Arabic names kill me. Most of the non-Mohamud related ones (Ahmed, Mahmoud, etc.) are just words. They name their kids “beautiful,” “pigeon,” “smile,” and even “justice.” I have a student in my conversation class whose name is Batool. She’s one of the better students in the class, but her name keeps throwing me off. Batool means “virgin” in Arabic. Who’d name their kid virgin?
We were talking about sayings in my conversation class, and something one of them said reminded me of that quip from the Bible, “It rains on the just and the unjust alike.”
I asked them what they thought it meant, one of them responded, “It means that good things happen to both good and bad people.” Huh? How’d he get the idea of good things out of that? Oh right… Here, rain is considered a good thing, it didn’t occur to them that it meant something bad. It really is a different world…
I was using the textbook known as Al-Kitab about 6 or 8 months ago. At the time I had switched from using the school’s all Arabic books to Al-Kitab. A lot of the new book was in English and I thought that my Arabic reading skills were really going downhill by using it, so I stopped and used other things. Well, I decided to go back to a more structured approach and so I am with Al-Kitab again. I had stopped around chapter 5 or 6 but my teacher figured that I was a little more advance than that. I thought so too, I mean c’mon, I’m reading newspaper articles, surely I can skip a handful of chapters right?
Wrong.
We jumped in at chapter 13 and I am totally lost. I am having trouble sorting out the subject from the direct object, let alone know what the sentences are talking about. I gave up on my homework (which is why I’ve had time to type a few blog posts) about 40 minutes into it. Tomorrow I’m going to tell my teacher that we’re going back to chapter 6. I’ve never really about it before, but newspapers are written pretty simply, things are much more complicated in other types of writing. I think that I’ll get through this first book (there are three in the series) without too much trouble, or time. I’m totally functional when it comes to reading and writing in basic terms, and I have a useful vocabulary. In’Shalla I’ll be making progress once again….
Warning, old joke ahead…
Two guys go into a deli. They go up to the counter and they see a sign.
OUR SPECIALTY TONGUE SANDWICH
They have very different reactions. One of them says, “Ugg, tongue? That’s repulsive!”
“I dunno, I’ve never had it before, give me a double tongue sandwich!”
“Oh God, that’s disgusting!”
“What, you don’t have to have it, you can have something else.”
“I can’t help it, I can’t believe that you’d eat something that came out of an animal’s mouth…
The deli worker asks the guy who hasn’t ordered what he wants. “I’ll have an egg sandwich…”
I’ve been eating eggs recently. They’re a Godsend in a place where the meat is usually questionable and/or tasteless. I can’t bring myself to buy a live chicken, so eggs are a good source of protein. I usually like my yolks a little runny, but without toast, it just isn’t the same. Most of the bread here doesn’t lend itself to making toast out of it. There’s the health issues too. I have always heard awful warnings about possibly getting salmonella from undercooked eggs, but I’ve never taken them very seriously. Not only have I never heard of someone getting sick from undercooked eggs, I don’t know anyone that knows of that happening. Plus, health standards are good enough that I don’t think it’s much of an issue.
Things are a little different here. Judging by how they keep chickens here, and the resulting smell, I have zero confidence that the “proper” health procedures are being followed. That, in addition to the state of the eggs leaves no doubts as to where the egg came from makes me think that cooking them fully is the smart thing to do. I wash my eggs with soap and water before cooking. I don’t know if that will actually help me, but it makes me feel better…
So some sweet peppers, maybe some onion, and perhaps a little Italian sausage and I’ve got a decent omelet-like concoction. Like I said, it’s great when you need a protein infusion, and like everywhere else, they’re cheap. I do like eggs, I just hope my cholesterol doesn’t suffer too much…
I have finally been able to upload my pictures taken with my pinhole camera. They’re a little funky looking, but that’s supposed to be part of the appeal… The guy at the lab I got these developed in tried to give me a lecture about shutter speed and fstops after seeing the pitures. I tried explaining to him that this camera doesn’t have a lens or shutter and only one fstop but either he didn’t understand or didn’t believe me.. Anyway, this camera is a lot of fun, I plan on shooting a lot more with it. For some reason, my “recent pictures” tab under “my pictures isn’t working, just click on “the rest of them” and you’ll be taken to the new shots…
Sometimes, the gaps between Yemeni and American cultures don’t seem so large. Other times, they look enormous… My friend Diana just wrote a decent blog post (http://fullbrightest.wordpress.com/) about some legislation she was working on. She works in some women’s advocacy group here and they were trying to get some of the laws on rape changed. Sounds like a good thing, rape laws all across the middle east are really screwed up. Here was the thing that they were hoping to get passed into law:
If a man rapes a woman and she becomes pregnant as a result, he would be required to marry her.
Now doesn’t that sound like a great idea? Diana writes about her reaction really well. The ladies there sat her down and explained the idea behind the law. You see, if a child does not have their father’s name, that child will have a very difficult time in life. The idea is that if the rapist marries the woman, the child will have an easier life and he will be forced to take care of the child financially.
Wow, talk about a different world view… Notice that the woman that was raped isn’t mentioned at all? Those reasons only make sense if the woman that was raped is totally disregarded. In addition, I’m dubious that that a rapist will suddenly become a good muslim and support his new wife and child… The legislation wasn’t passed, but is it a good thing or a bad thing? Neither myself nor Diana has a really good grasp on that. How can you possibly approach problems like that when our priorities are so different?
I was sick all of last week, it really threw off my schedule. I missed all but one Arabic lesson and I really dragged through my classes. I’m feeling better now and I’m hoping I can get back to normal….
The other night we wandered onto the topic of “freedom” in my conversation class. It was quite interesting to listen to them talk about it. The first thing they told me was that they are quite a bit freer in Yemen then in many Arabic countries. I hadn’t really thought about it, but it’s true. Compared to KSA, Syria, Egypt, and many others, Yemen is pretty free in political terms. There are many tribal/sociatal norms that limit people, but you are (mostly) free to talk about the government here.
I then asked them about that old chestnut about the tradeoff between freedom and stability. I don’t really believe that that a real tradeoff, but it’s good for getting people talking. All of them agreed that freedom was a far better thing than any sort of security or stability…
Wow, what a bunch of libertarians! I was quite surprised, but gratified. That night, the thought occurred to me, “Wait a minute, what about those Danish cartoons about the prophet Mohammed (PBUH)?” Clearly the response to those showed a real intolerance to freedom of speech. I brought them up in the next class and sure enough, the entire class said, “Oh, freedom is important, but there needs to be limits…” Like what? Well, like being able to say anything bad about any prophet or God, the inability to switch from Islam to something else, and of course any real criticism of Islam. So much for those libertarians…
I have to come up with a way of asking people why they care. To me, feeling that someone that blasphemes needs to be killed shows a real lack of faith. Surely, if that person has committed an awful sin, they will be punished by God, no? Why the need to exact punishment right now?
Anyway, I am being pleasantly surprised and predictably disappointed by them. I just hope that they learn as much from me as I’m learning from them.
I teach two classes every weekday (sat-wed.). The first one is an upper level English course, we cover grammar, vocab, the whole works. It starts at 2 and goes until 4. My second class is a conversation class. It starts at 7 and goes for one hour.
The English class is a challenge. Their English is better than my Arabic and so I’m able to talk to them for the most part. A lot of it is fun, the challenges for me are remembering my grammar rules and spelling. Inevitably, I know to to put sentences together properly, my problem is answering the question “Why?” As we go through the book, I’m being reacquainted with things like combining the past continuos with the past simple… I’ve always been a terrible speller. Thank God for spell check on the computer.. The problem is there isn’t one on the board of course. My course of action is to admit right up front that I misspell (ha! got it right on the first try!) a lot of words and keep my computer with it’s dictionary close by.
I love the sections when they explain how native speakers (north America) pronounce things. So far, my reaction has always been, “I’ll be damned, I do do that…” It’s fun to see the technical side of something that I do unconsciously.
My conversation class is nice. Nice in the sense that there is a lot less work for me, there’s no real lesson plan to speak of, and there’s no testing or grading. I’m just supposed to get people talking and address any major problems with grammar and vocab that come up. The trick is that there are two people in there that are pretty advanced and the other 4 lag behind significantly. It’s easy enough to just let the two dominate the conversation, but I work hard to try to get the others involved.
So my Arabic class is from 10 till 12, then I have to eat a quick lunch and get way the hell down Hadda street by 2. i stay at the school until 8pm and get home around 9ish. Busy busy busy but it pays the bills and more importantly I feel like I’m accomplishing something.
I turned 37 today. It really isn’t a big deal. This one isn’t, ask me again when 40 rolls around:-) I had Tami, Diana, and a new guy whose name I can’t remember over for pancakes and ham. It was a good time. I narrowly avoided disaster when my gas ran out in the middle of cooking. Luckily my new Yemeni neighbors gave me an extra can they had. It was really nice of them and saved me from having a lot of half cooked stuff…
We sat around and chatted for hours, mostly about Yemen and college days. Of course I had my requisite feeling old moments, like when we talked about when Kurt Cobain killed himself. I was in college at the time and it was a big deal to me. The others had dim recollections of it because they were too young. Then I told them that I remember the day John Lennon was killed and they were astounded. I then made them gasp when I told them I remembered the day Elvis died… Ah to be old….
Anyway, a good time was had by all. Tami is making lasagna for dinner tonight and there should be a bunch of people over at the student building for that. This sure beats my usual birthdays back home when I have to celebrate with friends the day before or after and spend the actual day by myself. Yeah, I know, if I would get off my butt and get a girlfriend it wouldn’t be so bad… I’ll work on that when I get back home:-)