Bumming out

I know that I've been complaining about school a lot here lately. More or less everything is about that right now. So to make things a little bit clearer I'll give you the inside scoop on what we're up to. Today the teacher asked us to conjugate verbs... Verbform one that is... Ok she wanted us to conjugate Akhada, shadda and verbs like that but still, I've known that stuff for years. So not only don't I see any new words I have to do old grammar all over again. In a week and a half I've written down about 20 words that I didn't know before. In class that is. Reading in private I've written down about ten times that.

To put this in another perspective I was doing word by word translation of a newspaper article for a friend today without even consulting good old Hans. Ok it was about an Hamas delegation going to Moscow but still... (ok that was a horrible example, me and Hans are still the best of friends. He's the shoulder I'm leaning on, the light in the end of my tunnel and that's not very bad going for an old dead German guy.)

So I was really down under after class today, just feeling like I'm wasting my time achiving nothing. I went to the gym but left after only half an hour because I was really feeling down. Then I went to the library at the French Cultural Center and read Ash-sharq al-awsat and that at least felt meaningful. The rest of the evening was spent loitering around doing nothing much at all. Homework for tomorrow was to conjugate verbs... I always do my homework, no matter how stupid and easy it is but this I will not do. Despite me and Werner being way ahead of the rest of the class, we seem to be the only ones doing the homework on a regular basis. I like to say: "I came to study". I say that almost as often as I say: "people are crazy, did I ever tell you that?"

Sometimes I think that the point of studying Arabic is to remind you that you're mortal. I've always had the idea that unless I almost break out and cry in every class and when ever I'm doing my homework or what ever there's something wrong. Arabic is supposed to be so hard that there simply is no hope around. And then one day you just sit down with a newspaper and read it as you would any Swedish or English one. At least that's how I Imagine it will be, sometime in the future. Now I'm just almost breaking out in tears for all the wrong reasons.

Everything else is just great but school sucks bigtime. I just hope it get's harder in the next couple of courses otherwise I won't be able to stand it. On the other hand it would be kind of cool to be the first one to quit an Arabic course because it was to easy... (maybe not the first one, but I dare to say that it's not the most common reason)

Sorry for this, I promise less bitter posts in the future. That despite the fact that I'm going to THE most boring city in the World next week...