!اهلً وساهلً
First of all, I just want to highlight the fact that I officially only have 45 days left until I get on a plane to head to Pre-Departure Orientation in Washington DC!!!! That's less than 2 months which is kind of blowing my mind. Especially considering that I only have 30 school days left of freshman year! Anyway, this is the 4th week of Arabic study so I thought I would keep you guys updated. We are working through the Alif Baa textbook series and every week we do a different unit. We learn new letters, new vocab and about cultural things like etiquette and how to interact with others. Even though I had an informal understanding of how to read and write letters from religious school and learning how to read the Quran, there is so much more nuance to all the sounds and pronunciations of the letters and how they interact with each other than I expected. It does mean that I don't have to alliterate anything when learning vocab which is really nice. The Arabic language is truly beautiful to write and listen to and if you are interested, take a look at this fun alphabet song below-
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As those of you who know me personally know, I have a little bit of an obsession with quotes. They cover my computer desktop and coat the walls in my room. I snap pictures and screenshots of interesting quotes I encounter and I love collecting these tiny capsules of wisdom. Here's one for all you fellow avid travelers out there-
"If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears." In light of my crazy levels of excitement for this summer, I found this quote that I think is so incredibly true...
"Never forget that anticipation is an important part of life. Work's important, family's important, but without excitement, you have nothing. You are cheating yourself if you refuse to enjoy what's coming."-Nicholas Sparks I have recently received a rough draft of my travel itinerary and as all this information starts to come to me, it starts to seem more and more real. I don't know when it will fully sink in that I will be going and studying in Jordan for two months this summer!!! (AAH, I kind of internally start jumping up and down every time I start thinking about it.
Anyway, the basic gist of it is that I fly out of SFO on June 13 (62 days from now!), stop in Chicago for a couple hour layover and then fly to DC where we will stay for two days for the Pre Departure Orientation (PDO). On June 15, we will depart from DC and have a stopover in Vienna, Austria briefly on our way to Amman. On the way back, we leave from Amman at 3 am and fly to Frankfurt, then DC and then finally back to San Francisco. The more than 30 hours of travel time back from Amman will definitely be tough. I will keep you updated on any more info that comes my way. Sophia .!اهل وسهلا
So, it is official, I have started on the Arabic MPPLC (Mandatory Pre-Program Language Course)! The purpose of the MPPLC is basically to give us the ability to read and write Arabic and learn some basic vocab and grammar so that when we arrive in Jordan, we have some ability to communicate. I have received my Alif Baa textbook and a nine week syllabus to guide the study. I am so excited to get started but the extra one hour a day commitment is a little daunting considering my current workload. Anyway, I have been able to make it work and I know that it is so important to spread language learning out rather than cram and I think it has been going well so far. I thought I already knew how to read and write the Arabic script through religious school, however, I have really realized that Arabic is so much more nuanced than I previously thought (like deep and frontal vowel sounds etc.). I am really enjoying my language study so far and as I learn more and more, I develop a deeper admiration and love for this beautiful language and the region it is spoken in. The readings on culture have greatly enriched my understanding of the Middle East and I feel so lucky to be taking Middle Eastern Literature in school and reading a Palestinian book and watching the accompanying movie in Arabic. That's all for now, Sophia |
We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us. !أهلا و ساهلاHi! I'm Sophia, a high schooler from the San Francisco Bay Area. I received a scholarship through the State Dept. to study Arabic in Jordan in the summer of 2016. Categories
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