Arabic Lessons Over

My Arabic lessons are over, the eight sessions completed as of yesterday.

Like most languages, it went from making sense to "I know nothing." They always work that way. You plow along at a rapid clip, following drills and answering questions correctly because it's so easy to spot patterns in the listen-and-repeat method, though you have no clue what you're doing or why you're responding the way you do.

Then we got into the meat and potatoes. The falafel and fuul. The alphabet. The damn thing offers no shortcuts, no tricks of memorization. No way around it, have to slog through it.

The next session begins December 2. I want to keep it up, but I'll miss a few lessons. I want a vacation after the atlas is complete, before I start working full-time making comic books again. I'll miss the end because I have a secret (non-sinister) mission coming up in Feb-March, and won't be needing to find a new place to live in the New York area for a while. But I sure will learn a lot of Arabic on this secret mission.