Al Sufouf! (الصوف)

Arabic classes started Sunday.  Yes, you read right.  The working week in the Arab World is Sunday – Thursday because Friday (يوم الجمعة ) is the holy day.  The switch has my days of week out of whack a little bit, but it’s actually a nice adjustment.  Gone are miserable Monday’s, because Monday is just the second day of the week!  And on Saturday nights I don’t think to be like “oh no, tomorrow is Sunday” though I guess the more I acclimate the more that might change. 

View from the CIEE building on Sunday...it was gorgeous out.

Notice that I said Arabic classes started this week.  My two area studies courses don’t start until Wednesday, so the majority of the day I’m free to run any last minute errands or just hang out and explore the city.  More on that later, though.  I have Modern Standard Arabic (MSA, or, in Arabic, الفصحى) every day of the week.  My professor is great so far; he speaks almost entirely in Arabic in class, so far I can pretty much understand what he says.  He also of course goes back and explains if we obviously don’t know what’s going on.  So far in MSA I’ll be ahead for awhile…in my Intermediate I class at AU last semester we made it to through chapter 17 in our textbook, and this semester we’re starting at chapter 15 (of the same textbook – most of the Arabic teaching world uses the textbook AU uses, Al Kitaab, because there aren’t very many series of Arabic textbooks, and Al Kitaab is generally thought to be one of the best in publication).  Right now, I’m really missing those flashcards I didn’t think I had room for, collecting dust 5,000 miles away. Oh well. خلاص. 



At this point I’m kind of wishing I had stuffed my suitcases more.  Maybe I’ll be singing a different tune in four months, but there’s definitely some things – sweatpants, sweatshirts, flashcards, a few other odds and ends – that I probably could have fit with a little elbow grease that would have been convenient.  But back to classes!


My colloquial Arabic class (spoken Arabic/dialect, in Arabic: العامية) is twice a week and only for fifty minutes.  That said, it is a fast paced and jam packed with vocabulary.  I think this class will be one of the most immediately helpful, because if focuses on the differences between MSA and Colloquial and gives us vocabulary we can use on the street when ordering food, hailing a taxi, for anything, really. 


I mentioned something about exploring earlier, didn’t I?  After class, I hung out at Gloria Jean’s (the coffee shop in the bottom floor of the Plaza the CIEE office is in) for an hour or so, catching up on administrative things, and then five of us decided to go have lunch at CityMall and see a movie!  We saw Selma & Omar, which is a – you guessed it – arab movie!  There wasn’t any English except for the random American rap music (look up “Busta Rhymes” if you’re feeling bored) and this one character who would throw in English with his Arabic I guess because he was “cool”.  It was a comedy, so luckily the plot wasn’t too hard to follow – partly because it was ridiculous.  I think in a good way. :-P 

Gloria Jean's makes your قهوة with care!