"From Blog Abroad to Blog From Home" by Charlotte Sheridan and Nora Kane
We’re Charlotte Sheridan and Nora Kane, Fall 2014 AMIDEAST Jordan and Blog Abroad Scholar alums. While studying in Amman, we both enjoyed the quintessential elements of a semester abroad in Jordan: living with host families in the neighborhood of Shmeisani (pictured above), making stacks of Arabic flashcards, and eating too many falafel sandwiches. However, our favorite memories were the outings that made Jordan unique. Every Tuesday night, we donned reflective vests and joined a group of fellow fast-walkers on brisk strolls around Amman. We sampled sweets from Patisserie Fairouz and spent weekends hiking through Dana Nature Preserve or wandering around the Roman Ruins in Jerash.
After returning to the US, we stayed in touch and both later returned to the MENA region. Charlotte enrolled in Arabic study on a Critical Language Scholarship in Oman and, post-graduation, lived in Amman on a Fulbright grant. Nora worked on the pilot for an Amman-based podcast, and returned for visits to reconnect with friends.
By 2018, we had both moved back to the US and were focused on our respective careers but continued to seek ways to keep up our Arabic skills. We found the Levantine dialect resources and classes available at AMIDEAST were hard to come by state-side. We made half-hearted attempts to review Arabic, exchanging a few playlists and swapping movie suggestions, but continued to slowly lose our language gains.
Then 2020 hit and suddenly we had extra time at home. We had previously discussed collaborating on a Levantine Arabic project and finally decided to make it a reality. We returned to our blogging roots and started Fi Kalam, a website for intermediate Arabic learners with a focus on the Levantine dialect. Each Tuesday and Friday, we post a vocabulary list and summary for a movie, podcast, song, or other Arabic media piece. So far we’ve covered the award-winning Palestinian documentary, Mayor, the Syrian drama, مسافة امان , the homegrown Jordanian band, جدل , the podcast دبس و طحينة , and much more! In April, we’ll be watching a number of the 2021 Arabic language Academy Award submissions and posting about each on Fi Kalam.
Our semester in Amman with AMIDEAST taught us that the best way to learn a language is by interacting with native speakers and reinforcing the language through local films, songs, and shows. However, we had difficulty finding media in colloquial Arabic that we could fully understand as non-fluent speakers. So, we created Fi Kalam to make colloquial Arabic media more accessible to intermediate learners, like many AMIDEAST students and others looking to improve their Arabic skills. We hope this will be a useful resource to the AMIDEAST community and welcome suggestions for media you’d like to see!
To stay up-to-date and catch our future posts, follow us on Twitter or visit fikalam.com and join our email newsletter.
Charlotte Sheridan and Nora Kane are alumnae of the Fall 2014 AMIDEAST Area and Arabic Language Studies Program in Amman, Jordan.
