Thursday, April 22, 2010

الجلماوي

"You are... American? I move here from Jordan to come to America and now I have Arabic neighbors. I think to myself this is not good. I am happy to meet you."

Yeah Me!

This happens on a regular basis at the playground at my apartment complex. Most conversations last at least a half hour because they are so excited to hear and speak English with a native speaker. I'm pretty much a celebrity around here because I'm "American" and speak "English". Yes, my apartment complex is that international. I think I am one of less than 10 "American, native English speaking" families in the complex. I LOVE it!
Please enjoy this very entertaining Arabic music video in honor of the birthday party we attended tonight.

My new Arabic speaking friends invited us over to celebrate a 3 year old. We went and Brad dazzled them all with his very impressive two word vocabulary in Arabic. He learned two more words tonight, yes and no. The group would have an entire conversation in Arabic and then Brad would chime in at the very end, "yes" (in Arabic which sounds like "e" or "nam"). Everyone would laugh and we walked away with a whole new appreciation for what these poor (in spirit) refugee families experience every waking moment in America (we also walked away waddling from eating so much food, man do they like to make you eat).

I wish I would have brought my camera to document Kaci's white hair amongst dark hair and dark complexion kids. She stands out to say the very least. They all adore her for it. She thinks she's the center of attention because, well, she is. I also would have had a really cool picture of me being buddy-buddy with 3 Iraqi women and one Jordanian woman.

Needless to say, I feel like my world is so small when it needs to be so so so so big to encompass more people, more languages, more cultures, more religions, more everything. I thought I was so culturally minded after BYU-H, but I don't recall meeting too many Muslims at BYU-H. I guess that's why I get to meet them now!

p.s. any "Americans" in the area want to makes some new friends, I know a couple families who are desperate to make more "American" friends.

2 comments:

Krystal and Bruce said...

thats cool! at first i saw your title and thought you got blogged jacked lol

Kera said...

hey! thanks for stopping my my my blog! So where are you?