السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركته

Salaamu 'alaikum warahmatu–Allah wa barakatuhu (translation: hi)

Why do I greet you in Arabic now you might ask?  Because I have been doing nothing else with my day.  Seriously.  Greeting people is kind of the strongest part of my language skills (followed closely by thanking and apologizing... when in doubt, I figure it's better to be impeccably polite above all else), and we as have entered the sinister Day Two of this Arabic-Only (outside of this blog) program, I'm feeling a little fried.  The workload of having class from 9-1 each day, lunch from 1-2, then six-ish hours of homework a night, in addition to needing to find a way to get myself dinner outside of the compound (my roommate and I looked up the word.  Should anyone want to know, the Arabic word for compound is المركٌب.  As in, نحن ندرس في المركٌب الأمريكي – translation: al-marakkib, as in "We study in the American compound."  Actually, we tend to call it "The American Compound of Obligation, which just so happens to be the Arabic word for homework as well.  Imagine that.  That was quite the digression on my part.) is a bit of a commitment.  Let alone the fact that I don't understand the language I'm doing all of this in.

That said, I get to do it with some great people.  My two teachers, Bushra and Abdullah 'Aziz are both great.  This morning, for his first day, Abdullah 'Aziz must have just decided that he was really only dealing with three of us in a class of ten, because he sat down next to Emily, Matt and I and didn't leave for the rest of the 1:45.  Instead, he wanted us to, in his words, "Speak Arabic like normal people.  You learned how to speak, now do it without sounding crazy."  (Actually, his words were in Arabic, but you all get the idea.)  He really did help us too, which was nice.  It's sort of nice in general to be able to review sections of the book that I have covered before in fact, because I feel like this time around I'm not quite being overwhelmed by it, but am actually able to learn both the new words and the grammar, instead of picking/choosing between the two based off of memory and time limits.  Bushra is a slightly different story.  Unlike Abdullah 'Aziz, who is a university professor, she's actually a third grade teacher in Meknes, which gives her a very different perspective on how to teach.  It's really interesting to learn from someone who teaches small children now that I'm not one, because I feel like it helps her operate with us in a very different way than intellectually everyone assumes you need to operate after a certain age.  There's less rote repetition, but also less flat-out assumption that after hearing a new word once we know what it is.  Instead, she sort of just directs the class to have conversations with itself/herself and 'Aziz, and will make corrections when necessary, but really focuses on us using the grammar and vocabulary as we see fit to talk to each other.

Also, she has taken to eating lunch with three of us from the class (actually, the aforementioned triad of myself, Matt, and Emily) each afternoon, which is a hoot.  She's very nice, and sort of soft-spoken, but has told me exactly what she thinks of my eating habits (read: I eat too fast/too little).  When I told her today that I was learning how to both talk like an Arab as well as eat like one (i.e. a lot of food for a very drawn-out lunch, which has apparently been socialized out of me), she said that in the classroom I was Iskandar al-'Athim (Alexander the Great), but didn't live up to my name at the table.  Zing.  She's also decided that apparently I need more work on this program (did I mention my 12 hour days of Arabic work?) because she felt like a few of us weren't being challenged enough or something, but unfortunately also learned how to get me to do it, which is to offer a class each week in Qu'ranic Arabic, where we'll read the Qu'ran and do traditional Qu'ranic memorization (if ever there was a way to draw the religious studies nerd in me like a moth to the flame...).  Yeah, my teachers are awesome.

We also had our first official Darija (again, that's the name for Moroccan Arabic) class today, although I was actually a little disappointed by the pace of it, possibly because after giving up my use of English, it was sort of a let down to go back to a classroom environment where things were being translated for me.  That said, I think in the long haul it'll be useful, and I hope becomes a little more rigorous.

I did need to use my Darija skills several times today, walking around the city attempting to get myself/others dinner, but, in the process of buying a sandwich had my first conversation with Moroccan children, which was pretty fascinating.  The restaurant I was in was clearly not geared from tourists (i.e. everything was in Arabic and Zach and I were the sole white people in the room), so I think this group of 3 12-year-old girls (as well as the employees) assumed when I walked in there that I'd be incompetent, so all of them were pretty shocked when I greeted the guy at the counter (more uses for greetings... well, I guess the same use for greetings, but it comes up a lot), then ordered what I wanted in Darija.  He did keep asking me though if I wanted to speak French or English, which I kept declining.  Anyhow, somewhere in this process, one of the girls came up to me as I was talking with the men behind the counter (who were also baffled as to why I'd want to learn to speak their dialect as a foreigner) and asked me, "Are you trying to speak Darija?"  I responded, "I am trying to speak Darija very much, but maybe I am not speaking very beautifully?"  To which I got, "No, I understand you.  You're just very white."  I laughed pretty hard at that, as did the guys behind the counter, then we all continued to focus intently on the vegetables whose names in Darija they were trying to teach me.  I must admit that Moroccans are by in large incredibly friendly and helpful, and have been very understanding of my inability to speak Darija, but once they understand that I'm doing it because I want to learn, and not because I think they don't know a language that I know better (I am sure that 90% of this population speaks impeccable French and strong English), they have been incredibly excited to help me learn.  Unlike other places I have travelled to where using the language on the local population is somewhat harrowing due to either their dismissive tendencies toward those who don't speak the language or their condescending demeanor to a poor-speaker, pretty much all of my attempts to speak Arabic (either MSA or Darija) here have been very gratified with great social interactions.

I guess it's all good incentive to go back into my 12 hours of work tomorrow.  Goodnight all!

P.S.  I am still trying to get this flickr thing to work.  It is the worst website ever and I would never recommend it for any use, but that said I have photos on it, and I don't know how else to show some of you them, so, the new plan is to try:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tangier2008/