Pictures and short stories

Hey everyone,

This is going to be a post with more pictures, not in chronological order. This jumps around from even before the language school. I will start out, however, with a picture of some of the students in my level 1.5A Arabic class. From right to left: Me, Marissa, Dina, Saba, and Lena (the girl blue shirt, and sunglasses). I'm not sure who the black shirt, long blonde-haired girl is because she isn't in our class.

We are actually in our final week of the program, all the clubs are done and so are the movies. Today (8/4) we just had our talent show. Our class did an arabic version of madlibs with audience participation and everything. There were other skits, some short movies, and some readings also.

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The following two pictures were taken in Berkley behind the farmer's market. There was a small locally-supported festival going on with music, a bunch of stands selling trinkets and other types of gizmos and gadgets, and then this bear made out of iron parts.

I thought this stand was pretty interesting also. The lady was selling some clothes and some little trinkets and locks also.

I have a similar picture that I posted on instagram which also showed up on my facebook earlier if you are reading from there. Some new indian friends I made while in Cali, Neha (left) and Soham (right). Both are really great and I'm glad I got the chance to meet such wonderful people. Here we are at a southern indian style restaurant called "Udupi Palace" which I highly recommend. The food was great, filling, inexpensive, and which different choices than the typical indian restaurants, which I'm told usually serve northern india style food (the kind we are accustomed to)

These next couple pictures were taken at the Sutra Bath ruins, a place that, in its time, served as a swimming pool and bathhouse for the public until it later burned down mid-20th century. Here are Swati, Soham, and Neha walking along one of the still-standing walls.

I just really liked these trees and the way that they grow sideways so I took a picture of it.

This is a picture from the visitor center of the Sutra Baths. You can kid tell when the walls may have been and how the set-up of the pool inside it was also.

French vs. Arabic

Hey everyone,

So everyone that reads these probably knows that apart from Arabic I speak French and many of you know that I did the same intensive language program through Middlebury here on Mills College campus 2 years ago. Talking to one of my friends from the French school program gave me the idea for this post: comparisons and contrasts between the 2 programs.

Graduate School Building (GSB), where we have class everyday from 845 - 2:30

To start off I'll just give some information on the French program. The French program was only 7 weeks compared to an optional 8 week program for Arabic, which I am doing. When I had first arrived to campus the first weekend, we almost all immediately started speaking French. The first person I met was the director of the French school. The language pledge is initially more lenient with the beginning levels and allow you to use some English for the first week and the teachers to explain the more difficult concepts in English for the first couple weeks.

There was also a significant difference in the number of students, at the French school there was about maybe 40 or less students and my class had 5 students including myself for 2 teachers. Classes are bigger now in the Arabic school with a total of about 175. 

The size difference has had an impact on how other events and activities are organized, also. For example, because of previous conflicts in schedules all the co-curricular clubs are offered on the same day at the same time and students are obligated to pick one and stay with it through whereas with French there was the option to do engaged in several different clubs since they were offered throughout the week and at different times.

Second is that the teachers all live in one dorm just like with the French school but not all the students are in one dorm so there's a lot more opportunity for those who don't feel as comfortable speaking Arabic to speak English which almost never happened with French. One thing I knew already but am actually learning from the program is how much harder Arabic is to get accustomed to than French. Then again, I had many years of French when I was younger so after a week or two of just speaking it I got back in the groove and it started flowing back to me. I've only taken 2 semesters of Arabic with a focus on the formal Arabic and almost no focus on the the many different dialects of colloquial Arabic which made for some difficulties adjusting to that when I arrived.

One other thing I wanted to mention was that this year the French school is only being held at Middlebury in Vermont due to not enough people signing up for California. I guess it is one of the biggest classes they've had with 200-250 students if I remember correctly.

Another difference between the French and Arabic programs is that with Arabic there TAs for every class, office hours to meet with the teachers, review sessions held by the TAs, pronunciation classes,  and 1-on-1 opportunities to work with TAs or the teachers. At the French school, the teachers were almost available. Everything before was in the same building: classes, teachers, and the director even. Now everything is separated which makes since given the amount of students but also not as easy to access. The proximity was a definite plus with the French school. There are also dialect classes for the higher levels to learn specific speech from countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, etc.

I hear more people speaking English than I ever did with the French school also. Then again, everyone with a smartphone has google translate up since there is always a word or 10 that you want to express but can't. You learn here that you also need to be very careful with translations as they can seriously change the meaning of what you want to say, and with spelling also. Here is an Arabic to English translation fail to highlight what I mean.

The word is actually meant to be "Pigeon" but when putting in a generic translator, the vowel signs were not put in and bathroom came out instead. *What you see to the right are Arabic letters without the vowel signs above them, people know the words from context and so don't write letters but translators do not know this. >_< 

Maybe think of it if we didn't use vowels in English, "hs" could be "his" or "has"

These are just a few of the differences between the two schools. Through other posts I will probably mention other differences as they come to mind. Enjoy!

Half way mark

Hey everyone,

It's been a couple weeks since my last post. It has also been a couple weeks since I started fasting (weekends semi-excluded). The first week was a bit rough but after adjusting my diet and daily activities, with scheduled naps,  I've gotten accustomed to going the whole day without food. I'm probably going to eat a little something midday so I can start running again like I planned to this summer, which I can't do if I'm not allowed to drink any water for 15hrs.

I am over half way through the program and things are going to start picking up in class since we are now all functioning listen to lessons in only arabic with no english translations. Our weekly Wednesday tests are covering more and more material with more focus on the grammar. Our class has gotten very intense over the last 2 weeks.

Not much other than that has been going on at the campus, Friday nights are still movie nights, Wednesday nights are still lecture nights, and all the rest of the nights are study nights.
The two weekends weekend I did go to the Point Reyes ship wreck in Inverness, California with Swati.

Here's a map of where Inverness is from where I am in Oakland, about an 1.5 hr drive from Oakland.

And here's a visitor style map of the West Marin National Park area. The boat above is behind a convenient store in the city of Inverness of the bay West of Point Reyes Station.

After going to Inverness we went to the South-West tip to the Point Reyes Lighthouse.
I currently don't have pictures but I will make another post with many pictures after I receive them all in a couple days.

Sorry I've been lazy/busy to write that much but I just haven't been doing to much that is write-worthy.
And for those of you in and/or around TC, I return August 9th, in a couple weeks.
I'll try to do more so that I can write more about what's going on and I'll also try to take more pictures, also.

Have a good one and until next time!

Ramadan (رمضان) and 2nd week

Hey everyone,

So I've been pretty busy with classes, clubs, and trying to improve my all around Arabic. I'm going to start this post off with a quick recap of week 1 and the previous week. I will discuss Ramadan later in the post, where the fasting started for us yesterday morning.
I've been put in the level 1.5A Arabic class (صف ١،٥) with 11 other people out of the 11 out of the 174 Arabic students. There are level 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5,...4, and ours happens to be one of the bigger classes.

Every Wednesday we have an obligatory lecture to attend at night which is followed by a small meal prepared by the cooking club earlier the same day. For the first 3 weeks levels 1 and 1.5 go to lectures that are partly in English and Arabic separated from the upper levels. The first week's lecture had several people talk about their experiences learning Arabic where they are now "fluent" speakers. By fluent I mean in the Modern Standard Arabic and not necessarily in more than a couple dialects. For those who don't know, there are many dialects of spoken Arabic which makes the process of learning and being able to communicate with different Arabic speakers a longer one that that of say Spanish or French.

We have class from 8:45 to 330 every day with break for lunch. On Wednesdays we get out earlier to take two hours to join a club. There's clubs ranging from opera and Quran to Calligraphy and Colloquial music. Now I am in the music one which helps me learn some of the other dialects that we don't work on in class.
On Friday we have late night movies that the Arabic school attends and Sunday evenings are tutor sessions with the TA's, some of which spoke at our first lecture and who have attended the Middlebury language schools. There are 1-on-1 office hours every day except Wednesday and so there is also plenty of time outside of class to get other types of exposures to the language.
I will try to get more info and the names of the movies we have already watched at a later time.

This last Wednesday lecture was on Ramadan. Ramadan is when the first verses of the Quran, the sacred book of Islam, were revealed by Allah. Over the month of Ramadan the verses are recited. Fasting goes on during the daylight hours and family and friends get together after the sun has gone down to eat. Not only is fasting a part of the practice but also abstaining from other things for the entire month, like alcohol, too. I'm participating in this for a real experience here and not just to try.
There's so much to say about Ramadan and I only know so much. If you are interested in learning a little bit more about why it's practiced, who practices it, in which parts of the world it is practiced, and other facts about it then you can read up here:

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-Issues/2013/0709/Ramadan-101-Ten-facts-about-the-holy-month-of-Ramadan/What-is-Ramadan

or here:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/05/world/ramadan-fast-facts/

There are plenty of sites out there explaining it. I will probably add more as I am still learning about Ramadan and what it really means.

Now that I am more in the flow of the program I am going to try and write more often. I hope you enjoyed reading and until later!

May-June

Hey everyone,

It's been nearly a year since I wrote last and the last time I wrote was about my adventures in Paris and my internship work I was doing and working with kids in the culturally diverse 18th district. The language I was focusing on was my French while I was surrounded by people who also spoke Arabic and made friends with others who speak Spanish. Now I will be taking language intensive courses in Arabic through the Middlebury language schools at Mills college in Oakland, California.
I will be studying form June 13th until August 8th and then from there, anything is possible.

This first blog is just going to recap the end of final semester senior year up until about now.

Enjoyed my last AIA formal at Witt: Me and Sasha!

Enjoyed a final trip to Yellow Springs as a Witt senior: L to R; Lizzie, Champ, Me, Evan, Jane!

Took a trip to Chicago to spend some time with family: Colleen, Bridget, Timmy, Cara, Lilli, Jay, Weston!

Helped out my hermano

Saw a Memorial Day parade with a pretty embarrassing finale 937 with 30" rims style!

What the hell is that? Patriotic because they stick flags smaller than your average notebook on the back of each one.... hmmm

 Shot my first zombie between the eyes!

Took a trip to Sandusky, OH! Thank you Hannah!

Made a trip back to TC, MI for a couple days to see some old friends! Jess & Leesha out frolfing

Made a trip to Boulder, CO! Thank Champ!

Had a great senior moment for Cinco de Mayo: Becca, Jesse, Jane, Anna, Rob, Tiana, Martin

The biggest event out of all the rest was obviously graduating after 4 yrs and 3 summers of intense studying. Graduation went off with only minor weather issues. Finally Graduated from Wittenberg studying foreign languages and economics with specializations in Spanish and international economics.

Was gifted my own stoll with my birth country's colors and seal on it and walked with my own, non Wittenberg-affiliated cords. I didn't realize until then that our degrees don't actually say what we studied, just the transcripts.


Now I am in Berkley, CA and I have made some new friends, great people from India!
Neha & Soham! You guys are great people!!!!

And this is where my adventures in Cali started, with Swati! It will continue with Arabic school and more pictures!

Hope you enjoyed reading! With love from Cali and until next time!