Owned In The Face

This is the term used to describe how well our class did on our first quiz. Apparently the teachers are displeased because we are behind, and we do not know as much vocabulary as we "should." I have a little bit of a problem with this, because our quiz covered things that were not in our study guides or lesson plans. It is difficult to study for things when you do not know what to study for. While we had assumed the quiz would be a quiz on vocabulary, it was much more like a quiz on everything we'd learned. There was a section where we had to listen and circle the characters we heard from a recording. Then there was the part where we just had to do a translation of something written. There was a section where we had to listen to a dialog and answer questions about the two speakers and their conversation. 

After school, I ran for about half an hour and the endorphins helped me feel better. 

What Homework?

Him, "Did you get the homework done?"

Me, "We didn't have any...?"

Him, "Lesson 3. It's on the Schedule."

Me, "I thought [the teacher] the whole class schedule is pushed back because we haven't received our laptops yet. Besides, we barely started lesson 3, much less get through it."

Him, "It's on the schedule, and I don't want to risk getting in trouble for not doing it."

After having almost exactly the same conversation with another classmate, I decided I should do the lesson 3 homework, even though it was already 9:30pm at this point.

Tuesdays Rock

For as much as I hate Monday, I love Tuesday. I believe the reason for this, is simply because it's no longer Monday.

We're approximately half-way through learning the alphabet, and as I understand it, the journal entry is due in the morning. So I stumble my way through altering some of the example dialog and creating something about myself. We are specifically instructed to only use the things we've been taught in class.

Imagine, for a moment, writing a paragraph about yourself in your own language, when you can only use half the alphabet. I think our teachers are confused.

We have on teacher that is particularly good at the calligraphy of the language. When he writes on the board, it is always beautiful and makes me wish I had time to become a master of the art.

Here is an example of what you can do with Arabic.

Day 2 of 320

Apparently we have a relatively standard pattern of homework, which we are given a schedule of. For the duration of the class, we are to have a second notebook which is to be used only for journal entries. There will be one journal entry due every week. We are told that our give assignment for this week is to write a paragraph about ourselves.

I found it amusing how everybody in the class thought it was redundant. We'd already written almost an entire page about ourselves during our "Smart Start" English class. I tried to explain to them, that the reason it's not redundant and it's only ONE paragraph due, is because we have to write it in Arabic. They laugh and (reasonably) suggest that it would be ridiculous to assign us a written paragraph in a foreign language, which we've studied for one day, and that we have only been taught the first 8 characters of a 32 character alphabet. 

When the outline is finally distributed to the class, I feel justified in raising my arms and saying, "I told you so." This was accompanied by several groans and much complaining from people who barely know how to greet others in this language, much less write in complete sentences.

I think it's exciting!

Wish I had a costume

Halloween is always kind of fun for me, I spend the week before halloween desperately trying to think of something fun and creative to dress up as, without spending too much money. Inevitably, the date always comes sooner than I could have imagined, and it's not worth the last minute effort to make a decision and rush to get the materials. So I usually just try to make myself feel better by laughing at all the costumes other people wear. There were some pretty good ones this year, and I found that some of the people here can come up with some pretty funny stuff.

My room mate, Lt. Jim Dangle, "Party's over! Gay cop says party's over!" 

I always enjoyed watching Reno 911, though I never saw more than a few episodes. Apparently the movie was funny, and I find myself inspired to go see it. 

RED

I went off and did some shopping! I suppose I'm the only one that can really get so excited over new blankets and a box of pop tarts...

But I also saw the movie RED, although it wasn't revolutionary in any way, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think  Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman made a great team. I never would have imagined the two of them acting next to each other, because they have such different styles.

Seeing action movies like that always makes me want to go buy an underground bunker and put stacks of cash in a safety deposit box or train station locker. I think maybe I've watched the Bourne movies one too many times. Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't REALLY out to get me!

While I was at the mall, doing my shopping, there were a few things I saw that I thought were particularly cool. Here are a couple of the things I thought were abundantly awesome:

The others were all behind glass. As anybody who has tried to take pictures of things behind glass can tell you, it doesn't work (unless the lighting is just PERFECT, which mine was not).

Kitab

First day of actual Arabic class. The morning got off to a good start, I had an omelet and some coffee and plenty of time to get to class. We were a little lost at first, a bunch of us gathered in a place that we thought was near our class room, but it was in the wrong building. At the last minute, we had to rush through the halls to the adjacent building and up some more stairs, luckily we were still on-time. Anyway, our class is split up into three sections of six people, but they started by gathering all of us into one room and giving us cookies, tea, and our "Arabic names" (I'm Saad). Apparently our teachers are REALLY nice.

Then we were told to pick up our books.

Unfortunately, I neglected to put something in the photo for a size reference, and you can't really tell that the stack is absolutely enormous. It weighs ten bazillion pounds (that's what the scale said, anyway).

Class was actually a lot of fun, we made it through the entire first lesson! It's so refreshing to be in a learning environment that moves at a reasonably fast past. I'm tired of feeling like class drags on because we spend so much time on each concept or new piece of information. This is going to be different, and I like it.

Top Down

Do you understand and learn from the bottom up, or from the top down? It is interesting to look at the difference between people that look at the big picture versus focusing on the details. Both aspects are important in language and in anything, but sometimes one in particular method can be more useful.

We were doing an exercise in class that gave us a list of sentences that didn't spell anything, or make any kind of sense on paper. However, these sentences would "make sense" when read aloud.

"Eye yam sofa king we Todd did."

Try this one:

Apple ledge a lesion to da flack of the you knighted stays of America, and to the reed bubble lick for Widgistan, 1-A shun, under guard, in the vestibule, whiff liver tea and just this for awl.

Motivation

Money can be a strong motivator, and many people learn new things with the hope that it enables them to earn more money. While making more money sounds nice, my main reason for learning another language is very different. I find that language often creates such a gap between cultures and people, we have a hard time working together as a global society. We seem to focus on all the differences we have, rather than our common goals and interests. I would hope that learning another language enables me to help break down the barriers between people. I want to help bring peace between people that might otherwise not understand each other, or the opposite point of view.

'night.

Grammar Again

Today started out rough. Last night did not go as planned, and my homework never even got started. It was poor judgement of a half-asleep student (me...) that made me think I could do it this morning by waking up early.

I bet you can guess how well that worked out.

I barely made it to my dental appointment on-time, and learned that I have several cavities, and need to have a wisdom tooth pulled. Yes, only one; apparently the others look fine? However, the awesomeness of the dental appointment caused me to be late to class, and I realized that I had neglected to have the dentist stamp my "excuse for being late" paper.

I find it interesting that we can test high enough to get into this program, but many of us barely seem able to understand basic English grammar. We have spent a considerable amount of time, both yesterday and today, learning about the difference between the subject, the object, and different tenses of verbs. I find myself, once again, falling asleep in class.

Fortunately, we did get some exciting stuff. I have two DVD's with a bunch of really cool looking material and lessons in our target language! Not to mention the double-sided sheet of paper full of links and resources! I was so inspired and excited that I stopped at the library, and picked up three books too!

So now I have all this extra stuff, and yet I managed to waste most of my evening doing things that didn't have anything to do with learning a language. Unfortunately, my studies have not gotten far, and I still haven't started a regular exercise program. My room mate keeps offering me to go work out with him, but I always have so many things to do that keep piling up.

I would pay good money to have more hours put into my day. Sleeping is a complete waste, we shouldn't need to do it.

The English Language

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?

Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.

Well don't! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard but sounds like bird.

And dead: it's said like bed, not bead,
For goodness sake don't call it deed!

Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).

A moth is not a moth as in mother
Nor both in bother, nor broth in brother,

And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear, for bear and pear.

And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose

And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword

And do and go, then thwart and cart,
Come, come! I've hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Why man alive!
I've learned to talk it when I was five.

And yet to write it, the more I tried;
I hadn't learned it at fifty-five.

--Author Unknown (but he sure hated spelling)

Rock & Roll

I have a new appreciation for Rock & Roll! To most, it is a genre of beats and sounds that can move the spirit and inspire great joy. However, in this place it is the last thing anybody wants. Our language program is very short, and only about half of us make it through. Those that don't do well enough will either sent back to an earlier week of the program (being "Rolled" into a previous class), or they will be dropped from the program (and fall like a "Rock"). Therefore, it is essential that we do our best, and study like mad to keep up, and to avoid becoming a failure.

The last thing I would want is to come this far just to be demoted to Sticker-boy.