jordan – dog with a blog

How To Cram For An OPI and Other Impossible Tasks

Posted on April 30, 2016January 8, 2021 by kenechukwuAU

So it’s official: my Oral Proficiency Interview in Arabic is in exactly 3 days. If you don’t know what an OPI is, imagine someone speaking at you in rapid-fire Arabic (or any language of your choice) and having to come up with grammatically pristine responses in a native-speaker amount of time. At the end, you get rated with one of 10 qualitative scores based on your performance anywhere from Novice Low to Superior. Naturally, the higher up your competency is, the more time it takes to move from level to level.

Now I’m hoping to achieve a score that’s somewhere between 1 and 2 levels above where I’m *guessing* that I am right now. Is this impossible? Maybe not. I’m sure I know more than I think I do but my struggles typically come from the fact that I’m not a very chatty person in any language. If someone asks me to describe my house I’d probably stall for half a minute or so and eventually say “It’s like small-ish I guess idk we live on a hill.” If I were to say that in Arabic, that really just that I don’t have a good command of the language when in reality, I just don’t ever really think about descriptors for something so normalised to me.

So how do I plan on cramming for the OPI you ask? Well I’m lucky because I’ve taken it twice before once in Arabic and once in Persian so I have an idea of the kind of questions that are asked and the format of it already. I plan on formulating lengthy, grammatically correct answers for the questions I already have an idea that they might ask. Granted all of these questions would be at the Novice Level which I’m most definitely not in, but I don’t want to be asked a question like “tell me about yourself” and reply with a 4 word answer because I don’t know what points I am linguistically able to cover.

Secondly, I’m watching A LOT of TV. I’m sure it’s far too late in the game for me to think I’m going to get drastically better as a result of passive listening but it’s the first time in a while where I don’t have a million and one things to do so I’m excited to be able to kick back, relax, and watch Fairly Odd Parents dubbed into Arabic for hours on end. While the focus of the OPI is on how well I am able to speaking, I also need to be able to understand the examiner’s questions in order to answer them. Related to my show of choice: I absolutely love watching children’s programs because a) they’re more likely to be Modern Standard Arabic, b) they don’t use overladen jargon or too-specific cultural references (especially shows that are dubbed), c) they’re typically shorter than your average show (Phineas and Ferb episodes are only 10 minutes!) which is good for a host of reasons one being that you’re not burned out halfway through the episode, d) and lastly, they’re just fun.

But overall, I’m preparing for this OPI by making sure I am hearing and speaking as much Arabic as possible in the days leading up to it. It’s not a competition and whatever OPI score I achieve does not particularly matter because I know that I have the rest of my life to get better which is one of the greatest parts of language learning.

The Here and Now

The Future is Dangerous

Posted on March 18, 2016January 8, 2021 by kenechukwuAU

I’m a 21 year old who is presently in Jordan and simultaneously all over the place.

I’ve been in Jordan for two months as of tomorrow and it dawned on me that once I get home, my real life starts. I’m going to be an actual human person who’s going to have to start thinking about how to pay off student loans and how not to cry in public (so often).

In conversation I constantly get asked what I’m studying, immediately followed by a question about my post-undergraduate plans. It’s a conversation I’ve been hearing for years but I’m genuinely stumped every single time. I don’t know what I want to do for a career, there are just so many options and will end up defining a great deal of my life. How could I decide?

I’ve see a quotation floating around the internet that says, “don’t ask people what they want to do, ask them what problems they want to solve” which I think is a really good question to turn inwardly as well.

I know that some problems I want to solve include:
– the patriarchy/hypermasculinity
– hunger & water crises
– ostracization of people with disabilities
– the poverty disparity
– homo/trans/not-straight-phobia
– bigotry, racism, islamophobia
– among others!

If I could have it my way I would just try and singlehandedly do everything and solve every single problem everywhere but I’m a tiny little human the fact that I have to choose just a few, for logistical/sanity reasons, breaks my heart. This has led me to the realisation that education is the track for me. I would love to teach the importance of service learning and civic engagement and give students to tools and resources to “fix the world” in whatever way they know how.

The world is my oyster which is comforting and terrifying in the best of ways. The next few years are going to be filled with a LOT of uncertainty but I think I’m finally prepared to handle it.

Travel

How Not To Be An Idiot In Amman: Taxi Edition

Posted on March 6, 2016 by kenechukwuAU

Cabs are the best way to get around the Amman, especially if you’re not as familiar with the bus routes or schedules. Relative to prices back in Boston, cabs here are an absolute steal. I could get from one corner of the city to the opposite one for something like $4.50JOD which is about $6.35USD. At home, I think I could get from my driveway to the next driveway for $6.35. On a GOOD day. Nevertheless, here are some *major keys* for getting cabs like a true Jordanian:

Patience is key. Waiting for cabs can take anywhere between 15 seconds and 15 minutes. Don’t be discouraged if it seems like a bunch of empty cabs are driving on by: sometimes cabbies are just done for the day and going home. You could also download Careem. It’s more expensive but useful for when you’re trying to navigate at an odd hour.
The word “aadad” is key. It means meter and it’s a good word to know. Look for the meter as you get in the taxi. Drivers sometime try to be slick and tuck it between the chairs where you can’t see it and tell you the final reading is more than it really is. If he doesn’t turn the meter on or he tells you it doesn’t work, feel free to get out. Cabs are a dime a dozen, trust.
Speaking of trust, trust is key. You may get into cabs where your driver is texting his habib, changing the radio station, rolling down his window, driving stick, and still somehow doing 80 and weaving in and out of pedestrians and other vehicles. These guys are pros. Their cars are their income so they wouldn’t do anything to put their vehicles (or their passengers) in danger.
Planning your travel outside of rush hour is key. You’re gonna be overcharged during rush hour. Most of the time, it’s not worth the hour+ wait for it to clear up and for cabs to start using the meter again. if you’re broke like me, you’d learn that 9km is a stone’s throw…walk it. (Just kidding, you just have to accept it.) Secondly, Amman traffic is on its own level. If you can avoid the “zahme,” please do. If you can’t, yikes.

This is Part III in my series about thriving in Jordan. Check out my other posts as well!

Travel

Amman, Week 5

Posted on March 4, 2016 by kenechukwuAU

I was just perusing some of the other travel and study abroad blogs that I follow, specifically my girl Laura, and I realised I’m really bad at posting updates of what I’m doing. I’ve been here for juuuust over 5 weeks which is so wild to think about.

The hardest part of living in Amman is really just the fact that I’m on my own in terms of a lot of things. I have never in my life had to buy my own toilet paper. So this is a really the biggest learning curve.

I have yet to explore Amman as much as I want to, mainly because I’m very much bogged down with work and also because I’m so so so broke. Even though I have my internship, I can’t get paid for it so it’s the first time since I was 16 that I don’t have an income and it’s terrifying seeing my bank account get lower and lower.

To be quite honest, my Arabic hasn’t improved as much as I had wanted it to by this point, but that’s partly because I’m very good at shying away from challenges (i.e. new vocabulary and complex verb conjugations). But what is strange is that I found I’ve “collected” a lot of words in Arabic that I could easily drop in a conversation and make someone think I’m well-versed in the language. Just the other day I said the word for stapler and, not to toot my own horn, but: the crowd went wild. It was really only a crowd of one but please let me revel in this accomplishment.

Just outside of Um Qais in Irbid

Lastly, don’t tell my mom, but I still haven’t unpacked.