veggietales, veggietales, veggietales, veggietales. . .

i'm sorry it's been so long between posts. i just found out yesterday that my motherboard on my computer is defunct so that's always nice. we also don't have internet at our apartment yet (coming soon. . .within the next five or so days, hopefully) so that impedes my updating as well.

we have a temporary roommate, katie, who melissa and i both really like. she's a pretty unique and hysterical girl. she's a vegetarian, and that's something i've always wanted to try. however, when i've tried it i get bored b/c i eat the same things over and over and over. SO, since she's living with us, and i can watch her i decided to try living a vegetarian lifestyle for a week. i started last monday. it's been going fine, and i haven't really missed meat yet. i'm eating eggs, nuts, and cheese for protein. it's been interesting and quite delicious!

we've all started our for-real arabic class, and holy cow!!! it's honestly the hardest thing i've ever done. i can honestly empathize with what illiterate highschoolers must feel like. poor them! our class, when reading in arabic, sounds like a class of kindergarteners sounding out words. it's really funny, and though we get frustrated--frequently--we still laugh at ourselves a lot. we've had good teachers this week, and are making headway. most of us can now read arabic script, and although we don't know what the words mean, we can at least recognize the letters and make mostly the correct sounds to go with them. it's definitely a mother of a mental workout for three hours everyday + study time (approx. two hours each day). it's pretty all consuming.

however, being that we can use what we learn as soon as we leave the classroom has it's benefits. however, some of the folks we regularly interact with aren't quite mentally prepared for us, as westerners, to be speaking arabic. here's a funny story that clearly shows this point:
most apartments have 7-11 type stores called "hanouts" near them. our hanout is around the corner from us, and we go almost everyday to buy lma (water) or hubz (round bread). we wanted some eggs to make a cake with the other night, and so we went to the hanout. we told the guy, "wash-andek-byedt?" which means, "do you have any eggs?" he immediately goes into the back of this tiny-tiny-tiny stores and brings out a huge package of laundry detergent that says "WASH" across the front!!!!!!! he though we wanted to wash our clothes. i said, "la" which means "no" and repeated what i wanted. finally he looked at me, as if seeing me for the first time, and when i repeated "wash-andek-byedt?" he made an egg shape with his fingers, i nodded, and he brought out the eggs. i told him i wanted 10 eggs, and he put them in a plastic bag. he THEN put the 2-1 liter diet cokes we were buying in there too. . . . .with the eggs. . .in the plastic bag :] we finished up, and left and promptly took the eggs out so they wouldn't get crushed. and when we got upstairs we cracked up about the whole thing. it was truly a great evening!