#clsscholarship

[adventureswithjay]

2017-06-20

나는 왜 중국에 가려고 했는가?

Yesterday we actually went ahead and signed the language pledge. It turns out, when only able to speak Chinese, I acted just about how I’d thought I would. I mean, it’s not that terribly awful, it’s just annoying and inconvenient. Especially during class. This means that when I have a question in class, I have to ask it in Chinese as well - which means I have to figure out how to discuss all aspects of grammar in Chinese. Which, I mean, isn't horrible, just extremely inconvenient. I could learn significantly more if my teacher was able to explain difficult grammar concepts to me in English. I know this because I have taken a lot of language classes, and while total immersion is great and all, it’s not particularly great when your teacher is trying to explain complicated grammar in the target language. 

As for the class itself, it’s very much oriented towards drilling. We literally spent four straight hours repeating the exact same series of sentences over and over and over and over and over again. I may not be able to order food in Chinese but I sure can tell you about how “Mary is transferring to David’s school and how she has to take a Chinese placement exam”. Anyway, when faced with speaking only Chinese, one with skills such as mine simply resorts to speaking less in general and getting used to being in a constant state of comfortable confusion. Just going along with everyone else and hoping for the best. I still feel slightly bad for my roommate as she keeps trying to tell me stuff and I legit have no idea what she’s saying, but hopefully she doesn’t take it personally lol. Overall, she’s a super nice, outgoing person, which is nice. That way, she does all the talking and I just keep nodding. She seems like a really busy person though, so she really hasn’t been in the dorm very much, which is fine with me. 

So far Changchun is a nice city. It’s not an extremely small city, but it’s also a very different experience than Shanghai or Beijing. I’ve only walked around a bit, but there’s a lot of restaurants nearby and plenty of places to shop. Inside the school there’s also this little coffee shop that all the foreign students go to a lot and they’ve already come to get to know us all pretty well. It’s hilarious to go there in a small group because we all have to speak Chinese (obviously) and they’re always just so kind and impressed with our skills. It’s really a lot of fun. All the students here are all very kind as well, especially our roommates and language partners. It’s always so funny to see people’s expressions when a huge group of us walk around speaking to each other in Chinese. It’s seriously priceless. 

There are also these two older ladies who take care of the dorms who are “huge gossips” according to our RA and they’re also really nice. We were also informed that a group of Norwegian foreign exchange students should be coming pretty soon and will be living on the floor above us. Apparently the older ladies were all gossiping to each other saying that the Norwegians’ Chinese was terrible lol. I can't wait for them to come and hear us all speaking to each other in Chinese. It seriously must suck to be a non-US western foreigner in China though, since if you have a Western face they all assume you speak English... Anyway, That’s pretty much it - so far so good. 

[adventureswithjay]

6/14/2017

Today was an orientation for the CLS program’s Chinese (Changchun + Xi’an) and Korean (Gwangju) programs. 

Starting the day, I had mixed feelings about how the program would be. I mean, I always wanted to go to China, but for some reason once it finally got to this day, I started to feel more anxious. As the orientation continued, I started to realize that maybe I had made a mistake - I wasn’t nearly as qualified, as unique, as impressive or amazing as these people! what am I doing here. 

Then came the language policy.

Now to be honest, I didn’t even know there was a language policy on this program. Well, I kinda skimmed it so I didn’t understand the full extent of the language policy. And now I’m absolutely terrified. For those of you who don’t know what the language policy for the CLS program is - it’s a pledge to only speak your target language for the entirety of the program (except for emergencies of course). Now, I thought that this would be alright. I’m among my peers after all, right? No. I’m not. At the orientation I found out that the majority of the people going on my program are significantly better than me at Chinese. Not in a “oh no, yooooou’re way better than I am”, but  a very real significance. The people on this program average about 5 years of combined in-US language instruction and in-country language instruction. Now that’s intimidation. I have spent two (pitiful) years studying my language in which I barely kept up with material in class. I’m not trying to put myself down here. The point is that I’m absolutely terrified because I know I can’t talk to my roommate or my language partner and I’m just going to spend the next two months being an awkward mess. 

But, in light of this, I started talking to my roommate (my American roommate while in the US while I was in the hotel) about this program and how inadequate I felt and unsurprisingly she admitted that she felt the same (which I only partly believed seeing as she also had a combined history of 6 years of Chinese instruction, go figure) but we bonded over the fact that unlike many other people on this program, this was my first time in China. I have no idea what to expect and neither did she, this comforted me, knowing I wasn’t alone.

[dionysustravels-blog]

Ramadan: Day 6 (June 23)

Last night we climbed to the top of a large hill in Ibri and looked out at the city. Coming from Chicago, “city” is a generous term for what I see. At the foot of the hill, I see remnants of what Ibri looked like about fifty years ago, before Sultan Qaboos came to power in 1970. Omanis lived in these mud/clay houses with no running water or electricity. They farmed and lived a subsistence lifestyle (perhaps with some small local trade). This is almost unfathomable to me, especially when I think of how the US looked in the 1950s and 1960s. When people think of the Arabian Gulf, they think of Dubai’s skyscrapers and Saudi’s desert glamour. But, Yemen and Oman do not enjoy the excesses of life like oil rentier states do. Oman does have some oil, but it’s a lot less than it’s neighbors. 

Only in the past couple decades have Omanis been building houses with doors, electricity, and plumbing, enjoying things like air conditioning and imported foods. The discovery of oil brought a lot of international attention of course, along with many migrant workers, but it also raised the level of living across the country. As I looked down on the very recent past of Oman. I wondered what it was like to know that your parents grew up in those houses while your house is made of marble - what it is like to see the past every day, to watch a group of foreigners admire it and photograph it.

We hiked to the top just before the Magrib prayer (which goes off around 7:03pm here), so that as soon as we descended and the sun was setting, we walked a few short steps before being welcomed into our bus driver Mahmoud’s house for iftar. 

Let me say, Omani families are HUGE. There are always parents, children, cousins, aunts, uncles, family friends, and in-laws (and more) all over the place. It’s loud and insane. Also, the women and men sit in separate rooms (gender segregation is taken very seriously), so it’s not uncommon that I may be welcomed into a house and never see the father or brothers - or any man over ten years old for that matter. Last night, we crowded into a large room just to the right of the main door. Then, as Omanis do, the hostess showered us with food. Rounds and rounds of local cuisine, sometimes inspired by Indian or Pakistani cuisine, were passed multiple times around our circle. We sat on the floor and the TV was blaring with some program about Islam. There were at least six kids under six years old running about, crying and laughing and getting food in every place but their mouths, and eight sisters/friends/sisters-in-law of the hostess sat on one side of the room together. We practiced our Arabic with the family, played with the children, and ate some of the most delicious food I have ever had in my life as the sun set all the way down. 

Omanis are also a people of ritual and tradition. For instance, a hostess will never verbalize that she thinks your visit is coming to an end. Rather, she starts serving dates and coffee. That’s a sign that you have about thirty minutes to go. Then, she’ll bring incense into the room. Traditionally, you stand over the incense bowl, draping your skirt over it, and wait until the incense smoke comes out your collar and sleeves. You can then hold it until your scarf as well. In ten minutes, the whole room smelled of the most savory, fragrant aroma, and we were set to go.

One thing you will never be in Oman is hungry. You won’t be hungry for food or for company because you constantly feel the warm embrace of the Omani people welcoming you into their world. 

[clsscholarshipibri2015-blog]

Ramadan: Day 3 (20 June)

I was the first to wake up this morning. I simply cannot sleep past 10:00am, even if I was up the entire night before. It’s past noon now, and two of the sisters and their young cousin are sitting with me in the haram - the part of the house specifically set aside for women to just be. 

This room is vast with pale green walls and a white floral detail on the far wall. There’s a seemingly boundless, ornate carpet covering the full extent of the floor, and exquisitely embroidered pillows trim the room, against the walls. It is customary to lounge on the floor, against the pillows. You will never find, for instance, couches or chairs or any sort of furniture in the rooms where the family lives. Most houses have receiving rooms for guests with couches and sometimes coffee tables, but those are never used by the family. In fact, they’re rarely used at all.

In case you were wondering, eating also happens on the floor. The hostess typically rolls out a plastic sheet on the ground, and then she bestows upon her company a mound of rice and meat on a platter at least 1.5 feet wide. Salads and sauces and drinks are placed around the center piece, and voilà. No utensils, just fingers. It’s magic. 

Anyway, this morning (or afternoon, I should say) the air conditioning is on full blast, of course, and the second call to prayer today is going off as I write this post. Conveniently, there is a mosque across the street. 

I will never forget the rest of my day yesterday, especially last night. We arrived at our family’s house around 2:00pm and went back into another grand family room with beautiful carpets, pillows, and two vigorously working air conditioning units. Then, in a beautiful display of converging cultures, we taught our sisters how to play Spoons. They loved it! After an hour of linguistic flops, slight miscommunications, heated competition and uncontrollable laughter, all seven of us (three American women, three Omani women, and their little cousin Nooria) proceeded into the kitchen to prepare iftar. Iftar is daily breaking of the fast during Ramadan. Last night’s iftar meal was going to be extravagant for three reasons: 1) they had three international guests 2) it was the first juma iftar during Ramadan and 3) they wanted to show us how to make traditional Omani food. 

The kitchen, like the rest of the house, is broad and beautiful. The eldest sister laid out a mat for people to sit on (should they want to take a rest), and then we went to work. Mind you, we are wearing full length dresses with full length sleeves. The air conditioning was off and the window was wide open, inviting in the sun’s rays and the afternoon’s 110 degree breezes. I might also add that we had two ovens going. I’ve never felt heat like that before. 

And while I’m sure I was red in the face with frizzing hair, looking slightly worse for wear, my three host sisters were radiant. They moved about the spacious kitchen with sweat on their brows and cheeks (also fasting, mind you, which again means no water to replenish). My two colleagues went to lie down after awhile, but I stayed. I felt as if I had traveled back in time, like I was looking at what Omani women have done during Ramadan for centuries, and I loved it. Similar to how I sometimes felt in Jordan, I felt closer to humanity, as if people in this part of the world are more in touch with what is vital in life. Life seems purer, as if at the end of the day they effortlessly distinguish what is necessary for a healthy society from what is superfluous, and they largely prefer the former. 

We all laid down for a bit until 7:00pm, and when we heard the magrib call, the sisters rushed us into another room where iftar was all set up. I was the only American fasting, so my colleagues looked at me to start eating, but again I couldn’t. I slowly broke the day’s fast with water, fruits, dates, and eventually seven different kinds of meat and cheese-filled pastries that the sisters made by hand that day. Little did I know, this was round one of food. 

Around 9:30pm we all put on our abayas and scarves and walked down the street to their uncle’s house, where we enjoyed juices, dates, fresh fruit and nuts. The, their aunt grabbed us and pulled us into a separate room and bathed us in various perfumes and spices. Around 11:00pm we left and walked a longer route back home, and the neighborhood was alive. People all around were driving and walking - going to visit family or neighbors or simply enjoying the night weather. 

When we got back home, I was exhausted and dizzy from the hot day and eventful night, but it was dinner time. The previous two meals were just appetizers. As soon as we got home, the sisters fetched a mat from inside and laid it down in front of the house. Then, they brought out a massive platter of spiced rice, chicken, and yogurt, along with salad, juices and fruit. We sat around and ate and talked until the early morning hours, and I began to realize why so many people enjoyed Ramadan. Along with the opportunity to nurture deep personal and communal spiritual connections, it’s also a time when people share very unique habits and customs that makes family, community and spiritual ties even stronger. There’s a special energy during the day because 99.99% of the people in Oman are praying and fasting together, and then there’s a unique energy at night because people share meals and give thanks together. Omanis are some of the warmest and most welcoming people I have ever met, and I’m truly grateful to be invited into their community during this time. 

[clsscholarshipibri2015-blog]

Ramadan Day 1 (June 18)

Today, Thursday, is the last day of the work week in the Arab World. I woke up this morning at 3:15am to have enough time to prep Suhur (the meal before Fajr prayer) with my flatmates. We are six girls living together. Four are Muslim and two are not. Regardless of official religious affiliation, I am fasting and praying this month as well, so only one girl in the flat sleeps through our pre-dawn meal, and two other girls from down the hall join us. It’s surreal to have the kitchen working at full speed at 3:30am. We feed off each other’s energy, and although it’s quiet, everyone is quite awake. We are relatively strangers, from extremely different backgrounds, but this morning we are sisters cooking together and forcing our food on each other to make sure everyone has achieved some level of nutrition before fasting begins around 4:00am. At 3:55am, we silently start cleaning up and putting the caps on our liters of water. No consumption of any kind until Magrib prayer, which is at about 7:00pm. 

That day was a long one, I must say. Not eating isn’t the biggest challenge - it’s the water. Not drinking when it’s 115 degrees Fahrenheit (about 46 degrees Celsius) is a brutal shock to the body, especially our bodies, which were introduced to this climate a short two weeks ago. Needless to say, everyone who was fasting was listless and lethargic by the end of classes that day.

PSA: We have Arabic instruction at the Noor Majan institute in Ibri, Oman every day, Sunday through Thursday, from 8:00am to 12:40pm. This schedule does not change during Ramadan. The only thing that changed is the lunch and snacks that used to be provided are not. We return home after classes so that people who are not participating in Ramadan (because it’s not mandatory, of course) can get home to prepare food. There is also a special room set aside for those in our envoy who wish to drink water or consume food during the day. 

PSA 2: It is illegal to drink water, consume food, or smoke in public in Oman during fasting hours during Ramadan. No person is exception to this law. Restaurants and most food stores are also closed.

At 7:03pm the call of Magrib prayer bellowed from the mosque across the street. I was in my room with two women from the program - one of whom not fasting - and I think she expected me to sprint for the case of water in my room and then continue my sprint for the refrigerator so that I may substitute the consumption of oxygen for that of calories for the next fifteen minutes. To be honest, I expected myself to do that. It thought the Magrib call would be like the gunshot at a track meet. But when I looked at the sun setting over the mosque and heard the call begin, I sat by my window with my two new friends and just listened. I saw men entering the mosque, some women two, and they looked calm. People weren’t flooding the nearby restaurants in a frenzy. I thought to myself, what is the point in fasting if all you think about all day is how hungry and thirsty you are? 

I eventually ventured out to dinner with some friends, and we were discussing what fasting means to different people. While the most obvious display is to not eat or drink, fasting also includes what you think and say. For instance, it would be rather incongruent if I was abstaining from food but cursing profusely. The conversation continued into the night, and we reminded one another to ask ourselves this next time we felt hungry or thirsty: 

Are you in control of your body? Or is your body in control of you?