Hello! I’m Julia Minassian (she/ her), and I am a third year International Affairs and Geography student currently studying abroad in Amman, Jordan through the CIEE program. As part of the Fall Abroad Experience Scholarship, I will be writing two blogs about my time here in Amman.
Thursday October 16, 2025
Mornings to Myself
I typically wake up around 6:15am, which makes me a begrudging morning person here in Amman. This is mostly because the neighborhood cat is constantly meowing in my bedroom window, and I enjoy talking to my partner and family back in the United States before they go to bed, as 6:00am in Amman is late night the previous day on the East coast. After potentially dozing off a few times, I start to get ready. I live with a host family: a mother, father, their 13 year old daughter and a grandmother, and our mornings are fairly quiet. My host family does not have a sit down breakfast during the week, but we will have tea together occasionally and watch the news. They all leave the house around 7:15am, so I take some time to myself to do some exam revision, clean my room, or do nothing productive at all.
My next stop is the gym. While I do not naturally enjoy morning workouts, it fits best with my schedule here. My commute to the gym is around 45 minutes if I opt to take the bus and walk or 20 minutes if I take a taxi. Both taxis and the bus are fairly inexpensive in Amman when compared to the United States, with a bus ride costing 0.555 Dinar ($0.80) and taxi/ uber prices depending on the distance and time of day but are around 1-3 Dinar ($1.41 - $4.23). Transportation costs do add up over time though, so it’s important to keep a budget. I arrive at the gym between 8:15 - 8:30, depending on how I get there and when I leave. Fitness and running are important parts of my life, and I wanted to keep up my exercise routine here to the best of my ability. Of course, my goals had to adjust slightly, and going abroad can change daily routines, but it is not a reason to give up on hobbies.
After a shower and outfit change at the gym, I walk about 15 minutes to get to the CIEE center where I have classes. I’ll typically stop on the way to pick up a piece of fruit from a nearby fruit stand or a coffee. Today, I arrived at the center around 10:30 and spent the next hour and a half on work, revising my notes, socializing with my friends, and eating the Weetabix I packed for breakfast.
Busy Afternoons
Classes in the CIEE program are similar to classes at GW in terms of content, but they differ in pace and size. The CIEE program is quite small (around 16 students), and my classes range from 4 to 10 people each. Each class is around 1.5 - 3 hours long, but I have less classes in a day than I do at GW. For example, my only class on Thursdays is Fusha (formal) Arabic from 12:00 - 2:00pm. After class, I’ll grab lunch, such as a 0.5 dinar ($0.70) falafel sandwich and then take a taxi to my internship. It typically takes around 20 minutes to get there, so I make it there by 2:30. I intern at a think tank within an NGO called the Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD). On this day, I wrote a press release and had some meetings to discuss an upcoming research project. I leave at around 5:00pm, after which I either take the 25 minute walk home, meet up with friends, or run some errands. Because I live quite far from where I go to school, it is not uncommon for me to spend 9 - 13 hours out of the house at a time, which is different from how I live at GW.
Fun-Filled Evenings
The weekend here in Amman is Friday-Saturday instead of Saturday-Sunday, so my friends and I typically will go out for dinner or dessert on Thursday nights. Tonight, we went to Hashem, one of the most famous restaurants in Jordan. I opted for the 35 minute walk there, as traffic at rush hour, or really anytime in Amman, is crazy. We cheers-ed to our one month anniversary in Amman and ate some delicious food, including falafel, hummus, foul (fava bean dip), and so much bread. After dinner, we went to the downtown fruit market and walked up to the Amman citadel where we enjoyed our fruit along with amazing views of the city before calling it a night.
Enjoying the Mundane
In my opinion, study abroad can be overly romanticized on social media and in blogs such as these. We often see people seemingly living their best lives, participating in expensive activities, and having grand adventures everyday. This can be reality for some days. Personally, I’ve been lucky enough to take some wonderful trips during my time here, such as to Petra and Istanbul. Nevertheless, most days are just kind of ordinary. And that’s not a bad thing! I’ve come to enjoy my routine and find joy in the small moments of chatting with locals or laughing with my friends or learning new words in Arabic or exploring a new place on my many walk commutes. Those quiet, everyday experiences have become the heart of my time in Amman, and I have a feeling they’ll be what I remember most fondly once this period in my life ends.
Julia Minassian
Fall 2025
CIEE - Amman, Jordan
Elliott School of International Affairs
International Affairs and Geography Double Major