I wake up around 7:00-7:30 daily, shower, get ready for the day and study a little bit before I go to class. I have Arabic class with my sister from 9:00 am- 12:30 pm. We learn between 4-5 letters a day and around 30-50 new vocabulary words. The Arabic language is one of the most complicated that I have tried to study. Each letter/sound has two to four different ways to write it depending on its placement within the word. It can either be connected or not to the rest of the letters within the word and there are at least four different ways to pronounce each letter based of punctuation. For example, the letter/sound seen, س, it can sound like sa, su, se and hard s sound based on the punctuation. There are slight differences between the letters/sounds such as the placement of a single dot or angle of a line. The language is beautiful and learning it I can see the similarity that a lot of languages have to it such as Spanish and French. I am excited to continue to learn as much as possible.
After my Arabic classes, I meet up with professors from the University at either the old campus or a refugee camp and assist them in their workshops. Currently, they are working with community members to better the care for 0-8 year olds within the community. People of all ages, mostly women, have come together with professors from An Najah to create a research group. The community members from the refugee camps learn research techniques and child development curriculum and visit homes within their community and share the information. The intent is to create a group of women within the community who have the knowledge and tools to inform parents and families about child development. The group will be self-sustaining rather dependent on an outsider which is important for creating a self supporting community and requiring the members to be interdependent on one another and not on outsiders. This work is really fun as we get to meet people of all ages and share stories. We have made friends with the young girls and I hope these friendships will grow and last a long time.
Last week I mentioned to the girls that I am interested in doing some artwork with them and they seem really excited about it. Next time I go to the workshop, I hope to talk to them more and begin doing that if they are interested!
Once Ramodon is over, I will begin working in the preschool on An Najah's campus. I am very excited to begin working the little ones and learning from them. Overall, I am having a great time so far and learning a lot.
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