Hello blog readers, this is Bonnie. I would like to share a little bit about the first official meeting we had in preparation for our amazing journey!! Mary Delgado, who takes care of the international students here on campus and arranged this meeting, was very nice, and so extremely excited for us and this trip. We covered a lot of ground during our time together. First we all went around and introduced ourselves, and talked briefly about our majors and interests, as well as how the idea of applying for the Jordan grant came about. There were two international grad students present, Rasha and Amani, who are close to my age and were also excited to bond with us and tell us all about their home. We watched a great tourism video, and we were invited to attend an Arabic class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The video was a great experience, because all four of the Jordanians present piped in with stories and ideas about which things we definitely should see, and which places were close to their homes..We four pretty much just listened for the duration of the meeting while the four from Jordan talked excitedly about home. We learned about the food (the women want to cook for us in their dorms as soon as finals are over), what to wear, the weather and the landscape (we learned that there is snow in Jordan, and it isn't as hot and dry as one might think), about the history and different sites to visit (some trips are being planned for us- so cool), and about how wonderful and welcoming the people will be there to us and to feel comfortable asking any of the locals any questions that we might have while we are there. It is very safe, and people leave their doors unlocked all the time- the surrounding countries love Jordan for its safety. There are also shopping malls and a wide variety of restaurants. Everyone at the meeting wants us to meet their familes while we are there, and we are welcome in their homes as guests as well. We talked about what our surveys entailed (as far as women bringing them home to mothers, the length of the surveys, and translating)..the women seemed to think that this would be very easy to do. Mary would like an idea of when the questionnaires would be ready to translate, as they may hire some of the students to work on the translation. I let her know that we needed them all together for the IRB which we are working hard on completing right now. Some random things... as women we should never put out our hands to shake a man's hand. To say hello we can just wave and smile, and just say hello. As far as clothing, we can pretty much wear whatever we like, as there are many tourists from countries such as Europe and China all the time- bathing suits will be fine and we can show our hair. They said that we absolutely must try certain foods, and ride camels. We all exchanged emails and numbers to get together and talk as soon as possible- and we were invited to go with them on a campus trip to visit the state house and Quincy market on Friday afternoon. I asked them if they knew of any good Middle Eastern restaurants that they really liked and felt like home, and they had some favorites- so we are making plans to go out and eat together (all of us women) and then shop for good Jordanian attire. It is all very very exciting. Mary is eager for us to bond so that we feel very connected with the culture before we go. I am personally very excited to befriend them and to learn as much about them (and the language!) as I can =) What else... here is the link to the video that we watched : http://na.visitjordan.com/I know I could come up with so much more.. Our next meeting is on May 5th!! We will keep you posted on updates!