Level Four

The Language Center at the University of Jordan is where all our classes are, both Arabic and areas studies.

The program, CIEE, decided that for level four of Arabic only, there would be one class that was all CIEE students, and one for all the other international students. All the other classes are mixed. While I am pretty sad about that, we wonder if it is because they know we don't really belong in four. Well, there's nothing we can do about it, so I'm just glad the people in my class are nice. Today we had several non CIEE students come in every once in a while and sit down, not realizing that they belonged in the other class. Someone would eventually tell them, and they would leave. For one woman, the teacher told her: "This class is CIA just, you are in other section." We were like, NO, NOT CIA, don't give the foreigners that impression!

We have two teachers, one Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, who is incredibly nice and a great teacher. The other guy, who taught today, is, well...different. The volume of voice escalates, to a very high level. It felt a little like boot camp, but for some reason at the beginning of class when he was first talking in English, I found it too hilarious to handle. I was biting my lip and tongue, but a small bit of laughter escaped. I don't know if he noticed, but it was bad. I don't know how the others excersized such self-restraint. He is so intense there's no way to keep a straight face, at least for me.

We read a news article on Monday, and I know the Arabic for the following words and phrases:

military officials

land mine explosions

to make an ambush

acts of violence

rebel forces

to make war

to be killed (I learned for the first time how to makes verbs passive!!!)

dangerous

to be wounded

presidential elections

tension

to make operations

convoy

attack

I can tell this is going to be infinitely more useful than Al-Kitaab (the standard US textbook).