Final review session in Arabic today. Bundles of fun. In fact, it was actually kind of neat to see how much we’ve learned over the last 8 weeks. Or rather, were supposed to learn. It’s that little gap that has me worried. Lots of grammar. Lots of words. For me, that means lots more still review.

For lunch, I was once again trying to play it safe. Avoid anything that could possibly have been responsible for yesterday’s disagreeable little bout of stomach sickness. I don’t know why, but this summer, dining has just been a pain. The dining hall here has a decent selection of food (less than on the Farm, but still, not small), but it’s been tricky finding stuff I like, and not winding up wishing I’d just skipped lunch altogether. The ice cream, I’ll say, has been pretty good.

So after my somewhat cautious lunch, I returned to the picnic tables by our classroom to continue practicing for the Arabic oral. Now we have a script. Just need to make sure we won’t skip anything, or we’ll be nowhere near the requisite 15 minutes. Events proved my partner something of a philanthropist, when two guys came around collecting money for a worthy cause. I was sufficiently impressed to join. Putting your money where your mouth is…

Rest of the afternoon ensconced in the textbook, and looking at photos from last weekend. I’d say they mostly turned out quite nice, although it’s amusing to realize that I don’t appear in any of them. Guess my prejudice against being photographed has become a little too vehement. On the whole I don’t have too many people shots. Something to work on…

Also, finalized on the plans for next week. Going hiking, around Mineral King. Haven’t been there in about 8 years, so yeah, it should be fun. The clever part is that I can take the train and bus, to meet up with my dad. This saves me from having to fly back to San Francisco, and saves him from an extra 200 miles of driving. And it’s cheap (relatively) going by bus and train. Goodness all around.