i got a lot going through my mind tonight.  lately, learning arabic has become a lot easier for me, so much so that i have nearly forgotten everything else.  with some help from some awesome alternative therapies, as well as batches V-D3 regimen, things are easier than i can remember them ever being.  i dont remember ever feeling this smart...

for some reason though, when i looked at my phone today, something seemed odd.  i couldnt put my finger on it, but something seemed important about the 25th of may.  well i just remembered.  its the last time i saw a friend of mine.  one hell of a soldier, expert infantryman, a PT superstar.  expert in hand to hand combat, he was insanely good at martial arts.  the guy was brilliant too.  he was kinda like the class clown, but you got the impression pretty quick that he was the last person on earth you wanted to tick off.

we were in different companies.  when we deployed, we didnt see each other.  he never made it back. 

i think maybe im thinking about such things too much.  maybe im nuts, but i cant help but feel like i should be back out there.

i tried to volunteer to go to Afghanistan, but i had already qualified to train to be a linguist, and it seems our country needs those more than infantry men right now, so here i am.  ill be damned if i fail now...  i hope to make sure that the next SPC ******* makes it home.  so far as i can, anyway.

sometimes i feel like i am going a little nuts with all this Arabic.  actually, i know im nuts.  i take breaks every once and a while from arabic.  what do i do during those breaks? 

i study Persian.  go figure.  nuts huh?

i have found some pretty simple methods that have boosted my learning abilities tremendously.  i had to come up with something, by the time i got the CHs under control and got off the lithium(which kept me in a bit of a fog) i was so far behind the class that i was in danger of being dis-enrolled from the program. 

far cry from where im at now.
  for anyone out there, ill teach my simple techniques....

when you want to learn a new word, in a foreign language, visualize it.
lets use mustashfa.  after you can see the word in your head and can correctly spell it and pronounce it, you can start breathing meaning into it:

i hate going to the mustashfa for cluster headaches because the emergency room personnel never seem to have a clue how to treat them.  in fact, i really cant think of a time i have ever liked going to the mustashfa.  the doctors always seem impersonal, the place always smells like industrial sterilizers or sick people, and the last time i woke up in one i had a thermometer shoved up my back side, a crap ton of stitches in my right hand, and more chords and tubes connected to me than God ever intended for me.  also why i could never be a doctor, i hate VISITING a mustashfa, i couldnt imagine WORKING in one.

you just learned the arabic word for hospital.  aint that something?
do that a few hundred times a day and you can learn any language in no time!
  the visualization part is only important if you intend to read it.  if not, you can just replace english words with foreign words until you realize that you can say most things in the other language.  using the word in a bunch of english sentences makes it easy to become fluent with the word.  it will come out in the target language just as fast as you can produce it in and english sentence. 

anyway, i think ive gone on long enough.  hope i didnt bore you all too much. 
:)

Didn't bore me at all, in fact I learned something.  Thank you for the lesson! :)

I too love reading things like this, learning what techniques work for different people.

I hope you did get to sleep although with some of your memories I can imagine the impact they have.

eh, believe it or not, its not the memories themselves that keep me up, its all the thinking.  me and my overactive mind...  :)

in other news,
i just found the discovery channel documentary about Special Forces Assessment and Selection(SFAS).

oh lord does that bring back some memories.  it was shot within a year or so from the time i went through it.  for as grueling as it was, i loved it.  kinda makes me want to go back. 

i remember the log pit quite well, rolling back and forth for hours.  they gave us more time to eat that morning than they normally did.  looking back, i should have seen the log pit coming.  after we got done burning ourselves out with those damn logs, we started rolling back and forth, back and forth.  after the first 20 minutes, i expelled that great big breakfast i had just eaten an hour or so earlier.  that was the most miserable part for me, the 20 minutes of getting sicker and sicker.  after i vomited, one of the cadre started screaming at me, "PICK UP YOUR WEAKNESS AND PUT IT IN YOUR POCKET CANDIDATE!!!"  at which point, everything seemed unbelievably funny to me.  for a good thirty seconds or so i was laughing so hysterically that i couldnt even roll any more.  when the cadre asked me what the hell i thought was so funny, i managed to scream out " EGGS!  F*&%ing EGGS!" 

so i picked it up and put it in my pocket and proceeded to roll over my buddies.  i could be have been imagining it, but i swear i saw that green beret fight back laughter.

in the end, i withdrew from the qualification course because i decided that being a special forces soldier would be too hard on a family.  i dont regret it, but sometimes i do miss the people.