So far, I have observed about 5 hours of classes. The system is tailored to each student very well. When I start working on Saturday, I don’t think I’ll have any problems teaching, I just hope I can learn all the procedures and don’t make any marking mistakes.

I’ve been at work about 8 hours each day even though training is only 2-3 hours. Part of my contract is full time at Oxford, even if they can’t use me. While I’m here I’m trying to make good use of my time learning Arabic. Unfortuantely, I haven’t had time to go to the bookstore and buy proper Arabic textbooks. Instead, I am using the arabic handwriting practice book and the Russian-Arabic conversation book that Mandy gave me to practice. Since both are without English, the work is going rather slowly.

I know about 2/3 of the alphabet, in all 3 to 4 forms of the letter (they have slightly different letters depending on where the letter is in the word). I’ll hopefully get the rest down this weekend, with some help of the internets.

In the conversation book, they cover the alphabet, how to pronounce it and give some examples. Conveinetly enough, they give the example of ‘door’ (дверь) which is Bob (more like b-ah-b, but I’m done with being B-oh-b). Even better, one of the later examples is ‘expensive’ (дорого) which is the ghali (they don’t have a G, it is the sound of breathing out while holding your throat in the G letter position(like gargling)). Door Expensive, that doesn’t mean much in English, but Arabic, like Spanish puts the adjectives after the noun.
So, my name is Expensive Door in Arabic.

I guess it is better than Bean. (Bob in Russian – боб)