Arrrrrrabic

Let’s learn some more Arabic today. My dear friend Lindsey thought it would be fun to send me 23 mucktofs (baskets) of fukhar (pottery). Since it’s coming from a bad layer and we can’t possibly keep everything, we have to go through and figure out what we want to keep and what we want to through away. The throw-aways are known as zabella (trash). There were 22 mucktofs of zabella fukhar. I’m not thrilled by this. My fanana (overseer, aka Tasha) was glad I went through them all instead of her. I'm a trooper.

- Zabella-chucker

PS. Having some internet issues again (our brand new stick died!)- if I don’t post for a day, don’t worry!

PPS. I found out yesterday that Rosetta Stone only has Modern Standard Arabic! I need a system that will teach me Egyptian colloquial (it's completely different). Arrrgh. Anyone know of a good language-learning system? I need something that will speak it to me, and not just have me read from a grammar.

Mafeesh Araby

I have no time for a real update today since we’re headed to Chicago House, so let’s have an Arabic lesson! You can learn all the fun words I can remember. I’ll spell them out as they should be pronounced, not as they are actually spelled:

- hello: ah-lan (pronounce the ‘h’)

- thank you: show-kran (I use this a lot)

- no: la

- yes: eye-wa (like ‘Iowa’, but w/out the ‘o’)

- sorry/no big deal/whatever: ma-lesh

- okay: ta-mom

- to draw: rasam

- brush: for-sha (to brush: bi-forsha [‘bit’ as in ‘bit’])

- Arabic: are-ah-bee

Now for the fun ones. For some reason, I can’t remember useful phrases like stop, or thank you, or fork/spoon/knife/plate/glass, but I was easily able to remember the first Arabic word I was taught this trip: mosquito. The guys probably wonder why I talk about mosquitoes and teddy bears so often, since the girls think it’s hilarious to ask me what those words are so that I’ll yell them out. Kat is also amused that I know what dogs say:

- cat: bee-sa (you call cats by saying, “biss biss biss biss” really fast)

- mosquito: na-moose-a

- bat: wat-wat (like the ‘wat’ in ‘wattage’)

- water buffalo: ga-moose-a

- teddy bear: da-boo-ba

- there is none: ma-feesh (this one cracks me up- “Quit touching ma-feesh!” Perhaps it’s only funny b/c ‘fish’ is pronounced ‘feesh’ in German)

- dog’s bark: how-how-how

- camel: gah-mel

- gecko: bors (this sounds random, but there are these adorable little gekos that live in our house. They don’t bother us at all, and we usually don’t see because they run away, but they eat bugs for us! If one will stand still long enough, I’ll try to grab a picture.)
- clothesline: hey-bill
- clothespin: mash-beck
- flip-flop: shib-shib

- World’s Greatest Linguist (I don’t know what that is in Arabic)

PS. If anyone is looking for a (rather expensive) Christmas present for me, I’d LOVE to have Arabic Rosetta Stone, since it looks like I’ll be back next year. Or my friends who like to do illegal things on the internet, any idea where one might torrent this (and by one, I mean you, and then I’ll steal it in a slight less “I can get caught” kind of way)? I’d love to come back next year and at least be able to make some simple conversation with the workmen.

More Crazy Food!

So glad you all liked my post of the pigeon! I swear I'll have a true food one coming later, but to whet your appetites, let's talk about what I had for dinner last night. We had bolti-fish! In fact, we had whole bolti-fish, heads on and everything. It had been battered, so you couldn't see much, but it was for sure looking at you. The cook had stuffed it with some nice herbs and it has the flakiness of tilapia. I was even super adventurous- Nadine said that the best part of the fish was actually the cheek. No one else braved digging through the fish head for this little piece of meat, but where else am I going to get fish cheek from a fish caught not more than 500 ft. away only hours earlier? Before I found the cheek, though, I did discover the eyeball. I wasn't quite *that* adventurous (though the Food Network tells me they are delicious). No idea what's on tap for tonight, but I'm guessing we'll go back to chicken or beef.

Last night I went up to the roof to read and found one of our men sitting there. Houses in Egypt are left unfinished for two reasons: you don't pay taxes if your house isn't done, and you are only allowed to build up, not out. So the roofs are typically quite nice and can be walked/sat on. Anyway, I was telling Ahmed that I'm trying to learn Arabic and so he started teaching me some more words. I can now add clothesline, clothespin, flip-flop, bench, and mat to my list of useless words I know. I can also say, "I draw pottery" and "I'm crazy"- both are true and both come in handy fairly often. The guys get a big kick out of me trying to learn Arabic b/c I get very excited when I remember a word and tend to yell it out. They probably wonder why I'm always yelling "mosquito" and "teddy bear". We're headed to Luxor this weekend and I won't get a chance to physically blog daily, so I've got a few things read to post, one of which is a list of words that I know in Arabic. So stay tuned.

- Eater of all the foodstuffs

PS. I told you yesterday that I'd try to post some pictures of the tell site. I try not to lie:

Looking up from where we draw pottery in the open-air museum. Those little roofs you see are probably 8 ft high.

Looking at the temple from the top of the tell. Hello, little people.

PPS. I can actually say 'I'm a crazy cat lady', too. Since we daily feed the 3 temple cats and 1 likes to come over and cuddle in the afternoon, most of the men think we are, in fact, crazy cat ladies.