Asma's diary

My diary

My name is Asma and I live in Jordan. I was born in Irbid but live most of the time in Salt. I am almost 20 years old. I have two brothers and two sisters. My oldest sister is married and just gave birth to a baby girl. My father works as a watchman in a business building.

I live in a boarding school together with 150 children. I share my room with 9 girls all around my age. At 6.00 o’clock in the morning I get up, make my bed, change and get ready to start the day. Half an hour later I help the small children get up – to wake them up, get them dressed, comb their hair. After that we go outside and at 7.30 we eat breakfast.

At 8.30 we stand in line outside to go to our classes. Today I am going to the pottery untill 12.00 o’clock. I enjoy that very much and already have learned how to make many different things.

Usually at school we wear a brown jacket over our normal clothes but in the pottery I have a special overall, because it can be very messy with the clay.

At lunch I have a special task. I take care of one of our deafblind children. He is called Mohammed. I help him to eat, or better I teach him and then after lunch I am outside with him till 1.30. Then school starts again. We are seven students in my class and we get on well with each other.

At 3.00 o’clock school is over and I can go outside. There I help to play with the kindergarten children and just help to take care untill 6 o’clock. Then we eat supper and again I help Mohammed.

After supper we all go back to the boarding house where I help with the small children. I help them to undress and put them to bed. After that I change myself and then do my homework. When I finish I have a chat with my friends and then at 10 o’clock it is time to go to bed. I go quickly around, see if everything is ok and then go to bed for a good night’s sleep.

I can’t really tell what I like most here in school. I just love to study and to learn new things. I especially love the work with the children, it gives me much joy. I like my life here at school and when once a month I can go home I am very happy to go. I love my parents very much. Sometimes my father comes to the school to visit me. That is always very nice and special and he also brings me some nice food…

I especially also like to go home because then I get nice food, like our national dish which is called Mansaf. This is rice with kind of yoghurt sauce and meat. I also like vine leafs, stuffed courgettes and cabbage. And I love milk very much and drink a lot of it.

In school we also have sports lessons and I love rollerblading most of all.