Miracle Pill Anecdotes

The day I arrived at my friend's house, she informed me that she had a headache from not having slept much over the previous days of celebration. I offered her an ibuprofen. She asked what it was, and I explained that it would remove her headache.

"It's not medicine from a doctor, is it? Just for you?" She asked.

I assured her that it was fine for her to take some, so she did. She returned a few hours later to tell me she was shocked at how her headache was completely gone. She told all her friends about my miraculous pill.

Who knew ibuprofen would cause such amazement?

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Two nights before I went to the wedding, I only got about 5 hours of sleep. The night before I left, I only got about 4 hours of sleep. My first night there, after the henna party, we went to sleep around 4am, and were all up by 8am. So the actual night of the wedding, by the time we returned to the house and were in our pajamas at 3am, I was exhausted. Add to the lack of sleep 30 hours of speaking in only arabic and French, and my brain was complete mush.

So when, at 3am, they brought out dinner, I wanted to cry. In my head, I was screaming, "Please just let me sleep." But I sat down and forced some food into my stomach, and then stumbled over to the bed. They didn't turn out the lights or stop the wedding cheers until about 5am. I drifted into blissful sleep.

The next morning, around 7am, the woman who insisted on calling me Fadia instead of my name started HOLLERING at us sleepyheads to get out of bed. I knew she was hollering because I could hear her clearly through my earplugs. Every single syllable she shouted pounded in my head like the drums that I'd been hearing at the parties for the past two days. I thought to myself, "This must be what a hangover feels like."

Then I remembered the proverb that says, "Whoever blesses his neighbor with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, will be counted as cursing." (27:14) With that recollection of Scripture, I was able to rise out bed, take some of the miracle pill, and go get coffee with a smile.

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The day before the wedding, I went with the sister to the market to purchase a few last minute things for the next day. At the stand where we were picking up the stencils for the henna, the female vendor saw my blue eyes and practically went into a seizure she was so thrilled by them. She kept talking really fast, and I picked up words like, "blue eyes," "pregnant," "you come," "bless me." I turned to my friend and asked for a translation into French. She said that the woman said, "You're so blessed to have such beautiful blue eyes! The next time I am pregnant, you must come back and lay your hands on my stomach so that the baby will have blue eyes like yours. It will bless me if you come back again when I am pregnant next."

Um...I don't think it works like that. If she thinks my eyes have that much power, I'd love to see what she thinks of my miracle pill the next time she has a headache!

Photos from the wedding

I posted the pictures from the wedding weekend, and explained all the stuff that goes with them over there on the photoblog.

Photos of the making of fresh lemonade HERE.

Photos of what happens during the day HERE.

Photos of the "bachlorette" party HERE.

Photos of the henna (non)slumber party HERE.

Photos of the day of the wedding HERE.

Photos of the results of the salon HERE. (See blog post below for full story).

Photos of my friends at the wedding HERE.

Photos of the actual wedding HERE.

Since you can't write comments on the photoblog, if you see something in the photos that sparks a question, post it here in the comments, and I'll do my best to answer it. Sometimes stuff here becomes common place to me and I forget that it's new/different to you and might need explaining. So ask any questions you want...and we'll see if I learned the answer over the weekend or not! :)

I'm still processing through the whole weekend...not sure how many blogs posts will actually get written. But keep checking back. And go look at the photos, since they tell so much. My facebook status pretty much says it all in one sentence.

3 days in a small North African town for a local friend's wedding = lots of henna, lots of couscous, lots of dancing, lots of saying "mafhemtesh" (I don't understand), lots of turning down offers to become Muslim, lots of culture, lots of laughter, lots of memories... and practically zero sleep.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

You've heard the old saying, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," and I experienced the truth behind that this weekend.

You know in the story of Esther how the women went through a year of beauty treatments for their one night with the king? Well, it seems not much has changed in this part of the world since then. My friend, the bride, left the capital city where we live days before her wedding to go to her small home town and begin the process of getting herself beautiful for her soon-to-be-husband.

I arrived a few days later for the final day of beauty treatments and then the wedding itself. By the time I arrived, she had already been to the hammam (public baths) for a serious scrub down, all the hair on her body except her head removed (quite painfully, I might add, from some of the videos they showed me), had something done to her face that caused it to break out and required water to be sprayed on then constant fanning to cool it of, and her hair dyed and treated.

So my first day there, we sat around while she fanned her face, and helped to keep her veil covering her hair so no one could see it before the wedding (when the new color would be revealed). The henna party was that night and everyone except the bride had henna applied to their hands and feet. She would have henna applied to her hands during the actual wedding. On the actual day of the wedding, she left early in the morning to go spend the day at the salon, where she would have blonde highlights added to her hair (only married women have highlights), get her nails done, and her make up done, and finally her hair coiffed for the wedding. We didn't see her again until her grand entrance at the wedding itself. The women at the salon help her into her gown...so different than our weddings, where the bridesmaids and women family help!

But the bride isn't the only one who goes through beauty treatments! All the girls do. So while we were sitting around that first day, one of the things that happened was HAIR REMOVAL.

One of the girls came into the living room where we all were lounging with the bride carrying a pot that still had red hot fire embers on the bottom of it, and a cup of water. Inside the pot was a mixture of melted sugar, water, and lemon juice. (My friends from Egypt--I think yall call this "sweet.") They told me it's just called "sucre" (sugar), and it's pretty much like waxing hair removal. But looked even more painful than waxing.

Someone would take some of the piping hot sticky mixture and apply it to a girl's upper lip, AND UP HER NOSE, and then just yank it all back off. Can you image having your nose hairs ripped out by hot glue?! Yeah. OUCH. So when they asked if I wanted to be sucre'd, I literally ran across the room with a loud, "No way!" When asked why, I didn't know how to say "pain," so I just said, "because I don't like OOOOOOWWWWWW!" They howled with laughter and made me repeat that phrase all weekend long.

They pointed out the hair on my arms and asked why I didn't remove it. I explained that because it's blonde and soft, I don't feel the need to (although I have been known to in summers past...but wearing long sleeve shirts here everyday, I've been lazy this summer, and left my arm hair alone). They explained that since all their hair is black, they have to remove it...it's just so unfeminine and not beautiful. I was a little shocked to see all the places they have hair (on their chest and back--girls!), and that they work so diligently to remove it all. And oh so thankful that I don't have hair on my chest or back that they would want to remove with sucre.

All the girls asked about my hair--my grey is really beginning to grow in strong--why don't I have it colored? I explained two reasons why: first, my hair has been colored so many times that it's pretty much fried. So I decided before arriving in North Africa to just let it grow out for awhile and get back to it's natural color, and once all the fried colored hair was cut off, I would deal with the grey. My hair needs a break.

But the other reason is something I've been pondering for awhile. I've been thinking about what behaviors and mentalities are from my American culture, and what behaviors and mentalities are Biblical culture. This train of thought is challenging me in how I spend my time, what I do with my money, how I think about myself and others. My grey hair is one small example. Our culture tells me that it is more beautiful for me to have no grey hair, because grey means old, and youthfulness is better than old age. Our culture tells me that it's okay to spend a good deal of money on dying my hair to hide my grey hair and appear young.

But the Bible says that grey hair is a crown of wisdom, and with youth comes folly. That my beauty ought to come from a love of the Lord that is visible, and not from fancy hairdos and expensive clothes and jewelry. I want to be wise. I want even the hairs on my head to show my love for the Lord. And I want to be a good steward of the money He has given me and spend it on things other than hiding the crown of wisdom that I feel like I'm earning right now. And so...I'm letting my grey hair grow out.

I shared that with my friends. I told them that I wanted to participate in most of their beauty treatments...but not removing hair painfully or dying hair that for me, right now, is a a physical example of me figuring out and living out my faith in everyday life. They understood that and let me keep my grey hair, and even told the women at the salon not to give me a hard time about it.

Oh, the salon. We arrived at 5:45pm, with appointments for 6pm. In a small salon with 6 chairs, there were 30 women waiting at any given moment that night. (Yes, I counted.) When we first arrived, I was excited and a little nervous. What would they do to my hair? What colors of eye shadow would they put on me? Would I be able to understand questions they asked at me? Would I look like an idiot after it was all done?

After an hour of waiting for our turn to sit in the chairs, the excitement wore off. 30 minutes after that, boredom set in. When I'd been there for over 2 hours, I simply didn't care anymore what I would look like at the end of it all. I just wanted to get it over with, and on to the wedding. And I was beginning to wonder when we would eat dinner, since it was 8pm, and the wedding was supposed to start at 8pm...

I asked my friend if it was okay that it was 8pm and we weren't all done yet, and the wedding started at 8pm. She said yes, it was fine, but I could tell she was starting to get angry at the salon for not honoring our reservations.

I finally was plopped into the make-up chair, and laid back, closing my eyes as they began to go to town on my face. I heard the beautician ask my friend what color my dress was...and that was it. No asking me what I wanted, just her doing what she thought would look good. I think I might have fallen asleep in the chair, because the next thing I knew, I heard my friend shout in English, "bettercountry! OPEN YOUR EYES!" She'd apparently told me first in Arabic, and then in French, but being half asleep, I didn't hear. Plus I don't know those words in arabic yet (open or eyes), so I wouldn't have understood the first time anyway.

Once they were done with my face, they fixed my hair. I was looking at some of the other girls and their outlandish make-up, and my first thought was, "They look like cross-dressing hookers." Then I began to think about how this insane make-up is what is beautiful to them. In their culture, 14 shades of eyeshadow that goes all the way up to the eyebrow and extends almost to the ear, on a powdered white face, with the brightest shade of lipstick known to man is considered beautiful. Even though it looks ridiculous to me, it's beautiful to them.

And so I will keep my grey hair. It may be beautiful only to me as a result of my understanding of Scripture, and it may look ridiculous to every one else...but it's beautiful to me to have a "crown of wisdom."

We finally left the salon at 9pm, raced back to the house, threw on our dresses, and flew across town to the wedding hall. No dinner, but we were "beautiful." My friend, the bride, told me later that night that when the groom saw me all dressed up with local make-up and coif, he was joyfully surprised and thrilled. They're all so used to me being obstinate in my refusal to become a Muslim, that I think they don't expect me to adapt to any of their ways. So while I thought the hot pink and gold eye shadow was GHASTLY, it made them happy, and for this I am happy.

Even with my grey hair, in their eyes, I was beautiful. Click HERE to see photos from the results of the salon. If I go to another wedding, I will rent a formal gown like the other girls do, and I will get my make-up and hair done again. But I will take my own lipstick...and pack a powerbar in my purse!

Standing Up for Princess Leah

I just got back from my friend's wedding, and will have plenty to write up and tell about it over the next few days. I'm too brain dead right now to function. But here is one short quip from the weekend that made me laugh and laugh.

I went to the wedding fully expecting every mother I met to try to marry me off to her son, and every friend to her brother. I received ZERO proposals. A first, I must say!!!

Master Yoda, my brother, however...unbeknownst to him, received several offers.

Here's how the conversation went with nearly every single girl I met who wasn't engaged.

Single girl: "Do you have brothers?"

Me: "Yes, I have one."

Single girl: "Is he married?"

Me: "No. But he has a very serious girlfriend."

Single girl: "But they're not married? Tell him to marry me instead."

One girl even said, "Invite me to their wedding. I will convince him then to marry me instead."

Seriously?

Princess Leah, you need not worry. I bragged and bragged that I want to keep you as Master Yoda's girl. You're worth more than 1000 camels!

But it really was a first for me to not be offered to a hundred different Mohammeds, but instead to have girls want to marry my brother and be sad to know that I've only got one, and that one's taken.

Growing Pains

No, this post is not about Mike Seaver. But wouldn't it be fun if I'd randomly met Kirk Cameron, and then wrote a whole blog post about it?

It would be an understatement to say that I am learning alot. And much like a junior high kid who's bones grow faster than his skin can keep up and it's just painful... that would be me right now.

For two weeks, Teacher tried to push our class so that we could finish the program of the level we were in before the summer intensive starts (next week), so that our intensive could be a whole new level. Those two weeks were crazy. Near the end, I stated that I simply could not learn anything more that was new. Teacher looked at me like she didn't understand. How hard can it be to learn just a few more words? Just a few?

I explained it this way.

You know how when you eat couscous, it expands in your stomach later? (For those of you who don't know, couscous expands in your stomach later. So if you eat until you're full...about 30 minutes later you'll feel lousy. If you eat until you're stuffed, 30 minutes later you'll feel downright sick.) You have to know when to stop eating couscous, or you'll be really ill later. But it's very cultural for the woman serving the couscous to keep dishing it onto your plate. "Eat more!" she says.

I've learned, that to communicate that I cannot eat any more couscous, I need to put my hand on my stomach and say, "alhumdullah." (Praise be to God.) Thank the good Lord, I've had my fill. With that North African twist of "Good Lawd Almighty, that was frightful good, but I'm about to bust!" the nice lady will stop spooning more of the expanding explosion of a grain onto my plate.

Teacher nodded that she fully understood. Patting the belly with an "alhumdullah" is the only way to not keep putting more couscous down the pipes.

Once I knew she got it, I patted my HEAD and said, "alhumdullah." And then explained that she was the nice lady who was refusing to stop spooning more of the expanding explosion of vocabulary and grammar into my brain. Any more and I would keel over and die from grammar gluttony.

So I've received a reprieve from language learning for a few days (alhumdullah). But oh, I'm still learning so much more.

I learned this week that you can't invite someone via someone else. (Example: You can't have one sister who's already at the party call the other sister asking them to come join in the fun.) And you can't invite someone the same day of the event...they need two days notice. (There's apparently a proverb that says, "The person invited to your house today will stay at his own house today.")

I learned that I can't throw away old bread, even if it's molded, because bread is food from God and should thus never be thrown away. And apparently one of the men walking through the neighborhood yelling things I don't understand is the man who picks up the old bread...but I haven't learned yet how to tell when he comes by, and the appropriate way to give him the old bread, and what he does with it.

I learned that I can't walk barefoot on tile..."because it will give you gas." (Insert snarky snicker here.)

I learned that I can't leave my shoes with the sole upwards "because that invites Satan to mischief with my shoes and thus my life." (Insert sadness here.)

I learned that there is a phrase "God bless you" and another phrase "God help you" and that there are different appropriate times to say them but I'm still working on how to pronounce each one properly.

I learned that when someone loves you, they give you way more than the normal two kisses of greeting...but I have not yet learned how to know when you lean in for a kiss if you are loved enough to get more than one kiss per side nor how many kisses I will receive on each side once the multiple kisses of love begin. (Insert thankfulness that I became comfortable with greeting with kisses in Portugal over 10 years ago, so that at least I'm not having to learn that now.)

And I am in the process of learning what it means when Scripture says, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (Insert joy here.)

All this learning, you see, has been painful. I have a headache every day. The nerve behind my eye that only twitches when I am severely stressed twitches all the time. My appetite is all out of whack. My joints ache. All the learning, like couscous, is expanding past limits that my pitiful little brain can handle, and thus exploding in various forms of physical aches and pains. Much like Mike Seaver, I am having Growing Pains.

But...much more like Kirk Cameron, (the actor who played Mike Seaver and who is a brother in Christ), I am being changed. Two verses that have brought me much comfort and hope lately is that "this slight momentary affliction is preparing for [me] an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison" (2 Cor 4:17) and "after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To HIM be the dominion forever and ever, Amen." (1 Peter 5:10-11)

I'm feeling pretty aware of all my glaring weaknesses right now...but I'm also standing on the promises that these growing pains are "slight momentary afflictions" that will last only for "a little while," and that when this phase is through, He will make it better. He is making me better, for His glory and dominion.

And no matter how much couscous is spooned onto my mental plate, THAT deserves one big "alhumdullah." (Insert Hallelujah chorus here.)

The Hanoot

Sometimes I forget that there are a million things I could blog about because while they have become normal to me, those of you in America don't know about them at all. So please allow me to introduce you to the Hanoot. (Pronounced: ha-noot. Which is why I spelled it "hanoot.")

The Hanoot is the local grocery store. It's really small and sells food stuffs. When I say small, I really mean small. About the size of your kitchen pantry, with a counter in the front of it, and a Hanoot man behind the counter. At the Hanoot, you approach the counter and tell the Hanoot man what food stuffs you would like, and he grabs them from his pantry-sized store for you. There are Hanoots everywhere, so that you don't have to carry groceries far.

The Hanoot man does not sell fruit; the Fruit man sells fruit. The Hanoot man does not sell vegetables (nor does the fruit man); the Vegetable man sells vegetables (and walks through the neighborhood yelling, "Vegetables! Vegetables!"). The Hanoot man does not sell meat; the Butcher sells meat (but not necessarily fish...there is a fish man who walks through the neighborhood yelling, "Fish! Fish!"). And the Hanoot man does not sell spices or olives; the Spice and Olive man sells those (and as far as I can tell, there is not a man who walks through the neighborhood yelling, "Spices! Olives!")

The Hanoot man does sell water, juice, milk, and soda. He sells yogurt and sour cream. He sells dried goods like pasta, tomato sauce, cookies, and canned food. He also sells bread and eggs.

The first time I went to the Hanoot man, I just needed a bottle of water. I was completely dehydrated, but too tired to carry a whole six pack across the street and up the stairs to my apartment. At the time, I only knew the words to say "One. Bottle. Water." I didn't know quantity words, and I didn't know that it's not really normal to buy just one big bottle of water. They come in six packs, and since you always need water, it just makes sense to buy the whole six pack. But as I said--I was too dehydrated to carry the six pack home. So I asked for one bottle of water. I pointed and said, "One."

"You just want one?!" He shrugged his shoulders and gave me the one bottle.

The next time I went, Roommate had sent me down to buy some sour cream while she was making dinner. I walked up to the counter and asked him for two sour creams, please. He handed them to me and said in French, "Where are you from?" I responded in Arabic, "I'm from America, and I'm learning Arabic. You speak Arabic to me, okay?" (Because I didn't know how to say, "Will you speak Arabic to me, please?") He nodded and gave me this look that said, "What in the world is an American doing learning Arabic, living in this neighborhood, shopping at my Hanoot?"

I went to the Hanoot again yesterday for a six pack of water. I still didn't know the word for a six-pack, so I just pointed again. Mr. Hanoot man is catching on to me, though.

In Arabic he said, "You want six waters or just one?"

"Six," I replied.

"It's called a 'sticka.' The group of six is called a 'sticka.' Do you want a 'sticka'?"

"Yes, please, I want a 'sticka' of water."

A woman who was buying some bread smiled at me, and joined in the fun. "What kind of sticka of water do you want?" And she listed the different brand names of water.

"I want a sticka of Safia water, please... and some yogurt."

And then they helped me practice saying different kinds of food as I picked out which flavors of yogurt I wanted.

I am learning to be brave and shop at the Hanoot. It gives me some practice for language, obviously, and lets me interact with people--something the Western-like grocery stores do not do. I really like the relational aspect of it. (Like how, for example, the Hanoot man stopped me the other day to ask me about the 50 euro bill he had acquired.) I like that if I need more eggs or milk or bread or water or yogurt, I literally just have to cross the street to get more.

Why does it require me to be brave to shop there? Because I feel like an absolute idiot every time I go. First of all, because I still don't know what I can buy at the Hanoot and what I can't...and so I feel stupid when I ask for something that he doesn't sell. Second of all, because these one, two, and more than two quantity words for food are really hard to get straight...and so I feel stupid when I mess them up so poorly that he doesn't know what I'm asking for. And third of all, because the Hanoot man always seems to be a hopping place, and people in a hurry to get their groceries might not be patient as I take 5 minutes to spit out the one sentence of what I want to buy...and so I feel stupid for getting in their way with my language inabilities.

But that's why I was so encouraged yesterday by not just Mr. Hanoot man telling me the word 'sticka,' but also by the woman buying bread joining in the fun. I'd forgotten in my fear of looking stupid that these are relational people who will slow down in order to be relational. People are more important than time to them, and so they don't mind if I slow things up for a minute or two in order to learn the word 'sticka'. Or to figure out what the Hanoot sells and doesn't sell. It even brings a smile to their face to see me trying.

And so... it's one of my current little things I'm enjoying about here: going to the Hanoot.

A few anecdotes

My language teacher foolishly taught me the phrase "Open Sesame!" in Arabic a few weeks ago, and it has now become the magic catch phrase at school. Instead of knocking on the door, me and Mr. Real McCoy will yell "iftah ya sim sim!" from the hallway. When doing a card trick for Teachers, we have them say "iftah ya sim sim!" before we flip a card. When Teacher wants me to conjugate verbs, even then I make her say, "iftah ya sim sim!" to me to get me to open my mouth to speak.

This may not seem overly funny at first to you, but imagine a Chinese student in America learning English, and someone teaches them an old-fashioned cheesy saying like, "Ride em cowboy!" and then they say it with a thick accent and much gusto for EVERYTHING. And that would be me with "Open Sesame!"

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I would have thought until a few days ago that there aren't really traffic laws here. I mean, people run red lights all the time. Drive backwards in a round-a-bout. (Not just the wrong way in a round-a-bout, but backwards the wrong way.) There are no lines. There is no separation between the sidewalk and road. There is no "wrong way" on a road.

So when my taxi driver got pulled over the other day for going right on red to exit a round-a-bout, I was shocked. I mean...right on red isn't even dangerous. But I was even more shocked when the taxi driver (a) left the meter running so that I ended up helping to pay for his traffic ticket and (b) explained to the police man that he ran the light because he was distracted by talking to "the american woman." How did it become my fault that he didn't obey the traffic law?

All in all, it cost me 25 cents, and gave me a bit of laugh.

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In France, I became addicted to Sweet Chili Pepper Doritos. I mean, addicted. I could eat a whole bag every day. I love the perfect blend of sweet and spicy. Oh my goodness, lovelovelove. One day about six weeks ago, I saw ONE BAG of those chips on the shelf at the store. And I happily paid the $5 it cost to buy the ONE BAG. One day, about three weeks ago, I saw mini-bags of them on the store shelf--for about $3.50 a bag. (The size bag you put in a kid's lunch). I couldn't do it. I just couldn't pay that much for them. I left the store so sad to have found my one addiction available to me, but not within a price range I could justify paying.

I went to the store today, and saw a whole shelf of normal sized bags. I checked the price, and the shelf clearly stated, "Pepper Cheese Dorito Chip: 700 millimes." (Conversion: 50 cents.) I can pay 50 cents for my addiction!!! I grabbed three bags and went to check out, also picking up a loaf of bread and a box of coffee filters. I paid 11 dinar.

I walked out and began thinking about it. 3 bags of chips for less than 1 dinar each, plus 1 loaf of bread (1 dinar) and 1 box of coffee filters could NOT add up to 11 dinar. There's no way that my coffee filters cost 7 dinar. I pulled out the receipt.

Each bag of Doritos cost almost 3 dinar--so I paid almost 4 times as much as I expected to pay. And while the price was equal to what I would pay for a bag of chips in the states, it felt like a ripoff to pay that much here.

But then I ate half a bag in one sitting, and they tasted so good I simply didn't care.

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There's a vendor I walk by every day on my way to/from school. About once every two weeks, I stop and buy a six-pack of big bottles of water from him and take them with me to school. On really hot days, I'll buy an ice cream to give me the extra energy I need just to make it to the school.

Today, I was with the Real McCoys when I walked by his little shop, but they didn't know that I stop there often. The vendor stopped me, pulled out 100 EUROS cash, handed me a 50 euro note, and asked in Arabic, "Is this real?" I looked it over, handed it back and said, "I think so... You know that this is ALOT of money? ALOT?!" He said, "I know. That's why I wanted you to tell me if it was real."

While I was amazed that this poor little shop owner in North Africa had 100 euros cash, Mrs. Real McCoy stood watching all of this amazed that this random man was handing me 50 euros. I explained that he "knows" me because I buy ice cream and water from him, and he must have figured that I, a foreigner, would know about foreigner money.

But yeah, only in North Africa would someone be trusting enough to hand someone they only know because they sell them ice cream that much money.

Language, language, language!

I had language class 5 days last week. I have it again 5 days this week. Teacher is pushing me and the Real McCoys hard to get all three of us to the same level so that we can begin a 1-month intensive together in July.

The good news is that I get a 10 day break from class starting this coming Sunday.

The bad news is that I probably won't blog until the weekend. Sorry.

Things to look forward to during my 10 day break:

• My Butterfly friend is arriving this weekend!
• A trip to the Roman mosaic museum!
• A trip to another Roman ruins site!
• A national friend's wedding! (I've never been to a non-American wedding before, so I'm pretty excited about this.)
• Lots of language study!

And for anyone who's curious about what level I'm at in language, after 10 weeks of study...

• I can conjugate approximately 50 simple verbs in the present tense. (Rumor has it there are harder forms of verbs that I have not been introduced to, such as "to like". Since I can't say that yet, I say "I love a little" instead.)
• I can add a word that is like "will" to a verb to make it future tense. ("I will learn Arabic...")
• I learned the simple past tense last week, but I wouldn't really say that I can DO it yet. I need some time for it to soak in, and practice, practice, practice!
• I know my numbers, days of the week, family words, fruits and vegetables, colors, and a select random handful of other nouns. I only know maybe 15 adjectives, but so far they've been the only ones I've needed. (Big, small, good, bad, young, old, new, hot, cold, sweet, spicy, easy and difficult.)
• I can give directions to a taxi driver.

That's pretty much it. It's much more slow-going than French or Portuguese was...but I wasn't still learning how to read vowels after 10 weeks of studying those languages! As hard as Arabic is, I'm still enjoying learning it. (My Teachers are awesome!) And actually--the challenge of it really motivates me. I just keep telling myself that others learned this language, I can too.

And I have a deep, deep respect for all those who have learned it.

Okay, so with all of that said...I need to get ready for class. Have a great week, and I'll be back to blogging soon.

YA WHO-YA!

When I'm in the apartment, I hear various noises beyond the Sardook and the carpenter, but I don't know what many of them are. There's a man that comes through the neighborhood yelling what sounds like, "YA WHO-YA, YA WHO-YA!" There is a way to say "my brother" that sounds sort of like, "ya who-ya," but I don't think he's yelling "My brother! My brother!" everyday, up and down all the streets. And whenever I hear him, Roommate isn't around, and I always forget to ask her about it when she is around.

There is a honking sound that is reminiscent of the horn with a squeezy handle on it that clowns would use at the circus. The honking drove me nuts until I asked Roommate what it was, and she explained that it was the ice cream man letting the kids know he was in the neighborhood. Well, you can't be annoyed by the ice cream man, can you? I sure can't.

And on the way to class yesterday, I saw a man pushing a cart, selling various things. I remembered that in Turkey, there were men who walked through the neighborhood selling things, and would yell out really loudly what their various wares were. So I wondered if this was the "YA WHO-YA" man, and well...just what is he selling?

I asked Teacher in class what does the man with the cart sell? She laughed and said, "It depends. What was in his cart? There are lots of men selling lots of things." So then I told her, "Well, I'm not so confused about what HE was selling--I could see that--as I am more confused about what I hear some man yelling. He yells, 'YA WHO-YA' over and over." She laughed really hard and said that he is selling fish.

She didn't tell me the proper way to pronounce fish, so right now, I only know that it sounds like, "My brother!"

Well, when I asked all this question, Mr. Real McCoy perked up and said they have a guy selling something in their neighborhood too. Oh how I wish I could include a soundbite on the blog so you could hear him making the sound of the unknown vendor in his neighborhood. But it sounds something like an evil bird. Teacher didn't recognize that one, so it's still a mystery.

This somehow led to us practicing some hand gestures, so that we know the right ones to make (and can avoid making bad/rude ones by innocently using our hands to communicate). As we were doing all of this, I wondered what it must be like for Teacher to hear all our questions about her culture. I've always just been the learner, and find it so fun. But it seems like it would be equally fun to watch someone observe your own culture for the first time, asking questions about things that are so second-nature you don't even notice them, and have to learn basic things that even children know.

It's no wonder that she laughs as much as she does. I do hope she's having as much fun as I am.

She let me take some photos of her making the various hand gestures, and said I could post them on the photoblog. So, click HERE.

Culture Shock = Compounding Interest of Emotions

I'm not very good at math, and I don't really know anything about economics. (I can hear my dad snort in laugher and say, "understatement.") But here's something that I do know.

Basic math tells me that 1 + 1 = 2.

Simple interest tells me that 1 + 1 x interest = more than 2 (eventually).

Compound interest tells that 1 + 1 + interest x interest= more than 2 + interest on the interest (eventually).

Basic logic tells me that as that interest on the interest starts to grow, things start multiplying rapidly.

So when I learned this, I learned that I want compound interest. It's where you get the most whatever you're trying to get.

Well, my emotions have been out-of-whack lately, and I'm pretty sure it's a open/shut case of culture shock. I was thinking about my emotions today, when I realized that culture shock puts the compound interest principle to work, but not producing the most of what I'm trying to get. Let me give you an example.

If I was in America, and feeling kind of (insert whatever emotion here), and I saw a bug in my house, (insert frustration/fear of bugs/whatever emotion here), I would have two emotions.

1 + 1 = 2.

But say the bug problem doesn't go away, and I have to keep killing bugs. The continual and increasing amount of that emotion equates to simple interest, so that I begin to feel stressed, which is more than just the original two emotions.

1 + 1 x interest = more than 2 (eventually).

I may not have been stressed over the original one bug. But the bug x interest produces much more than just 2 emotions. And if it is actual bugs we're talking about in this case, a woman with 1 emotion already + bugs x interest = stress (and probably an unhappy husband calling an exterminator).

Now let's put this example into the context overseas.

Let's say I am feeling kind of (insert whatever emotion here) and I saw a bug in my house, I thus feel (insert frustration/fear of bugs/whatever emotion here). The reason it doesn't equal two emotions is because of compound emotion. Every single emotion is not just building on other ones, but picking up steam from the other ones, and making the increase multiply rapidly.

So when I'm already feeling frustrated from the carpentry shop and the sardook, and am just longing for a little bit of peace and quiet and rest, and I open my Bible to find all of that, only to suddenly see a large cockroach crawling on the wall just above my shoulder, I don't feel the normal emotion that cockroaches bring about in the states. Instead, I feel that emotion plus compounding interest of emotions.

So I leave my house to get a break from the carpentry shop and the sardook and the cockroaches, and walk through the heat that drains any semblance of energy that I once had, avoid being killed by insane drivers, and the compound interest of emotions just keeps multiplying. I get to language class and work on short vowels and the mathematics of my emotional state begin to soar past calculable amounts.

Here, I have (insert any number) of emotions (1+1+etc) + stress from everything about life overseas (interest x interest) = culture shock (rapid multiplication of emotions).

I am usually not irrational about killing a bug. Or about being drained by the heat. Or language learning. But when I'm already feeling a little emotional about whatever, cockroaches during my quiet time can quickly send me over the edge. As can short vowels. And almost being hit by insane drivers. You name it. Insert whatever here. Whatever you inserted, it adds up to me beyond description.

I THINK, if I had money in a compounding interest bank account that was working at the rate of my emotions during culture shock, I'd be one wealthy woman.

One apple? Really?

You may remember from this post that I learned a whole bunch of words regarding to quantities of fruits and vegetables. Sort of like when we say "a cluster" of grapes, or a "head" of lettuce.

Feeling pretty confident in those words, I went to the fruit man today to practice my language AND get some of that all-important food group. I thought I said, "6 pieces of apples, please."

He gave me one apple. So I told him, "No. Sorry. Six." He looked utterly confused, and then gave me six apples.

In class, I asked Teacher, "Do you use "piece" for apples?" She confirmed that, and when she saw my look of confusion asked what was up. I told her what had happened at the fruit man.

Mr. Real McCoy turns to me and says, "Cause you asked for six 1-piece of 1 apple." Teacher nods and says that he's correct.

"That's the singular form for apples?! And there's a plural form for piece?!" I ask in astonishment. "YES" they reply in unison to me. UGG. So I have to learn plural forms of all my fruits and vegetables, too? And you tell me this on a day we're working on short vowels (hardest thing I've had to learn yet)?

I still think, though, that if a foreigner came up to me in the grocery store in America and asked for "Six 1 piece of 1 apple" and didn't use the plural forms, I'd know they wanted six and not one. Why else would they keep saying six? And who buys just one apple? I told Teacher I'm going to give up on learning this quantity of fruits and vegetable nonsense and just speak to the fruit man in French.

She made a "shame shame" hand gesture at me.

Azulejos and the Alfama

An eternity ago I began to search which country I would go live and learn in for two years. I thought I was fully seeking God's will for my life, but years and maturity and wisdom have since shown me how young I was then. How self-serving I was. How I wanted God to acquiesce to my will instead of the other way around.

I picked one country after another, and each time, the door closed. After choosing seven countries, and the door shutting to seven countries, the program through whom I was going suggested I look at studying Arabic in Egypt. I remember them telling me how they thought I would flourish.

"You have an aptitude for languages. You'll learn Arabic well."

"You like adventure. You'll love North Africa."

"Your outgoing, energetic, story-telling personality will fit in so well among this culture."

But I was stuck. Sometime at the beginning of college I'd watched Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn, and decided I wanted to move to some cute European town, live in a cute little apartment with a balcony, learn a Romantic language, and go to the market to buy flowers on a regular basis. So stuck was I that I did not even consider their suggestion of learning Arabic in Egypt. Didn't pray about it. Didn't ask wise friends and family for advice. Simply said, "No thanks. Not interested."

Well, months later, I finally found an open door to get overseas and I went to Portugal. They were two of the happiest, most fun years of my whole life. God really blessed me in that time, and I'm still thankful for it. It felt like this little gift that He gave me.

The time since Portugal, and especially since I left California to move back overseas in 2004, has been difficult. I've often referred to those years as my own personal desert wanderings. (Click here for a small recap of that story, from when I left Marseille last summer.)

So why am I telling you about all that history from so long ago? Because when I landed here, in North Africa, two months ago, I couldn't help but laugh. The woman who said back in 1998 that she did not want to live in North Africa, nor learn Arabic, nor even hang out with Muslims...is joyfully living in North Africa, learning Arabic, and having a blast hanging out with Muslims. (Upon seeing me today, Mrs. Flower, immediately shouted my name to prove she'd remembered it without the cheat sheet--then stuck her hand down her dress just to get a laugh out of me.) But it isn't just the irony of my journey coming back around full circle.

In my first days, I noticed the tiles. There are painted tiles here--everywhere--and they look exactly like the Portuguese painted tiles called azulejos that were my absolute favorite thing there. I couldn't get over how much the tiles here look like my beloved azulejos from there. So I looked up azulejos on Wikipedia, and get this--they come from North Africa, and even the word azulejo, is from an Arabic word ( الزليج (al zulayj))! Somehow that escaped me when I lived there.

Then, as I began learning language, I noticed all the "sh" sounds that they've added into the dialect here. One of the most distinctive things about Portuguese is the "sh" sounds made for nearly half their letters. Portuguese even has the famous "inshallah" (if God wills it) in their language: oxalá. (oh-sha-la).

Well, now, after getting to be a tourist a few times recently, I've found that one of my favorite things to do is just wander around the medinas. A medina is the old town with winding, narrow streets, usually built within the walls of what used to be the fort that guarded the town. When I lived in Lisbon, my favorite thing to do was to wander through the neighborhood called the Alfama, because it was this glorious narrow, steep maze of streets, old houses, and a way of life from so long ago.

One of my favorite memories from Lisbon is the first time I wandered into the Alfama, found myself a little lost, and stated as much out loud to my friend with me. A kid, probably about five years old, ran up to us, gave a very dramatic and gentlemanly bow, and said, "YOU are in...(dramatic flair) THE ALFAMA! Welcome!" And ran off.

The medinas remind me so much of the Alfama that I went again to look it up. Sure enough...it comes from the Arabic word al-hamma, and the Lisbon neighborhood is left over from when the North African Moors ruled in Portugal. I found this interesting article that shows many of the other cultural things in Portuguese culture left over from when the Moors were living there.

The azulejos, the language, the Alfama...all of it made me sit back in wonder of my great God. HE KNEW the culture that my heart would love and thrive in...and even when I wouldn't accept it the first time it was offered, He graciously allowed me to go to the place that had enough of a taste of it that I would begin to hunger for more. I just can't get over how He was preparing me to love it here by having me fall in love with all the things that were Arab in Portugal.

And I'm humbled again that He's a God who gives second chances. He offered me the chance to be here so many years ago, and I refused to even consider it. And just like the wandering Children in the desert, I took the long way to get here. He literally took me through a desert at one point. While in Egypt in 2008, He told me my wanderings were over and I was arriving at Gilgal.

I camped out at Gilgal from then until two months ago, when I landed here. He was very clear upon my arrival...my long, out of the way, trialsome path to my Promised Land is over, and so is the time of sitting just across the way from it waiting to enter. Gilgal is a place that the wandering Children often returned to--but it wasn't the Promised Land. They had to leave Gilgal to go conquer their Promised Land.

Now is my time to conquer. Now is my time to enter, live, settle in, and have my milk and honey in the place that God promised me. The place He prepared me for way back when with azulejos and the Alfama. I am humbly grateful for this time and that I can honestly say--I love it here.

Curtaining, Cheat Sheets, and Koftans

Yesterday, I went to the Real McCoy's house to study language. They arrived here just two months before me, so we're pretty much at the same place linguistically...which makes them great language study partners. Not to mention friends. They live above a family, which also makes for great language practice when we need it. And cultural fun. I call the family the Flower family, because they have an AMAZING garden that I get to enjoy each time I go to see the Real McCoys.

Well, yesterday, the Real McCoy's and I had been studying for all of about 15 minutes when we heard the Flower family coming up the stairs. Studying went out the window, and practicing marched right through the front door. The Flowers have been helping the Real McCoy's pick out/purchase/sew/hang up/assemble curtains for all the rooms in their house. For this particular segment, they were bringing over the guest bedroom curtains to make sure they were hemmed to the right length, and then to pick out "cords" to help pull the curtains back.

(I say "cords" because they kept using the word cordant, which I understood, but I don't know what the right word for that is in English.)

Mrs. Real McCoy, one of the Flowers, and I left to go to the cord store--twice. I think cords, fringe, wall handles, and all sorts of curtain accessories were picked out. I laughed that the Real McCoys were going to end up with some seriously Arab curtain outfitting: Enough gold and bling bling for a lifetime!

Well, during this afternoon of curtaining, Mrs. Flower admitted that she was having a really hard time remembering my name. So I wrote it in Arabic for her on a small slip of paper. Usually, once people see it written, they can remember it better.

On our way back from the second trip to the curtain shop, we discovered that one of the Flower family's friends had stopped by to sell some koftan (traditional Moroccan getup that ladies here like to wear too). Mrs. Flower went to introduce me, and blushed that she'd once again forgotten my name. OH! She said and snapped her fingers to show she'd remembered something. But it wasn't my name she'd remembered. It was where she'd put the slip of paper with it written down. To my astonishment, this very modest woman reached her hand down into her dress, and pulled the slip of paper out of her bra.

Well, I'll be.

I doubled over I was laughing so hard. But I guess, when you wear the traditional dress that these ladies wear, there aren't really pockets anywhere to put something like a slip of paper. The bra will have to do, I suppose. She made me laugh even harder when later, she again forgot my name, and reached, again, into her bosom to withdraw the cheat sheet.

But I wasn't the only one laughing yesterday...because the Flower family sure had fun dressing me and Mrs. Real McCoy up like dolls in the koftans. They were so insistent about so much of it..."take your hair out of the pony tail!", "wear these heels instead of those flip flops!", "stand like this!", that I really thought they were going to parade us down the street.

There I am, all dolled up. The koftans really were pretty...although sort of hot. It was a fun afternoon...language study, culture learning, curtains and koftans, cheat sheets and photo shoots. It was one of those "this is why I love it here" type days.

I could blog...

I haven't been in a blogging mood lately. (Can you tell?) It's not because I don't have anything to blog about. I do.

• I could blog about the town I went to last week with the huge Roman ruins of a coliseum.
• I could blog about wandering through the medina this past weekend at the beach town I went to.
• I could blog about the promotion woman who cornered me in the grocery store and gave me her whole schpeal in Arabic, only to learn that I really couldn't understand much of what she said.
• I could blog about taking a taxi to the grocery store, only to learn that it wasn't in the capital city, but almost practically in this other town halfway across the country! (But I sure got to see some pretty olive trees from that taxi ride!)
• I could blog about more serious things, like how I've been pondering just how literally (and thus how far) are we to understand Jesus' statement of "turn the other cheek" and just what does it mean to really truly live one's life by FAITH?
• I could blog about the weather.
• I could blog about strawberry juice, and asking whether melons are green or orange inside to figure out what kind of melon they are, or about "blackberries" being called toot (which makes me laugh) but they aren't our kind of blackberries because they grow on trees and then fall to the ground.
• I could blog about how you know the coffee is bad when you are relieved to get Nescafe instead.
• I could blog about how the cheese doesn't melt. (I'm scared to know what's in the cheese to make it not melt. Dad says, if it gets hot enough, it'll melt. I responded, "Or just burn.")

But as I said, I haven't been in a blogging mood. Maybe because I've got too much on my mind to feel inspired to make the words come? Maybe because I don't feel funny right now, and I feel like my blog posts are supposed to be funny? Maybe because I'm just too lazy?

I really do hope that soon and very soon, I'll be able to blog my thoughts about God preparing my heart to be here by sending me to Portugal eleven years ago. And about what Mrs. Flower did that made me double over in laughter--twice. But instead of actually blogging those things, I wrote a whole post about what I could blog about...