Beirut Day 1-June 24

I got up early and went with my roommate to the orientation meeting. Everyone seemed really nice and all the teachers introduced themselves. We got a few lectures on safety and health and Bilal, the program director talked about what the program would be like, what constituted excuses for missing class and threatened us with warnings and expulsions if we broke the language pledge, which seems to have been a joke (I don’t know what the poor introductory students were supposed to do otherwise since many of them don’t know the alphabet yet) because no one has chastised anyone outside of class. After all this we mingled in the lobby and then headed off to the placement test and then the oral exam. The introductory students who didn’t know a word were supposed to just put down their name, turn the exam in, then go to the oral interview and do basically the same thing. I would have felt horribly embarrassed to do that. The exam was fairly hard but not horrific. It consisted of three parts, reading, writing and grammar/vocab. The first part of one of the sections was about food and I didn’t know aaany proper food names so I was mostly guessing. I saved the reading for last and I was doing fine until I hit the last reading which was long and complex and about new Orientalism. At that point my brain just shut down. I actually wrote (and misspelled) “my brain broke” on a corner of that sheet. I could get the gist of what the article was saying and I could tell where the answers to the comprehension questions were located…I just couldn’t give details. There were several points on the test where I was like ‘oh, I know there’s a rule for this, I know I learned it, I know it’s in book three…I just don’t quite remember what it is.’ Apparently I guessed fairly well. We had about 3.5 hours for the test and I took almost all the time. I would have taken the whole time and a bit extra had I not just given up on the last reading. Then I went to my oral interview. There was a line so the woman told us to go get our lunch (which was paid for for that day) and to come back in 15 minutes. I had okra stew on rice which was good but since we had so little time I couldn’t finish it. My interview was with Hussein (who would later be my MSA teacher) which went alright and he said I would probably be in one of the advanced levels. I had been hoping for high intermediate based on the description of the levels on the website but apparently they were wrong or out of date because high intermediate started at the end of book one and would have meant me retaking the same class for the third time and I was having none of that. I had no Levantine Arabic for him to assess and I managed to embarrass myself my barely remembering any of the two years of Egyptian dialect I studied, although it has since come back a bit. Then we had a tour of the campus which was alright but a lot of it was about buildings I didn’t have any interest in (e.g. the chemistry building). After that I got my internet access (Alhamdulillah!) and went back to my room to finish unpacking and the like.

I had heard from someone, I don’t remember who, that a large group of students were going out to celebrate Grant’s 20th birthday. I debated for a while since I rarely like situations where I don’t know anyone but in the end I said screw it and went. Everyone met and the main gate and then we walked to this semi-nearby restaurant. It turned out to be Italian which I was a bit miffed at but was nice enough. Dinner was fun and after that the group decided to walk to Solidere, the rebuilt downtown area. It was a looong walk and we passed by the green line from the civil war and the infamous Holiday Inn which was built right before the war and used as a sniper position and consequently shelled repeatedly. Stupid my I had not brought my camera. It was such a long walk that one of the girls started getting a blister and I gave her the bandaid that I had had on my ankle for an abrasion (she took it with full knowledge). Solidere was pretty and its lit clocktower looks quite nice at night. We also passed the mosque where Rafik Hariri, the assassinated PM is buried; it’s reminiscent of Istanbul’s Blue Mosque. The rest of the group decided they wanted to go to a hooka bar but I and this other guy Rob opted out and to walk back. I’m still not sure why we walked back the entire way to the university, but Rob swore he could get us back and he did, even if it was in a rather meandering manner. When we were close but hadn’t quite reached the Corniche (basically the boardwalk; Wiki it) Rob asked directions of a taxi driver sitting outside. Through a mix of FusHa and Egyptian dialect (quick note: MSA or Fusha is what they teach in universities, it’s basically Classical Arabic, makes you sound archaic and is no one’s native tongue) we had a conversation and got directions. We walked along the Corniche and was eventually able to find an open gate (some close after midnight) near the gym and get on to campus. I then survived my cross-campus walk at night, mostly because I didn’t see a soul. The men’s and women’s dorms are located on opposite sides of campus. Then I went on the internet and then to bed, mentally preparing myself for the first day of classes.