Tuesday-Thursday, 26-28 August 2008

Well, the first week is over. My schedule is finalized now so I am taking Arabic, Classical Islamic History, Political Economy of the Arab World, Public International Law, and America and the Middle East. All the courses so far seem interesting. My Arabic class is taught from a different book than I am used to and the book we need is not yet in the book store. Besides that, none of my classes have books I have to buy, which at first sounds nice but is really a pain because that means all the readings are online. It gets tiresome reading dozens of articles on the computer every week; I'd much rather read from a book. I ordered two books for two of my classes that it appears we will be reading a lot from. Even though the chapters will be online, we use the books so much, it would just be easier to have the hard copy. Of course, I don't know how to have books shipped to me here, so they are being shipped to my home and then my parents are going to mail them to me.

The classes here are not incredibly different than classes at home. The only main difference is that the students call out a lot during class instead of raising their hands; this seems normal and acceptable here. Also, most of my teachers have said that if you are late and the door is closed, don't bother coming, which is a little stricter than my teachers at AU.

As for how I am doing, I was feeling rather sick yesterday and ended up skipping one of my classes because of it. I slept almost all day yesterday and last night, but woke up feeling much better today. Of course, since I was sick and not quite functional last night, I forgot to do the daily sign-in with the dorm supervisor saying I was in the dorms before curfew, so at 6:30 this morning my phone started ringing. It was my dorm supervisor checking to see if I was here. I did not appreciate being woken up and really do not like this whole curfew/sign-in thing, but I guess it is something I will just have to deal with for now.

Well, most of my friends spent the night in Dubai last night. I was supposed to go but thought it better to get some sleep and feel better. So I'm not really sure what I'll be up to today, but hopefully something good. Until next time...

-Lindsay