to sublease the apartment for the summer. 

Anyways, I no longer have an apartment. And now I am working on finishing packing for my trip to Istanbul and Jordan. Idk how often I will be able to post in the next few days. but I will try when I arrive there. 

Today I went out for lunch with a friend from school. It was supposed to be a big group coming (kinda like a sendoff) but it ended up being just me and her at this little cafe in Chicago. We got this AWESOME crepe (banana, nutella, vanilla ice cream, and whipped cream) and gabbed about the next few months. it was so nice to hang out with her before I left. 

I’m gonna miss so many people while I’m gone, but I’ll see them when I get back. maybe I’ll get them souvenirs from there ;) 

[jumanaabroad]

8-20-16

Hey,

So I didn’t type this up yesterday because I didn’t so there. Anyways. on Thursday I went out with one of my besties @dreamingoftomorroww to a Harry Potter Trivia night next to my university. And it was actually fun :D (not like some of those lame trivia nights where they ask things like Who taught Potions). I am proud to say that we won 30/33 but unfortunately there were some people who got 32 and some who got 31 so we didn’t win anything. But it felt nice to finally put the random Harry potter crap in my head to good use :D. Then we went to dinner and hung out at another friend’s apartment.  I wish I could have taken pictures (This blog really needs to have some) but my phone died and all of the friends I was hanging out with only had iPhones which don’t really work with my Samsung :(

The next day we went to Brunch and the Zoo for @dreamingoftomorroww‘s b-day <3 and it was totally fun. until we parked in the wrong lot and got towed. And it wasn’t even our fault. The only signs we saw that said “Tow zone” were either driven over, ergo on the ground and not visible from the car, or in Chinese (We were at Argyle, which is apparently where Chicago’s Chinatown used to be, now I think it is mostly Vietnamese people who live there) idk.

Anyways, Loved hanging out with the besties one last time before I leave for Istanbul on Thursday. God that’s exactly 5 days away. I have so much shit to do before then. 

Lots of love to Meruma on her B-Day. Will def be bringing you a present when I get back <3 

[jumanaabroad]

8-15-16

Ik its a little late but I thought I would make another post. it is now 1am on 8-16-16 but big news of the day happened yesterday and i am finally clear headed enough to type about it and sit up on my own. 

I got my wisdom teeth removed today. whoop dee freaking do. this morning i got no sleep because my sisters had their friends over until about 2am and because my mom got rid of my brother’s mattress and i have an apartment in the city i got the wonderful opportunity to sleep on the couch. Any ways when i get up to go to the dentist i am already sleep deprived (and i think the medicine they gave me to take before the procedure had some sleeping agents in it as well) and my siblings decided to watch that funny youtube video where the guy gets repeatedly hit in the face with a soccer ball which made me woozy. Anyways, I remember vaguely stumbling into the chair and then they told me i needed to relax before they started working on me and then they put one of those heart monitors on my finger, gave me some more pills, then I put my headphones on and woke up seven hours later at home. 

and no there was is no video of me all loopy. according to my mom and sister i wasnt funny loopy i was just swaying and had to basically be carried into the car and later into the house. 

now it’s 1am and my jaw hurts and i think imma go back to sleep cuz i cant open my mouth all the way, i want real food, but so far all i can swallow is soup and a milkshake from wendy’s, and i just don’t feel too good 

good night 

[jumanaabroad]

8-13-16

So today I went out shopping with a friend of mine who is also going on the trip with me (I’m going to call her L because Idk if she wants me to post her name online). Anyways L and I are the only two who are going from our class the other three students have only taken one year of Arabic, while L and I are going into the fourth year of the program.

Anyways, we got some awesome things for the trip like a new dress for me and some souvenirs to give to our host families, I got a mug with Al Capone’s face on it and I am going to wait till I go home because we live pretty close to where he’s buried and take a picture. Idky but so many of my dad’s friends, when they come from abroad, are extremely interested in Al Capone and so my dad always takes them to see the grave, I figured my host family might find it cool as well :D. Then we spent the rest of the day freaking out over everything that might happen while we are overseas. 

All in all I think it was a successful trip, and now I am going to make some food and finish packing up the crap at the back of my closet...

[jumanaabroad]

This blog

This blog is dedicated to my upcoming study abroad trip to Jordan in a few weeks. It’s going to be fun. First time going to Jordan, first time going to Istanbul not just the airport, First time going to the middle east in 13 years. And to top it all off I am getting my wisdom teeth removed on Monday :/ so this entire thing is going to be an adventure. I still have to finish packing and moving out of my apartment, finishing shopping to go abroad, and say goodbye to my friends for the next few months.

I’ll try to post every day, or maybe every other day. There might be pictures and there might be videos, so it should be interesting.

Xoxo