Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Language, Pack N Play, and Cookies

Alot has been going on around the Galloway household, or, rather, I should say alot of little things have been going on. Not things that some would find important or interesting, but I do!

Today we had our first of two exams. Today's exam was an oral interview of sorts. There wasn't many ways to prepare ahead of time, I felt. It was one of those situations where you would be showing off what you actually knew, instead of cramming and expelling information.

I was a little shakey and nervous walking into the interview, but tried my best to speak clearly and answer correctly. We started off with a round of greetings (their greetings are very extensive, repetitive, and structured, and can take close to 5 minutes! Though I only have 1-2 minutes worth down.) next we moved onto a question about me and my "bent," (little girl,) before moving on to a question about travelling. I didn't conjugate my verb correctly (drat. I put it into past tense when I meant to say present.)

Our final open discussion question was on what I would want my "dream house," to be like. Unfortunately, I didn't remember all of the names for the rooms so I just did a general 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms with a big kitchen. They were surprised that I didn't want it bigger and I told them that I like my small little house and that I didn't think I would ever want a huge house.

We had two picture based questions, one where I told a story in sequence and one where I described what I saw in the picture. The final part of the interview was me reading out loud a narrative.

Overall, I thought I did pretty well! At least, I felt like what I did in the interview was a pretty accurate description of what I actually know in Arabic! It will be exciting to compare this interview with my interview at the end of semester two!

We have an early morning written exam on Wednesday morning and then we are finished for the semester! So hard to believe.

The whole thing only took 5-10 minutes and then we were done for the day with school! We spent a leisurely day hanging out at the house, watching FRIENDS, eating salad (a new obsession of mine,) and reading.

Speaking of reading, I'm so excited that I am finally back in a reading mood! I went from reading 50 books in 2009 to hardly reading 20-25 in 2010. I haven't set any goal specifically for this year, but I am glad to see my reading is picking back up. I just finished Terri Blackstock's Newpointe 911 Series which was very interesting, if anyone is looking for a good Christian Fiction series.

I can't wait to share with you the book I am reading now. Super interesting. And a real story!

Ian and I capped our day off by doing 3 exciting things.

1.) We pulled out the pack n' play we had bought and put it together. I moved it into our room, where it will be once Grace makes her appearance near April, and stood in wonder at the fact that we actually have a baby on the way! we'll probably pack it up into it's storage bag later this week, as I don't really want it sitting in our room for the next 3 months if not necessary, but it was still a sweet moment of realization!

2.) We went for a walk! The wind was blowing and the temperature was just perfect. I put on my tennis shoes, which I haven't worn since we got here, and we went on a 30 minute walk around our area, before stopping at our local market to get some milk.

3.) Then we hightailed it back home to eat some fresh chocolate chip cookies. Delicious! For some reason those little cookies totally made my night.

I have a final confession to make:

We still have our tree up.

As in, our Christmas tree.

And we left it up on purpose.

More on that later.

5 comments:

Emily Powell said...

it REALLY hit me the other day that we have a baby on the way...and of course I cried. I mean I know I'm having a baby and we have baby stuff all over the place but sometimes it just doesn't seem real. I feel just TOO BLESSED :)

Emily Powell said...

ok, I typed one comment and hit post but it deleted it...sorry if you get this twice:
It hit me the other day that we were having a baby and of course I cried. I mean, I know I'm pregnant but sometimes it just doesn't feel real. I feel just TOO blessed!

Kelley said...

I can't imagine having to speak for several minutes in another language! COngrats, Im sure you did great!

chloƫ. said...

hope you get awesome grades on those finals! and i love when baby things makes it that more *real*. your little one will be here so soon!

Sonya said...

I wish I had left our tree up! It's so empty in the living room now! Maybe next year I'll just take off the decorations and let it sit with just the lights for awhile:)