We just completed our first week of teaching English and Arabic classes. I confess it was one of the most exhausting and challenging weeks I have endured in a long time.
Perhaps “endured” isn’t right word though – its much more complicated than that. As arduous as it has been, this first week has been highly rewarding on many fronts.
An average day runs (read: races) something like this:
8:30 AM – wake up and take an ice cold shower. But to be fair, it’s really the latter before the former.
9:00 AM – Dylan and I leave the apartment to meet a few of the girls at a little café (el Nuby Kawah) on the main street (Qasr al-Einy). This is where and when the day really begins. After a strong cup of Arabic coffee (something that has truly captivated my palette) we sn
ag a taxi to St. Andrews. Arabic coffee is born by coupling a healthy pile of ground beans and an equally “healthy” amount of sugar, with a touch of nutmeg and cardimum of course. Afterwards, the barista (well, not quite but the word will suffice) adds a small amount of water (perhaps 7 fl oz) and boils the mixture over a flame. In about 5 minutes you have a stiff cup of coffee much akin to rocketfuel. Best part is that when you’ve consumed the cup there is inevitably a clump of “sludge” (gritty solvent). Great way to begin to day – Folger’s missed the mark on this one.10:00 AM to 2:00 PM – Teaching begins. We have five groups of two “teachers” apiece and each group is paired with two to four students. For the first two hours we work in our small groups, then we break for lunch (usually ta’amiyya or foul in pita). Afterwards we congregate for group activities – thus far these have included Pictionary, learning the birthday song, and playing hangman. That concludes our teaching session. More later.
2:30 PM to 5:00 PM – FREE TIME! Well, kind of. After returning from St. Andrews we normally grab a quick bite to eat and do our Arabic homework. And blog … which as you can tell, is, well unfortunately quickly becoming a sporadic activity.
5:00 to 7:00 PM – Activities or Calligraphy. Despite the disappointment of al-Diwan some of us have chosen to take this two hour period off … myself included. Quite frankly I need time to recharge before class, but I am hoping that in the following weeks I attend. In shaa Allah (God willing, a common expression used in lieu of “hopefully”)!
7:00 PM to 11:00 PM - Arabic class. Four hours of intensive Arabic with Jamal (our professor) really kicks you in the you-know-what. But honestly, its great. As difficult it is, my Arabic is skyrocketing.
Well, relatively speaking … if you could call running two meters of a marathon in 25 minutes skyrocketing …
It is an amazing opportunity to study here – lekin (“but” in Arabic) it is a tad bit frustrating when we try to practice outside class. Egyptians speak a heavy dialect (aamiyya) that is distinctly different from formal Arabic (fus’ha) – which makes communication difficult at the very least.
In all seriousness though, having such a focused environment with heavy concentration on one subject really hones our abilities. Our books are all in Arabic, so the professor has to Google translate words (by typing them into image search).
11:30 PM – We get out of class and frantically search for a place to eat dinner. It’s quite a challenge to eat lunch at noon and dinner at midnight. Afterwards we normally hang out at the girls place and Skype with friends and family back home, blog, do Arabic homework, or just reflect for a bit.
2:00 to 4:00 AM – depending on the aforementioned activities, the day finally ends. And begins anew in about six hours!
Highly draining, but doubly fulfilling. I look forward to the remaining 86% (6/7 weeks).
Jonathan
2 comments:
I think they make all Middle Eastern/Mediterranean coffee like that. It's the same in Greece. And it smells like dirt! And they have like 20 cups a day! (My dad loves to partake.)
do you drink the sludge? i hope so, sounds great.
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