Recently have been...
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I think the line is "content and dreaming." That sounds about right.
I've recently become addicted to the hammam and the French music channels on my tv. One of them, however, is called "Music Black" and features primarily hip hop and other "black" genres of music. My American mind screams "BIGOT!" but then again, it is technically "black" music, is it not? The best part, though, is that they constantly show the new Pink video, requiring me to again pose the question...what color is Pink? The answer, for the record, is not "pink."
As for the hammam - it sounds crazy, but ain't nothing like laying down and letting a half-naked woman scrub you raw. It's amazing to see the scrolls of dead skin come so easily off your body. Kind of disgusting, but amazing nonetheless. I went last night with a friend's mom, who's become my hammam buddy, so to speak. I adore her, and the whole process, but...after someone has scrubbed all of your skin off, all you want to do is relax for a moment, and she always takes that time to talk my ear off...in Arabic.
Speaking of which, my Arabic has become much more functional. Before, though I could conjugate some verbs, form some true sentences, I was mostly useless when it came to everyday communication. Picture this: my first Arabic class involved a book called Al-Kitaab ("The Book," no joke), and the first page included this following paragraph (but in Arabic)"
"My name is Maha. I am Egyptian. I am a student at New York University. My father is Egyptian. He is a professor. My mother is Palestinian. She is a translator for the United Nations."
A TRANSLATOR for the UNITED NATIONS? I can say "waleedatee mutarjima fi'l umum al-mutahida" but I don't know how to say "hi, how are you?" Whoever writes these books deserves a good slap in the face. Mind you, nearly all Arabic textbooks are written by non-native speakers, which to me makes no sense. Kind of like how most Moroccan school textbooks are written by Moroccans. Even the English ones, and if you've ever spent any time in Morocco, well...you get the gist. My friend H., a university student of economics, actually goes home from class and checks facts on the internet because he's found so many mistakes in his economics textbook.
That's all for now, my stomach is grumbly and there's a café out there with pastries calling my name.
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In the first chapter, they do an okay job of addressing the basics, but they don't make ANY mention of gendered possessives throughout the whole thing. They don't even touch the topic until CHAPTER SIX. So you've got these example dialogues between Jack and Faridah, and he's like "aish ism-ich?" and she's like "aish ism-ak?" and the student is just expected to intuitively know the difference, or something.
Craziness.
