Malaysia-Egypt-Jordan

Forgot to publish this post. have several problems with internet wifi here. Thanks to Allah, it solved right now.
----------------*****-----------------------

MARA students bound to Jordan all are 69 students with 3 different courses; Medicine, Dentistry and Islamic Banking. We were split into 2 groups and flights.

- First group (30 students)  will fly with Royal Jordanian Air (RJ). RJ Air will transit in Bangkok then will have direct flight to Amman, Jordan. It took about 11 hours. 

- Second group (39 students) will fly with Egypt Air. This flight took much longer times, it will transit twice, in Bangkok for 1.5 hours and in Cairo for 11 hours. 

Most of medic students will be in the second group. These are the photos taken during flight

Cairo, Egypt ( 11 hours Transit)

We were informed by Amazon Travel agents that we will have transit in Cairo for 11 hours. To ensure safety we were told to stay at the transit waiting room. 11 hours waiting there?? Adehh, ape la yg nk  dibuat 11 jamm tuu, bangang laa~ :(. We just redha n pasrah je. We went to Egypt Air transfer desk to take boarding pass to Amman. Surprisingly, we were granted vouchers for hotel stay in Baron Hotel, Heliopolis along with breakfast and lunch. Wi-fi package all along. My senior, Bro Abdul Rahman from University of Cairo came by. We had great conversations here.

Arrival Hall.Lot of people with lot of noises. :)

Breakfast in Baron Hotel

Room

Lunch with Akh Abdul Rahman

Bro Abdul Rahman. Cairo Uni

In a hotel van, on the way to the airport

Day 1 : Arrival Day

Alhmdulillah, we arrived at Queen Alia International Airport, Amman after 1.5 hours in flight from Cairo. From the plane-mirror view, the scenery seems much better than Cairo Airport. We could see grassy ground, unike Cairo Airport, where we could only find sand all over the places; it's like an airport built in the middle of a desert. xD  But, Queen Alia Airport is much smaller. The size is nearly similar to that of Sultan Ismail Airport in Kota Bharu.

I recalled, it was 8.15p.m *(Jordan time. It differs 5 hours from M'sian Time), we passed all the security gates. As we reached arrival hall, there are several Malaysian seniors wearing SPB (Sambutan Pelajar Baru) tag waiting to welcome us. They are quite friendly and hospitable. We were told to leave our bags and luggages with them, so we can perform prayer Maghrib and Isya' (Jama' taa'khir).

Well, "Don't Judge Book by Its Cover!".

The musalla is located near the toilets. As we're passing through the passage to the musalla, we smelled very very very very very "kaaaawwwwwwwwwww!" fragrance from the toilet. It's human natural fragrance to be frankly honest. Or simply described as "BUSUK punya human shitloads". pergghh!.  It happened that we don't know (some of us) where to take wuduk. So, we didn't have much choice rather than to use the toilet. The toilet  was apparently unmaintained, small and crowded. I recalled there was only 3 toilet rooms. All we could do at that time just bear with the smell and take wuduk quickly. I don't know how to describe the smell, but seriously I felt nauseous!

This time, you would surely being grateful living in Malaysia. !

Then we entered the musalla. And of course there is a place for wuduk there. Had we know it before, we would never enter the toilet. :( . Farhan Nadzam leaded our prayers. Alhmdulillah, we managed to perform the Solat Maghrib and Isya' bil jamaah.  After the prayer, there was an Arab came into us and talked to us, with Arabic of course. He talked slowly and much of the letters came from his mouth as I recalled were fushah (Standard Arabic) and some were ammi (colloquial). Nevertheless, it was still understandable. Firstly, he praised our Imam Farhan Nadzam for his good recitation of Quran in the solat previously. He said his makhraj and pronunciation are good and much resembled Arab tongue. Farhan was blushing! haha.  Then came another two Arabs into us. They greeted us politely and we started our conversation. We tried to converse in Arabic with them even it was a broken one. hehe. But one special characteristic of Arab is, they always welcome us conversing in Arabic. They even know that we were new here and have difficulty in communicating with Arabic fluently. So, they talked slowly, often with sign of body language, so we could understand them. They even tried to translate some words to English despite they themselves mispronounce it. xD.

We have a 'breaking-the-ice" session with them. They are Algerians who just came back from Umrah in Mecca. But I forgot their names. :( Then they talked about Arabic language. They asked where we learned Arabic. And they explained to us the benefits for mastering Arabic.

As I recalled the conversation is as follow. It is in arabic, but I translated it, because much of our Arabic at that time was completely broken. hehe.

Arab : The imam (Farhan) has very good recitation of quran. His makhraj and pronunciation is very good.

(All looked at Paan gladly)

Farhan         : *blushing*

Arab : min win intuu? (Where are you from?)

We                : Ihna min Maliziya. ( we are from Malaysia)

Arab : Janub Syarqi Asia? Qorib min Indonesia? (South East Asia? Near indonesia right?)

We                : Aiwahh. Inta? ((Yeahh, you?)

Arab              :  Ihna min Jazair (We're from Algeria)

Arab : Where did you learn Arabic?*

Miswar         :  Malaysia. But we know better Arabic in fushah.

Mu'min         : Yaaah. laakin in Ammi 'Arabi syuwayya syuwayya bash  (Yes, but Arabic ammi just a little) 

Arab : (Smile) good. Arabic language is used by many people in the world. It is an easy-to-learned language. You should learn it. Why are you here?*

We                : We are new student here.*

Arab : Which university?*

We                : Techno.

Arab : ooo. Kuliyyah? (Course?)

We                 : Tibb Basyari (Medicine)

And the conversation continued. I don't recall the other conversation but it was really a good one.

*is not written in actual language because I forgot the correct Arabic they said. Only mafhum ^_^

Then, one of our seniors who were in-charge of our transportation came and told us to assemble and to take our belongings into the bus. So we wished goodbye to them. They quickly asked to take photo with us. Some of their friends nearby came joining us to take photo together. They came close to us as both our shoulders meeting theirs. They seemed very happy meeting with us. We had never meet before, but have then become good friends.

We had good start here. Although there are some weaknesses in Arabs often in cleanliness, they have several strengths that are difficult to find in Malaysia.

_________-------------____________

All begs were assembled near the bus. We had a bus and a coaster. The boys will ride on the bus, while the girls on the coaster. Girls' begs were given priority, then came the boys'. The bus luggage storage were fully occupied by the girls' beg. As the boys number were just 26, the bus had more spaces to be filled up. So, we filled the remaining begs on the bus. Around 9.15p.m the bus started to move. Akh Hidayat Hasni, President of Persatuan Mahasiswa Irbid (PERMAI) was with us on the bus. He gave introductory briefing to us. The distance between Amman and Irbid is 70km. So it took us about 45 minutes to reach the destination. All of us fell asleep, maybe due to exhausting day we had during 11-hour-transit in Cairo. On the way to our sakan, we passed through JUST University. Akh Hidayat briefed us about the main entrance of the university and some of its facilities. But I recalled no one do mind the briefing. All continue to sleep. haha.

Then the bus stopped at sakan akhawat (girls home stay).  There are two sakan for akhawat, I am not quite sure where they are, but they are definitely very close. We have to lift their baggages into their sakan. Only some of us woke up from sleep to help the seniors lift the begs. And of course each begs are 20kg+++. To lift these all up to 6th floor by stairs is really the work of gentlemen. So, do thank us and the seniors ^_^.

Afterwards, we arrived at our sakan. It is called Sakan Al-'Umari. It's 4-storey-building, much like an apartment. Each floor have 8 houses. Each of them have 3 rooms (1 bedroom, 1 living room, 1 pantry/kitchen) and 1 toilet. Only two persons are allowed to live in each house. This is due to water rationing practised by Jordan to all of its residents due to insufficient of water supply. The water supplied was cukup-cukup for the residents living here. It cannot afford excess usage of water. We were divided into groups, which are called mentor-mentee group under PERMAI. Each group would consist 6-7 persons and one mentor. Our seniors would be the mentor and they act as our guider. The mentor will bring us along with him to familiarize us with the syari' (roads) and places here. The seniors are very fluent in Jordanian Ammi (Colloquial Arabic). They can communicate with the locals professionally. They can even negotiated with them.

My group consist of 6 persons :

-Syahmi

-Miswar

-Fattah

-Iqbal

-Hasan

-Faizul

We have two mentors. hehe. Bro Syamil and Bro Fadzli. Bro Syamil is a fourth year student, so sometimes he would be busy with his clinical. Thus, Bro Fadzli, a third year student came to guide us. They're both very good, supporting, relax, informative, hospitable and funny. We had about 10 more days before official opening of JUST 1st year intake. We are looking forward to know more about Jordan. :)

Bro Syamil

Bro Fadzli

__________________________

Day 2 :

We slept in Bro Syamil's house because our sakan don't have carpets yet. The subuh here is 4.50 a.m (local time),  about one hour less than Malaysia subuh time. After performing the solat, we went out for breakfast. We had it in restaurant Fawwal. We were served with falafil (fried mashed nuts which are shaped like a fishball), khummush ( bread served with mashed kacang kuda) and Ghazaleen Tea. They are very delicious, especially the khummush. Completely different from the one we had during international food festival in INTEC which at that time was one of the most-tak-sedap food in the festival. haha.

Khummush(left) and Falaafil(right)

We had great conversation with one of the waiter namely Mooad. He is a student of Yarmouk University studying in Accounting. At first look, he seemed very messy, with teared-off jeans, smoking, and gile-gile style. haha. But then we discovered he was a good man. We never meet before, but he invited us to come to his house. He gave his phone number and asked us to come to his house tomorrow. He would like to practice English with us. We just could afford to say insya-allah we'll come. You know, sometimes it is difficult to differentiate good and bad Arab. Even if they are apparently good, maybe they have another hidden agenda that we never know at the first place. We would just hushnu zhon (think positively). We hope to make a good friend with him. They want to practice English, we want to practice Arabic. This is what we called Mutualism. Two-way communication. Win-Win situation. Or what ever it is.

Then our mentors brought us to visit Yarmouk University. Just a walking distance from our sakan. Usually to enter this university you need to have student card ID. But, for Malaysian, they don't even care. They would allow us to come in unconditionally because of the Malaysian records of good qualities, our previous seniors have shown to them. These are the pictures we managed to take.