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No, I'm not sick. But my throat decidedly hurts. An hour and a half of serious Arabic work does that to me, still, aparently. Class doesn't- I'm not talking so much in class. And well, a good bit of htis time I was just writing and copying things, but when I write Arabic, the inside of my mouth forms the words still- I need to, I'm really basically illiterate: I know my letters nad can work out words, but it's not your world's fastest process. I'm really rather frustrated with my lack of progress in that language, compared to Hebrew. On the other hand, tonight's assignment, while long and hard (I was Very glad I ended up doing it with Kate- I don't know if I'd have done it so well on my own) I had a real sense of accomplishment when I finished. The last question required us to go in and vowel (including case endings) a full paragraph. I'm still not good with doing that with verbs- I'm sure most of my verbs there are wrong. But the nouns are almost fun, once you get into the right mindset, and there's a nice feeling of accomplishment and something solid afterwards that I don't get from fill-in-the-blank vocab assignments. ANd I do feel like I have a better sense of the text that we're workign with now (ok, I'm not sure if I should dignify it by calling it a text: it's an article, probably for children, about an Arabic explorer by the name of Ibn Batuta, which if I remember properly is a moniker meaning "Son of a Duck" literally, although the "son of" construction generally means, in this context "having an attribute similar to". But the idea is really quite funny.
Today, after lunch remained a pretty emotive day. Class was its usual fun self, including an "advertisement" from Professor Wright for a bubble bath that cleanses from sin. (We'd been talking about holiness and purity.) I had a nap, some talk, and went to shiur, in which we discussed kol ishah. We'd talked about this in the same shiur (women and halakha) last year, and it hadn't bothered me- it'd seemed nicely academic and far away. This time- somehow, maybe because of the way the day was, it felt too close to home. I felt (and apparently looked) somewhat disturbed throughout, so I stayed and talked to Adina for a while afterwards, which helped. SO then I had a very quick dinner, and went ot see The Jew in the Lotus. I'd read the book a number of years ago, and really enjoyed it, although I don't remember too much of it- which is often what happens when I only read a book once. But the film was very good, as much as I can ever tell about films, and the speaker had actually been involved in the actual event (a meeting in Dharamshala where the Tibetan government in exile is, between a bunch of Jewish leaders, including Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, Yitz and Blu Greenberg as the real big names I caught and the Dalai Lama), but didn't have a presentation that made very good use of his experiences. But it was really worthwhile- I want to reread the book, now. THe film- well, it made me kind of dizzy, with all the driving and bouncing involved. But the audio stuff was fascinating- they had this Really, Really low chanting sound (I think it was actual people singing) that reached out and grabbed me. THey also had Melech Nimrod, a song with which I'm familiar from Israeli Dance, as performed with more Middle Eastern/Indian instrumentation and styling than I'm used to. I walked out part way for a moment, and had my usual post-video feeling, as if the world wasn't really There, or like I was seperate from it. It's a weird visual experience.
Now I just want to do the equivalent of soaking the inside of my throat, abused by too many ayins in too condensed a time, so I can sing to work on the torah reading Hillel just asked me to do for Shabbat morning. Only 8 verses, but I'd like to get some of it done tongiht. MIght not really happen, with my throat. So- maybe I'll just do some in the morning and some in the afternoon, and review at night..? I don't usually like cutting things that close, but- my throat is not happy with the idea of more things out loud. We'll see.
Today, after lunch remained a pretty emotive day. Class was its usual fun self, including an "advertisement" from Professor Wright for a bubble bath that cleanses from sin. (We'd been talking about holiness and purity.) I had a nap, some talk, and went to shiur, in which we discussed kol ishah. We'd talked about this in the same shiur (women and halakha) last year, and it hadn't bothered me- it'd seemed nicely academic and far away. This time- somehow, maybe because of the way the day was, it felt too close to home. I felt (and apparently looked) somewhat disturbed throughout, so I stayed and talked to Adina for a while afterwards, which helped. SO then I had a very quick dinner, and went ot see The Jew in the Lotus. I'd read the book a number of years ago, and really enjoyed it, although I don't remember too much of it- which is often what happens when I only read a book once. But the film was very good, as much as I can ever tell about films, and the speaker had actually been involved in the actual event (a meeting in Dharamshala where the Tibetan government in exile is, between a bunch of Jewish leaders, including Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, Yitz and Blu Greenberg as the real big names I caught and the Dalai Lama), but didn't have a presentation that made very good use of his experiences. But it was really worthwhile- I want to reread the book, now. THe film- well, it made me kind of dizzy, with all the driving and bouncing involved. But the audio stuff was fascinating- they had this Really, Really low chanting sound (I think it was actual people singing) that reached out and grabbed me. THey also had Melech Nimrod, a song with which I'm familiar from Israeli Dance, as performed with more Middle Eastern/Indian instrumentation and styling than I'm used to. I walked out part way for a moment, and had my usual post-video feeling, as if the world wasn't really There, or like I was seperate from it. It's a weird visual experience.
Now I just want to do the equivalent of soaking the inside of my throat, abused by too many ayins in too condensed a time, so I can sing to work on the torah reading Hillel just asked me to do for Shabbat morning. Only 8 verses, but I'd like to get some of it done tongiht. MIght not really happen, with my throat. So- maybe I'll just do some in the morning and some in the afternoon, and review at night..? I don't usually like cutting things that close, but- my throat is not happy with the idea of more things out loud. We'll see.