1/2/11

Today was our first day of Arabic class in Arabeya Institute. I have a really nice, understanding, and bubbly teacher named Hasnaa.We started by learning the first 13 letters of the alphabet. Because I was taught how to read the Quran, and therefore recognize the Arabic letters, I thought that I would be able to breeze through the alphabet, but unfortunately that was not the case. I realized that the way I’d been pronouncing some of the letters was different than the way I would need to pronounce them in Egyptian Arabic. I also realized that being able to read Arabic is not the same as writing Arabic. So when we wrote the letter today, I realized that when it comes to writing, I’m at the same pace as everyone else. We also started practicing the greetings, like “Sabah el kheir.”

Later, we went for lunch at a traditional Egyptian restaurant called El Omda Restaurant. The environment of the restaurant itself was very nice, but everyone was upset with how long it took for us to get our food. Not only did it take them a while to make the food, but there were even some who never even got their food. I’d ordered the chicken pane with fries and I would just give it a 3 out of 5.

The reason why everyone was so upset about the food taking forever to come (besides the fact that we were all starving,) was that we had to meet with Dr. Dina Shehata at the offices of the newspaper Al-Ahram. First, Dina provided thorough background information about the Egyptian political system from it’s establishment in 1952 up until today. One fact that I found very interesting and strange is that Egypt has been in a state of emergency since 1981 when President Sadat was assassinated. It just seemed odd that a country should remain in a state of emergency for 30 years when there’s nothing really going on right now. I mean, what state would Egypt declare if there was a new emergency? I also learned that Egypt is not an Islamic state—it actually combines elements of both secularism and religion (Islamic views).

Arabic class with our teacher, Hasnaa

Talk with Dr. Dina at Al-Ahram