I leave for Amman in a little over a week! Ever since I started learning Arabic I have been so excited to study in the Middle East, and now the time has almost come!
Why am I doing this?
I love studying Arabic, but where the classroom emphasizes grammar and spelling, this summer is an opportunity to practice my speaking and listening skills and get exposure to the Levantine dialect. I like to learn languages because I view language as a bridge to people. There is only so much Arabic that I can learn in a classroom, and this immersive experience – exposure to spoken language and cultural understandings that accompany daily life – will be truly invaluable and will allow me to finally connect language with people and culture.
What am I expecting to get out of this experience?
By the end of the Qasid program, I hope to be able to sustain a conversation with a native speaker in the Jordanian dialect for upwards of 10 minutes, covering topics that go beyond the realm of small talk or daily life. Additionally, I hope to improve my MSA abilities to the point where I will be able to fully comprehend a news broadcast at normal speed and score a 3 on an OPI test.
I know that this summer will be very challenging – 4 hours of in-class instruction in MSA and 1 hour in dialect, along with 4 hours of outside work 5 days/week. But I am fully prepared to put in the time because I know that the returns will be immense. Beyond the work itself, what is most daunting to me at the moment is that as a Catholic, I will be in the vast minority (over 92% of Jordanian people are Muslim). This will definitely be an adjustment, but at the same time, it will be such a unique experience to be in a country that has a national religion and observe how this manifests in daily life – one thing I am looking forward to is experiencing the call to prayer.
While there won’t be much free time during the weeks, I hope to also get involved with an organization called “Reclaim Childhood”, which is an after-school sports program for young local girls and refugees. To truly immerse myself in Jordanian life and culture is to understand that a large part of the current landscape is marked by the influx of refugees. There are over 3 million refugees living in Jordan, mostly from Syria and Palestine. Volunteering with Reclaim Childhood and playing with the young girls will be a great way to better my skills in the Levantine dialect, but it will also allow me to learn about their experiences – a window into a large and growing crisis in the region.
When I arrive in Amman, I expect an adjustment period, but while 2 months sounds like a long time right now, I know that at the end of the program, I will be wondering where all the time went. I will try to make the most of the 9 weeks I am in Jordan and am so excited to meet the others in the program and immerse myself in the language, people, and cultural landscape of Jordan!