Last Friday we (the group of American immersion students and a few of the expats taking language classes with us) went to the Jordanian shore of the Dead Sea and a place called Wadi Mujib (Wadi means “valley”), where we hiked to a waterfall. As a point of note, let no one tell you that the Dead Sea isn't too salty, or that you should put your head under. It took fifteen minutes for the “water” to evaporate off of my face (leaving granules of salt as it went) and stop burning my lips and eyes.

What fills the Dead Sea is thick enough that it’s really more like salty soup than seawater, and the slightest breeze on a wet face causes a heating sensation rather than a cooling one. That being said, it’s pretty amazing to float atop the water like you’re lying in a hammock on a sunny day. A few people cut themselves on the salt crystals that form on the rocks jutting out into the water (I suspect the crystals form from the breeze coming across the water, but the water may just get to a much higher level than that at which we saw it), but the cuts closed up within a few minutes in the water. We collected a few smooth souvenirs off of the beach (charitably called such—the beach is essentially rocks that have washed up) and walked a hundred yards or so to a freshwater waterfall where we cleaned the salt from our skin.

We hopped back in the bus and drove another few kilometers to the Wadi Mujib Nature Reserve, paid the fee to get through the gate, and started the kilometer-or-so walk to the big waterfall. We were advised to leave our cameras in the bus because they’d be ruined, and the warning was not an exaggeration. After a couple hundred yards we were walking through shin-deep water and after a few hundred more we were all but wading. We quickly entered a canyon, the walls of which soared a good hundred or hundred-and-fifty feet above our heads. After climbing up four sets of small waterfalls (and sliding down them a fun few times in the process), we got to a deeper part of the canyon and saw a waterfall about seventy-five feet high. Trying to stand up straight under it, without buckling or being pushed out, is terribly difficult, but we had a great time trying. After a little while sitting in the waterfall pool, we trekked back and boarded the bus back to Amman. We were all exhausted when we got back in the late afternoon, so we slept, thinking we’d get up in a few hours and go to the coffee shop. We didn't wake up until the next morning.

Arabic classes continue to challenge us, but we persevere. Robert, Craig and I have an odd way of cementing pronunciation. When we learn a new word, we say it to each other a dozen times or so, going back and forth in a manner befitting, in the words of Nicole (a Villanova senior), “the seagulls from Nemo”. It may look odd to observers, but once we learn a word, it’s rare that we all forget it the next day.

Rami, our classical Arabic teacher, has spent the last four days (and plans to spend Sunday through Wednesday of next week) playing a game with us for an hour and a half or so each morning, wherein he says a word (sometimes a nonsensical one) and we have to tell him how many letters it contains and how to spell it. Our pronunciation and ear for the language (likely interdependent, if my slight knowledge of human psychology and pedagogy is accurate) have progressed very far very quickly. Looking back on the two weeks we've been here, I'm amazed

Christine is our spoken Arabic teacher (spoken Arabic, 3amiya, is a somewhat simplified version of classical Arabic, the name of which I don’t know how to spell, and we learn both because no one speaks classical except in news and politics), and she’s much more effervescent than Rami is, though they’re both incredibly nice and very good teachers—I’m quite certain I lack the patience necessary to repeat simple phrases over and over again only to hear them butchered by half the room. It may be the result of our spoken classes being in the afternoon and after three hours of classical classes, but the atmosphere is significantly lighter and more prone to distraction, tangent, and the mental state that accompanies as much class time as we have.

In the two weeks we've been here, we've seen two weddings near our apartment. First, it’s really odd to hear a man half-chanting/half-singing into a megaphone with bongo drums and bagpipes backing him, but the sound is surprisingly good and the rhythm gets into your head. Second, these songs go on for a very long time with no break. The crowd is clapping and dancing and singing along as the bride and groom stand on a dais and watch, and we've stood and watched for twenty minutes without ever seeing a pause. Weddings here are much more fun and exciting than Christian weddings back home.

One last thing: Christine crashed our classical Arabic class this morning to teach us all, as Rami frowned at her, how to say tame Arabic words that sound like English swear words (faak, `ass, shita, etc). She laughed devilishly as she walked out of the room.