beverly hills

my host family lives in the amman version of beverly hills, and i think this may be the nicest house i have ever been in in my entire life, anywhere it is insane!



i have my own room, and internet, both of which are extremely uncommon here. my family is so nice and very welcoming. my host dad is ibrahim, mom abeer, brothers ala, amr and mohammed (28, 26, 19), and sister farah (23). in case you can't tell from the fact that their son's name is mohammed, my host family is muslim, which is exciting for me to be able to learn more about their faith. however, they are also very modern- neither my host mom or sister wear the hijab, and they all dress in western-style clothes, except for today when it was cool to see my host dad head off for friday (muslim holy day) prayers at the mosque in more traditional muslim garb. ibrahim is a retired brigadier general (a.k.a. really important person- i think this must be where the family's wealth comes from) in the jordanian police, and he now teaches law at the university. abeer doesn't work, just takes care of the family. ala is recently engaged and currently working in dubai, amr is a law intern, farah works for a jordanian cell phone company, and mohammed is a second-year finance student at my university. all three of my host brothers are apparently champion squash players- mohammed is currently in egypt for some sort of tournament. they all speak some amount of english, which has made these first days of communication a little easier, but hopefully as my vocab comes back to me we'll speak almost all arabic.
also, in arab society, the concept of family is in no way limited to mom-dad-kids; in the course of today alone (think multiple visitors/visiting excursions and soooo many cups of tea) i met three of abeer's sisters- and their families- and her parents, as well as two of her friends/neighbors. friday is not only a holy day for muslims, but it is also considered family day, and visiting is definitely the activity of choice. it was actually kind of funny because i discovered that a fair number of abeer's family and friends also host ciee students, so many visits included other host-kids. but it was a great day, i enjoyed meeting everyone and definitely got a good sense of the family ties that bind arab society- and of the faithfully practiced custom of offering tea to guests :)