If Speaking is Silver then Silence is Gold اذا كان الكلام من فضى فالسكوت من ذهب

This past week I had the pleasure of staying with a Bedouin family in the Middle Badia about an hour outside of Jordan's capital, Amman for 4 days. Before leaving, I was expecting to live in a pretty primitive house out in the middle of the desert, but it was more like small olive tree farm town in the country . 

The word Badia and Bedoiun comes from Abda which means to start. The people who live here are called Bedouin because they live more like the original Arab people than people in cities. 

While I was there I heard the phrase    اذا كان الكلام من فضى فالسكوت من ذهب a lot, which means "If Speaking is Silver then Silence is Gold". Upon my return from the Badia, I decided to break my old commitment of making sure to speak 2 hours of Arabic a day while around my English speaking classmates with a new commitment to speak Arabic %100 of the time. 

My class went to the Dead Sea after school the first day back from the Badia, and I didn't speak any English until the ride back. It not only helped me practice Arabic more, but it felt good to not always speak when I had something to say. If you have spent a little bit of time with me, you probably know  that I love talking and I often speak the majority the conversation, but this forced me to listen more. I can truly say that I enjoyed my conversations more and want to continue listen more now and in the future.

As usual, I have pictures and brief commentary's below. Thank you all for helping me get here.

 Enjoy! 

Some camels that my Badia host brother's cousin owned.

The Alpha Camel

Floating in the Dead Sea near Sunset

Our first meal at in the Badia. 

All of our meals were on the floor with tea, usually followed by a 3 hour nap. 

Breakfast and dinner are usually small meals, while lunch is the  main meal of the day.

One of the female camels

My favorite meal in the Badia, next to Mansef which is the traditional Jordanian dish.

Some kids that lived next door to my Badia host family

Some camels eating dinner in our back yard

Some coffee before sunrise on the second day of Rammadon.

An old church we visited in the city of Madaba on our way to the Dead Sea

A 20 foot pillar at Mount Nebo which is one of the tallest mountains in Jordan. 

I was able to sea, Amman and the Dead Sea from here.

We had class on one of the balconies because the air-conditioning wasn't working for a couple days. 

I was hoping they wouldn't fix it so we could keep having class outside haha.

Thanks again for reading my Blog!