She can sing. She can dance. But she can't do calligraphy.

I'm a girl. As a girl I feel like there are a few chief components to life that I should be the master of. Handwriting is one of those things. Calligraphy? Of course I should be able to handle it. WRONG! Such was the discovery I made tonight whilst working on the Rosetta project with my civilization group.

First and foremost, I now have a deep and abiding respect for anyone who can successfully manage a calligraphy pen. Those things are difficult! As such, it was my responsibility to acquire the calligraphy pen with which we were to write our message. Perhaps I didn't buy the highest quality pen (college budget... hehe), but still it was a good pen. Despite my most valiant efforts though, I could not make that pen work for me. On our practice page, I managed to convince the pen to write one word: "Mom." Thanks Mom!

In our group, the process of creating our "artefact" happened like so:

• We met at the library with supplies in hand.
• We journey through the library to find a suitable place to work
• We select parallel verses from the Qur'an and Bible about Joseph in Egypt to compare and contrast the two works.
• We each take turns writing the Hebrew/Arabic calligraphy in pencil on our medium. Hebrew on one side, Arabic on the other.
• We each take turns tracing the pencil with the calligraphy pen (except for me who couldn't get the pen to work).
• We examine our work.
• We celebrate!

I'm amazed at the time it must have taken monks to slowly and meticulously write this calligraphy. Theirs was much more detailed and much higher quality than our artifact, and ours took nearly two hours to complete! I'm definitely grateful I do not have to copy all my books by hand, and especially that I do not have to use a calligraphy pen in doing so. Maybe one day I'll figure out how to use one. Or maybe I'll simply be forever haunted by the memory.