On Sunday we went to a school to help teach English at an English summer camp program, and today we also got to come back. Unfortunately this day was our last day with the group of boys we were helping out, but next week the English camp for girls starts so we will get to help with that! On Saturday they are having their graduation, and for it they will be playing English games and presenting about the program, it's called the Access program. Today I got to help make an English game that they called "Monopoly"(they actually pronounced it as mono-poly instead of monopoly), but wasn't really similar to it all, basically each player rolls and moves the amount they roll, but instead of having a Monopoly they just answer questions in English in order to keep moving on. The questions widely varied from how to greet people in English to what the meaning of Y.O.L.O is. The boys are extremely friendly, and I was able to learn some Arabic from them. I will miss being part of their classes. I was able to learn alot about them, and it was amazing to see that people are all somewhat similar in different cultures.
I also found out about official host family information recently. There are still a few weeks until we get to move in with our host families. I already knew quite a bit about my host family because our group coordinators know quite a bit about my family, and I found out why, my host mom works at the AMIDEAST office. Since she works there I have been seeing her everyday, and been able to talk to her. I am really looking forward to the time we will get to spend with host families.
We also got to go to the grocerey store Carrefour at the mall. We bought different snacks for our room. The juices here are amazing, they have a kiwi juice which apparently is basically just straight syrub, but it's still really good. I pretty much finished a whole bottle yesterday. The mango juice is really good, and apparently they make fresh avocado honey juice. The fresh avocado honey juice sounds like an extremely strange mix, but I've heard quite a few good things about it and I'm interesting in trying it.
I have officially memorized the Arabic alphabet, and I am trying very hard to read things now, and I can to a certain extent. It takes me a VERY long time to sound out words and figure out quite what it is. Our classes have been fun, and just in two full day I already feel as though I have learned alot. I am glad that I studied a little bit on my own before coming here because that has made the memorization easier for me.
Mashallah is a word that prevents the evil eye, so whenever you give anyone a compliment you must make sure to say mashallah either before or after you give the compliment. This is necessary because if you don't say mashallah that means that the evil eye is upon the person that was complimented. If you don't say mashallah the person gives whatever item they were complimented on to the person that complimented them. At first I wasn't all that aware of the idea, but yesterday when we were going home one of the girls in our group told the driver that he had a nice hat, he automatically reached to his head and offered it to her, she didn't understand and instead of mashallah began to say inshallah, which means god willing. She finally realized, and said mashallah, but this was honestly one of the funniest moments yet. It also makes me wonder if people just don't say mashallah in order to receive something the want...
Tomorrow we will be heading to Salalah for the Dhofari festival, and in Salalah they temperature drops by about 20 degrees, so that will definitely be a nice change. Salalah is completely different from Muscat, it's more conservative, the language is quite different, and at this time of the year it has tropical weather.
Also, our chaperone from D.C to Muscat, and basically the first person that told the kids going to Oman anything about Oman is leaving tomorrow because he got a job outside of Oman . This will definitely be strange, but not only that it means that the girls in the Oman group won't have much contact with the male gender for awhile. Anyways, today we had a fun little good bye celebration, and new adventure is always good even when it means leaving.
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