Dear Readers,
After 6 weeks of Arabic instruction for 6 hours a day, I can safely say this is a SUPER-HARD language to learn. Today, it was posted, to all of the new groups, that starting tomorrow our schedule is changing and we will now have 7 hours of Arabic per day. I can feel the pain already!
It has never been made more clear to me than now, how "physical" learning really is. By the end of the day, I am at the limit of my "cognitive load." It literally starts to hurt my brain to try to continue working with my vocabulary flash cards, listening comprehension or verb conjugations. I have to either go exercise, take a power nap, or BOTH!
At the same time, this is a thrilling endeavor. I am in a class of 5 students and one teacher. My teacher is a very patient gentleman from Sudan. He is generous with his knowledge and kind in his instruction. He charitably sits with the five of us as we butcher his native language in our attempts to express the most basic ideas. He shares information about the Arabic-speaking world with us, prods us along our learning paths, laughs with us at our silly sayings we come up with, and even goes out to lunch with us to Yemeni restaurants and converses with us in our pidgin-Arabic. It is a blessing to have such experiences.
I am learning an incredible amount about a culture that is very different from my own. At the same time, I am learning that I am just scratching the surface. At times, it seems to be radically different. For example, the music is very different. Here is my non-musically trained attempt to explain this: The instruments are all played in unison, BUT they are all slightly tuned differently - this produces a wave effect in the sound, which creates a slightly off-key sound to the western-trained ear. We are used to all of our instruments being in tune with each other and then playing harmony and melody. After our class on the folk music of the Arab world, I have a whole new appreciation for their music and dance. It just takes a little retraining of the ear to hear the beauty and passion in eastern music. It is important to note that the guitar, mandolin, bagpipes, clarinet, and oboe all have roots in the Middle and Near East regions.
Well, enough musings for now. Back to my "wajib al bayt" - homework.
