In other news...

I have also moved into a new apartment that is SUCH an improvement from my last place. I have three rooms – bedroom, a kitchen/living area, and a sun room with two walls of windows, plus a bathroom of course. Yesterday I was invited for tea by the owner of the building who wanted to ‘formally’ welcome me to Jordan and to his building. He lives on the ground floor, the entire floor, although with its columns and marble floors it is hardly recognizable as the same building! He introduced me to his wife and daughter, he also has four sons that are no longer at home. They lived in Canada for a long time and just moved back to Jordan a year ago. His daughter, Lina, is in 9th grade and they all speak exceptional English. I’m hoping I can spend some time with her and practice some of my feeble Arabic skills with her.

On the Arabic front, tomorrow I am going to The Modern School, which is a private school relatively close to where I live. I met with the head of the KG section of the school and I am going to start going there twice a week to help out with classes and work on my Arabic. The KG classes only meet until around noon and are taught half in Arabic and half in English, so I can work with the teachers in the English section and then try to learn from the Arabic part (great, getting shown up by 5-year-olds!) It should be a good learning experience, and yes, I know, me spending time with little people, go ahead and laugh. :-) I’m a little scared but everyone says they are the best people to learn languages from so I’ll give it a shot! Plus a lot of the teachers seem to be young women so hopefully I can make some friends there too.