Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Watching the superbowl, eating at McDonald's, and other such Jordanian things

On Sunday night/ Monday morning at 1:30 am 8 of us crazy CIEE students went to the nearby Marriott to watch the Steelers lose miserably and drink a lot of very overpriced beer. Despite these two set-backs it was definitely worth it and we all had a great time, especially when the delirium set in around 4 am. It was a great little taste of America in a city so much different from anything I'm used to. There was loud shouting from every part of the bar, TVs everywhere, and plenty of crappy beer. I felt like I had transported back to the US for those 4 hours, and felt very disoriented when I walked out into a very dark and very quiet Amman. The taxi drivers were quite annoyed at us crazy Americans who apparently have too much fun (even though at this point we were fully sober zombies). My roommate and I shuffled into the apartment at about 5:30 am, crashed quickly and went off to class at 9 am.
I was in a total haze that whole next day, but not so much that I didn't fully enjoy my area studies courses. My political islam is gonna be amazing. The teacher does a lot of research on feminism in the Middle East and has a fully secular point of view. The archaeology teacher, on the other hand, is slightly more biased. But I hoped to have a teacher that would let me see how teachers are different at the University of Jordan as compared to Pitt.
I ate at the McDonald's near the university this afternoon just for comparison sake, and found it to be exactly the same. I'm glad I have another resource when I'm feeling homesick. There is certainly not a lack of American culture around here, albeit slightly outdated, especially when it comes to music. Jordanians seem to think that N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys are still whats hip in the US. Fortunately, the Jordanian pop music is very entertaining, and I would rather listen to that in cabs any day.
Posted by at

4 comments:

  1. CynthiaFebruary 8, 2011 at 4:11 PM

    Make sure they know you got to see N'Sync in concert! They will be so impressed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Roy BixlerFebruary 8, 2011 at 5:25 PM

    When travelling overseas, I make an effort to try the local cuisine and I have a very limited experience with foreign McDonalds (i.e. I may have bought a cup of coffee at one once and I'm pretty sure that they accept US dollars.) That said, I've heard that McDonalds makes an effort to accommodate local tastes. Did you see any evidence of that in the Jordanian McDonalds?

    I'm glad that you took the chance to immerse yourself in another culture. That should be interesting. Are you learning Arabic?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Olivia SFebruary 8, 2011 at 10:57 PM

    i have been trying lots of local foods, especially falafel. But I went to McDonald's due to homesickness. I didn't notice any Jordanian influence on the menu and that kind of surprised me.

    I am learning Arabic. We are required to take 9 hours of MSA a week and 3 hours of Jordanian dialect.

    Thanks for reading and following my blog!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Roy BixlerFebruary 9, 2011 at 1:16 PM

    Some languages I've tried to learn are French, Russian, Chinese and German. Three out of the four are indo-european languages, like English. Not coincidentally, those were also easier to learn (though I think, in the case of German, it can be challenging to wrap the mind around the concept of dative versus accusative cases.) Good luck with Arabic. It sounds like that can be a mind-bending exercise.

    Big blizzards, biting winds, bitter cold ... Hope that helps with the homesickness.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)