You eat me...

...eat me completely, all that I give you, you eat, tamaam?' is how our first lesson in Arabic started yesterday. Wasil is an amazing teacher, extremely active and serious about his job. His English is rather poor, but he compensates this with a fanatic attitude I have seldom seen in a teacher: even though we have four hours of instruction every day, we only get to have two three minute breaks and lessons tend to run late: there is no minute to be wasted on such useless past-times as thinking or writing things down: one should pay attention, repeat and learn.

The first lesson was preceded by a day of tests, both a written and an oral one. The latter was rather interesting, as it was on the same level for all students, whether fluent or not. Mine resulted in an impressive score of 12/100, which seemed rather detailed for the three words I had spoken throughout. (the highest score was 25/100, so the teachers noticed room for a little improvement).

Other than the horror described above, most frustration arises from the difference between the language spoken on the street (amia), and the proper language of newspapers, books and university life (fusha). Tomorrow we will learn how to say the vegetables and fruits. First in fusha and then in amia: it is like learning two languages simultaneously - there are even some letters which are pronouned in one, but not in the other.

It is not all pain however: after testing day on sunday we went to mousalla farm and relaxed by the pool side: a big switch from the anarchy that is the old city of Damascus, but highely appreciated: Arash and I met the other students there as well, that range from Dutch students of Arabic (or medicine!) to diplomats & ngo workers. A very mixed group with very different levels of experience of the Middle East: to some, a cockroach and a lost bag seem the end of the world, other Dutchies have eloborate discussions in Arabic with anyone they meet whilst walking the streets. Everything is an amazing experience for sure!

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