Orientation, Day 2 & A Night Out

So after our first amaaazing day here in Amman, we took the second day of orientation to tour the University of Jordan, where we would be attending school. My first impression was - it is crazy how big the school is. It literally takes 30 minutes to walk from one end of the school to the other. This, for me is ridiculous, since us Clarkies are used to walking everywhere on campus in like 10 minutes or less. The campus was extremely beautiful though and extremely green, which I don't think many of us expected. It will definitely take a long time to get accustomed to the size and not get lost, but I definitely am glad at how gorgeous it is.

After the tour and eating another amazing lunch, most of the students went off to take the Arabic placement exam. Me and another 5 students, who had never taken formal lessons in the language, went off to our first lesson! Our instructor Rabiah was extremely energetic and fun! I think I can learn a lot from her for sure and am excited to start real lessons!

That pretty much wrapped up the second day of orientation. Later that night, some of the people who were from the year-long program ended up inviting us out for the night to a bar. Now, most of the population in Jordan does not drink, however there are a select few who do. So it is possible to find a few bars and places that serve alcohol. It was nice to go though, because the place was filled with other CIEE students who were studying abroad either on the year-long program or were new-comers, just like me. Plus we got to mingle a little with locals, which was an awesome place to practice the 10 words I had learned in Arabic earlier that day! Overall it was lots of socializing, dancing and having fun!

The second day here in Amman was definitely a lot of fun. The next day we were looking forward to meeting our host families, which was both extremely nerve-racking yet exciting! It was definitely one of the things I looked forward to the most. But again, it is impossible to not feel nervous about meeting a family you are going to live with for the next four months, but have no idea about! As it turns out though, I got extremely lucky...