"What was it like studying in Scotland??"

I know this is pretty unrelated to my Israeli experience, but ever since I first decided - four and a half years ago - to attend university in Scotland, I have often been asked two questions: "What was it like?", and "How come you decided to study there?"
Well, this afternoon I read a New York Times article that I am pretty sure I could have written, considering it is almost verbatim what I tell people who ask me the aforementioned questions. Anyways, I thought some of you might be interested so here it is.

Related to my Israeli experience, today in Arabic class we finally finished learning the entire alphabet. I know what you're thinking, "It's December and it has taken you two months to learn the alphabet???" Trust me, I know twenty-eight letters does not sound like much, but multiply that number by four because every letter has four different ways of writing itself: its initial form, medial form, final form, and independent form. Anyways, with each new letter we learn, the Arabic teacher gives us words as examples of how to use the letters. When translated into English, sometimes the group of words are related and make sense, and other times they make me laugh. For example, using words with the 'emphatic haa', I can now create sentences such as, "It is true: we declared a struggle on the government". Where as using words with the letter 'jim' - yes, a letter in Arabic is called 'jim'; there is also a 'steve' and a 'bob'... - I can now say sentences like, "My new crown exploded in the snow."

Oh, and in today's modern Middle Eastern history class I received irrefutable evidence that social networking sites are taking over the world. Since our class has wireless internet access, during the lecture I like to Google names of history figures that my teacher mentions so that I can put a face to a name: when I Googled one such name hoping to find a picture and a Wikipedia entry, the first link at the top of the results page was Abdul Rahman Al-Wakabi...'s Facebook group.
I'll let that conclude today's class.
!ו'מ טוב