allahu akbaar!

that's my arabic name (a3ziza... and yes, you must pronounce the three)

i can't believe i just finished my arabic summer class.

wow. it feels strange. and in the words of maha... ash3ur bilwahida... (i feel lonely). i have had class monday-friday for two hours over the last two months, and then about 6 hours outside of class every single day. that's eight hours a day of arabic... trying desperately to learn hundreds and hundreds of words in both fusha and amiyya (i think about 700), trying keep up with the complicated grammar, like trying to remember the seven ways to negate (mish, mash, lem, len, la, laysit and ma) and remembering which tenses follow them, the different reasons to take off that final nun (for heyya, hom, and intum) when it's subjunctive, or 'mansub', the five different ways to make a conditional sentence, all the different ways to use ba'a/yi'ba, how to conjugate those blasted hollow verbs, not to mention the 10 verb forms and their musdars, and on and on and on and on. 

this has been my life for the last two months... well, really 8 months, and it will be this way for at least another year and a half... and hopefully more. i am in love with this crazy language, and i'm kind of sad to have two weeks off. 

i'm going to go listen to amr diab and tamer hosny to ease my troubled little heart. yeah... that should do it.

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