Learning Arabic....or Trying Anyways

So, I started taking arabic classes this week; it's a class for faculty & staff and is held twice a week at the school. We learned the arabic alphabet and how to sound it out today. This proved to be quite an interesting experience. For each letter, our instructor points around the room to everyone and makes sure we're sounding them correctly. At one point I looked around at my middle-aged classmates, and had to laugh in my head. Here we all are desperately trying to sound out these foreign sounds and looking totally infantile and, basically, silly. Each letter has three sounds so we are all sitting there repeating "ah, ooh, eh" "bah, boo, beh" - it was when they all started sounding the same that problems arised. So we asked to differentiate between common letters and we got --> the first one sounds like "tha" and the second one like "tha"....is that supposed to help?! Baffled we are all still staring, thinking, huh? So, to clarify, he points to his mouth and says, "watch, 'tha' (pause) 'tha' ". OH! Okay, it's crystal clear now. Right! Poor guy...bunch of americans can't figure it out! He is a good teacher, I'm not making fun of him; I'm doing it at us, the students, because we look so ridiculous. Just teach me the words....

Doha at 5am

And here you have it: the reason for Daylight Savings Time (too bad its not practiced in Doha). This is a picture I took ten minutes ago at 5am from my front door. Ahh, so this is why there are super thick curtains....it's all clear now. I haven't been here during the summer yet, but apparently the sun continues to rise earlier and earlier. All the better for those who want to do their morning jogs; too bad I'm not one of them. But, honestly, the weather is perfect outside right now - it's just too bad I typically sleep through it.

How was your Chicken Slaughtered?

I'd first like to point out that I'm not making fun of anyone by writing this.... Below are pictures of frozen chicken I bought at the grocery store in Qatar. I didn't notice this, but my grandmother pointed out the phrase on the package stating that the chicken was "slaughtered by hand with a sharp knife." We both thought this was funny and so I decided to post it. It's been a while since I put anything up anyways.