September in Belgium

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 16:51

September in Belgium and I still don't have a fully functioning visa to work here yet so what else is an immigrant to do but take a language course. In this Tri-lingual - officially - Dutch, French, German and unofficially - English, Arabic (all variant spoken dialects probably being spoken right here somewhere in this little country at any given moment), Spanish, Italian, etc etc... September the first rolled around and unbeknownst to me that is the day school here starts. Luckily one of my swimteam-mates informed me that i must go to class to get a place. At the language school i arrived only to find massive lines and all language courses full except for Arabic. so i got enrolled as a student of Arabic putting my Nederlandse cursus on hold for the time being. Now who would think that if one were to take an Arabic course it would be full of pale faces westerners from most certainly Belgium? As i discovered in my class of 15 students twelve are women and all but two are of Arabic origin yet amoung the new Belgians (unlike myself). Not only are these women Arabic seven or eight of the twelve are rather conservative in their religiously appropriate attire representing to some degree their religious affiliations. Needless to say my first few days were a bit eye opening as everyone seems to have some comprehension of Modern Standard Arabic. I have to hand it to the teacher and the rest of the class who were able to get me speaking in quite a few different sentances even though most of the time i had no idea what was going on! Unlike my Dutch courses everyone in the class was helping me out as if i were their kid brother so even though i am something of the class oddity i wasn't left on my own. I'm not certain how i feel about the class yet. studying a non-western language with a bunch of eccentric westerners is one thing studying in a class dominated by women from another culture is another matter. On the other hand when would i have the opportunity to spend twenty hours a week with people who i normally hardly see even in this multi-cultural city where i live.