Arabee

The purpose for spending the summer in Jordan was for Ovaise and I to study Arabic at Qasid Institute in Amman.
We went into Qasid to take the placement exam and I will never forget it! I was feeling pretty good about myself since the first three questions were relatively easy. However, it was all downhill from there! I flipped through the rest of the pages and it was as if this test was written in some foreign language I had never seen before! I turned over to Ovaise and he was in the same predicament. I pretty much guessed at the rest of the answers and when I got to the page of composing a short paragraph for pictures, I felt like a first grader! My sentences went something like this: "Man on donkey, donkey on street. Woman at souq. Boy with family."
It was quite ridiculous. Ovaise, on the other hand, just gave up and opted to hand in a blank test.
Later on, it was time for the oral test. Ovaise went in first and came out laughing. Then I went in and sat across from the two examiners. They asked me if I had taken the same previous Arabic courses as my husband to which I replied in the affirmative. Then I was handed a sheet written in Arabic and asked to read from it. Once again, I felt pretty good that my reading skills were satisfactory, so I read through the first line quite quickly. That's when they told me to stop reading and translate the sentence. Ummmm, I know that 'fi' means in and that's about it! They looked at the word 'kana' and expected me to know it, but I did not! They thanked me and I walked out, only to see Ovaise grinning at me. We look back at it now and have a good laugh over the whole thing.
SubhanAllah, even though we have taken Arabic courses in the States and studied Madinah book one a few times, we were lost when it came to the placement test.
They decided to put us both in level 1b (there are five levels at Qasid). However, this posed a problem as there was only one level 1b class, and obviously, we could not both take it at the same time due to the kids. After some discussion and praying istikharah, it was decided that Ovaise would take the class and I would study with him at home. Alhamdulillah, this arrangement worked out very well, as Ovaise went through all the class notes with me and we did the homework together. The book came with a dvd, so that made things easier for me to do the listening exercises and I would do the oral exercises with Ovaise too. I even got to take the quizzes and tests too.
Our next aim was to get the kids into a Quran school for the summer. Alhamdulillah, my husband went to the masjid for prayer the next day and was informed about a Quran class for kids very close to our place, 3-4 mornings a week. It was perfect!
So, now we had a schedule and it was great! Ovaise's class was on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. He had Friday and Monday off. The class timing was 1 to 5 pm. Meanwhile, the kids had class, every other day (not on Fridays) from 9 to 11:30 am. Basically, the schedule was to drop off the kids on the day they had class and study Arabic until about noon. Then during the time Ovaise went to class, I would homeschool the kids and after maghrib (when the kids were in bed), Ovaise and I would study again for about 1-2 hours. I would also try to spend one hour going over vocabulary while Ovaise was in class. So, all in all, we were studying Arabic for about 5-6 hours a day (excluding the days off).
In addition to that, the thing I loved about living in Jordan was that we would get a chance to practise our speaking and listening skills on the street. Whenever we'd go out, we would have to speak Arabic (in most cases) and that really helped. I am sure that our Arabic was full of errors, but mashaAllah, no one ever laughed and they were always so eager to help and tried their best to understand. As soon as we would mention to them that we are studying Arabic, they would be very happy and welcome us to Jordan.
Since this course was intense, alot of vocabulary and grammar was thrown at us in a short amount of time, but alhamdulillah, it was just what we needed (especially after that placement exam)!