I didn’t have a camera on me today, but this photo captures my confusion pretty adequately.  Completely different situation; totally identical confusion.  I think of this photo often when I have trouble finding the right words to describe how I feel.

In other news, remember that Arabic امتحان (exam) I had?  Well I completely slept through my alarm that day, oh by about two hours or so.  It was beautiful.  I threw some clothes on and ran out the door to catch the bus.  Not A bus, THE last bus that would have the ability to get me all the way out to New Cairo in time, Inshallah!  Long story short, or rather short boring story short, I made it to class just in time.  And since I am sure you are all wondering, I got an A… whew!

And now we are learning verbs.  That means I can make sentences like:

اميلي يأكتل بيتزا و يشرب كوكا كولا

which is… Emily eats pizza and drinks coca cola.

It’s true, so very, very true.  And now English-speakers and Arabic-speakers alike can know these amazingly important things about me.  Pretty cool, huh.  Learning Arabic is the most fun thing I have done in a long time.  Fun, because I feel somewhat accomplished every day when I can say, “Kusa!!!!” at the zucchini at the fruit-stand and “Basal!!!!” at the onions.  It’s thrilling, really.  It really is.  There is no sarcasm here.  Just honest truth.  It really helps that I think I have a very good teacher who makes class fun.  I wish you all were in my class so we could practice saying things like: “The coffee is on the table” and “The girl reads the book” together.  It would be SO fun.  I think you will just have to trust me on that.

Anyone that comes to visit gets a complimentary crash course in Arabic.  So get ready!