On the Road Again

The last couple of days have reawakened my love of music. They've also gotten me completely and eternally addicted to soduku, the number game that was so popular last year and I never got into. Find it here if you're interested in wasting ten or eleven hours a day. At least I feel that I'm doing something mildly mental. The last couple of weeks have involved very little brain and a whole lot of vegetation, which is fine in that it passes the time quickly - but overall I don't think it's that useful. And then Tuesday I went to Dr. Sami's, and Wednesday I stood next to Ms. East-West as we tore a (cooked) sheep apart with our bare hands.

So now that I've proven myself obsessed with things completely unrelated to my purpose in being here, I am faced with the prospect of weaning myself away from all of these wonderful things. Luckily I think I can afford to wait until after break.

Which brings me to the fantastic news. BREAK ON WEDNESDAY!

I am going to the travel agent tonight to get my tickets and pay for them - or that's the idea anyway. I realize I don't really know where the agent is, and so I'm hoping that the driver knows (or else I'll call and ask them to give me directions). And I have a toe appointment. So today I have dubbed 'errand day'.

And THEN the real fun begins - I get to come back to my room and study for an Arabic test/quiz tomorrow. A practice midterm. HAahahahaha. Death in a hat. But at least it will show me how much I still have left to do - and I'm sure there's a lot. I feel fairly clear on the grammar, because it's all simplistic stuff, although obviously learning the terms in Arabic is a little tough. What's particularly weird is that not only do the terms have different names, the entire concept of the sentence is different. For example, when you conjugate the verbs you think of "katabtu" as "I wrote" - the verb, conjugated for first person singular. Then you learn, separately, that Arabic doesn't require explicit definition of the subject because it is implied in the verb. Thus, "katabtu" literally means "I wrote" - the complete thought. But in Arabic terminology, this is thought of differently. A subject is still required, but the "-tu" part of "katabtu" isn't considered a verb, per se. It's the pronoun. So "katabtu" rather than a verb, is a verb, "katab" and a pronoun "-tu". Or, not a pronoun, exactly....

Anyway, I don't understand it that well, obviously. But I'm working on it.

After I master the intricacies of Arabic grammar, my nxt step (and the harder one) is to prepare myself to competently discuss the Jahiliyyah period of Arabic history (being the period prior to Islam - jahil means "ignorant"). That's going to be the real challenge.

And on that note, I'm back to trying to motivate myself.