tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68593345784060961542011-07-30T15:55:40.887-06:00MidEast Snapshotslinguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.comBlogger211100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-21655538988078115772010-01-06T20:21:00.001-07:002010-01-06T20:22:34.424-07:00Blog UpgradeI have upgraded this blog into a website that is more professional. For details see the link:MiddleEastSnapShots.comlinguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-19835776072763676262009-08-11T13:50:00.002-06:002009-08-11T13:55:44.746-06:00Near the Lybian borderThis morning I woke up to the sun rising over the desert. We finished our desert safari last night sleeping under the stars on the sand.They took us in 4 wheel drive vehicles on a desert excursion, climbing peaks and sliding down. It looked like one of my brothers' video games only if we flipped, we probably wouldn't get a couple more lives to live. We stopped a few times and I tumbled down one linguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-88694373201510020542009-07-06T21:47:00.000-06:002009-07-08T23:39:43.479-06:00Jerusalem: FayezA Palestinian Family
Part VI
<!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-CN AR-SA <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]>linguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-36568537822440360562009-06-30T16:30:00.000-06:002009-07-08T23:39:42.787-06:00Levantine CuisineLevantine Cuisine Hair hid behind the hijab.A cross around another's neck. Two women share their secrets Of home learned recipes. And The Egyptian didn't know the Syrian's Levantine cuisine. The next day American women Turn off the news in disgust. And one says to the other Arabs are all terrorists.Some Americans misunderstand Arabs. This poem comes from a real experience overhearing two women linguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-30863427523241969642009-06-26T21:37:00.000-06:002009-07-02T05:55:50.811-06:00Tweeting the Middle EastTom Regan, a journalist for the Christian Science Monitor, suggested tweeting the Middle East. So I started a Twitter account and gave it a try. Great idea. Did you know you can follow Ha'aretz, the liberal Israeli news service? Or why not follow Iran or #iranelection? CNN Breaking News? Soon you're getting up to date information from various points of view on the hottest topics in the linguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-7406294968205642462009-06-22T21:35:00.002-06:002009-06-22T21:51:34.305-06:00Trip PlansTomorrow early morning departure: DC (Orientation) June 25/26: 9 hour layover Frankfurt (In Sha Allah a look around the city) June 27: Arrive in Egypt My grandpa called me on the phone to tell me Egypt was his favorite place to visit. Didn't know that before. I love that guy. I stopped by to see him and my grandma. They gave me all the Middle Eastern advice they normally do. Then my grandpalinguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-89811933341974847902009-06-20T06:00:00.002-06:002009-06-20T08:23:37.126-06:00Middle East a little hotSo this will be my fourth trip heading to the Middle East. I'm getting the last details tied down and thinking about what's ahead. There have been a lot of well wishers and I'm gonna need as many as I can get. You kinda have to be a tough cookie as an American girl. There are guys who grab in Egypt. And, if you’re in Cairo, you’ll never make it on the metro during busy hours if you don’t push.linguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-58517959239008493192009-06-17T13:42:00.004-06:002009-06-17T13:54:23.241-06:00To Alexandria, EgyptThe Department of State: Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs is sending teachers of Arabic to Alexandria, Egypt to strengthen what is considered a critical need language in schools across the country. The program's official name is the Intensive Summer Language Institute for Arabic. I am going this year with the program. We leave next week. This is one of the exchanges Obama spoke aboutlinguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-55412756718333203072009-06-13T17:52:00.004-06:002009-06-13T17:59:45.754-06:00Jerusalem: SoapsA Palestinian FamilyPart VIf "Noor" was on TV, the house went completely still. Mom and Dad didn't like the Turkish prime time soap opera, but they watched. Mom still kept tabs on the plot even when she wasn't there. The boys dropped in for an update from their sisters. Salsabil pulled a chair right under the TV to watch glued and deaf to everything else. Mom and Dad's biggest concern about the linguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-8807888463695146172009-06-08T23:44:00.006-06:002009-06-08T23:57:59.287-06:00Jerusalem: Wein Audrey?A Palestinian FamilyPart IVSalsabil spoke Arabic very quickly to me, amused I couldn't always understand. She also spoke English, very loudly I should add. I don't think they realized how much Arabic I understood, though. One night Nusaiba, the mom, yelled at her kids, "Wein Audrey?! (pronounced Wayne)Wein Audrey?!" No one answered so I went to her and said, "I'm here." She looked startled linguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-23772384597224201252009-06-04T11:53:00.005-06:002009-06-05T12:49:37.054-06:00Obama's Speech in Cairo(Image from CNN International)http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/04/egypt.obama.speech/index.htmlI got a phone call this morning around 9:30am from Washington D.C. My contacts at Relief International: Schools Online and the State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs wanted me to get on Skype to speak to youth from across Palestine to talk about Obama’s Speech in Cairo. We linguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-41155692453874469552009-06-03T07:58:00.007-06:002009-06-03T22:42:23.617-06:00Jerusalem: Out-bridgedA Palestinian FamilyPart IIITalaal and I became pals when I let him play my hand of Pit cards and showed him how to shuffle a bridge. Anwar and Ibrahim couldn't be out-bridged by their younger brother and I ended up with a lot of warped cards.Talaal met me every day as I got off the shuttle coming home. I would ask him what he did that day. He quickly learned to keep it very simple and use linguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-16091985356735839192009-05-30T10:14:00.008-06:002009-05-30T11:26:44.181-06:00Jerusalem: "You're Turning Green."A Palestinian FamilyPart IIAlthough my first night with the family was a little tense, the ice broke when I came home the second day with heat stroke. Salsabil says, "You're turning green. Do you need to go to the restroom?" For the next couple hours I ran back and forth to the bathroom. Once I even opened the door to the kids making gagging noises and giggling.(no picture included...on linguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-92180707756250598722009-05-26T17:37:00.008-06:002009-05-30T11:27:10.175-06:00Jerusalem: A Friendly Parakeet
A Palestinian Family in Jerusalem
Part I
<!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-CN AR-SA MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]>linguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-79206108050900754842009-05-21T15:29:00.024-06:002009-05-22T15:47:38.172-06:00Cairo: Less and Less Women, More and More MenThis was the trip to Cairo that led me to not advertise my connections to the Middle East. It would be 8 years before someone discovered my Arabic past which consequently led me back into the Arab world. But that is a story for a different post. What did I love about Cairo the second time? My happiest memory was with a guy I hung out with our whole Arabic program. We often bolted from our linguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-32613235666059115482009-05-20T15:41:00.005-06:002009-05-20T15:55:37.897-06:00Cairo: ModernityI once stayed at a sprawling four star hotel with a large group of Brigham Young University students outside Cairo. We were often possessive of the air conditioning in the hotel lobby and restaurants after hot days. I remember a song playing outside drawing me out of the lobby into the evening air to gaze at the Egyptian stars.“Don’t Cry for me Argentina.”Didn't expect to hear it. The song is linguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-64087008888845543622009-05-19T17:41:00.008-06:002009-05-20T22:05:57.721-06:00Cairo: Abraham's PyramidsBonding with Abraham and Moses. Giza, now almost a suburb of Cairo, is home to the great pyramids. The pyramids and city press upon each other. You can drive from a thriving metropolis to an ancient wonder in minutes. The pyramid building era ended in about 2150 BC meaning you can look at structures Abraham (approx. 1813-1638 BC) and Moses would have seen passing through the same land. What linguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-81886410126795775682009-05-19T17:27:00.003-06:002009-05-19T17:39:18.433-06:00City of Oranges: An Intimate History of Arabs and Jews in JaffaCity of Oranges written by Adam LeBor is one of my favorite reads on contemporary Israeli-Palestinian history. The book is written through the stories of prominent families, Arab and Jewish humanizing their struggle and conflict. I also appreciate that the stories are told around the city of Jaffa instead of Jerusalem which holds more political rancor. The theme I gleaned from the book was thatlinguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-31904828952653351292009-05-16T19:16:00.005-06:002009-05-16T21:20:14.519-06:00Cairo: Auntie comes homeCairo was not a city I was expecting to get to know. Sitting in a tire swing outside of our house in Utah, I watched my aunt come by one day not long before she left to go on a CASA program to study intensive Arabic for a year in Cairo. I would have been 10 or 11 at the time. We just moved to the United States from Okinawa. I was struggling with the culture shock having no real memory of the linguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-32460791720559138062009-05-16T16:15:00.003-06:002009-05-16T22:34:42.165-06:00Syria: Damascus & Aleppo“They all lived next door to each other and they didn’t give a d—. They thought it was perfectly normal.” –Peter Sluglett, a British historian at the University of Utah talking about Muslims, Christians, and Jews living together in Aleppo, Syria.My conception of Syria changed at my Middle Eastern cities class from the University of Utah.My misconception that Syria’s wounded pride over Israel’s linguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6859334578406096154.post-79894686134707420412009-05-16T13:29:00.006-06:002009-05-16T19:26:37.899-06:00Damascus: Three ViewsDamascus through my interactions with three people. A travelor: my grandma, a photographer: John Wreford, and a CASA student: Zachary Queen. Grandma: Growing up I saw the beautiful copper and emroidered linens of my grandparents’ home which I lived in for many years. Of course, no mention about copper is complete without a lively story of how my grandma got them in and out of Syria. Syria has linguagirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02615049560628728207noreply@blogger.com0