That's an "alef +" -- not sure if that's a grade they give in Egyptian schools, but the transliteration implies "A+". Keli and I finished our Level 1 (48 hours) of Arabic today with an exam covering what we learned throughout the course--it was all in Arabic (even the directions) and we were only given 2 hints--1) whether or not the names in the sentences were male or female, and 2) one of the fruits on the test had a different spelling than we learned. Everything from adding currency, writing our address, writing out numbers in the thousands, identifying vocabulary terms, to "she is from Pakistan, she is Pakistani". With so little direction, it took us awhile to get going, but we started to figure it out; and, though our spelling was not perfect, our comprehension and application of what we learned was perfect. Our teacher was very pleased. Hooray and Hallelujah! Now, the Level 1 perfect score really means very little in our day to day interactions, but it sets a good foundation to begin Level 2 immediately--another 48 hours--that we aim to complete before summer. Level 2 offers learning more verbs and greater conversational application, which will be really helpful.
In other good news, our shipment was picked up from Decatur, Alabama yesterday--we hope by this time next week we will be hip deep in our stuff. Of course, by that time, we will wonder why we ever thought we needed most of it?!? Living off what we could bring with us on the airplane has had its ups and downs; one negative is it is getting much warmer and we have very little of our warmer weather clothing. I'm not looking forward to unpacking--except for the espresso machine :) Thanks to Keli's family, particularly to Scott who finalized the cartons for shipping, and Pat who made several extra trips to the store to find all the things we realized we needed!
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