My Farcical Attempts At A New Language

I took a Farsi class this morning. For the other students, this was their eighth lesson or so. The other students ranged between about 8 or 9 and 14, but I am the baby of the class. We arrived 15 minutes late, as I'm not familiar with Burien and it is about 30 miles from Tacoma, and they were studying the alphabet. I had thought there were about 4 forms of each letter, but Saeid is teaching two: capital and small case.

When we came in, each student was writing a different letter in turn. After the break, where Saeid wrote the alphabet for me in the book I bought in Vancouver [Let's Learn Farsi, by Farshid Eghba] in beautiful penmanship, the class worked to memorize a prayer. The teacher had each student recite the prayer, word by word, then wrote the prayer in their notebook [in Farsi, of course.]

The class ended with a game in which Saeid wrote a letter on each student's back, with his finger, and had the student identify and write the letter on the blackboard.

I had my translator help me memorize the prayer [of which I can say about the first four words] and learn to pronounce them, as I drove from Burien to Puyallup. "Faghrr." I still have a sore throat learning to say the word. "Powerty," said Enayat. "If I can say faghrr, you can learn to say poverty," I said.

Then we looked in Walmart, Lowe's, and drove to Eatonville and argued--I mean, consulted--about the placement of the sink, stove and cabinets in the new kitchen. This time I am insisting on being consulted and included in the plans, which is difficult. Enayat gets into the flow of things and starts just making unilateral decisions; then he tries to invalidate my concerns. I did a good job of asserting my point of view while staying quiet about it.

I stopped by Northwest Trek, where I've learned that one can pick up a pass and walk the trails for free, while the park is open. So that was fun. That was it for my big day off.