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By Linden, YES Abroad 2014-2015, Oman

About once a week my host family goes to our village to visit relatives. Our village is about an hour away from our house. The main difference between Muscat and our village is the relatives. There are so many of them. Gaggles of young children roam through the house and the number of aunts I’ve met has been mind boggling.

The first time I went to the village the women sat on cushions pushed up against the wall, drank chai, watched Indian soap operas and as far as I could tell, gossiped in Arabic. I sat, pretty awkwardly, against the wall with my knees drawn up to my chest. The women asked me where I was from, what my name was, and whether or not I wanted chai. Then their English ran out and my non-existent Arabic couldn’t keep up a conversation either.

For about an hour or two I sat watching Indian women fake cry on the television. And then three of my little cousins came in. At first I thought I was seeing triple because they all had the exact same dress with the exact same hair style. The only way I could tell them apart was their size.

The biggest one plopped down right next to me and asked me, “You American?” when I nodded she said, “Arabic?” And I shook my head. So she said, “I teach.”

She wouldn’t be the first person to claim they were going to teach me Arabic. Everyday I get harassed by an onslaught of random Arabic vocabulary. Someone in my family points at something, says a jumble of H and R sounds, I repeat it a few times until they look pleased and then I forget it. Needless to say I had my doubts about how much Arabic she could get through my head.

She started pointing at colors around the room and saying words waiting just long enough for me to repeat them. She was incredibly serious about it all. After we’d named all the colors in the living room she pointed at red and said, “In Arabic.” I helplessly shrugged. I had no idea what red was.

Frantically she went through them again. Maybe one stuck in my mind. She pointed at red again. I shrugged again. It was too much. So she went through it one last time. And pointed at the red one last time. By this time we’d gathered quite the audience and the aunts and cousins were looking on with amusement. Red. It started with an “ahh” sound I was pretty sure. Maybe? The aunts were laughing and a few of them tried to whisper it to me but with a yell my teacher silenced them.

“I don’t know.” I said resolutely. The little girls face turned the exact shade I couldn’t say in Arabic. She started yelling, in Arabic, tears brimming in her eyes. Then she sprang up and ran out of the room sobbing, slamming the door behind her.

A little stunned I sat quietly- I’d just been chewed out by someone that couldn’t have been half my height. A woman came over to sit next to me and introduced herself as the girl’s mother. She explained what the girl had said in Arabic before she left.

It went something like this, “I wanted to teach her all of Arabic so that we could bond but she can’t remember anything! I will never teach her ever again!” Her mother also mentioned that my teacher was a mere seven years old.

The word for red is “Ahhmar”. I know this and every single other color in arabic. Because an hour after my teacher’s temper tantrum she came back in and went through the colors about eight more times. Patiently and slowly. “Ben-ef-seg-i, ben-ef-seg-i.” That’s purple. Black is pronounced “Es-wood” and yellow is “As-far”.

I learned and remembered more from that seven year old then anyone else I’ve met. Unfortunately my little teacher and her two younger sisters are going to England to study this week so I won’t have anymore lessons from her. I fully expect all of the U.K. to be fluent in Arabic by the time she gets back.

I start formal Arabic class this week and hope my teacher cares half as much as my first Arabic teacher did.