Sky Surfing

Assalam u alaikum,

Alhamdulillah I am doing fine (I think I've started every single post with that statement. Let's try something else.)

ALHAMDULILLAH I AM FEELING AMAZING WAL HAMDULILLAH!!!!!!!

Today we started Book 2 of Kitab ul Assassi. I had my test today for Level 4. Silly mistakes, silly mistakes, you all know the number. I know the rules perfectly for kaana and inna but I forgot to look at both the mubtada' and the khabr, so I made a few mistakes.

(Don't worry, I am not actually mad I just have to grouse a bit after everything. Maybe it's the fact I didn't drink tea today.)

:)

This new book looks a lot more interesting than the first one, although it seems that it will also be somewhat of a promotional for Arabic culture and I bet the Arab satellite Farooq bhai mentioned will be in this book somewhere. (By the way Farooq bhai I have your teacher's number, don't let me forget to give it to you.)

Everyone please try to encourage me to talk, talk, TALK in Arabic. Unless I talk all the time to everyone, I won't be able to speak really well. And I want these four months to have the maximum benefit. Like Uncle Syed Hasan said, "Just talk to everyone and use every moment."

I'm pretty sure the advice that our friends gave us before we left will be momentous golden statements that will go down in history. They sure help me a lot, like Uncle Imran's, "Choose the greater of the two goods and the lesser of the two evils." Or Adil's, "Remember what you're there for." Or even Hadi's, "Drink bottled water!"

Sometimes I feel so funny in Cairo. Everything seems to have metaphysical significance. Take the word harf. A harf is a grammatical element of a sentence, roughly a preposition in English. But the crazy thing about a harf is that it doesn't mean anything without the rest of the sentence. When my teacher was telling me about this, I immediately remembered the ayah in the Qur'an about people worshipping Allah a'la harf; I know that in the ayah the meaning is something different, but everything is related to the root word. Worshipping Allah, but not really meaning anything.

And by the way, that tea thing was blown a little of proportion. I just like the colour of the tea as the sunlight shines through it, not really the tea itself (I don't really drink tea; I drink sugar with a little bit of tea added). I am not yet a vampire, and I don't intend on becoming one insha'allah.

Insha'allah we are going to play soccer tomorrow insha'allah. My teacher Ustadh Ibrahim may becoming from his house (an hour away) to play with us insha'allah! Stay tuned for more hilarious stories involving Ameer's marathon running, Mustafa's 25th goal, and my teacher berating me in Arabic!

Riklaah! (Shoot!)

Ma'asalam,

~Ameer

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