A couple weeks ago, we walked into our ‘amiyya (colloquial Arabic) classroom/conference room and found a lone sheet of paper chilling on the table. Stamped with the name of a professor from the “Department of English, University of Jordan,” it featured a pretty awkwardly typed text. What follows is an exact reproduction, typos, weird punctuation and strange spacing intact:
A man is
taking a walk
in Central
park in New
York. Suddenly
he sees
a little girl
being attacked
by a pit bull
dog and
starts
fighting with
the dog. He
succeeds in
killing the
dog and
saving the
girl’s life. A
policeman who
was watching
the scene
walks
over and says:
“You are a
hero, tomorrow
you can read
it in all the
newspapers:
“Brave New
Yorker saves
the life of
little girl”
The man
says: – “But I
am not a New
Yorker!”
“Oh ,then it
will say in
newspapers in
the morning:
‘Brave
American saves
life of little
girl’” – the
policeman
answers. “But
I am not an
American!” –
says
the man. “Oh,
what are you
then? ” The
man says: – “I
“! am Saudi â
The next day
the newspapers
says: “Islamic
extremist
kills innocent
American dog
Oh man. Keep in mind this is apparently used to teach people English. Wonderful.
Anyway, my blog posts might come less frequently over the next couple weeks, as I have a couple midterms coming up and some travel planned. I’ll try to update as much as possible, and I’ll be adding photos to Facebook, too, inshallah.
In the meantime, I strongly urge you to check out this hilarious blog post on my friend Virginia’s (of El Jerasho fame) blog. It’s all about the ridiculous notebooks that Jordanian bookstores around the university sell; some of them are absolutely absurd.
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