O Brave New World...

I haven't actually started, apart from this preliminary stuff I'm using with my students. But the Pimsleur method Eastern Arabic thing seems like a possibility, though I quail at the thought of not using the crutch of reading and writing while learning a language. I'm guessing Eastern vs. Egyptian (and certainly vs. Western) would be the most useful, though I don't really know. Yemeni kids... would they speak Eastern Arabic? And Iraqis, and Syrians and the Lebanese?

If you have suggestions, I'd be interested to hear them. Are you a native speaker? Why (if you don't mind me asking) were you doing this for your boyfriend?