The question of culture comes up so much in my daily life here. I think part of it comes from just the types of friends that I have and make, but its also really hard to avoid the subject when I come across a menu completely in English, with waiters who speak English. Its also unnerving to listen to conversations where there are English sentences sand-witched between Arabic ones.
For instance: Last night I went to city mall with two friends and it was legit nicer than most malls that I've ever been to, and there were very few veiled women, probably about the amount that you see in certain places in DC.
There were two notable experiences at the mall however. When I went into the girls bathroom, it was just like the way I imagine that guys image girls bathrooms to be. There were women just crowed in front of the mirror, shaking hands and cheek-kissing. Large amounts of eyeliner was being applied, and one chick straight up sat down and lit a cigarette. (okay I guess that another difference, we were smoking hooka in a mall, something that doesn't really happen.) The second interesting thing was that a fight was totally about to break out. I've never actually witnessed a fight, but I was in the middle of a sentence, when all of a sudden, my friend Nate, goes: "guys I think we need to go, I think there's going to be a fight." And sure enough, they were pushing tables back, and mall security was there in about two second. We still got out of there. On the way out of the mall, we saw the kids getting put into the back of one of those police vans...
When I told my host mom she said "Over a girl, for sure" I had the same thought, and to me, that sounds like a mix of Jordanian culture and the Jersey Shore. Like really, who is really stupid enough to have a fight IN the mall. I think that the culture here is so much more different than it appears, even in the Western areas, you just have to open your eyes to the subtleties
This morning, however, stands out in sharp contrast to the mall. I'm currently at a cafe downtown with a group of other students who live in this area. We took the bus (its soooooo much cheaper) and so we had to walk though part of center city. Since its Friday at noonish, everyone just got out of the Mosques, and the streets were full, but there were no women. Additionally, there was a side walk that was ummmmm kind of a butcher shop. The first sign should have been the roosters that were just chillin' on the sidewalk, but then there were rabbits, and finally there was a small creature being straight-up butchered on the side of the street.
This is NOT something that one would ever find in the US and I'm not gonna lie, I really enjoyed imagining the horrified expression of a USDA official. I think its great that people know where they're getting their rabbit/chicken/pigeon from.
For instance: Last night I went to city mall with two friends and it was legit nicer than most malls that I've ever been to, and there were very few veiled women, probably about the amount that you see in certain places in DC.
There were two notable experiences at the mall however. When I went into the girls bathroom, it was just like the way I imagine that guys image girls bathrooms to be. There were women just crowed in front of the mirror, shaking hands and cheek-kissing. Large amounts of eyeliner was being applied, and one chick straight up sat down and lit a cigarette. (okay I guess that another difference, we were smoking hooka in a mall, something that doesn't really happen.) The second interesting thing was that a fight was totally about to break out. I've never actually witnessed a fight, but I was in the middle of a sentence, when all of a sudden, my friend Nate, goes: "guys I think we need to go, I think there's going to be a fight." And sure enough, they were pushing tables back, and mall security was there in about two second. We still got out of there. On the way out of the mall, we saw the kids getting put into the back of one of those police vans...
When I told my host mom she said "Over a girl, for sure" I had the same thought, and to me, that sounds like a mix of Jordanian culture and the Jersey Shore. Like really, who is really stupid enough to have a fight IN the mall. I think that the culture here is so much more different than it appears, even in the Western areas, you just have to open your eyes to the subtleties
This morning, however, stands out in sharp contrast to the mall. I'm currently at a cafe downtown with a group of other students who live in this area. We took the bus (its soooooo much cheaper) and so we had to walk though part of center city. Since its Friday at noonish, everyone just got out of the Mosques, and the streets were full, but there were no women. Additionally, there was a side walk that was ummmmm kind of a butcher shop. The first sign should have been the roosters that were just chillin' on the sidewalk, but then there were rabbits, and finally there was a small creature being straight-up butchered on the side of the street.
This is NOT something that one would ever find in the US and I'm not gonna lie, I really enjoyed imagining the horrified expression of a USDA official. I think its great that people know where they're getting their rabbit/chicken/pigeon from.
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