More language stories...

Once you've been teaching English for a while, you can pick out potential pot holes before your students fall into them.

For example, I know that a lot of EFL learners have real difficulty telling the difference between the long "ee" and the short "i" sound. They often can't hear a difference between "sheep" and "ship."

Today, I began teaching Um Zahra nouns associated with a bedroom.

"Lamp," I told her, pointing to the appropriate picture.

"Lamp," she repeated.

"Bed," I said.

"I know bed," she said.

"Okay. Sheet. But Um Zahra," I said quickly. "You must be careful with this word. If you say it wrong, it's a bad word in English."

"Oh," she said. "Shit."

That really was unintentional on her part.

At least she doesn't have trouble making herself say some English words. In Arabic, the word for "think" is "fuker." Pronounced exactly like you don't want it to be.

People will talk...

Today, at my friend Ahlam's:

Ahlam: You should get pregnant soon. It will stop the people speaking about you.

Me: Oh! Are people speaking about me?

Ahlam: Yes.

Me: Are you?

Ahlam: Yes.

Well, I can appreciate the honesty.

One Year

...modeled on Proverbs 31

The Husband of Noble Character

How many people are lucky enough to find a noble husband?

He is far more precious than a diamond wedding ring.

The heart of his wife trusts and grows steadily closer to him,

and she will have no lack of gain.

He is always finding some new way to romance her

all the days of her life.

He studies hard and seeks work,

and he is happy when his hands are busy.

He is like the Google Corporation:

He always manages to find just the thing his wife needs.

He gets up super-early in the morning

and makes his wife coffee, just the way she likes it,

and brings it to her in bed.

He considers the weed-ridden land behind the house;

with his own hands he digs a garden and plants food.

He dresses himself in strength

at the university gym, and makes his chest strong.

He perceives that he has so many great things to offer the world,

so he gives all day long, and finishes his own work late at night.

He puts his hands to the whole days’ dirty dishes,

and his hands on his wife’s sore shoulders.

He opens his hands to the lonely,

and reaches out to those who were made homeless in the floods.

He is not afraid of the snow for his household

(because all his household lives in the desert)

and because he is faithful to provide for them.

He makes his home a place of warmth and familiarity.

He hangs pictures on the walls and offers to clean the shower.

He brings his wife flowers for no reason at all.

His wife is known to their neighbors;

because of her husband she has time and energy to love them.

He does water-treatment research that she doesn’t understand,

and he doesn’t forget to send a kind e-mail to his co-workers.

Strength and kindness are like two shoes he puts on in the morning,

and he laughs at all his wife’s silly jokes.

He opens his mouth with compassion,

but only after he’s sat quietly to listen to everything.

He doesn’t only study or work all the time,

because he is careful to put his family first in his priority list.

His wife rises up and calls him the best blessing—after Jesus—she’s ever had.

She brags about him to all her friends and all over the Internet.

There are a lot of nice guys in the world, I’m sure,

but you are better than all of them put together.

The people who are the life of the party are usually putting up a façade,

and your good looks might fade someday,

but you, because you love the Lord with all you have, should be praised.

Why They Don't Sell Fitness Magazines Here

I'm on a bit of a quest for a healthy lifestyle right now. I'm thinking of switching, though, to a quest for the Holy Grail, because I suspect the Grail might be easier to find in this country.

S.A. is a fat country. Not as fat as the U.S., but it's a different kind of fat. In America, we hate being fat. There's whole industries built on helping you lose weight. Here, telling someone they've gained weight is a compliment. Fully half the country suffers from self-induced diabetes. Saudis don't just want junk in the trunk, they want the rear bumper scraping the ground when they back out of the driveway.

Unfortunately, I come to this country armed only with my own knowledge of "how to live a healthy lifestyle," gleaned mostly from my mother and various fitness magazines. My arsenal of advice fails me time and again, and here's why:

The Fitness Magazine's Advice: When you go to a party, simply take your plate to the vegetable tray and load up on crudites. Or count out 15 pretzels and make them last all evening as you chat with your friends.
The Reality of Living in the KSA: When you go to a party, you will go armed with a plan. You will tell your husband you will not get yourself any birthday cake. You will have a (non-alcoholic, obviously) drink, only. When you get there, you will scan the entire table for something not made entirely of sugar and butter. When you don't see anything, you'll simply tell your host, "Oh, gee, everything looks great, thanks, but I just ate dinner and I'm not hungry right now." Success! Self-control! Inner glow of pride that you managed to refuse! But that'll all come crashing down when your host takes a plate, piles it high with cake, cookies, doughnuts and fried sugar, and pushes it into your hands. "Please, eat!" she'll say. "Enjoy! You are my guest!"

The Fitness Magazine's Advice: Look at food labels to keep good tabs on how much fat, carbohydrates and protein you are eating. Aim for a balance of protein and carbs, and limit fat intake.
The Reality of Living in the KSA: Food labels? What food labels? Here, food labels just say, "Corn," "Beans," or something in Arabic that, insha'allah, you'll be able to read soon.

The Fitness Magazine's Advice: Eat 4-5 mini-meals every day, aiming to pack in fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat proteins.
The Reality of Living in Saudi Arabia: Unless you want friends. Because when you visit them, I guarantee you they will bring you either tea with about a tablespoon of sugar in each cup or juice so sweet it'll make your blood-sugar levels do the wave. Additionally, I'll bet my skinny jeans that they'll bring you muffins or cake or cookies or candy, and if, IF you should DARE to refuse because you are trying to live a healthy lifestyle, they will suddenly start inserting the word "eat" into the conversation as though it was the word "um." "I went to the store--eat!--with my husband--eat!--and I wanted to buy some fruit--eat!--but I didn't know the name of it--eat! please! I made it myself! I made it special for you! I will be personally offended forever if you don't EAT!" Jillian Michaels herself couldn't stand up to such pressure.

The Fitness Magazine's Advice: Look for extra ways to get movement in. Don't take the elevator; take the stairs. Do bicep curls with your grocery bags as you carry them in. Find opportunities!
The Reality of Living in the KSA: If you attempt to "get moving" by lifting something like, oh, I don't know, a 12-pack of canned beans, people around you will go into a literal panic. "What are you doing??? Put that down! Let the men take care of it! Please!" Baffled, you will insist, "Oh, gee, thanks, I'm fine." At which point a Saudi woman will pull you aside and whisper, "Listen, really, you need to stop lifting such heavy things if you plan to have children one day." You can insist that you've moved heavy furniture in and out of apartments before. You can tell her you go to the gym specifically to lift weights. You can tell her whatever you want, but you will not convince her that lifting something that weighs about 12 pounds will not, in fact, damage your womb. Apparently, Saudis believe wombs are prone to just dropping right out. Yes, lifting more than 10 pounds will probably prompt at least one woman to hiss in your ear, "Your womb is around your ankles right now!" Your best defense is to just say, "Well, I don't want children right now," which is akin to telling an American, "I don't want freedom and happiness right now." That way, instead of being thought of as stupid, you can just be thought of as insane.

So, if anyone sees the fitness article titled, "How to Get Fit in a Culture That Values Being Pudgy Without Losing All Your Friends, Who Apparently Take Your Diet as a Personal Affront," please send it my way.

al-Arabeeya

I had one of those great language days. When you're learning a language, there are days you feel like a complete idiot, and there are days when you feel like a rock star. Today, people were asking me questions in English and I was answering in Arabic. I was offered a great discount at a sports store (shortly after I was told, "You speak Arabic good!") After speaking to one lady in Arabic, she asked me out of the blue to please have lunch with her sometime this week. I went to al-Ballad and purchased about a half-dozen small items without any major frustrations or difficulties in bartering. I felt like I had leapt over a huge first barrier when it comes to language-learning: I am making sentences. And not just the two or three I'd previously memorized. Cuz baby, I'm conjugating verbs now!

As I had previously suspected, language-learning opens up a whole new world (someone cue up that Aladdin song, eh?) Without Arabic, you can usually communicate in this country. Enough people know English; you can get around. And frankly, it's fairly tempting to stay there, with English--I mean, is Arabic really necessary?

But without language, you are always going to be a stranger--a stranger who prefers to stay strange. You are a huge inconvenience any time you want to accomplish anything. You are a shallow acquaintance for anyone who is less than fluent in English. You always have to ask others to come to you, instead of going to them. To refuse to learn the language is to insist on being aloof. And aloof people never get invited to the cool parties.

I often imagine myself standing in an enormous room with a crowd of other people. They're nice; they're interesting. But I just can't ignore the 5,000 doors lined up all around the walls of the room. Behind them, I can hear people talking--murmuring and singing to one another. I just know they're talking about how they grew up and who they hope to become and what they want out of life--but I can't understand a word. I might lean in and press my ear up against the door, but it's got a fat lock, and that door muffles everything.

But the Arabic language?

That's my heavy, golden key.

How Beautiful Are the Feet of Those Who Bring Good News

Last night, Marc and I spent an unexpected hour outdoors talking to a friend. Today, this is what my feet look like:

I counted 68 bites on this foot alone.

Like Batman

I visited my friend Ahlam last night. She remains one of my favorite people in the world, even though we have so little language in common. I think in about 2 months, my Arabic will be better than her English. A little moment from last night: We were sitting on the couch in the living room and all of a sudden, I heard the sound of someone tapping on the glass door behind us. I turned around and saw a man's shadow lurking behind the curtain. I almost screamed; then the shadow pulled the curtain aside and I saw it was only her husband, coming home early from class. I clutched at my heart, which was racing, and told him, "I was ready to fight or run!" Ahlam started laughing and said, "You have two doors in your house?" I told her yes, but my back door is always locked. She said, "Maybe one day I come to your house and scare you." I said, "Will you wear a mask?" She said, waving her hands to indicate a cape, "Yes, like Batman. With my abaaya behind me!" I laughed so hard I almost fell off the couch.