Learning Arabic
Today I spent the day up in Haifa, mostly walking and busing around the different neighborhoods and looking at areas where I'd seen apartments in my price range on Websites. I settled on two neighborhoods that I'll be looking to live in. Both are good neighborhoods but still have places I can afford. Both are fast, easy trips to a train station. So, now my apartment hunt is really in full swing.
On the way back to Tel Aviv, I was on a very crowded train and I sat next to a little girl and her grandmother. A moment after I sat down I noticed that the two were playing a game kind of like hangman. the grandmother was writing words in Arabic, but writing x's in place of some of the letters. Then the little girl had to guess the word and write it correctly. They played that for a while, and then they played another game where the grandmother wrote numbers and letters on the paper backwards and forwards and the little girl had to pick out which ones were written correctly.
After a little while, I leaned over and said in Hebrew to the little girl, "I want to learn, too. Can you teach me?" I wasn't actually sure if the little girl spoke Hebrew, but I figured that if not, either the grandmother would be able to translate, or else we'd make due with writing and sounding things out. I'm good at making myself understood in those sorts of situations -- with kids at least.
The little girl looked at her grandmother and then at me and said, "I can't teach you!"
The grandmother smiled and said, "Sure you can! Just show her the letters and what they sound like, and then show her some words."
And so she did. I listened to the little girl, and repeated the names of the letters and the sounds after her. Her grandmother corrected her when she wrote something backwards. And then I copied the words and the little girl corrected my mistakes. It was fun. I think she and I were both doing a good job of reinforcing our meager Arabic writing skills.
The grandmother said that the little girl was 6 years old and goes to a multilingual school in Yafo where she learns Hebrew, Arabic and English. The girl showed off her knowledge of the ABC's in English. I made appropriately appreciative noises. Then we both wrote our names in all three languages. I didn't know how to write my name in Arabic and she didn't know how to write her name in English, so we again had a chance to teach each other something.
The grandmother asked if I'm a teacher. "No," I said, but I took that as a compliment.
Right before I got off the train I showed them pictures of my grandson and his dad. "See? I'm a grandmother, too." I was glad that the "other" grandmother didn't proceed to tell me that I'm far too young. I'm kinda getting sick of that.
We waved goodbye and the little girl blew me a kiss as I headed to the door at my stop.
