I'm back home again after another quick trip. The birthday party last night was a great deal of fun-- food, presents, and music. And music is inevitably accompanied by dancing. One of the American girls had recently acquired a drum in a village she visited, and so they passed around the drum and took turns playing, with everyone else joining in singing. (Everyone, that is, except the ignorant Americans who didn't know the words.) That led to the inevitable dancing (which always makes me think that it's no wonder they make the women cover)-- and then after a while someone decided it was time for the "English dance". [warning: the following may expose generation gaps] Evidently, at a party a few weeks ago (which I unfortunately missed), the girls had asked to learn an American dance, so Brandi and Melissa taught them the Electric Slide. But that wasn't what they really wanted-- as one of them put it, they wanted to dance like people dance on television. So Brandi put in her Skillet CD (that's a band) and they started moshing. (If you don't know what that is, think rock concert, right in front of the stage. Better yet, talk to someone my age (or my father); they can explain it to you. Ask them to demonstrate.) I spent most of the first song doubled over in the floor laughing. The whole idea of it-- being in this country, with friends from another, neighboring country, having a birthday party, moshing to Skillet-- was simply too much for me. Eventually the first attack of hilarity passed and our "mosh pit" really got going. We even convinced the mom and the aunt to join in for a few minutes. The neighbors probably thought we were tearing the apartment apart. In the States they would have called the police.

I meant to be in bed about an hour ago, but then I picked up the guitar.... I have class in the morning, and after last night's excitement and late bedtime, I'd better try to get a decent amount of rest tonight.

My visits with old friends were wonderful-- it was very refreshing to see them again and to know that some sort of impact has been made through my living here thus far. Two of them have birthdays this week (they're sisters), and since I have to be back in town for a meeting Friday morning anyhow, the birthday party will be on Thursday night so I can be there. And hopefully sometime in the next couple weeks they'll be able to come visit me here.

I spent Saturday afternoon with my former grammar tutor and her family. She traveled to the States back in mid-November-- actually, my last lesson with her was the day I found out I was being reassigned, but at the time I didn't really know yet whether I would be moving and was having trouble processing the news anyhow... so she didn't know I'd moved until she came back in January. Amazing what can happen in two months. By that point I was already feeling settled in here.

I finally started school yesterday. It's a small school (there aren't a lot of serious independent students of Arabic in this city), so there will be only one other woman in my colloquial class, and my classical Arabic lessons will be on my own. So it should still be all pretty much at a pace I set-- but I also really think that the added structure will help me catch up a bit after the time I've lost over the past couple months.
And I always think it's exciting to get new books.

I went with some people today to visit a friend who lives in a small town not too far from this city. Our trip there and back required multiple taxis and micro-buses-- that was a cultural experience in itself. Definitely an exciting way to travel. Never a dull moment. Most of our visit was spent in preparing food, most of the rest of the time in eating that food, and the last bit in walking on the beach. It's difficult to imagine a better agenda for a visit. The turquoise blue of the sea today was so intense it looked as though the water had been dyed. Who knew that water really could be that color?

I travel tomorrow to visit some old friends that I haven't seen since our Christmas party the day before I moved here. That makes it two months, almost exactly-- I'm excited to be able to see them again.

Much silence of late. I have no explanations to give.

I realised the other day that my time before moving to this city seems as though it was only a short time of transition and preparation for living here-- odd, since when I came to this country I had no thought of living anywhere but there, at least for quite some time. But life now, since moving just before Christmas, feels much more settled and normal and real. Even with the ongoing language learning limbo (though I did have another meeting with the school director this morning-- insha-allah, next week...) and my difficulties in meeting people here. For some reason I can more readily believe that I live here, that this is my home. Perhaps that's mostly a result of having lived in this country for nearly six months now. A natural adjustment to the total length of time, rather than a consequence of any differences between this residence and my former abode.

Things continue to feel very much the same out on the streets. Maybe sometimes people are a little more emphatically friendly, as if they're trying to make a particular point or overcome a suspected assumption by the force of their welcome. My watching of the news has rather noticably decreased. I'm still interested, I still know want to know what's happening, but the daily contrast between the ominous harbingers of war and the pleasant hospitality of the people here was causing undesirable schisms in my thought life.
Life makes slightly more sense this way.

An addendum to my last post: Today my language helper asked me if I'd seen the snow the other night. She asked the question in Arabic, except for that one all-important word, and that she said in English: "snow". I laughed a little, especially remembering my own wishful comparisons, and tried to explain the difference. The problem is that there's only word in the local Arabic. The word telg refers to any frozen water (and maybe other frozen liquids too; I'm not sure), no matter if it's hail falling from the sky or frost clogging up the freezer. So snow (and presumably sleet and freezing rain and other such fun gifts of an Oklahoma winter) is also telg. And since almost no one here has ever seen snow, and my Arabic isn't quite up to elaborations on the crystalline structure of frozen H₂O or meteorological lectures on the formation of such precipitation, about the most mutual understanding that was achieved, I think, is that pieces of snow are much, much smaller than pieces of hail.

It's hailing. That's kind of like snow, right? Like sleet and other forms of winter precipitation? At least in that it's frozen? I'm not sure that it actually makes launching into joyous renditions of "Winter Wonderland" or "Let It Snow" anymore apropos, but one can pretend. One has to pretend. This is by far the most winter I'm going to see anytime soon.

My language helper is wonderful. She has no grandiose ideas of trying to keep me "on track"-- she'll let me rabbit-trail off into whatever digression I choose, so long as I continue speaking Arabic. This is good, in my opinion. Lesson plans and outlines are for grammar classes.