We have become old!!!

Hello all... salaams.. hope you all are doing well, Alhamd we are doing great here in Damascus!!! As you can tell by the title, we are getting old!! lol, it seems that by the end of the day we are so exhausted that we are in bed by 10.. lol, thats never happened before.. but it is really a long day... as we mentioned in previous blogs we have 10 classes in a day, and by the end of it and after we finish our homework, go for a walk to practice our Arabic, or watch some tv (in arabic) we are pretty exhausted. Its good though cause we are well rested for the next day...

Our classes are going really well, we finished the first book of Arabic and have started the 2nd, which is much bigger then the first, so this one will take some time...and there are no pictures in this one! lol .... But according to our teacher, we are ahead of schedule which is great. Today in our tutorial class we did something interesting... the teacher turned on the tv and we started watching the news. Then he timed us for 3 minutes and told us to write down as many words we could recognize. It was a lot of fun and something different then our regular tutorial. The great thing was that we actually could recognize quite a few words, though because i was writing so fast, I could hardly read my own writing...lol...

So our reading and understanding are getting better, but we are striving to speak better. Though i have to say, for learning arabic for 2 months, we speak quite well, we just need to keep getting and finding more opportunities to practice our speakin... though far from good..we're progressing well :) Sabiha and I went out yesterday and bought little note books that we can carry around and write new words, to practice them in our conversation. Sabiha and I try to speak to each other in arabic at home, though our grammar is terrible and a lot of times we just throw in words in english if we dont know the arabic word.

It is getting colder now, we have started wearing jackets and more layers of clothes, and i hear its only going to get colder. The heating system here is different then what we have ever seen before, obviously...lol. There are these radiator things in every room but the main power switch for them is controlled by the building management. Yesterday they turned it on but unfortunately the heating system doesnt work in our apartment. So the manager said he would come by today to take a look at it, but ofcourse, he didnt. lol.. oh well, hopefully soon, but its not that cold yet, iA they will fix it before it gets much colder....

besides that, all else is good here, pray that we learn well, i know all your prayers are definitely helping us. we still cant believe that we are so close to the Honorable Lady Sayyida Zainab AS. Each day we are amazed and feel lucky that we are in her proximity. They call her the untaught Scholar, because of her wisdom, even though she was never taught. We pray that she will bless us so that we can learn and make her and her family proud, which in turn, most definitely will make Allah SWT pleased with us.

Take care for now and GO LAKERS!!!!!