Family Time

I am so back in the blogosphere. And with a vengeance.

Things are going well. I was placed with an Omani family about a week and a half ago, and I’ve been more and more content with my situation. I’m with what I’ve come to understand as a fairly typical middle class Omani family in Seeb, a city in the capital area that’s a hub for local fisherman and home to a sizable daily fish market. Fortunately, the building where our classes are is quite near—about a 4 minute drive or so.

About the family: Saad is the father of the family, and the person who I spend the most time with. He’s very into me learning Arabic, which has been great cause he’ll have conversations with me and speak in modern standard Arabic with me. Even though I had been told about it ever since I started learning Arabic, I was still somewhat surprised to find that the local dialect of Arabic differs a fair bit from the Modern Standard Arabic that I’d been learning at Brown. This is the case everywhere, though, since MSA really isn’t spoken as a first language everywhere. I can still carry out basic conversations all over the place, though. It’s just that if I run into someone who never studied formal Arabic at school (usually meaning middle aged and over or very young), then half my vocabulary becomes obsolete. Saad has one wife and four children, Ali, Suleiman, Selma, and Sarah, all under the age of 10. I don’t know his wife’s name, because, while Saad is open enough to let me stay with his family (he had only accepted female students until me); it’s quite culturally unusual to have a strange man stay in the house. In keeping with this, I only eat meals with Saad or by myself if he’s not here. All of the children are energetic and have inadvertently taught me quite a bit of colloquial Arabic. I have tons of pictures and videos on my camera from the first day here from them asking to use my camera. Half of them are of them and other children (their cousins live nearby and come over often) dancing with a fake trophy that they pretend is the "Gulf Cup" from a recent soccer tournament in which the Omanis beat both the Saudis and the Emirates.

It obviously would be impossible to describe all of what's happened even in just the last couple weeks, so I guess most things will have to be turned into oral stories later on.

Classes have been good as well. I usually get picked up in time to be at the school by 8:30 with classes starting t 9. From 9-12 every day we just work on Arabic (with a half hour break). After time to go get lunch nearby we usually have some sort of lecture or class in the afternoon but not always. We operate on the usual system here where Thursday and Friday are the weekend. Unfortunately, this means I can't really go to a church on Sunday mornings since I'm in class then. After school I do different things, sometimes hanging out with SIT kids for a bit, usually going out with Saad on various errands, and occasionally doing homework. Dinner usually isn't eaten here until very late—9 or 10 at night or even later, so lunch is pretty big usually.

On an unrelated note, one of the great things about Oman is kahwa (Arabic coffee) and dates. Both of these are everywhere and are offered to guests, snacked on, and eaten after meals (dates that is). I don't know how I ever lived without eating dates all the time.

I'll try to put in some interesting stories next time instead of utilizing this ultra hip, post modern, stream of consciousness technique.