I have my Arabic final in a few days and so I was searching through a bunch of older notebooks and so many billion copies of grammar pages from my textbook that i have copied over the last 9 months...when I came across this wonderful little sketch.

The day I went to Mafraq with my friend Melissa in March to visit the Syrain refugee family that she had been spending time with, I spent a lot of time drawing with the kids. I spent a good hour or so sitting on the couch in their vastly undecorated and open living room with the little girl and at times her little brother would come along.

The little girl who was about 7 or 8 if I remember knew some english from school, but not much and the rest of her family new less since they mostly spoke in am Arabic dialect from Syria. They were so kind and just the nicest family. We stayed all afternoon, probably 6 hours or so while the mother cooked for at least 3 of those hours and with my inability to speak the Syrian dialect, so only understanding about every 9th word or so...I hung out with the kids mostly....which lets be honest, thats really who I typically would rather hang out with in general :)

I put the little sketch on my fridge when I found it because it only brings such sweet and great memories. By far some of my favorite memories so far in my time in Jordan.

We drew many things that day. She showed me how she could write the alphabet in English and I showed her I could write the alphabet in Arabic (which she thought was pretty funny! The little brother, the girl and I all drew many many many hearts and our names all over the place of course. A cat or two were drawn as well.

The little girl drew me this image above! It is a picture of me (with awesome hair by the way...I'm thinking of making this my new hairstyle permanently) with my name i the skirt. Then a big heart that has my name above the line and then below in Arabic says "I love you Emily a lot..." and then writes my name a few more times.

Before I left I colored a big heart of her and wrote her a little message about how happy I was to meet her and how pretty she is in Arabic, and left it on the table for her to find later.

It was a nice day! Really sweet memories to find as I'm cramming for my Arabic final. :)