Thank goodness!!!! lol, perfect timing too, Sabiha's bday today so perfect bday gift. Alhamd... we are doing great, would like to apologize again for not updating more frequently, but its been real busy... as sabiha mentioned, her parents are here visiting so its been real nice the last few days. our cousin from london is here as well with his family so that has been nice...tho he isnt staying at our place.... but we do have exams coming up so please pray that they go well. Alhamd, we havent fallen behind at all, keeping pace with the homework and class work that we have. But since we dont know what kind of tests we have, what format they will be in...and etc, we are stressing a little... i mean i havent been in school in a LONG time so dont quite know what to expect anymore...
Our classes are going well and the course is fantastic... we have alot of people coming to visit the institution to see how it is going, it seems we have met more people here then we would back in LA... lol... anyhow, thought i would give you a little insight as to who are our teachers and staff are.
1) Hussein bhai - Administrator... he basically runs the admin part of this course... he is real nice cause he listens to our problems and issues and concerns that we have, and it feels good to know there is someone there who will take care of them... and he listens to us and most of the issues get addressed in a timely manner... ie.. syrian standard time. lol.. we keep telling him he has become syrian with his laid back attitude... and he keeps promising us some Khoja bhiryani and cutless that we are yet to taste...lol.. but inshaAllah soon. we do hope that he stays on this role because we find comfort in approaching him.. he keeps mentioning to us that this is a temp role, but IA, lets see...
2) Sheikh Qasim - he is our arabic teacher, and boy, what energy this man has... he can probably read 3 pages of text in one breath..lol.. and we have him for 4 classes and its non stop energy in all... but i feel we have learnt alot already in the few weeks that we have been in his class. and i can only imagine that at this pace of learning and teaching, we will iA know quite a bit by the end of the year... he does place alot of demands on us, which is good otherwise we would fall behind in his classes... he is one of the teachers who speak english, so it helps learning from him. in fact his english is better than ours.. lol... he knows more about grammar and rules of the language than we do....truly funny!!!!!
3) Sheikh Saami - he is our fiqh and tutorial (religious rules) teacher... he speaks english as well... and he is REAl patient with us... he has a great sense of humor and you can tell he is real educated about the rules of religion. he has been in syria for the last 20 years and is real well traveled.. by the way, he can eat spicy food just like we do, surprising since most arabs cant. he is also our tutorial teacher, meaning we spend nearly 3 hours a day with him.. and the time in his classes fly by.
4) Sheikh Abu Hamza - he is our qur'an teacher and dictation teacher - AND he only speaks arabic.. and the great part about his class is that we understand most of what he is talking about.. he does do great hand gestures, and it feels like we are playing charades sometimes..lol... but Alhamd, it gets the job done. and he has a wonderful, i mean great voice when he recites the Holy Qur'an.. supposedly the plan is that we recite like him, iA..lol... he did invite us to his house for dinner one night where we spent 4 hours talking to him and his family who speak absolutely no english... lol.
5) Um Hammza - she is the girl's qur'an teacher.. she speaks no english as well, and sabiha says she really enjoys her class... i think sabiha is her pet student in that class.. thats probably true in every class... ummm, i dont really know her that well, cause she just teaches the girls, but im sure sabiha will write more about her in the future...
6) Syed Mahir - he is the caretaker of our institution.. basically he does the up keeping of this place and takes care of everything that the admin. asks him to do. he does not speak english either, but we get along real well with him and we get to practice our arabic with him as well. he does make a mean cup of tea tho..lol sabiha and i drink black tea now days..lol...
ok, thats it for now, sabiha is tired and wants to go to sleep...lol... will try and update more often, iA.... anyways, take care and pray that our exams go well.
Peace
Monday, October 22, 2007
We have internet WOHOOOO!!! ('indanaa internet)
so the long awaited day has come...we now have internet access in our building, so no more apologies before starting each blog (hopefully)...hoping to upload pictures too!
it's been a great few days because my parents are here visiting...yup, great huh? they'll be here for a few more days. they were really pleased to see that we are settled, are doing well in school and are happy. I'm glad they are here so they are reassured that we are ok and can pass on the reassurance to the rest of our family and friends. they were able to come and see our classes and met our teachers during one of our breaks...they were pleased and so were our teachers. :)
classes have been going well...the pressure is on as we have exams next week...sat - thurs...one exam a day...a total of 6 ...yes we've started studying already...and have been probing our teachers for details re the exams as it will be different to sit for 6 exams, all in Arabic...we'll see how it goes...
so get this, the other day we went to the haram ( shrine of seyyida zainab - the grand daughter of our holy prophet) and to actually go inside you have to take of your shoes for respect...i normally take off my shoes and leave them on the side where there aren't too many people...so that is what i did...i went to pay my respects and when i came out my shoes were no where to be found lol i looked everywhere...i ended up meeting up with jaffer and my parents and the other couple we study with...we were all going out for dinner and were waiting for the driver to come...lol i had to run out with jaffer to buy a pair of sandals...went out found something real quick...came back in our driver still hadn't come..so just like that i decided to take a quick walk to where i had left my shoes --- went there and lo and behold they were back lol guess someone must have just borrowed them...lol oh well got and extra pair of sandals out of it.
anyhow, other than that..all is well...arabiyatuna afdhal alaan wa nahnu nastatee' an natakallam jayid. fi isboo' al qaadim 'indanaa imtihaan wa inshallah kulluna will get mia bil mia!
'our arabic is better now and we are able to speak well. next week we have exams and god willing we will all do well'.
though we can speak more now, we still have quite a few blunders, lol jaffer is famous for holding up a certain number of fingers but saying a totally different number...like to the taxi driver he held up 4 fingers but kept saying inthnain which is 2 lol yup cab driver was looking at us like we're crazy...he did that once w 4 and 10 also...held up 4 fingers but kept saying he wanted 10 lol lol t'was too funny...anyhow...jaffer's waiting for his turn to 'blog' so will sign off.
more frequent updates from now on...so keep coming :)
it's been a great few days because my parents are here visiting...yup, great huh? they'll be here for a few more days. they were really pleased to see that we are settled, are doing well in school and are happy. I'm glad they are here so they are reassured that we are ok and can pass on the reassurance to the rest of our family and friends. they were able to come and see our classes and met our teachers during one of our breaks...they were pleased and so were our teachers. :)
classes have been going well...the pressure is on as we have exams next week...sat - thurs...one exam a day...a total of 6 ...yes we've started studying already...and have been probing our teachers for details re the exams as it will be different to sit for 6 exams, all in Arabic...we'll see how it goes...
so get this, the other day we went to the haram ( shrine of seyyida zainab - the grand daughter of our holy prophet) and to actually go inside you have to take of your shoes for respect...i normally take off my shoes and leave them on the side where there aren't too many people...so that is what i did...i went to pay my respects and when i came out my shoes were no where to be found lol i looked everywhere...i ended up meeting up with jaffer and my parents and the other couple we study with...we were all going out for dinner and were waiting for the driver to come...lol i had to run out with jaffer to buy a pair of sandals...went out found something real quick...came back in our driver still hadn't come..so just like that i decided to take a quick walk to where i had left my shoes --- went there and lo and behold they were back lol guess someone must have just borrowed them...lol oh well got and extra pair of sandals out of it.
anyhow, other than that..all is well...arabiyatuna afdhal alaan wa nahnu nastatee' an natakallam jayid. fi isboo' al qaadim 'indanaa imtihaan wa inshallah kulluna will get mia bil mia!
'our arabic is better now and we are able to speak well. next week we have exams and god willing we will all do well'.
though we can speak more now, we still have quite a few blunders, lol jaffer is famous for holding up a certain number of fingers but saying a totally different number...like to the taxi driver he held up 4 fingers but kept saying inthnain which is 2 lol yup cab driver was looking at us like we're crazy...he did that once w 4 and 10 also...held up 4 fingers but kept saying he wanted 10 lol lol t'was too funny...anyhow...jaffer's waiting for his turn to 'blog' so will sign off.
more frequent updates from now on...so keep coming :)
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Eid Mubarak
s'nabd'a bil 'eid mubarak wa as'adu Allah ayyamakum! I begin with wishing you 'eid mubarak and may Allah help you through your years.
our month of fasting has come to and end and iA all our prayers will be accepted. the month of ramadhan was different - definitely and experience it being our first year here...though it was different from back home...our teachers and faculty went out of their way to make sure that had programs for us during the nights of ramadhan as we would not have known where to go for programs. We sealed the month with 'eid prayers yesterday morning...the eid prayers here was absolutely amazing...definitely made up for the the quiet evenings we had in ramadhan...the eid congregation was massive..lol u'll know from jaffer's story of his champals (sandals). anyhow it was great to have the other couple with us as we are now eachother's family...we had eid breakfast together and then went out at nite...we went to 'happy land' ( the major amusement park here) sat on a ride called pirata (pirate boat) and enjoyed some basket robens ( baskin robins) LOL anyhow we had a great time...aaaaaaaand back to dars (studies) today.
now that the month of ramadhan has come to an end, we will probably have more energy through out the day to focus on our classes...no more being kaslan (lazy)! we are now able to communicate much more, though sometimes our tenses for verbs are incorrect we make do alhamd. however i am REALLY really enjoying the classes and crave to learn more so I can converse properly...but for now, i try to use it whenever i can...
alaan inteha al waqt lil internet, thumma anaa adhabu ilal baytee...ma' salaama --- ie, times up, gotta go home - peace! ~sabs
our month of fasting has come to and end and iA all our prayers will be accepted. the month of ramadhan was different - definitely and experience it being our first year here...though it was different from back home...our teachers and faculty went out of their way to make sure that had programs for us during the nights of ramadhan as we would not have known where to go for programs. We sealed the month with 'eid prayers yesterday morning...the eid prayers here was absolutely amazing...definitely made up for the the quiet evenings we had in ramadhan...the eid congregation was massive..lol u'll know from jaffer's story of his champals (sandals). anyhow it was great to have the other couple with us as we are now eachother's family...we had eid breakfast together and then went out at nite...we went to 'happy land' ( the major amusement park here) sat on a ride called pirata (pirate boat) and enjoyed some basket robens ( baskin robins) LOL anyhow we had a great time...aaaaaaaand back to dars (studies) today.
now that the month of ramadhan has come to an end, we will probably have more energy through out the day to focus on our classes...no more being kaslan (lazy)! we are now able to communicate much more, though sometimes our tenses for verbs are incorrect we make do alhamd. however i am REALLY really enjoying the classes and crave to learn more so I can converse properly...but for now, i try to use it whenever i can...
alaan inteha al waqt lil internet, thumma anaa adhabu ilal baytee...ma' salaama --- ie, times up, gotta go home - peace! ~sabs
Eid Mubarak!!!
salaams to all, ok... again must start off the blog with many apologies... lol.. we really try hard to come and update our blog periodically, but sometimes, manytimes, it becomes a very difficult process... lol... last time we came with the intention to update it, however, checking our email took up the whole hour... so here we are again, with a 2nd attempt... but keep up the faith and please keep checking... you're the reason we write... but good news, they should have internet access soon at our school (sounds funny doesnt it, but lest you forget we are in a 3rd world country :)), but one connection, so we will have to share it with the other couple, but really, it doesnt matter... it will be good to go online more often, meaning... yup you guessed it, more updates on our blog!!!
so the holy month of Ramadhan is now over, meaning we can eat again..lol. jk, so eid mubarak to all of you.... the month of ramadhan was definitely different here, but in many ways it was the same... i really thought coming here i would get a new sense of spirituality that was really lacking in my life, being in a muslim country, around shia's would raise my level of spirituality, but guess what, that did not happpen. my level of spirituality has unfortunately been stagnat... lol... not really funny, but kind off... so that means that the enviroment doesnt really play that big of a role... sure it does a little, but spirituality comes from within, and it looks like i need to step up my game... pray :) but in many ways, it was fantastic.. walking on the streets at 1 in the morning, still packed with people, people eating and drinking (juice and milkshakes :))... we found a great falafel place which charges 15 syrian pounds... about $.33 (cents) and it filled me up good... and this great juice place across the haram that has vimto juice (fresh) for 25 syrian pounds ($.50) amazing, we eat comfortably sometimes for less then a dollar.. lol... sometimes...lol.
the day of eid was great tho... the feeling on the day of eid, at the eid prayers, made up for the fact that the month of ramadhan wasnt how i expected it... please dont get me wrong, we are having a great time here, just not what i expected. however eid prayers was amazing... the entire hall was packed, and when i say packed, i mean packed... it took me 5 minutes of walking and stepping on people before someone moved a little and i squeezed in.. great guy for doing that... the person reciting the duas had an amazing voice and the whole gathering was reciting with him... imagine a few thousand people chanting together... just great!!!! then afterwards, we went to Safir hotel for a nice western breakfast with omelettes and potatoes, beef and chicken... Alhamd, really nice... that day we spent a little (lot) more then $1.00..lol.. but definitely worth it... Tho the day was great, it was a little sad cause we dont have any family of friends here... but the other couple is alone too, so we had dinner and went out afterwards...
Funny thing happened when we went for our prayers... to get into the mosque, you give you slippers to someone to keep, and he gives you a token back so you can pick it up... however, i know this guy so i dont usually take a number... so i gave my shoes to him, his name is Ebrahim by the way, very nice guy.... but this day there was shoes all over the place, as i mentioned it was packed with people... so after it was over, i went out to get my shoes, and he handed me a pair of shoes, but they werent mine..so in broked arabic i told him that these werent mine and he looked around, and was really apologetic about giving my shoes away... so on the day of eid, i got a gift as well, a new pair of shoes...lol... so someone is damascus is wearing my shoes and i am wearing his.. atleast none of us are barefoot..alhamd... :)
so as we mentioned before, school is going well, we are getting into some slightly harder arabic material, so really need to focus, but ALhamd, its alot of fun... al-aan, nahnu natakalam qalil, insha-allah iltimase-dua, wa ba'da ithnan au thalatha shahr, nahnu saufanatakallam arabiya jayid... not sure at all about grammar....
k, take care and will write more later.... take care!!!!
so the holy month of Ramadhan is now over, meaning we can eat again..lol. jk, so eid mubarak to all of you.... the month of ramadhan was definitely different here, but in many ways it was the same... i really thought coming here i would get a new sense of spirituality that was really lacking in my life, being in a muslim country, around shia's would raise my level of spirituality, but guess what, that did not happpen. my level of spirituality has unfortunately been stagnat... lol... not really funny, but kind off... so that means that the enviroment doesnt really play that big of a role... sure it does a little, but spirituality comes from within, and it looks like i need to step up my game... pray :) but in many ways, it was fantastic.. walking on the streets at 1 in the morning, still packed with people, people eating and drinking (juice and milkshakes :))... we found a great falafel place which charges 15 syrian pounds... about $.33 (cents) and it filled me up good... and this great juice place across the haram that has vimto juice (fresh) for 25 syrian pounds ($.50) amazing, we eat comfortably sometimes for less then a dollar.. lol... sometimes...lol.
the day of eid was great tho... the feeling on the day of eid, at the eid prayers, made up for the fact that the month of ramadhan wasnt how i expected it... please dont get me wrong, we are having a great time here, just not what i expected. however eid prayers was amazing... the entire hall was packed, and when i say packed, i mean packed... it took me 5 minutes of walking and stepping on people before someone moved a little and i squeezed in.. great guy for doing that... the person reciting the duas had an amazing voice and the whole gathering was reciting with him... imagine a few thousand people chanting together... just great!!!! then afterwards, we went to Safir hotel for a nice western breakfast with omelettes and potatoes, beef and chicken... Alhamd, really nice... that day we spent a little (lot) more then $1.00..lol.. but definitely worth it... Tho the day was great, it was a little sad cause we dont have any family of friends here... but the other couple is alone too, so we had dinner and went out afterwards...
Funny thing happened when we went for our prayers... to get into the mosque, you give you slippers to someone to keep, and he gives you a token back so you can pick it up... however, i know this guy so i dont usually take a number... so i gave my shoes to him, his name is Ebrahim by the way, very nice guy.... but this day there was shoes all over the place, as i mentioned it was packed with people... so after it was over, i went out to get my shoes, and he handed me a pair of shoes, but they werent mine..so in broked arabic i told him that these werent mine and he looked around, and was really apologetic about giving my shoes away... so on the day of eid, i got a gift as well, a new pair of shoes...lol... so someone is damascus is wearing my shoes and i am wearing his.. atleast none of us are barefoot..alhamd... :)
so as we mentioned before, school is going well, we are getting into some slightly harder arabic material, so really need to focus, but ALhamd, its alot of fun... al-aan, nahnu natakalam qalil, insha-allah iltimase-dua, wa ba'da ithnan au thalatha shahr, nahnu saufanatakallam arabiya jayid... not sure at all about grammar....
k, take care and will write more later.... take care!!!!
Thursday, October 4, 2007
'utla' for 3 days!
so my vocab is slowly increasing and am ofcourse trying to pick up most important words lol 'utla' means holiday...we have a 3 day break, well today is almost over for us but we're off tomorrow and saturday. since it is the holy month of ramadhan; there are certain nights when we are awake and night in supplication and prayer to Him...it's nice to have these days off so we can focus on the spiritual aspect of this holy month.
we can't express enought how grateful we are to all of the people we interact with here alhamd...one of our teachers' invited us over to his place for dinner...his wife cooked a fabulous syrian/lebanese meal for us...neither him or his wife speak any english so we were forced to use the little arabic that we know - we did quite well as the 4 hours we spent there flew by really fast...
another person that we have failed to mention since we've arrived here, and has been extremely helpful is haji hussein - he is always there for us in any aspect since day one, and has continued to go above and beyond to ensure that we are well taken care of and are comfortable. he is always encouraging us to use our arabic with him and is always proactive in asking us about our classes to make sure they are goin ok. shukran jazeelan haji hussein. by they way remember in one of our earlier blogs i had mentioned how crazy it is driving here? well guess what? haji hussein got his licence just a few days ago - can u believe it? not sure yet if we're ready to drive with him, but sure he'll take us out once he gets his new car lol
as for our classes, they are going really well - each week is more and more exciting as we are learing more and more and are actually able to understand and communicate much more. just earlier we were watching some news on tv and we were actually able to pick up quite a bit!
al'aan nahnu nadhhabu ilal masjid lil salat wa ba'da namshee ila al-bayt lil iftaar! now we are going to the mosque for our prayers and then will walk home for dinner :)
we can't express enought how grateful we are to all of the people we interact with here alhamd...one of our teachers' invited us over to his place for dinner...his wife cooked a fabulous syrian/lebanese meal for us...neither him or his wife speak any english so we were forced to use the little arabic that we know - we did quite well as the 4 hours we spent there flew by really fast...
another person that we have failed to mention since we've arrived here, and has been extremely helpful is haji hussein - he is always there for us in any aspect since day one, and has continued to go above and beyond to ensure that we are well taken care of and are comfortable. he is always encouraging us to use our arabic with him and is always proactive in asking us about our classes to make sure they are goin ok. shukran jazeelan haji hussein. by they way remember in one of our earlier blogs i had mentioned how crazy it is driving here? well guess what? haji hussein got his licence just a few days ago - can u believe it? not sure yet if we're ready to drive with him, but sure he'll take us out once he gets his new car lol
as for our classes, they are going really well - each week is more and more exciting as we are learing more and more and are actually able to understand and communicate much more. just earlier we were watching some news on tv and we were actually able to pick up quite a bit!
al'aan nahnu nadhhabu ilal masjid lil salat wa ba'da namshee ila al-bayt lil iftaar! now we are going to the mosque for our prayers and then will walk home for dinner :)
Difficult to find time...
hello everyone... again, sorry for not writing in so long but thanks to all the people who check our blog on a daily basis. you are our motivation to write. We have been wanting to come to the Internet cafe for the last few days, but things have been busy with the month of Ramadhan, school and then our night programs. But ALhamd, starting today (thursday) till saturday we have a few days off from school due to the important nights in this Holy Month. Ramadhan here has been different. For one thing, everyone is fasting... well almost everyone..:) occasionally we will see people eating, but its probably cause they are visiting damascus... there are no huge congregations for us where we get together and recite our prayers (aamals together).. so that's different, but ALhamd, Sabiha and I have been doing them at home. the really nice thing is that during the days, the streets are quiet and deserted, but at nights they are lively and filled with energy. So tonight, because we have no school tomorrow, we will iA go out for a walk and have a late night meal as well...
we received some sad news from back home, one of my good friends' son passed away, i believe he was less then 1 year old but was quite sick. because we are so far away, it was really hard news to take...
besides that, our arabic classes are going well. it is amazing that in 4 weeks of studying, we can actually make sentences and communicate with people. of course, it is far far far from good sentences..lol.. but we can communicate. a few days ago we went to dinner to one of our teachers' home and he only speaks arabic. for 4 hours we were able to have a good conversation with him and his family.. ALhamd... fantastic. the kind or arabic we are learning is really useful for speaking, iA down the line we are supposed to learn grammar, but not yet. let me make a sentence for you... "al-talibu kharaja min al-bayt, wa dhahaba ila al-masjid lil-salaat." pretty cool huh... lol... what that sentence says is the student left from the house and went to the mosque to pray... lol.. we are learning basic terminology or words and how to use them in sentences, for example words ike min, ila, fee, ala, huwa, hiya, dhalika, tilka...all these words are key for sentence structure.. and then with the vocab we know or are studying, we can make nice little sentences.. lol.. we are also doing skits, so that helps out with our fluency on basic terminology... but honestly, all praise is for Allah SWT because I am baaaaaddddd at languages, and ALhamd i am not doing too bad after 4 weeks. doing pretty good actually.. Sabiha is doing phenomenal... really, hands down the best student in this program... yup, and she is my wife:)
ok, we will write more stuff later, sabiha is updating right next to me right now...
take care and remember us during these special nights of the month of Ramadhan.
we received some sad news from back home, one of my good friends' son passed away, i believe he was less then 1 year old but was quite sick. because we are so far away, it was really hard news to take...
besides that, our arabic classes are going well. it is amazing that in 4 weeks of studying, we can actually make sentences and communicate with people. of course, it is far far far from good sentences..lol.. but we can communicate. a few days ago we went to dinner to one of our teachers' home and he only speaks arabic. for 4 hours we were able to have a good conversation with him and his family.. ALhamd... fantastic. the kind or arabic we are learning is really useful for speaking, iA down the line we are supposed to learn grammar, but not yet. let me make a sentence for you... "al-talibu kharaja min al-bayt, wa dhahaba ila al-masjid lil-salaat." pretty cool huh... lol... what that sentence says is the student left from the house and went to the mosque to pray... lol.. we are learning basic terminology or words and how to use them in sentences, for example words ike min, ila, fee, ala, huwa, hiya, dhalika, tilka...all these words are key for sentence structure.. and then with the vocab we know or are studying, we can make nice little sentences.. lol.. we are also doing skits, so that helps out with our fluency on basic terminology... but honestly, all praise is for Allah SWT because I am baaaaaddddd at languages, and ALhamd i am not doing too bad after 4 weeks. doing pretty good actually.. Sabiha is doing phenomenal... really, hands down the best student in this program... yup, and she is my wife:)
ok, we will write more stuff later, sabiha is updating right next to me right now...
take care and remember us during these special nights of the month of Ramadhan.
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