Good food, boring post.

Yesterday I had one of the most amazing meals. It was mansaf-- Jordan's national dish. Basically, mansaf is served on a massive platter and everyone eats from it. On the bottom, there is very thin bread; almost like a crepe(except not sweetened). On top of that is rice with spices and pine nuts toasted in oil, and then there is either chicken or meat on the rice. Then to top it off, a very pungent, dried yogurt is made into a gravy-ish mixture and it is poured over the top. The fun thing is that this dish is eaten with the hands. Specifically, only the right hand because the left is the toilet hand. You eat only from the section in front of you, and you take a bit in your hand and roll it into a ball. From there, you curl your index finger around your thumb and place the ball on top. Then you kind of flip it into your mouth without letting your fingers touch your lips- this so you can reach back into the plate and your fingers aren't considered dirty. Mansaf is total comfort food and it was incredible... I did a good job of making the balls and eating without touching my fingers to my lips once I got used to only using one hand. Here is a photo of mansaf I pulled from google. Ours looked very similar to it; except on a much larger platter with the bread on the bottom.

I began colloquial Arabic class today and it went well, except for the taxi driver taking me to the wrong university. I still don't understand how that happened. Nothing else too exciting to report... the weather really sucks. I should have brought some more sweaters! But the good news is that it begins to get warm in March :)