Tomorrow will be my 6 month anniversary working at the Language Acquisition Resource Center at San Diego State University.
It is amazing how quickly time has flown by, and how much I have learned in such a short period of time. To be honest, I didn’t know much about Arabic and Persian cultures before I began working at the center, nor did I know that much about foreign languages. Of course I took my high school language requirements, and worked towards a master’s degree in teaching English to speakers of other languages, but the actual languages themselves, I knew very little about.
I am the only monolingual in my office, but am making it a goal of mine to work on my Spanish over the next few months. My brain has been resting after 18+ years of school, but I really need to get back into the classroom soon! So what exactly do I do? After six months, it is still difficult to put into words what I do, since I do a little bit of a lot of things. You can check out our website at
larc.sdsu.edu I work mainly with the critical language program, helping coordinate classes in Pashto, Persian, Arabic, Iraqi, Russian, Turkish, and Chinese.
I have spent my last few months working with Pashto and Iraqi, but as the summer approached, I began working with the ROTC language program, where the main focus is summer intensive language institutes. Thankfully, the institutes began last week, so I have been able to take a deep breath and relax for the first time in a few weeks.
One of the perks of my job is I am able to experience many unique cultural events, especially food. Last Thursday, I attended a classical Persian concert, which introduced me to very unique percussion instruments. And on Friday I enjoyed a meal from Afghanistan, in a traditional setting. I spend most of time doing paperwork, running around campus for signatures, and making sure Marine’s are using their parking permits correctly, but I also get to enjoy the finer cultural events that make the endless paperwork worthwhile!
It is amazing how quickly time has flown by, and how much I have learned in such a short period of time. To be honest, I didn’t know much about Arabic and Persian cultures before I began working at the center, nor did I know that much about foreign languages. Of course I took my high school language requirements, and worked towards a master’s degree in teaching English to speakers of other languages, but the actual languages themselves, I knew very little about. 
I am the only monolingual in my office, but am making it a goal of mine to work on my Spanish over the next few months. My brain has been resting after 18+ years of school, but I really need to get back into the classroom soon! So what exactly do I do? After six months, it is still difficult to put into words what I do, since I do a little bit of a lot of things. You can check out our website at larc.sdsu.edu I work mainly with the critical language program, helping coordinate classes in Pashto, Persian, Arabic, Iraqi, Russian, Turkish, and Chinese. 
I have spent my last few months working with Pashto and Iraqi, but as the summer approached, I began working with the ROTC language program, where the main focus is summer intensive language institutes. Thankfully, the institutes began last week, so I have been able to take a deep breath and relax for the first time in a few weeks. 
One of the perks of my job is I am able to experience many unique cultural events, especially food. Last Thursday, I attended a classical Persian concert, which introduced me to very unique percussion instruments. And on Friday I enjoyed a meal from Afghanistan, in a traditional setting. I spend most of time doing paperwork, running around campus for signatures, and making sure Marine’s are using their parking permits correctly, but I also get to enjoy the finer cultural events that make the endless paperwork worthwhile!
That looks like the teapot dad brought me from Pakistan.
ReplyDeleteLove, Mom B.
That's probably because the Pashtun tribes live in north-west Afghanistan, and I think in the eastern areas of Pakistan. So the culture is probably really similar. I have a dress from Turkmenistan that looks like the one on the wall too. It's pretty similar.
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