lost in translation

I've spent the past week at the double wedding of my host mom's brother and sister. Wedding festivities started last Thursday and will still be going on when I get back from hub tonight. I'll write a full post about it another time, but let's just say it's insane and awesome and pretty exhausting (I haven't been able to study at night or really sleep since it started.) I'll write a full post about it later when I have some time and post some pictures of the brides and grooms.

Our CBT group: Alex, Lena, Kristin, me, Conor, and Ikram

Anyways, here's one story that exemplifies the many difficulties of communication here, even with our designated educators and English speakers. Last week in class, Kristin asked our LCF (our language teacher, who grew up in Tiznit and has never left Morocco) how to say chapstick in Arabic. Ikram didn't know the English word, so Kristin pulled out her chapstick. Ikram told us the word was "l-saq", and we spent a few minutes practicing pronouncing the Arabic q, and comparing it to "l-sak", which means purse. We all diligently wrote the words down in our notebooks.

About a week later, we were on break and Kristin couldn't find her chapstick, and said so out loud. Ikram immediately searches around in her office supplies bag and hands Kristin a roll of masking tape. We just stared blankly at her--Lena pulled out her red shimmery chapstick and Ikram writes a new word on the board that we haven't seen yet. Finally we realize that Ikram thought Kristin was showing her a gluestick, and "l-saq" just means "adhesive". In the meantime, Lena's practicing her new vocabulary at home and her whole host family thinks she's putting glue on her lips. Just one example of the many, many miscommunications, even with the people that it's supposed to be easiest for us to communicate with ...