As I said before, we are in full-time language classes these days learning Arabic. We have a great teacher, Hamza, who is a Jordanian nursing student. Unfortunately, we may have to switch teachers in a few weeks because he is only on a break from school right now because of Ramadan. He has become a good friend though and has taught us a lot.
Most days after class my brain is fried and all I want to do is sleep (which never happens by the way). I had a small breakdown in class last week and don't know where it came from. I was feeling extra emotional that particular day. Ha. We had just begun to learn the Arabic alphabet and it was a bit overwhelming. Not to mention that I cannot pronounce half of their letters...I'm not exactly gifted in the foreign languages department! I can't roll my "R's" and I cannot make the deep, back of your throat sounds (which unfortunately is the majority of Arabic). But Paul is a natural and is really good at speaking! He has always been able to imitate almost anyone's voice...and this Arabic proved to be no different. Hamza had me saying the world for cloud (ghaamma) and the world for forest (ghaaba) back and forth about 15 times, and I sounded pitiful. Then he had Paul say it, which was pure perfection on the FIRST, yes FIRST try! What a stinker! Our teacher said, "Great job Paul. Now Kari, let's try again." At this point, I felt like throwing something at our teacher. Ha. I think I was just beyond frustrated and was mentally exhausted and discouraged. Hamza noticed I was upset, and asked me if I needed to "go wash up?" At that point, the tears started flowing down my face and I quickly grabbed a tissue and said "I"m fine." I don't think Hamza knew what to do with me. :) He excused himself from the room for a few minutes which allowed Paul and I to talk. We only had 15 more minutes of class that day, so we decided to call it quits for the day-thank goodness! I apologized over and over to Hamza and so did Paul. Hamza said he understood that girls are emotional at times. So true! I just usually don't cry that easily...
Here are a few pictures of us with Hamza.
1 comment:
Love the story, Kari. I'm not that emotional either, but I cried at a stupid commercial the other day. It was ridiculous really! Andrew didn't know what to do. He just held me and told me it was okay. It was a pretty funny site to say the least. So yeah, struggling with Arabic is a little more forgiving when it comes to a breakdown. Thanks for the laugh!
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