MONTEREY

This latest update comes to you from the first capital of California. In fact, our class building is just across the street from the first capital building of the California Republic in Gold Rush times. I'm at the Monterey Institute for International Studies (not connected with the military) finishing up a 3-week intensive course in Arabic.

It's easy for people to get into trouble over totally innocent things these days. We just learned that the Arabic word for baseball is "kurat al-qaida" - ball of the base (Al-Qaida means "the Base".) Computer snoopers looking for suspicious "chatter" by terrorists might well unintentially pick up electronic messages in Arabic talking about baseball! And the name Osama is as common in Muslim countries as John in America. (That doesn't stop the hundreds of unfortunate Arab men in this country named Osama from having to find nicknames as a cover to keep from alarming people!) It's the "bin Laden" part that is really distinctive. The family originally comes from Yemen. (I mean, thousands of Europeans used to be named Adolph - though not as many since WWII. Hitler as a surname has kind of died out, however.)

I'm by far the farthest ahead in my intermediate Arabic class of five. Which is fine. I mainly wanted an excuse to concentrate on nothing but Arabic for a sold stretch, and any exposure for hours a day, even if review and slowed down a bit for the others, is fine. Our teacher is from Baghdad, having left there in 1980. He's Sunni and very dismayed at the chaos that has befallen his homeland. He was no great fan of Saddam's, but he misses the stability and only state-organized violence.

When I get back to Torrance around the 22nd of January, I'll be right back into teaching, at least teachers' orientation. I told CSU-Long Beach that since most of my job possiblities involve Fall '07, I would be able to commit for this spring semester. They're giving me only two mornings a week - Tuesday/Thursday 9-12 - to teach Grammar and Spelling to Saudi students (they need it!).

But I'll be supplementing that with flex hours at the West Semitic Research Project, where I started as a part-time research/office assistant just before Christmas. Their goal is making quality digital images of all the important early Semitic texts (papyri, cuneiform tablets, Dead Sea Scrolls, etc.) to create an online database for linguists, archeologists and Biblical scholars to use anywhere in the world. One of their most recent photography expeditions was to the Berlin Museum to photograph their goodly portion (40%) of the Amarna Tablets from Egypt - cuneiform tablets from Canaan, Phoenicia, etc. from before the establishment of the Israelites. The main benefit at the WSRP is that there's no homework or prepping. I work while at the office in Palos Verdes (up the hill from Torrance), and take home nothing. Yea!

I'll write more in later updates. Just wanted to catch everyone up.

Happy 2007!