want to share with you a secret: the **best place for learn arabic **at this moment is probably **Damascus - Syria **(and obviously Yemen!). I have been there myself. In Damascus, you live in a complete linguistic immersion: you speak Arabic all day long. Syrian are not very strong in English speaking, so you might be lucky to be obliged to speak in every moment, situation, every place in the streets, city, shops, taxi …
Courses are great there, i recommend Abu Nour and a place called Arabesk Studies Damascus (i think their email is arabesk at mail.sy ). For girls, you can live in a female syrian family, where you can practise Arabic on everyday life basis and all situations, get to know the culutre and traditions, learn about Islam and many other things.
You can find **very nice people **(and also bad people, as everywhere in the world (specially taxi drivers and real states agents), but here nice friendly people are more, Insha Allah). The weather is great. It is sunny almost 320 days or more per year. It is very important for the psychology side of your studies.
Furthermore, their colloquial syrian dialect is very beautiful and very very close to the Fus-ha (standard classical arabic). In Egypt, you will find yourself studying 2 languages (arabic and egyptian dialect, which is very different
