South Jordan Trip and Final Exams

The most fun part of the semester here has been the end.  Generally at Cornell it is the opposite, but hey, we're not really at Cornell anymore are we?  We waited all semester and looked forward to visiting the most popular and memorable tourist sites in Jordan, Petra and Wadi Rum, and they are everything they were cracked up to be.  We rode to Petra on a Philadelphia University bus with Doctor Rababa on Friday, and arrived at noon after about 4 hours.  We toured Petra for several hours, and though pictures don't really do it justice, I will post some anyway.

That night we stayed in a hotel in Petra and then the next day made our way to Wadi Rum, which was fantastic!!  We were driven around the sands of the valley in the bed of a pick-up truck (there were benches of course) by a Bedouin named Abu Suleiman.  The views in Wadi Rum are truly breathtaking, and in my personal opinion it was cooler that Petra.  We toured 8 different locales of interest in the valley including Lawrence of Arabia's house, Nabatean inscriptions into the rock, Lawrence's Valley, and the great stone natural bridge, which we climbed - totally cool.  We stayed in Wadi Rum until late that night at a camp on the outskirts of the valley.  There we played backgammon and drank tea while waiting for dinner to be served.  To our surprise and great pleasure, dinner was a traditional Bedouin dish called zereb, basically it is an entire sheep cooked in an underground, sand-covered pit.  It was delicious!  At first I was worried that it would have sand in it, but they know what they're doing down South and they cover up the meat very well so it doesn't get dirty.

Doctor Rababa

Abu Suleiman's truck

Camel ride

"The Tower"

Zereb...mmm

When we arrived back in Amman after these adventures, it was suddenly the last week of classes and time to begin working on our final projects.  For Arab Media class, we had to write a paper analyzing media coverage (3 different Arabic news articles) of one of the Arab Spring revolutions.  I chose Libya, Rob did Egypt, Caitlin wrote about Yemen, and Susannah chose Syria.  In addition to the paper we each had to give an oral presentation on the subject, which was video-taped.

For Jordanian Society, we were asked to write a paper and give an oral presentation about the establishment in which we worked for our required 10 hours of volunteering.  I worked as a translator and writer for Amman Post, a liberal electronic newspaper run by a good friend of Doctor Rababa.  I translated a long AP article about the recent reconciliation agreement between the two competing Palestinian governments, Fatah and Hamas.  The editor also asked me to write my opinion on the subject in 300 words, and after it was edited my article was posted on the newspaper's website:
http://www.ammanpost.net/article.aspx?ArticleNo=7629
I will post the afore-mentioned report on my experience at the newspaper for the reading pleasure of those of you who speak Arabic.

Last but not least, Arab-Islamic Philosophy required a group research paper/presentation on the Society of the Muslim Brotherhood, a topic which is not only interesting but also pertinent to current events today.  We were divided up and instructed to research and present on various facets of the Society: history, important people and places, goals, and means of reaching those goals.

I was a little nervous when it came to giving video-taped oral presentations, but we gave them over the course of three days and my nerves retreated more with each passing day.  For those of you who are planning to take this course in the future, get used to speaking with a camera in the room, all of your final exams will be this way.  In reality these presentations were just a more formal version of what we do every day in class toward the end of the semester when we are asked simply to read a local newspaper article and present it to the class with your analysis.

I suppose this will be my final post to this blog, since I am officially a graduate of the IAP.  I return to the US tomorrow morning and am very excited to go back, though I will be sad to leave Jordan behind.  This has been a truly amazing experience and has not only shaped my language skills (in a big way), but also my world view in general.   I am more than satisfied with my results after completing this program, and I would still fully recommend it to any student interested in learning Arabic.  Yallah ma assalema!