parties and princes

i just emerged from the family room of my house here after a major two hour event: the watching of the video of my host brother's engagement party. the party actually took place two fridays ago, and i unfortunately had to forgo it in favor of the only free weekend i had left to do my jerusalem trip. still a worthwhile trade-off, but BUMMER that i missed the shenanigans of the engagement. number one most important shenanigan: the attendance of prince hamzah. yep, that's right, the king's brother himself was at my brother's engagement party and i was not- opportunity to become the next queen noor= lost (haha, kidding, hamzah is already married). anyway, for the past four months whenever we discuss ala''s engagement, my host mom will be sure to tell me (in these exact words every single time): "ah, sure, family sousou like this (intertwines her fingers to demonstrate closeness) ma'a family melek abdullah". to decipher this sentence you need to know the following: a) my host mom continues, after four months of living here, after my continuing to speak to her in arabic, after discovering that i am indeed in the 5th level (of 6) arabic class here, and even in spite of the fact that my host brothers giggle at her every time she does it, to speak to me in english as much her vocabulary enables it, thus the arab-ingleezi mix; b) ah= yes; c) sousou is the name of my brother's fiancé; d) ma'a= with; e) melek abdullah= king abdullah of jordan. thus, i guess it should have been no surprise to me that prince hamzah attended the engagement party. okay, second highly entertaining party shenanigan: first ala' and then shortly after amr and hameed (my other brothers) being thrown headfirst into the pool. lucky for me the professional videographer hired for the event captured each of these precious moments, and i think it might even have been funnier to watch after the fact at how the way they each went in the water reflects their personalities. anyone could see from the start of the video that ala', the oldest and the engaged, was obviously going to get tossed in the pool at some point during the night- it's his engagement party, how could he not? next came hameed, my lanky goofball of a youngest brother- ala' pulls himself out of the pool, acting perfectly normal, then with one easy yank throws hameed into the water just for kicks. last came amr, the jolly middle brother, but not til five minutes or so had passed and he thought he was safe, dancing and chatting with sousou when he found himself being dragged towards the edge of the pool. despite his attempts to hang on to sousou as protection, he was overpowered and plunked head-first over the side. all three of them enjoyed the experience entirely though, and it was equally priceless to watch my host mom's reaction of trying to hide her amusement as she chided them for being soaked, while my host dad looked on thoroughly pleased with the situation. all in all the party looked like lots of fun (and lots of money), with lots of dancing, including its fair share of dabkeh of course.
but watching the video and laughing with/at my host brothers made me realize i'm going to miss the cacophonous mess that is my family here- as crazy as they often are, their quirks have become endearing and it will definitely be a big change to go back to the relative quiet of my own house. (...aside from soph-soph of course, haha)