Just Barely

I am officially in the program! After taking the super difficult long placement exam yesterday, I was officially accepted into the program. They told me I was on the border but just made it. So I know this semester will definitely be a challenge, but I think I’ll have plenty of time for studying because when I’m home at night all we do is watch TV. Being accepted into the program also means I have now signed the language pledge to only speak in Arabic. This is the hardest at home because my host brother and sister prefer to speak in English. I also met my peer tutor today – she’s really nice. A bit hard to understand because I’m not used to the speed of everyday conversation but she doesn’t mind repeating things or explaining them in a different way when I don’t understand.

It’s the weekend now because Friday is the holy day instead of Sunday. I live near a mosque and woke up this morning for the call to prayer because it’s quite loud. I don’t know what tomorrow will sound like – I assume it’s longer? I’m not sure. I’ll have to wait and see. In our orientation, they told us that families usually hang out together on the weekend. I asked my host brother what they do and he said sometimes the parents go to visit the grandparents but other than that all the siblings just hang out with friends and everyone does their own thing. I’m thinking of going to the gym maybe and then hanging out with other people from my program. My family told me I can shower about twice a week, so the gym membership is partially to work out but mainly so I can take a shower more often.

I’m still in the search for internet – I went today to different companies to see which would be the least expensive, most coverage, etc. I feel bad using my family’s internet because unlimited doesn’t exist here. Everyone’s on a data plan and I don’t know how much theirs is. I don’t want to use it all up, especially since I want to FaceTime people. Getting my own internet is also good because I’ll have it everywhere. It’s a USB stick that you put in your computer. And according to another girl in the program, you can open up the network so I can put my iPod on it as well.

I took the taxi yesterday and today to the university. Yesterday morning, I had the best experience: I could see the meter, the driver’s taxi license was easily visible and we took the route that Google Maps told me I should go. Yesterday afternoon the driver stopped for gas on the way (I checked his gauge – he was low) but I’m also sure that you pay by the seconds/minute so I got a little ripped off. This morning I carpooled with another girl who lives near me and the driver asked us for our numbers – we politely refused. And coming home, the driver asked me a question, I think it was which way I wanted him to go or which street he should take and I had no idea how to tell him so I just said the street where I wanted to go (he seemed exasperated when I told him since I wasn’t really answering his question) but I got there without overpaying so I considered it a success.