It's over!

Yesterday was the students' last day of finals, so the semester is officially over. Student affairs put on a party for the students after their last final. It was really nice: the covered area outside our building was carpeted in, well, carpets, and majlis-style cushions were set up around the edges. There was WAY too much food catered by the Intercontinental. The decorations were really interesting, featuring traditional Arabic elements (red woven majlis cushions, fancy coffeepots, etc.) and Christmas elements (strings of lights, stuffed Santas). The waitstaff wore jelabas and Santa hats.

It was a lot of fun to hang out with the students. Someone brought a traditional goblet drum -- they called it something like dringa, but it seems to be what's called a doumbek in other Middle Eastern countries -- and a group of students sat around drumming and singing in Arabic. I only caught two words in all their songs: habibi, beloved, and seyyara, or car. (I was surprised by the latter, but it turned out to be a ballad one of our students wrote to his automobile, promising to keep it clean and accelerate often.) But even without knowing the songs, it was a whole lot of fun to listen. The students also got to ride the Segways for the first (official) time, and at the end of the evening a group of students taught foobart an Arabic card game called tarneeb, which is sort of a simplified pinochle.

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My iPod just arrived!!!!!!!!!! Off to play, more later.