5 Days In Iraq and 67 in Syria Later...

...and ya boy back with a fresh blog post.

First of all, let me apologize for that last sentance; I blame black people. Secondly, let me apologize for that last sentance; I actually love black people. Thirdly, and most importantly, let me see if I can't come up with an adequate explanation for why it took me over 2 months to update this blog with an actual original post (the kind that doesn't just rot on my iPod for months before I get around to finishing and putting it up):

Umm... I'm lazy and crapping out solid blog posts is hard work?

So what's new? Well, for one thing, it appears that the trip, in some mutilated form at least, is back on. A few days ago I found out that Alex has randomly- and shockingly I might add- surfaced in Cambodia, with Beddor trailing shortly behind. I'm probably not gonna get a chance to meet up with him before he heads back home, but I'm inspired by his dedication all the same. And even more so by his mustache:

I shall never again doubt that 'stache.

Meanwhile, I've been working my ass off attempting to scale the mount everest* of tough languages- Arabic. And man, let me tell you, does it suck. Not long ago I was flipping through TV channels at a hotel when I stumbled across a French news broadcast and mistook a few of the news headings at the bottom of the screen for English. Then I realized that I could be learning that language instead of Arabic. Then I fired the remote, which is lucky I throw like a girl, across the room.

(*No offense, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Russian. I'm sure you all suck too.)

I've also made the mistake of attempting to read the Koran in Arabic multiple times. Let me put it this way- if I had been forced to sacrifice a virgin to Allah every time I completely butchered the meaning of a Koran verse, Syria would be a land inhabited only by wives and whores by now.

But- and this is one gigantic butt- it's also been unbelivably rewarding- and enlightening- to take on a behemoth of a task and to give it everything I've got. I can honestly say that I've spent more hours studying some weeks here in Damascus than I did some whole semesters at Marquette. Which is, admittedly, incredibly, incredibly sad.

And then there are the fleeting moments where all that sweat and toil pays off, even if the peaks that I dream of reaching are still months, even years, away. Three weeks ago I bought an Arabic edition of Newsweek and attempted to read an article by Fareed Zakaria, translated into Arabic. I say attempted, because I would have placed my comprehension of the article somewhere between 1 and 3%.

Impressive, I know; it's like I was born speaking Arabic.

I finally revisited that article a few days ago, however, and somewhere in inbetween that first attempted reading and this latest, I apparantly learned a lot- I knew about 75% of the words in the article; I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that that's not bad after a month and a half of study.

The only way I can think of to describe the utter elation I felt upon reaching the end of that article is to say that it must have been a lot like what the guy dancing in this music video with Shakira felt when he found out that he was the guy who got to dance in that music video with Shakira.

Of course, immediately afterwards, I turned the page to a different article and felt like I was staring at a brick wall. But I'll take "hit and miss" over "miss, miss, and more miss" any day of the week.

Oh yeah, and I can finally read the first two words on the book cover I posted in my first Iraq post!

The first is "Saddam". The second (I'm pretty sure) is "biography"*. Exhilirating stuff.

*EDIT: Nope, it's "life".