Ugh, so much to talk about! I have found that the problem with blogging is that it's especially hard to keep up when you are extremely busy, but then it's doubly hard to keep up because you end up having to write such long posts to cover all the things that have been keeping you so darn busy! But anyways, I'll try to summarize the last week as short as possible!!
All week, we had Pakistani food for lunch - each week they serve us a different kind of food from the local restaurants, so the first week was Turkish, followed by Zanzibari and then Pakistani this week. We'll see what they give us tomorrow :)
Saturday - We had a MCA test and a Media vocab quiz - luckily neither of them were too difficult. Standard PF time and had a grand old time in Media class after our quiz. Our teacher, Ishaq, is a hoot, sometimes we just laugh almost non-stop through the entire class. He always drops words in sentences and then acts super surprised when we don't know the word; it's happened several times and always leads to incessant laughter. And he has this giggle that he does. Oh and he's like maybe 5'2-4, around there, and has this fairly long beard. It's a fun and interesting class, though most of us are ready to peace out by the time we get to class.
Sunday - Another usual day of classes and then following classes, we had our interest group meetings. I'm not sure I explained these before, but every Sunday, we split into four groups (Economics, Religion, Women's Studies, or Poetry/Literature) and hear from an Omani expert in the field. I chose to be in the Economics group because I felt that, of all of the groups, I was least likely to ever have to opportunity to hear about Middle East economics from a Middle Eastern perspective. Unfortunately, our lecturer is a fairly good English speaker, and thus spends most of the time lecturing in English and then translating it to Arabic, and vice-versa, despite the fact that most of us are able to understand a good part of what he is saying. Were hoping that he gets the hang of it though and starts really focusing on speaking Arabic and teaching us about Omani economics. This seems to be a common problem with Omanis, one that I've experienced in other languages as well. Native speakers find it hard to speak Arabic to us because it feels strange to them - plus they feel like they need to dumb down their sentences, and that takes more effort than just speaking English to us. Here it is worse than it was for me when I was in France, where at least I could pull of looking like a French student, but here, as soon as people see me they immediately switch to English. I'm getting used to just trying to always respond in Arabic, no matter what language they speak to me. It's still difficult to speak very proficiently mostly because my vocab-knowledge still feels so limited, and I still need to work on pronunciation. It's always so funny and frustrating when you try to say a word that you know is correct but the native speaker can't understand you and then they figure out what your saying and they go "OH _____!" and it only sounds slightly different from what you said, but you realize you were still unintelligible.
Monday - Today, instead of the usual full PF-time, we met as a huge group to discuss how to effectively use the PF time to maximize our progress and learning. We discussed ways that we could improve our Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing abilities, including but not limited to things like learning and singing Arabic songs, watching Arabic movies, reading Arabic books or practicing Qu'ranic phrases in Calligraphy. Personally though, I thought the meeting was way too drawn out and somewhat silly. Much of language learning is being proactive as a student; there are tons of resources, and our PF's are one of the best possible ones. But they are young too, they don't know what we need or what we should practice; therefore it is our job to inform them of what we want to do and how they can help us. It is not their responsibility to read our minds. A lot of students were complaining because 1- they thought the day was too long and 2- the PF's weren't 'taking us out' enough. For me, the idea of 'going out' seems to be slightly culturally incorrect. Many times, I have talked to PF's about what they would normally be doing during the 3-5 time of the day, and normally the response is hanging out at their houses or napping. Life somewhat shuts down from 3-5 here, something that is also true in many other places, including many places in the US. I know even at school, from 3-5 is when people are chilling out after classes, napping, doing work, or working out - but it's still kind of a dead time. I agree that getting out into the community is important and super valuable, but I believe also that it should be stuff that is traditionally Omani - a trip to the souq or to the maktaba (bookstore) is perfect. But to be honest, the time is also a great opportunity to practice reading or speaking with a native speaker willing to correct you, something more difficult outside of a classroom environment.
Tuesday - Another normal day of classes and then we did a group activity with two other PF groups before our Calligraphy workshop. The workshop was awesome, the guy was super super talented and we all got these cool calligraphy pens so that we could practice. I'm not sure why we don't have more calligraphy workshops, considering it is such a cool part of the language (just look up arabic calligraphy on google and you'll see why). But we did find out from the visiting calligrapher that where he works, they do workshops as well, so were hopefully going to go and do another workshop. Unfortunately, calligraphy is somewhat difficult for me - writing the letters normally in a pretty way, not as difficult, but the idea of making the writing into shapes and sizes, that was just too much for my un-creative, un-artistic mind to manage :)
Wednesday - We had normal PF time today and I just ended up practicing reading aloud for most of my time. I also spent quite a bit of time on Facebook; I told myself last Friday at about this time, that I would go all week (school week mind you), without going on Facebook - for no strick reason, just to see if I could do it. What I found out is that it didn't necessarily make me more productive to be off Facebook, for there is far too many cool things online to prevent my procrastination. But I did realize that Facebook has become such an obsession for our generation. When people found out that I was going a week, just five simple days, without going onto Facebook, people kept saying they were impressed. And yes, it was pretty difficult. There's something about it, maybe its the comfort fact, aka knowing that even though I'm across the globe, I can still be connected somewhat to my friends and family back at home, that draws me back to it. But it was refreshing to kind of step away from everything for a bit. Made me appreciate it a little bit more.
Then Wednesday night, our OCA teacher Rahma took our class out to a movie, minus Maggie who went camping with Lili, Travis and Greg. We went to a cafe before hand and got to just sit and talk with her, and then we went and saw X-Men: First Class. Unfortunately and fortunately, it was in English, but it had Arabic subtitles. The movie itself was actually really good, I haven't seen any of the other X-Men movies, but it made me want to see the others actually. And Rahma is such a sweetheart, she was willing to do anything to make sure we were having a good time. Plus it was nice, because she spoke mostly Arabic with us so we got to practice.
Yesterday, Thursday - Kat, Julie and I decided to try this aerobic class that Samira (the student coordinator at the Learning Center) suggested we try. Luckily, we mentioned it to Rahma Wednesday night and she offered to drive us. We were a little late so decided to just wait and go to the 10:30 class; in the mean time, we went to a little grocery and bought juice and then stopped by Rahma's house for a few minutes - she lives about a 3 minute drive from the Sports Complex where the class was. She served us these awesome Samosa's and this sweet arabic bread and then, apologized for not having more for us. The class was so much fun, a mix of dancercise and belly dancing with music and a little bit of stretching at the end. The teacher was this Pilipino woman who was an absolute hoot. And the class was about 80 Omani women, all without abayas, since it was only women. It was an awesome experience, and quite a workout (though of course, no substitution for running, though I am pretty sore in my back today). After, Rahma invited us back to her house, where we met one of her sisters (who was absolutely gorgeous), one of her brothers, and one of her nieces. We hung out for a while just chatting among the three of us, and then chatted with her sister for a while and then had lunch (rice and chicken with some salad - I love how simple and delicious Omani food is). Omanis are so nice that they are always telling you to eat more and getting more food for you. Unfortunately this leads to overeating easily haha. We returned to the hotel and then the three of us went and tanned for a little on the balcony of the gym - its so bloody hot here though, so we could barely stay out there for 40 minutes, even at 3 in the afternoon. Then last night, Saleh, the head of the PF's, brought a bunch of us to the Olympic qualifying football (soccer as we call it in America) game between Oman and China. It was a great game, and since Oman beat China in China before, they had to play overtime even though China was ahead 1-0 at the end of 90 minutes. The overtime was sooo exciting resulting in Oman winning by 2 goals! We were sitting in the front row of the family section (all the men can sit in one section and then theres a separate section where 'families' sit, like in most parts of society here), and apparently had attracted some attention, because at the end of the game, three of the Omani players came over and threw their jerseys to us. It was a ton of fun, and I was sitting next to Saleh so I got to practice my Arabic a bit.
And our bus on the way back was totally tricked out and the driver was playing pretty good music, so we were just singing and dancing along occasionally, of course drawing a ton of attention to us. Towards the end of the ride, Akons "Right Now (Na Na Na)" came on, and all of us just started singing and dancing. It was all girls in the bus, minus Robert who was sitting in the front, and we were just having a ball. The driver even replayed the song since it was so hilarious how into it we were. It was so much fun and just a great ending to a fun night.
Today has just been a chill out day - probably gonna grab some Thai food for dinner tonight and get ready for our tests tomorrow (one in MSA and one on Media vocab - yay...), so I might be up late studying vocabulary tonight but oh well! Its crazy to think that were almost half-way done! Tomorrow I think Kat and I are going to cook during PF time with Rasha (our PF) and then next weekend we have a big jumbo trip to the Sharqia region I think - were camping and hopefully riding camels and seeing turtles! And we get next Saturday off, so next week is only a four day week. I think we only have one more free weekend before the end of the program! Time is starting to fly by, eek!
Love and miss everyone,
Liv xoxo
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