Ten things I do that I'm pretty sure my host family thinks are really, really weird

The thing about being in someone else's home is that all your weird habits seem even WEIRDER.

1.Go to bed before midnight. Every day. No matter what time I have to get up in the morning. After Forbidden Love, I hang out for a little while, and then make a cup of tea and take my leave for the night. I get in bed and read a book or skype a little. No big deal. Except that they don't go to bed until 1 a.m. so not only am I missing out on fun, I'm pretty sure that they don't get what my deal is.

2.Read, constantly and obsessively, for pleasure. I realized yesterday that they think every time I'm reading, I'm studying. They must have some image of me as the most dedicated student ever, when really I'm just reading the Shoebox Project on my computer for the 4th time (thanks again, Kaitlin!).

3.Consistently dress kind of like a hobo (though to be fair, they should see me at Earlham because this is like a really big step up. what happened to me?)

i. case in point: plaid. they thought this was the WEIRDEST. they talked about it, like, all day.

ii. the same smelly hiking boots every day, regardless of where I'm going.

iii. this one jacket that I actually stole from my roommate freshman year.

iii. jeggings

iv. these terrifying glasses that I thought were a good deal ($9! Thanks WalMart) but that make me look like a cross between the awkward love child of my father, Terence, and Clark Kent/Lucas Williams (granted, this is what I was going for:

)

I think they're cool, plus I'm out of contact solution...but it turns out that in some places glasses are supposed to be less of a statement of aggressive personality and more of a, like, vision aid.

4. Get excited about camels. (This one is whatever.)

5. Turn down second platefuls of lentils and rice, kufta, and mansaf. While my own mother would applaud such willpower, my host mother is semi-mortified. "...but you didn't eat anything!"

6. Actually--turn down food, ever. I was saying goodnight at like, 10:30 and my host mother

looked at me wide-eyed and said, "you don't want dinner?" I had already eaten one dinner with them, at seven, so I told her no thank you. "not hungry? why? I'm making eggs!" she said (in Arabic). "you LOVE eggs! what's wrong?"

7. Watch Star Wars, and make them watch it with me. Despite their love for Turkish soap operas, the space saga is a little much. "It's his father??"

8. Not wear a coat when it's 60 degrees out. "It's WINTER!"

9. Practice random Arabic phrases on them. (This is another thing I got from my American mother, who learned Spanish by putting little labels on every thing in our house.) I learned how to say "Nice to meet you" three weeks after I arrived in their home, but I came home and said it even though we were already well acquainted. My host mother laughed for like ten minutes.

10. Write down everything that happens to me, and then post it on the Internet. Whoops. Guess this one is kind of weird.

Bonuses:

11. Play the mandolin to myself.

12. Have class at weird places, like the United Nations or art galleries. Except that I never know where I'm going--I only know the taxi landmark Bruce gave us, so when Ziad asks where I'm going I have to say something like "Mustashfa Luzmilla" (Luzmilla Hospital) which raises all these questions about why I'm taking a taxi to the hospital instead of to, like, a school.