I literally heard an American tourist borderline yelling this at a Spanish employee during my recent trip to Barcelona, as if speaking louder and slower would make someone who did not understand the language magically be able to comprehend it.

Ever wanted to learn Korean? Now's your chance! Students, adults, and children of any language level are invited to sign up for a variety of community classes with the UI King Sejong Institute during the spring 2016 semester. An orientation session to provide additional class details and placement information will be held on January 15, 2016, from 5:30 - 6:30 p.m. in 114 Phillips Hall.

Back in August, I was told that Al Akhawayn University was designed on the American system, differing from most universities of the world in that it involves a “liberal arts” education. Students don’t just study within their specialization, but a wide range of subjects in a way that is meant to broaden one’s worldview and train in critical thinking. But I’m discovering that while you can take the professor out of the Moroccan university, it’s harder to take the Moroccan university out of the professor. Even though the university is “American” in style, that doesn’t change the way individual professors conduct their classes. As a result, I’ve been learning the hard way what it’s like to attend an actual Moroccan university from my two language professors with whom I have a love/hate relationship.

Homesickness hit me hard this past week, which marks a little less than two months since leaving home. When I was getting ready to leave, back in August, I knew I would miss some things while I was in Morocco, like my family, friends, dog, et cetera. But these aren't the things that bothered me the most– it's not hard to make a Skype call home. The real difficulty lies in a few things I never knew I would miss, little things that even though they wouldn't matter by themselves add up to make a big difference.

I love words. The paradox of love is it both requires an expression of totality but also one of discernment. When you love a person, the first attribute that comes to mind may be her beguiling smile, the way her voice sounds when she’s flustered, or the beauty mark on her elbow. What I love most about words is their capacity to express exactly what I – who I am in a particular context at that specific moment – would like to communicate. And I think in piecing together these words that contain our truths in their meanings we just may be able to find some kind of ultimate meaning.

On the first day of class, I can’t tell if the teacher is giving an overview of the course or trying to convince people to drop it. Perhaps the culprit of my confusion is my participation in a rigorous study abroad program at Peking University, known as the “Harvard of China”, through which I am directly enrolled in classes with Chinese undergraduate students at the School of Economics and the School of International Studies.

I've studied Arabic for three years. I can write papers, discuss ideas, give presentations, and I can't even ask a taxi driver what the fare is in Morocco. Or I couldn't yesterday morning, when my fellow international student and I took a taxi with four other people (two in the front seat, four squeezed in the back) to the city of Meknès, about an hour away from campus, for the day. We were lucky– there happened to be someone else in the taxi who spoke English.

Studying abroad in college was something I had always wanted to do since I was a very young age and last semester I finally got the opportunity to do so. I wanted to go to a country where I could utilize my Spanish but I did not want to go to Spain. So I spent my fall semester in Heredia, Costa Rica.