His Book and My book.

Now that all of my kids are going to school, I have time to focus on myself. Before September came I signed myself up for an Arabic class. My sole reason for this was to learn the language of the Quran. It is really disappointing to not fully understand what is going on when you are reading Quran or saying your prayers and spending time in the mosque. For example I never know whether they are reciting Quran or saying a dua at the mosque. Feeling like a stranger in your own religion is a very painful thing to go through. So to rectify this I signed up for Arabic1a with Rabata. If you are unfamiliar with them, they are a group of sisters mainly a sister; Anse Tamara (a convert like me) who studied in Syria then started this online portal of Islamic learning. Arabic 101 was too easy for me as I already know my letters and basically how to read so I chose the next level. Its been a few weeks now and there are two classes per week including grammar and vocabulary. At first I was literally getting headaches and the teacher said its normal when learning a new language. It never happened to me before when learning other languages though. This is really intense for me I guess. Another strange thing is that sometimes now I think of random Arabic sentences. This is amazing to me since I only just started learning.

The second kind of learning I am doing kind of fell in my lap! I asked a woman from the mosque if she would be interested in starting a book club and she said she had no time! She said she had just signed up for 4 writing courses. I expressed an interest and she said I could sign up too and that they were free through the library website! My library doesn't offer these courses sadly, but, my old library does in the city I used to live in. I still have my card from that library and our town has privileges with theirs so I signed up. These courses are offered through Gale.  The course I am taking now is Writing for Children. I also signed up for 3 other courses. This course has homework just like my Arabic course so I am very busy now with that and like I mentioned in the last post, teaching the kiddies in the mosque. Sadly though we still have no book club at the mosque.

So insha Allah one day with Allah's help I will be able to understand the language of the Quran and also write a book of my own.

A little bonus for my hubby was that when I went to the library I saw a bookmark there advertising another Gale resource; CHILTON. If you are a car enthusiast you will know what I'm talking about but if not it refers to the repair manuals used for cars. He has already used it to fix the power locks in our van. Alhumdullilah.

Book I borrowed from the library (not part of Rabata) which has proved useful.

Omwits got her groove

Whoa! Remember my last post? I was kind of lost? Well, now I seem to have so many activities that I'm overwhelmed but in a good sort of way. Alhumdullilah. One activity I planned but the others fell into my lap! Again alhumdullilah. One thing that fell into my lap was when I signed up my kids to a different islamic/arabic class. At the original one it was 3 hours and now revamped to 5 hours. At that place I had to travel there just like the second one but at the first I was not allowed to access the classes so had to sit in the hall for 3 hours. Contemplating sitting in the hall for an additional 2 hours made me say no way! So I decided to travel the other direction and bring my kids to a school that was only 2 and a half hours long with a break in between and a lovely playground outside. The first place had neither. Funny thing happened though on the way to signing up. I got roped in to be the kindergarten Islamic Studies teacher. So on the spot I had to come up with a lesson. Since it was almost Eid at the time, I figured I'd go with a hajj theme. First I read to the kids about the story of Ibrahim (as) and hajj. Then I got them to colour a picture of the kabba (photocopies from a colouring book). After that I got the kids to build kabbas out of legos/mega blocks which was something I saw on Facebook and since the mosque had these, why not? Whew, that was my first unplanned night. The cherry on the top is that I also get to teach my littlest daughter who is tickled pink and during the first hour I am learning quran. When one door closes, another one opens. Subhanallah.