After coming home from our wonderful vacation, I got a new roommate! Luckily, I knew her- Lara my language partner- so I wasn't afraid of her being weird or anything. I like living with her. We cook, watch My Fair Lady, I help her with her English pronunciation and she helps me with Arabic. We have very deep and complicated conversations about politics and history. Its a lot of fun. And she makes delicious ma'luba without chicken (its potatoes and eggplant and sometimes cauliflower and rice with spices and herbs)!
Last weekend I went to stay over at a Jordanian family's house. It was the strangest experience of my life. My friend Jenny is in the Anthropology class and her teacher set up the overnight stay with one of his "real students". She had to go for class and write a paper about it. I was just being nice and accompanying her because there were three girls, and two went to another Jordanian house together, and Jenny would be on her own if I didn't go. The girl was very nice. She was wealthy up the wazoo, and her entire house was purple! She and her mother kept showing us what in the house was from America, as if it was proof that they were worthy of our time. The girl asked us if we like to go to JC Penny and Dilliards and showed us all her American clothes. The mother also kept stuffing food down our throats. The seccond we got there, we ate dinner (at 6pm about). I had told them I was vegetarian, but forgot to say I wouldn't eat rice if it was cooked with meat. I didn't want to be rude, so I ate it. My stomach was a little unhappy, but not too bad. After dinner, we were given Khunafa (a cheesy pastry thing) and some of the deserts we had brought as a 'thank you for having us' gift. After that, some family members came over. The girl's older sister (there were 6 siblings and the girl was the youngest- three were in America and one was in Hungary) and her 3 children came over- ages 7,5, and BABY! The baby was super cute! But he was left alone a lot which made me nervous...they didn't have a crib or anything, just lay him on the couch and checked on him if he cried....
The girl kept asking if Jenny and I were tired, so finally we said yes and were sent to her room for a nap. It was more that we felt uncomfortable with all the family babbling on about this and that and 'this is from America, and so is that'. When we returned, we were greeted with more desert!
The sister brought cake, and the mother made us eat it...by this point I was concentrating on not getting sick from eating so much, but it is rude not to accept the food, and I didn't want to be rude. After cake, A lot of us piled into a car. It was like a clown car, as some more people had arrived (I don't know who they were). There were two women in the front, then in the back was Jenny, the girl, and me. Oh and three children sitting on our laps! This made me very nervous as I was in the center and the boy on my lap wanted to stand on my knees and stick his head out the sunroof...I grabbed him and didn't let him do it. He and the girl on Jenny's lap were very curious with us, and talked a lot...They were young and had kid voices, so it was hard to understand and they thought it strange that two adults couldn't understand them. We arrived at a house and a lot of the people got out, so it was just the girl, the woman driving, me, Jenny, and the boy who had been on my lap (he got his own seat now). He wanted to play a game and explained it to be a riddle! We told riddles, (I was a little out of practice and forgot most of mine) and he seemed to enjoy it immensely. We went to Mcdonalds drive through and got MORE DESERT! We got ice cream! Then we drove to a little stand on the side of the road and got beans. you have to peel the skin off the bean and the little boy taught us how to do it properly. After that, we were dropped off by the house again and Jenny, the girl, and I walked around her neighborhood for a while (the street was named after her family). Then finally, we went to sleep. The next day I woke up around 10...I stayed in bed until about 1pm when both Jenny and I couldn't take staying in bed any longer. We got up and then the girl got up when she heard us moving around. We had breakfast, and then watched tv for an hour. The the mother brought in a bowl of chocolates and the girl showed us her pictures of when she visited America. We told her we couldn't stay past 4:30 because we had a previous engagement, and she was dissapointed. She thought we were staying for 2 nights! Then we had to have lunch. This is where my problem really was. We were far from hungry as we had just eaten breakfast. But the mother had made soup. She ladled a bunch of greenbeens from the soup onto my plate along with leftover rice from the day before...I had a feeling, but I didn't want to be rude and didn't know what to do so I ate it...BAD IDEA. The soup had tons of meat in it. I told Jenny we had to leave immediately. I made it home and then started puking my guts out. I spent a good portion of the day in my bathroom, and then lay in my bed in pain for a while. Not the most successful of ventures, but I survived.
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