عرب وغرب: أين الاختلاف؟

Here is the second enrichment I did for my MESA 201 class last semester.

MESA 201–2nd Enrichment

I live in the FLSR, or Foreign Language Student Residence.  As a FLSR-ite, I live with five other roommates who all speak the target language when in the apartment.  The target language for our apartment is Arabic.  My roommate is a Catholic Palestinian from Jerusalem, and my other roommates are all enrolled in Arabic 201.  Having completed the study abroad experience, which includes all of the third year classes, I am the most advanced speaker in our house not counting the RF.  I am the most advanced LDS speaker in our house.

For church in the FLSR, all the apartments or language houses are all included in the same ward.  We have Sacrament Meeting, Priesthood, and Relief Society all in English, but for Sunday School we divide up by language.  As the most advanced LDS speaker in our house, my calling this year is Sunday School teacher for the Arabic Sunday School classes.

I decided, when I received this calling, to use the Gospel Principles manual instead of the Gospel Doctrine manual.  The Gospel Doctrine manuals have been translated into Arabic, but the language level of these classes is much more advanced than any of us in the class (including me).  Also, I feel that before we can learn and talk about the advanced gospel topics, we need to have a firm understanding of the basic gospel principles as described in the language and vocabulary of Arabic.  There are many gospel principles that do not translate readily from Arabic to English, due to the Muslim–Christian culture split.  Some of these concepts include “fall,” “atonement,” “savior,” “restoration,” “grace,” “inspiration,” “godhead,” etc.  All of these basic concepts are addressed in Gospel Principles before Gospel Doctrine, so I decided to focus on the Gospel Principles lessons first.  In turn, this has helped me to greatly expand my own Arabic church vocabulary.

Also, I decided to use church hymns as extensively in the class as I could.  I have a copy of the Amman Jordan branch hymnbook that my sister copied when she lived in Jordan in 2007.  I have made copies of various hymns and we sing one of these each period at the beginning of class.  Through song and music, we are also coming to appreciate Arabic and the Arabic translations of the hymns we know so well.

My role as Sunday School teacher is to teach the gospel, not teach the language.  However, I have on many occasions had to teach principles of Arabic in order for the class to understand what I’m talking about.  The times when this was most successful, and when the spirit was present in the classroom the strongest, was when I was able to express the same concept multiple times in different words and phrases.  The linguistic limitations of my students have forced me to think and rethink gospel principles, often on the spot, in order to express them more clearly in ways they can understand.  This has not only increased my appreciation of the gospel, it has helped me to deepen my language skills.

In short, teaching Arabic Sunday School has enriched my language learning experience through expanding my vocabulary, deepening my appreciation of Arabic song, and forcing me to learn how to express complex ideas in simpler, clearer words and phrases.

I know I haven’t been active on this blog very much recently, but I’d like to change that.  With that goal in mind, here is something Arabic language/culture related from the past semester.  The assignment was to participate in at least five extracurricular cultural activities and write a short report of each one.  This is the writeup for the first one.

MESA 201–1st Enrichment

For my first enrichment, I decided to learn how to prepare Hummous.  While studying in Jordan over the summer, I came to thoroughly enjoy the bean dish, both as a topping on a falafel / pita sandwich, or by itself, eaten with bread and pickles.  All of the hummous I’ve seen in stores in the US, however, is ridiculously expensive, so I decided that it would be much better to learn how to make it myself.

I used a variation of the recipe on Blackboard to make the hummous—I used less lemon juice, no garlic, and more olive oil.  I used some tahini from my Arab roommate and made it with my other roommate’s magic bullet.

I found that I didn’t care much for the tahini, and that if you use all the water from the cans, the hummous ends up being too watery.  However, the taste was fantastic—it took me right back to the Middle East and the study abroad this summer.  I was very surprised at how easy it was to make, and how cheap it was relative to buying it at the store.

The next time, I used less water, garlic, and some of the zatar that I brought home from Jordan.  I also used the Tahini, but about a tablespoon less.  The hummous ended up tasting even better than the last time.

The third time I made hummous was actually for the 64th ward dinner.  In the Foreign Language Student Residence, where I live, we all get together as a ward approximately once a month for a combined dinner.  Cooking duties are distributed to the various houses, with the ward dinner committee buying the food and preparing the recipes.  For this dinner, the Arabic house was given the responsibility of preparing the hummous, and since I had experience making it, I took charge.

We got for our five blenders together and made upwards of four or five gallons of the stuff.  It was a lot of fun!  We burned out just about every blender, and by the very end, the kitchen smelled like dying blender engines.  I’m still not sure if my roommate’s blender still works. =P

For this recipe, we used the bare minimum of ingredients: garbanzo beans, olive oil, garlic, and lemon juice.  We also completely drained the water from the cans.  Surprisingly, it ended up tasting very good.  Except for the chopped up bits of garbanzo that the blenders weren’t able to chop up well in the last round, the texture and consistency was remarkably similar to the authentic hummous from Jordan.

We had lots of leftovers, so I ate hummous for lunch for a week.  I found out that hummous goes bad rather quickly, so it’s best to prepare it in small amounts.  I also found that it goes very well with the fresh bread from Sugar & Spice in the cougareat.  It would go better with fresh pita bread, but since this isn’t readily available at BYU, the hot, fresh loaves are an acceptable substitute.