This is a few days old, but I didn’t have internet until now: Yesterday we took the entrance exam, which was designed to be really hard as to sort out students into the appropriate levels of Arabic. I feel like I did well, but I didn’t recognize a few words in the last question and blew that one, although I should have still scored well enough to get into the level I was aiming for. We all felt fairly lost and confused by it, but hopefully everyone will get put into the appropriate level tomorrow morning.

The other interesting thing that happened yesterday was that Ben, Elise, Paula, and I went to a Catholic mass. The church (al-kineesa catholeekee) was nice, but I didn’t have my camera with me so you’ll will have to wait another week or two for pictures. The homily was difficult to follow, as the only big words I recognized were church, father, son, spirit, God, one, and three, so we figured it must have been a sermon about the Holy Trinity, which is still a contentious point in contrast to Islam.

Because we are near the university, there are a decent amount of places near us that try to serve foods that you can find anywhere in the world (ie pizza and fries), so we’ve been asking a lot of people where we can find good restaurants. So far, every single person has said KFC. And we say, “no, a good Arab restaurant,” and the response is still KFC, which is then followed by another less than compelling recommendation.

The last remark I have for today is that people here are insane drivers. Driving here, it is like a race. Drivers cut each other off constantly; it seems like every taxi ride the guy is slamming on the breaks, whipping into another land, and gunning it again. Two lane roads find the cars going four wide regularly. But to their credit, auto accidents are apparently a rare sight. Some of the stop signs have speed bumps, otherwise no one will slow down there. If there is a stop sign without a speed bump, it is more just a sort of forewarning that your about to cut somebody off than an appeal to stop.