atakalam alugha alarabiya jayidan - insh'allah

(I speak Arabic well - I hope)

Today was Arabic test day, and all-in-all, I feel good.

I did some good prep over the weekend with my tutors, and felt much more comfortable, fluid, and ready to go. Good nights sleep was in order before the 9am test time.

Oh, if only it had been that easy. I wake up this morning to a blanket of snow and ice outside, and the news that the OPM has called a 2-hour delay for the federal government. So if the government usually opens at 8 and would today open at 10, I assume that my test will be canceled or delayed. Right? Unfortunately, there wasn't much I could figure out at 6:30 in the morning with no one yet in the offices to answer my calls. Do I go into work, prepare there, and try to call in at 9? Or stay at home, lazy relaxing morning, with some preping of course, for an 11?

So while I enjoyed my breakfast and some early morning talk TV, I repeatedly called FSI until Steve finally got into work. He was clearly flustered, trying to deal with all the chaos the weather had caused for them, and told me at 8:30 that he didn't know if my testers would be in or not. With the possibility that it would take place, I turn on some BBC Arabic to set the mood and get ready to go.

9am rolls around and what do you know, testers are in, set to go. I still don't really get why they came in when the rest of State and FSI was shut all morning, but I guess it has something to do with the fact that the people who are being tested aren't necessarily in DC, and changing the time last minute on a test-taker in Nairobi ain't so easy.

Anyways, the test itself was FAST. I couldn't believe it was already done when they said thanks, bye. We jumped into Arabic directly after some formalities & explanations, and it went from "hi how are you" to discussing the political crisis in Lebanon in about 60 seconds. Thank goodness for my tutors, who really helped me out by practicing discussing current events over the past few weeks. After we conversed about political events for a few minutes, the English speaking observer informed me that I would now be asked to speak "at length" on a topic. That's fine, except for instead of choosing a nice easy topic like Sudanese refugees or climate change, I get asked about a certain domestic issue for which I don't have the most essential vocabulary. After explaining in Arabic that I unfortunately did not know the word for said topic, and was told to try my best, I went off on a bit of a ramble, substituting the "this issue" in for the specific words that I lacked. I managed to quickly divert my monologue down a path that let me talk about something I felt more comfortable with, but was still related. Hopefully this won't count against me, because I was still speaking about a larger issue related to what they wanted to hear, was using Arabic, and had clearly explained that I lacked a few words that had led to the diversion.

So I feel good about the test overall. I think I spoke coherently and relatively fluently, and got to use a lot of advanced vocabulary to express some interesting ideas on relatively specific topics. Insh'allah they were happy with it- but I have to wait a week to find out!

I'm really feel like I'm getting to be an expert in the art of waiting (I didn't say patiently...)

Ila liqa (Till next time...)