First post!
So, today is Tuesday, and in four days I’m going to be on a plane headed to Cairo. Yikes! And I’ve still got an exam, packing, cleaning checks, my sister’s wedding, and a novel to finish writing! Where did all the time go?
Even with all the other stuff that’s going on, I’m getting really, really excited to go on this study abroad trip! We’ll be going to Cairo for a week, then we’ll be in Amman, Jordan for the next three months, until we fly back on August 17th. In between, we’ll go visit Jerusalem and Israel/Palestine, and I’ll fly back for my second sister’s wedding (holy cow squared!).
Am I nervous? Extremely!
The thing is that I really don’t have any firm goals at this point for what I want to accomplish on my study abroad experience. That’s probably not very good. I need to figure out what I want to get done, where I want to be when I get back so that I can focus my efforts while I’m there.
This past semester I didn’t focus much on my Arabic, and the result was that I did just what I needed to do to get by, rather than actually learn the language. I feel I’m approximately where I was at the end of the fall semester in terms of what I can actually speak and write. I’m much better at reading, but reading is probably the easiest part of Arabic for me.
I probably won’t have any time to set down any firm goals until I’m actually on the plane, but I hope to have something by the time we land. I definitely will not be wasting my time there–I want to come home having learned a significant amount of Arabic. Who knows but what this will prepare me to go further in the program–say, do CASA like Spencer did, or get a master’s degree in Arabic? I really don’t know.
That leads me to another thing I’ve really been thinking about as a prelude to this study abroad trip, which is what I’ll be doing after graduation. I’m already half way through my undergraduate, and I currently don’t have any post-graduation plans. Funny thing is that I’ve been too busy with school to step back and think “what do I want to do with my life?”
I know I want to write Science Fiction, and I’ve been pursuing that very rigorously (Brandon Sanderson told the BYU English faculty that I’m hardcore! Yay!), but I also know that I don’t want to do that as my primary career.
I’m just going to call a can of worms on that subject (post-graduation plans), because I could ramble forever on that. I’m sure it’s a theme that will be recurring on this blog. My sister Kate tells me that it’s actually not a bad thing that I don’t have firm plans, because everything is going to change after this study abroad experience. That’s both encouraging and scary.
With this blog, I plan on keeping it a lot like my sister Kate did with her Kate in Jordan blog. That was really an awesome cross cultural blog! I learned a lot about Jordan, language learning, and Arab culture just from what she posted! I want this blog to be something like that, though I’m sure it’s going to become it’s own beast. I already keep a regular writing blog, and I think this one is going to become something like that one: where the main theme is the study abroad, but it also goes into other things in my life that may be only loosely connected.
In any case, I think this blog is going to become more like a journal than any of my other blogs. The main focus will be the BYU study abroad program in Jordan and my experiences in it, so unlike most blogs, it will have a definite beginning, middle, and end. This beginning is very rambly, but once I’m on the plane with this crazy week behind me, I think I’ll be a little more coherent.
Man! I’m excited, stressed, nervous, and feeling generally crazy!
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