Midterms- Keep your fingers cross!

So midterms. They suck in any setting. Lucky for me, I only have a paper and one test. The test is super important and I am super unprepared, but I will get through. After that I get to go to Israel! Thank goodness. I need some freedom from this place. (remember my game? I got 40 points today- and I had my headphones in so I could have gotten more and not known.) It is making me go to the gym more- I have a lot of anger I can work out on the treadmill, so that's good I guess.

Another thing that makes me mad is the education system here. My language partner, the sweetest smartest girl I have met in a long time, Lara, is studying translation (like I want to! twinsies! lol). However, she is learning incorrect English! I don't mean she isn't learning properly, I mean they are teaching her incorrectly. For example, the phrase is NOT keep your fingers cross! it is crossed. And she is not the only English student whose professors were teaching them incorrectly. My friends Ra'ad and Khalid had a test this summer, and it was on something about verbs. Their teacher taught them that after "I like" there must be a verb ending in 'ing', and after "I would like" there must be the infinitive, "to...." but you could not do "I like" followed by "to...." for example, they were taught that "I like to swim" is incorrect, and you must say "I like swimming". I know I never properly studied English grammar, but I am pretty sure I say "I like to swim" all the time. Frustrating. I am seriously considering coming back (not to Irbid, but to Amman) and teaching English properly after graduation. Also, its not just their English that could use some work. General knowledge is lacking too. My Arabic teacher told us there was a genetic difference between Arabs and Americans and that Americans could not gain weight. Because of genetics. Of Americans. There are so many problems with that statement, we just started at her in exasperation. I mean, 1) we invented McDonald's! 2) Americans don't all have the same ethnicity, so saying we all share some commonality that is different from other countries is just...just wrong. She thought we all looked like actors on TV. That's how they learn about America-from our television shows!

Anyways, I am exhausted, and procrastinating my homework, so I am going to finish this up real quick:

This weekend, my "archaeology class" went on a trip to see the desert castles. We didn't see all of them, just 3: Qasr al-Azraq, Qasr Amra, and Qasr Kharana. They were really cool! Unfortunately, we ended up going with a Jordanian anthropology class so we went on a bus with about 20 Jordanian students. Different cultures, I know, but I was kinda hoping I could sleep on the bus because they are far apart, and about 2 hours from Irbid, so we left really early. I am NOT a morning person, but I figured I would sleep, and when I woke up we would be there. Nope. It was a party bus! There was singing and clapping and trilling, and lots and lots of noise! On top of that, I have been getting these headaches ALL THE TIME and it sucks, and I had one for most of the trip, but explaining to a bus full of Jordanian students that but time was for sleeping is like trying to tell kindergarteners how to build rockets in Chinese. Impossible. On top of that, a lot of the ACs were broken, and were on full blast, so I was freezing. I was miserable on the bus, but the forts were really amazing.

Roman guards carved a mancala board into the floor in the entrance way to play while they worked! how Awesome is that?!

And I am standing in T.E. Lawrence's office....Like a boss

The first one, Qasr al-Azraq was the oldest, and the one I researched (there are 3 students in my Archaeology class so we each researched a fortress and taught the others about them)  It was really cool- Lawrence of Arabia used it as HQ during the winter of 1917 in the revolt, and its entirely made of basalt, and the doors weigh 1ton, but you can open them (with some effort) because they used palm tree oil.

The second fortress was Qasr Amra (Qasr means fortress/castle) it is pretty small and in the middle of the desert. But it was really cool because it is covered floor to ceiling in frescoes from before Islam, aka there are people and animals, not just designs. However, it is in disrepair, and there were people doing restorations, but it kills me that people would graffiti OVER these amazing frescoes from way back in the Umayyid period!

Frescoes at Qasr Amra

The last fortress was really cool too. I don't have any photos yet because my camera died, but I will have to get some from my friends who went with me. It wasn't decorated, and was used only for meetings so it wasn't quite as exciting as the others, but it was earthquake proof!

Next week we have a week break, and I will be going to Israel to party it up!