Nepheshe

I have been biting my nails all my life except for a few short quits. The last time I bit them was Septmber 15th (about) 2006. This may sound funny, but I feel like more of an adult when I am not biting them. Or should I say, like more of a child when I was a biter. Psychological association, probably.

When I met my first friend from Morocco online, he sent me a traditional Moroccan song. Later I found it was not a downloaded file, but a link to a site by which I could play the song. But I wanted to hear more of this artist’s music because it causes such a stir in my soul. The file name was in transliterated Arabic, using both numbers and letters, and I could not distinguish from the file name the artist from the song title. I also saw that the entire site was in Arabic with no option to change the interface to English! But I have been learning the Arabic alphabet, and looked on the side menu for the Arabic word for Moroccan- and found it! Then I looked for the first word in the file name, assuming it was the artist. I listened to other songs, and I could hear it was the same vocalist! Then I looked for the song title (all in Arabic characters) and found the song!

The next challenge here is to learn the lyrics and meaning of the song.

I have several friends online who are helping me learn, and a couple of websites, as well, so if anyone would like links to these resources, please contact me! I found a language exchange web site at www.mylanguageexchange.com. It is full of friendly people who are interested in learning other languages and cultures and making friends and exchanging ideas.

I find that the value of real exchange- learning the language from a friend- even if online- cannot compare to learning from computer programs (although those help a lot and are innvaluable, too). But by making friends who are native speakers of the language you are learning, it helps (me, at least) remember what I have learned. And it is more exciting that way, too.

This is a book by Becky Tirabassi, and it has some great ideas that I would like to utilize in my own system. I think I should structure a similar thing to her system into my Palm program so I can add entries on the go and cut down on the paper and notebook type things I have to carry around.