orientation

These past few days (Mon-Thurs) have been orientation. That means that we're staying in a hotel (reasonably clean, but not posh...nothing my family would stay in in the states, and we are not exactly known for extravagance). A bus picks us up in the morning, and we go to SIT's villa for orientation. Then we spend half an hour making tea and coffee. Then our Academic Director, Muhammad, talks to us about various aspects of Arab culture that are likely to surprise us. Then we take another break for coffee. We go out somewhere nice for lunch, then orientation resumes. We tend to break at 15:00 to go back to the hotel and nap/shuffle/blog until we reconvene for dinner. The thing about meals here is that they are big, long, social affairs. Dinner tends to take 2-3 hours. The major break in the routine was the one day we had a "drop-off"--a scavenger hunt, basically. They send us to an area with specific tasks to do at the local businesses. It was cold and windy, and my group ended up pretty lost looking for various banks and coffee shops, until a nice guy walked up to us (we must have looked awfully pathetic) and offered to show us the remaining two places on our list. So anyway, that was a cool experience. I found myself getting frustrated because I wanted to ask random people directions, but was unsure how appropriate it was for me to walk up to men and ask them. I mean, no harm would have come to me or anything (the worst thing would have been being hit on), but I don't like looking tacky.