Harry Potter makes life better.

Also, my English is going down the tube, because I just typed "lefe" for "life" in the title the first time I tried to write it. Whatever.

So yesterday I finally got some good shawarma! And it was like .50, so that's even better. I also went to this great bookstore with my roommate- they had SO many books in like every subject. Lots were translated from English to Arabic (a bunch of Agatha Christie, for some reason?) including....Harry Potter 1-4!!! If you know me (and you should, if you read this), you know how much I love HP. And Harry Potter is kind of my "comfort" series when I'm sick or in a bad mood. So I bought books 3 and 4 in Arabic, and this will be FABULOUS because I know the HP books so well that I can actually take a stab at reading them in Arabic and I'll know what's happening! The man at the bookstore was so so so nice- I think book-lovers can gravitate toward each other in any language, right? So he gave my roommate and me a very generous discount on our books. I'm definitely going back to get some actual Arab works of literature sometime soon.

I also got some bootleg DVDs earlier in the day yesterday. One of the guys in the program had seen some bootleg places the day before and wanted to go back and browse, so I went with a group of the program guys to go look at a very impressive selection of bootlegs. I wanted Star Trek, but the quality was bad (the guy tested the DVDs for us so we could see). So I ended up with "Iron Man" and "Babel", and two of the other guys got some movies that I'll definitely be borrowing sometime. Between this, Arabic Harry Potter, and fascinating Arabic TV, I will need to budget my time exceptionally well to get homework done and do some exploring. Maybe it's good that I don't have internet access in my room!

Things are good in general. I was late to class today, because I and two other people from the program went to grab a quick lunch. As it turns out, none of us know enough dialect to get any quick food. We were ushered to a dining room, and somehow we ended up with this huge kebab platter, hummus, tabbouleh, and baba ganoush. I need to learn the Arabic for "ripped off", because the whole thing cost like 14JD and we couldn't even finish it, because we had to run to class. We kept trying to say things, and the guy just stared at us. It was an experience.

In general, things are ok. I've been feeling a little down yesterday and today. There are some things that are hard to get used to, like men who are pigs. I take for granted in America the ability to walk down the street without much fear of verbal or physical harassment (for the most part). In what culture would this be okay?! Inshallah, I'm just going to stick with big groups and walking around with guys from the program so I can feel a little safer. I'm not actually in fear for my safety, it's just uncomfortable going out (mostly at night) when the streets are filled with young guys and some of them (by no means all of them) don't have a lot of respect for American women.

I refuse to let pig men ruin my trip, though. First homework assignments tonight! Wish me luck.

--K