School


Advertisement
Syria's flag
Middle East » Syria » South » Damascus
June 20th 2006
Published: June 20th 2006
Edit Blog Post

I have a little bit of time waiting for friends so I decided to write a quick entry. I've had classes for about a week now and I must say they are very difficult. Some stuff is easy but even when I know most of the things it is still challenging. There is no English spoken unless we are just thoroughly confused. I think this is the best way to learn a language but when your vocabulary is as limited as ours it can sometimes lead to guessing what a word means and guessing wrong. Hasn't been a real problem so far but I could see it being one. We started the colloquial (Ammeah) yesterday and had 2 hours of it. WOW is it different than the Fus Hah (Modern Standard Arabic) that we were taught at home. It really is another language. So not only am I learning TWO languages at the same time, I also need to be able to switch between them both in an instant. School lessons are taught in Fus Hah but it is not a conversational language so any common conversation, even in the classroom, is usually carried out in Ammeah. It can be very confusing at times but the teachers do their best to explain and are very understanding of the challenges. All I can say is that by the end of the 4 hours of classes a day my brain is fried and I'm ready for a break. Everyone usually goes home and takes a nap because we all need a break and because it's not very fun to walk around in the heat of the day.

Today it reached the highest it's been so far since I've been here, about 105 degrees. I took a nap like usual and while doing so the power went out cuting off the fan. With the fan it was tolerable but without it it was rather hot. After a while it came back on and I was thankful. Not really much else to report except for heat, hard classes, and lots of homework which I must be getting to now. Keep those emails coming or start them coming if you haven't yet, I love to get them.

Advertisement



Tot: 0.082s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 9; qc: 32; dbt: 0.047s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1mb