a real kick in the 'class'...

so, classes began here on sunday (yes, freaking sunday, suprerbowl sunday) and with the advent of classes comes the little loved aspects of homework and long days...but i embracing all these things, good and bad, because for the last 10 days i have had absolutely nothing, not one thing, to do. so classes starting offered me an exciting chance to interact, meet new people, and ultimately show how little arabic i have learned in two semesters...

i have 4 classes, all arabic, all the time and they include arabic grammar/syntax, arabic dictation and listening, arabic vocabulary and pronounciation, and finally colloquial egytpian arabic. thus far they have all proved to be challenging but very interesting. imagine my surprise as i had 6 straight hours of arabic on sunday (as i will every sunday and tuesday until june) and all the teachers are speaking 80-90% arabic throughout the class, breaking into english for very brief moments of explanation...granted this is all conducive to learning, but a bit overwhelming considering that at Elon, I had 3.5 hours of arabic a week. you do the math, i have 19 hours a week here in Cairo...so if i don't come home decently proficient in june, something went terribly, terribly wrong.

my class consists of 7-8 other people on my level, which is nice cuz i don't look like the dumb kid since we are all equal, and my classmates include two people my age and then an assortment of older to middle aged people from holland, pakistan, and south korea. pretty diverse and pretty cool i'd say, but thank god for the people my age or i may have no friends this whole semester. needless to say, i will be with these people for the next 5 months and hopefully, insha allah (god willing), i will be pretty darn decent at arabic when i return.

the best news is i have ONE, count it, ONE book for all my classes. eat that american universities (cough, cough...ELON) who make us buy like 91 books, use 6 pages from each book and then sell them back to the same store in perfect condition for 1/76 of the price...call me crazy, but that sucks. so i have one book that cost me 195 guiney or pounds (40 bucks) and i am a happy camper. only bad part is that the book has no english words in or on it, with the exception of the cover...i'm doomed...

anyway, i must actually attend one of these aforementioned classes now, as my first one was canceled, but i shall update again sometime soon. subjects to be covered include the wonderful egyptian past time of smoking sheesha (harmless, flavored tobacco which is fantastic), the complete lack of and nonexistence of stop signs in this country, the amazing food that will cause me to gain at least 20 kgs (take that, metric system), and the egyptian conspiracy to prevent todd and his room mates from ever exercising...anywhere...in the entire city...for real...

alright, over and out, i will see you all next time insha allah (you should already know what that means from before!)