Why I’m Here--

It’s a lovely Tuesday morning right now with a perfect blue sky and a warm, light breeze.  If there’s one thing that I can count on every day, it’s that the weather will never fail to be pristine.  If I had to name another thing that I could count on every day, well then it would be that I am guaranteed to hear daily about 500 honks of horns given that the school I go to is located on an intersection and Moroccans like to honk (or, rather, they hate bad drivers)! 

I suppose now it’s more than time to share with you all a little bit about my school.  I’m sitting outside on the school’s patio at a row of tables with my friends who are sipping on Moroccan tea and laughing at jokes they’ve been sharing in English, German, and Italian (it seems that “your mom” jokes are universal, only I’ve yet to hear one in Arabic…).  It’s not a very big school—enrolled are about two or three dozen students, as far as I know, whom I see every day.  They are all different ages, varying from high school students taking a year off to discover themselves to 60-year-old individuals whose children have all grown up and have children of their own.  They are also from all different countries and at different levels of Arabic, which provides a lot of opportunity to meet some great people and learn about different cultures but unfortunately it also means that everyone has a tendency to resort to conversing mostly in English, and as horrible as my Arabic is, I really came here to speak it!  At least the Germans are willing to speak German with me…

Personally, I feel that I got fantastic training of the formal Arabic language with my Grand Valley professor’s help from the Al-Kitaab workbook series (thank you, Professor Maisel!!), so I was pumped to discover that the classes here at Qalam wa Lawh use the same series.  I was even more excited that I had exhausted my Arabic language learning at Grand Valley, so by receiving this scholarship from the Center, I was going to be going above and beyond any possibility I had of advancing my Arabic back at school. This meant buying the second al-Kitaab book and it has got so much vocabulary that it’s fantastically overwhelming—but but by the time I leave Morocco, I will already have gotten through the first four chapters.  Not only are the class lessons beneficial to my furthering my comprehension of the language, but even more so is the fact that from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep, I am constantly confronted with Arabic Arabic Arabic.  And this my friends, long story short, is why I decided to accept my scholarship, fly to North Africa, and dedicate a month of my summer to learning this beautiful language rather than ride the struggle bus trying to teach myself from the second al-Kitaab book out at the pool in my own backyard.  Sure beats last summer.