Day 2 of feeling stupid in Arabic Class

Yes....another day of being confused but trying...hopefully I will be able to get fully caught up by the end of this week.

But let me say this about BYU and Provo.....it is superfical. Everything looks pretty and manicured, students walk on the frying campus with this blank happy look on their face and no sweat.......NO SWEAT PEOPLE....I DON"T THINK THAT THEY ARE HUMAN. At least you can see Salt Lake's flaws when you visit, the city feels lived in not like you just walked into someone's front parlor. Everything is only the surface, an image of tranquility that smacks of the brainwashed. And I am not talking about the church, although I am sure that something has to do with it. No one has any real personality, they don't question things, they just walk and live their lives in a herd...following the leader to devotional. Tuesdays is the lucky day that BYU has their devotional....everything, and I do mean everything, completely shuts down on campus....and if you are in a building that the devotional is not being held in, they pipe the audio in for you. It's frightening. Everyone seems to be forced into a box...you must dress right, are you married, if not why?, what car do you drive?, blah blah blah....even Mr.3 and I feel like we are put in a little box. We haven't been holding hands like we normally do, or the occasional kiss and cuddle. I am definitely not sitting close enough to him. In fact during our break I finally caved in, put my chair next to him and put my head on his shoulder.....it felt like we were doing something illegal, but I enjoyed it anyway.

Of course we are also exhausted....the heat radiating off of the campus is killing us. I don't know how they manage it. There are very little trees there, mostly just fast growing small growth type of things....giving no shade at all....then there is also the issue of us trying to figure the campus out. For example, our classroom got moved...no problem. So today, seeing that there was a closer parking lot on the map we decided to park there this morning, only to discover that we had to go up (and I am not kidding with the number here) 8 flights of stairs to get to the main part of campus. My chest hurt so bad by the time we got to the top (because we had to hurry or we would have been late) that I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I didn't, but did end of spending a lot of time in the bathroom sick today. My chest still aches dully, which was only increased in the level of pain with the awful case of hiccups that I had when I began to write this post---I'm better now....apparently the hiccups were cured by a short snuggle with my hubby.

Quickly, back to our class....they don't ask questions about things that they should....I mean they are in their second year of Arabic, and they don't know what Ramadan is.....or they know that Muslims fast but haven't bothered to find out why. These kids have been having a full year of colloquial Arabic as well as the Modern Standard and they seem to have no idea of Arab and/or Islamic culture....nor do they even bother to want to know. It is really sad, and I honestly feel that since they have such a strong belief that "the LDS is true" in all aspects of it...that they feel that even learning about other faiths would somehow make them a bad Mormon....and it wouldn't, it would make them more worldly. Honestly, you can speak the best Arabic in the world, but the second you go up and say the wrong thing to someone because you don't know the culture, you're through....and a lot of them want to work for the government! If you are translating something and don't know about the culture, think of how much you would miss!