The First of 1001 Nights...

Today:

Attended the Instructor Certification Course from 8am-3pm.

I talked to one of my old instructors from the Advanced Arabic Course for about an hour. He gave me a dvd with alot of dialect information on it. Good stuff to use in the future and in teaching dialect.

I practiced reading Arabic with my friend whom I've been practicing my speaking with lately. We went to Starbucks and I started reading 1001 Nights (in the Arabic version). The story doesn't waste any time getting started, as the first page features King Shah Zaman returning home after a short journey to find his wife in bed with their slave, after which the king kills the two of them and departs quickly without saying a word to anyone. In the next page there is pretty much a sexual free-for-all where everyone in the castle gets in on the action. Fun story indeed! I'm learning a lot of interesting vocab that I've never encountered before. Let's see, I learned a new word for an unchaste woman, (harlot or whore if you go with the English translation of the story that I've linked here... but no new word for Shepherd ) a new word for ancient Persia, and a few new synonyms for other words I already knew. Some of the phrases in the book are clearly outdated, and it is interesting to see the different ways that the language has changed over time, but for the most part the vocab is still useful and relevant, and quite... educational.

After I dropped off my friend, I went to school to teach grammar as I often do on Tuesday and Thursday nights. We discussed equational sentences, usage of the pronouns with the verbs and possessives, as well as how the Noun In Construct works. All in all I think that it was a productive night.

I went shopping at Safeway after that, buying food enough for a few days. I've been eating very well lately. Lots of steamed vegetables and rice.

I decided that I had to see Dar Williams on the 27th even though I've been planning to see Dave Lippman (who I've mentioned in a post before). I had the pleasure of meeting him a year and a half ago or so in Georgia, and played a song for him back then. I have been hoping that he would come and perform in Monterey sometime. I really enjoy his music and it is great that he has finally made it into town, but I've seen him twice now and I've never seen Dar Williams perform live. I am disappointed that I'll miss his performance here. Anyway, I think that I've drummed up enough reservations for him here to make up for not showing up myself.