My second day in Munich was equally as good. It was snowing so the entire city looked beautiful. I left the hostel early to go to the Deutsches Museum of Science and Technology. It spans something ridiculous like 13 acres and I can only equate it to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, only about 1000 times bigger and better. The museum had everything from history of locks and keys to tunnel construction, to airplanes, to every single type of engine you can imagine, to nanotechnology and everything in between. I only spent an hour and half there because I wanted to see the glockenspiel in Marienplatz. The glockenspiel was really cool - it sounded beautiful and there were figurines on the central spire of the Neues Rathaus that moved to tell a story (watch video below).
Then I climbed the 306 steps of the tower in Peterskirche to see a panoramic view of the city. Although I had done this on the first day, I wanted to see how the city looked covered in a layer of fresh snow.
After climbing back down, I had a lovely pastry in a bakery near Peterskirche and then went back to the hostel to grab my bags and head to the airport. I made it on my plane without any issues and I even made the connection despite only have a half hour between when I landed and when my next flight took off. I had to switch terminals but luckily the guy next to me on my flight from Munich to Frankfurt was also going from Frankfurt to Amman so we rushed together.
I got into Amman around 1:20AM (it's 8 hours ahead of the US because they don't do Daylight Savings) but due to the baggage claim taking forever, we (the two other students on the same flight and I) didn't leave until 2, getting to the hotel a little before 3AM. That same day was mainly a resting day, getting our phones, settling in, etc.
Today was our first real day of orientation. We started off with a brief tour of the city, lunch, and then we saw the University of Jordan from our van before heading back to the hotel for a program orientation and our first lesson in the colloquial. Our tour was entirely in Arabic. Well, the entire day was in Arabic, minus lunch (thank goodness). I can definitely say that this semester is going to be a challenge. But it will also be really good.
We first went to the ruins, which covered Amman's history of different ruling groups, such as the Romans and the Ummayyids (just to name two). We learned that Amman is made of 8 different mountains/hills. We were on top of one so we got a good look at the city. The picture below shows one of the Palestine refugee camps.
This is a picture of the very first Turkish bath. The cistern and the 33 smaller ones were enough for 2000 people.
Here are the Roman ruins:
And here is the amphitheater that a couple of us climbed all the way to the top of. I learned that they can clean the entire thing in a span of 5 minutes after festivals. The stone at the bottom of the picture (that's at the top of the amphitheater) is where I took my first Amman handstand photo!
Then I climbed the 306 steps of the tower in Peterskirche to see a panoramic view of the city. Although I had done this on the first day, I wanted to see how the city looked covered in a layer of fresh snow.
After climbing back down, I had a lovely pastry in a bakery near Peterskirche and then went back to the hostel to grab my bags and head to the airport. I made it on my plane without any issues and I even made the connection despite only have a half hour between when I landed and when my next flight took off. I had to switch terminals but luckily the guy next to me on my flight from Munich to Frankfurt was also going from Frankfurt to Amman so we rushed together.
I got into Amman around 1:20AM (it's 8 hours ahead of the US because they don't do Daylight Savings) but due to the baggage claim taking forever, we (the two other students on the same flight and I) didn't leave until 2, getting to the hotel a little before 3AM. That same day was mainly a resting day, getting our phones, settling in, etc.
Today was our first real day of orientation. We started off with a brief tour of the city, lunch, and then we saw the University of Jordan from our van before heading back to the hotel for a program orientation and our first lesson in the colloquial. Our tour was entirely in Arabic. Well, the entire day was in Arabic, minus lunch (thank goodness). I can definitely say that this semester is going to be a challenge. But it will also be really good.
We first went to the ruins, which covered Amman's history of different ruling groups, such as the Romans and the Ummayyids (just to name two). We learned that Amman is made of 8 different mountains/hills. We were on top of one so we got a good look at the city. The picture below shows one of the Palestine refugee camps.
This is a picture of the very first Turkish bath. The cistern and the 33 smaller ones were enough for 2000 people.
Here are the Roman ruins:
And here is the amphitheater that a couple of us climbed all the way to the top of. I learned that they can clean the entire thing in a span of 5 minutes after festivals. The stone at the bottom of the picture (that's at the top of the amphitheater) is where I took my first Amman handstand photo!
Our program overview was pretty standard and then we paired up and had to introduce our partners to the entire group (including our professors). Then we had our first colloquial lesson! Colloquial Jordanian seems pretty easy. There's no ان and even if you put a plural subject at the beginning of a sentence, it doesn't have to agree in number with the verb. All the ث become ت , there's no ء, and a couple other letters change. But our first hour lesson went pretty well. Tomorrow we start off the day with another colloquial lesson and then we get to go home with our host families! I'm a little nervous to meet mine, but hopefully it'll go well.
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