Tabda2 Boukreh: It Begins Tomorrow

As some of you may know, this semester I will be studying back in the Middle East. Last year, I spent my summer studying at the University of Jordan and then visiting some of the most lovely people I've ever known in Palestine. Unfortunately because of complications, I couldn't write in Palestine. If any of you are interested in Jordan, though, my Jordan blog can be found here:
            http://the-desert-diaries.blogspot.com/
Tomorrow, my plane leaves to embark on a new journey. I'll be travelling now a bit further south with a new dialect, a new culture and a new life. As the little tidbit of the day, Arabic is actually a very diverse language. Spreading from Morocco to Iraq, there  are five main dialects including the Modern Standard Arabic (fusHa) used in formal writings and settings. There are obviously similarities between them all, but some prove themselves to be virtually unintelligible to one another (unfortunate for the poor Meghreb...No one understands them.). Oman, though, is a little country in the Gulf, southeast of Saudi Arabia (You should google it!). It falls into the khaleeji (gulf) dialect (one of the main five I referenced before).

I'll be studying in a little international center. I'm an Arabic minor, and while I learned a tremendous amount during my stay in the Middle East last year, there is still so much to learn. I'll be staying in Muscat, the capital, located on the southeast coast, living with a home stay family. 

There is so much to say, but I'll be sharing it all over the next four months. Until then!