"Study Abroad is Not a Vacation"

So yeah, I do have to go to school, Sunday thru Thursday, at the university of Jordan. So far I’ve had three days of Arabic classes and one session of each of my other courses. Currently I’m taking a class on the politics of water and one on recent Islamic thought, but I’m hoping to get an internship and if so I’ll drop one. They both seem really interesting, though, so I’m not sure which it’ll be. It depends a bit on my schedule – if I have to go to the internship between classes I’ll keep the later one (my Arabic is in the morning and the others in the afternoon, with several hours in between) but if not I might want to go home sooner. Also, the politics of water class is held in a building that’s about twenty minutes from everything else. The teacher is trying to get a new classroom, but if it’s still that far away I may just have to take the other class.

The University of Jordan is a huge campus with around 40,000 students when it’s in session. Because it’s Ramadan right now, the normal university session has been delayed until after Eid al-Fitr, the celebration at the end of Ramadan. Even so, there are people all over the campus, and I’m not really looking forward to how busy it’ll get once classes are in session. (It will be nice to have the cafeteria open, though.) For the moment, the campus is only open from 8 til about 3, so our class schedule has been compressed to fit within that time. Normally, I’ll end class around 5, but right now I get done at 3 on my longest days (area studies classes are only M/W though), with no scheduled breaks in between. However, almost every class so far has gotten out half an hour before the time listed on the schedule, if not more. This may be partly because we’re just starting out and still figuring out where things are and how things work, but someone did tell me it’s fairly normal.

More on school later, when I know more.