Marhaba!

Keef hakum? Ana zaina, shukran! Al hamdilaila!

These are some of the phrases I learnt in my first Arabic language lesson today. I've been really looking forward to learning another new language but couldn't help being a little worried that I was going to be lost and left behind as I'm enrolling a week late into the course.

The administrator tried to reassure me with comments like "yes, it'll be fine" and that "the teacher will help you catch up", but the minute I entered the classroom full of white expat women stressing over not remembering what they'd learnt in the previous week's class, all 3 ounces of confidence and optimism I had in being able to catch up disappeared.

It seemed that my small stress attack was short-lived as the ladies in the class were really lovely and showed me some of their notes from the lesson I'd missed last week. I managed to photocopy the notes and caught up fine in the end.

Our teacher, Mohammed, is the only male in the class and he is really laid back and takes the class at a slow-ish pace. Mohammed doesn't write anything up during the lesson, nor does he have any preparation notes! I found this approach to language teaching really fascinating as I've never seen it before in all the seven languages I've studied. Mohammed's emphasis is on repetition and class participation.

I'm naturally an audio-visual learner with most of my preferred learning style being visual so at first, I found not seeing words and patterns a little challenging but soon got into the hang of listening carefully and repeating.

All in all, it was fun and I'm so happy to be learning a new language again. I'm already looking forward to next week's lesson!