So I’ve arrived in Amman and have settled in my homestay. I’m in a really nice area that has a mall, shopping center, markets, and tons of restaurants nearby. The only downside is that it’s about an hour-long walk from where my classes are. So, since I have 8 AM classes, I decided to take taxis. One thing you learn very quickly in Jordan is that most people are very curious and don’t have the same “boundaries” concerning what is or isn’t appropriate to ask. So on my first ride, as I was shaking off the rust of not practicing Arabic for a month, I ended up having a mini conversation about my ethnic origins! When I said I was from America the driver responded with, yeah what about your parents? I told him that they were both from America too, and then he asked where they were originally from? At this point I figured out that he was trying to figure out what my ethnic origins were and when I told him that my dad was African(-American) and my mom Irish, he was then confused about why I’m brown, insisting that all Irish people are white. After this we began talking about how he was from Palestine (Bethlehem!) and how he had moved to Jordan with his family. There has been a growing Palestinian population in Jordan over the past few decades with a country of originally four million growing to six million. He explained that while Palestinians aren’t treated as second class citizens exactly, it is very rare for them to get government jobs as Jordanians want Jordanians in their government. In addition to this, there has been a growing number of protests against the current Israeli-Palestinian situation. My host family has told me that most of these are because Jordanians want the problem solved so that Palestinians can go back, not only because it’s their homeland but also because they want fewer people in the country. I would kind of sum up the treatment of Palestinians as a “charity” case in a loose sense. Jordanians feel an obligation to take them in, but they definitely don’t want it to be a permanent situation, and they won’t afford Palestinians all of the same benefits as Jordanians. All this has given me a cool insight into the culture and the importance of origins in defining who you are in Arab and Middle Eastern culture