It’s the rest of the week. What does rest require?
Ricardo and I just completed the first week of a 5-week Arabic language intensive.
They were not joking when they called it an intensive. Six hours a day, and no way to stay afloat in the class if you don’t spend a good chunk of the rest of your waking hours working to get what you’re learning to stick in your head, flow out of your mouth, and be recognizable to your ear.
All of this intensity amounts to 150 hours of class time during the month of July—a mere drop in the bucket of the roughly 2200 hours needed to attain a professional level of Arabic (which is categorized as one of the “hardest language to learn for English speakers”, along with Mandarine, Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean).
Thankfully, it is a great jumpstart on the estimated 300-600 hours required to be able to engage in conversation—which is what we are after now.
So, when it feels like there is a traffic jam in my brain, and smoke is coming out of my ears, I remind myself that it is only a matter of time before the lines and dots running from right to left morph into familiar words. Also that I won’t always need half a minute to think before responding to the most basic of questions.
Then, for a moment, I imagine myself freely speaking and enjoying conversations in Arabic.
Sometimes imagining what it will feel like to experience something we desire can nudge us forward and bring joy to the work involved—whatever that work is.
Just imagine how good it feels to rest.
May your rest be sweet.
Alicia
Wow! Prayers for you. May you have the gift of tongues.