Some ramblings about school and why I trust 'NO ONE' here!
So life in Egypt is much easier now. I understand A LOT of spoken Arabic because I make that when I come home from school I go out and talk with the people. Whether it's eating out, getting ice cream, at the Internet cafe, at the grocery store, I am out everyday. I'm actually really skinny here because I don't have a car and I don't take taxis. Stuff isn't that far away. The only reason I would take a taxi is because there are always so many people out on the street. They stay up really late here in Egypt, which isn't that bad because I don't mind being out late. It's nice that things don't close down at 9 or 10 p.m. In fact, people start going out at those times.
Today was my first full week of teaching at the school. It has been exhausting. My special ed kids gave me a hard time this week and the classes are soooo long. I teach three 1 1/2 hour classes every day. I have one 4th grader, 2 9th graders (special ed) and 5 regular awesome 11 & 12th graders who are normal and not ESL. It's difficult teaching to one student for an hour and half. Her attention span is almost nill and she HATES English. Her first langauge is German and she is learning Arabic now. She's like 9 years old and it's tough to be in there for so long with her. My special ed 9th graders gave me a hard time. Well, one of them did...the one with Down's Syndrome was a total ass this week. I got one of the assistant directors to come in and give him a piece of her mind and he was fine every day after that. I also threatened to call his mother and he is very afraid of his mother so I think that helped, too. It's tough to be in there with the special ed kids for 90 minutes every day. It's hard to plan a lot of stuff for that long and there is no way to do group activities. The 9th grader I have is mildly retarded and he's actually really sweet and tries hard, even though he's definitely not at the 9th grade level. My 11 & 12th graders are a blessing in disguise. If it weren't for them I would have left his place a long time ago. They are no ESL and have been learning English since they were about 5 years old or earlier. They work hard and they come to class everyday. I'm teaching them Literature, which is something new to me and I hated Lit in college, except the class I took on only Shakespeare. That was cool. This Lit is okay because the textbook gives a lot of ideas to the teachers so there isn't that much prep. Plus I'm preparing them for the SAT and that makes it not feel so much like I'm in a foreign country.
So the weekend here is Friday and Saturday and my days are ALL mixed up. I keep thinking that I'll have a long weekend, but I don't! I still taught 5 days this week. Today is Thursday here so it's the start of the weekend, but then on Sunday when I start to work it's like a Monday. But what's cool is that I don't have to be all glum about Monday because it's like being Tuesday. Does that make sense? So tomorrow me and Kate are going to go to the ancient catacombs on the outskirts of the city. We started to go last week but we didn't make it to the catacombs in time. We got there at 4:30 & they were closing at 5. We did go see Pompey's Pillar, which was a big umimpressive pillar standing on a big dusty hill. We had to pay 15 pounds to get in ($3.00) which is no big deal, but then listen to this. The tourist police were situated on the ruins and one of them asked us to come over where he was. We should have known something was up. Me & Kate talked to him because I saw a Korean couple being escorted around by another tourist policeman and I thought everything was okay. So we went with this guy and he showed us some stuff that wasn't impresssive because I don't remember it. His English wasn't great, but he knew enough to explain some of the things. Well, the guy took us down to the library which was a hallway in the ground with a looooooong stairwell down. Me & Kate & the tourist police guy were standing there chatting when another police officer walked to where we were. He didn't come all the way up to us but turned a corner before he got to us. I couldn't believe what I saw next. The freaking tourist officer that went behind the corner was doing sign language and sending some kind of a message to the guy we were chatting with. I know this because there was a light shining in the corner and I could see his shadow perfectly! Plus our guide stopped talking and was looking at the corner. I FREAKED OUT! I grabbed Kate's arm and we started running out of the library. Poor Kate didn't know what was going on, she just knew I was dragging her along with me! As I was runnning and saying "Let's get out of here!" the officer who was with us was asking, "Kwayis mudaresa?" Which means is everything okay teacher? I didn't answer him we just hoofed it out of there. Then the a^&*())& had the nerve to ask Kate for a tip for showing us around. #$%^&*()_!@#$%^&*()_@#$%^&*()_+ WHATEVER! See what I mean that people can't be trusted?! These were tourist police officers. I don't know what they were signing about and I'm just glad I saw it. Now I watch EVERYTHING and everybody. It sounds like I'm being paranoid, but not really. I'm just being observant and making sure not to trust anyone too much because people here are VERY VERY different from Americans. The women are cool, but the ones me & Kate have been hanging out with are really pushy. They want us to spend our weekends with them. Like the whole weekend. This will be the first weekend that me & Kate will go to the catacombs and not spend the day with them. These women will get mad, but we don't care. Women here are really pushy and will try to be overbearing and want you to do whatever they tell you to do. I don't know if it's a cultural thing because that's what they do with their husbands & children or what, but it's annoying. They keep telling me & Kate to do everything together, not to go out alone, and not to travel in Alex by ourselves. Okay, so that means we need to be stuck in the house and depend on someone to take us everywhere? That is NOT the American way (or the New Zealand way!) These women have never traveled outside of the country and never will. Only one is a Muslim and she isn't covered and the other women are Christian, so it's not like they are trying to keep us at bay because they want to convert us to Islam or anything. I don't know what the deal is, but like I said, it's annoying! We'll see if they still call us friends after tomorrow when me & Kate dare to venture off by ourselves.
Today was my first full week of teaching at the school. It has been exhausting. My special ed kids gave me a hard time this week and the classes are soooo long. I teach three 1 1/2 hour classes every day. I have one 4th grader, 2 9th graders (special ed) and 5 regular awesome 11 & 12th graders who are normal and not ESL. It's difficult teaching to one student for an hour and half. Her attention span is almost nill and she HATES English. Her first langauge is German and she is learning Arabic now. She's like 9 years old and it's tough to be in there for so long with her. My special ed 9th graders gave me a hard time. Well, one of them did...the one with Down's Syndrome was a total ass this week. I got one of the assistant directors to come in and give him a piece of her mind and he was fine every day after that. I also threatened to call his mother and he is very afraid of his mother so I think that helped, too. It's tough to be in there with the special ed kids for 90 minutes every day. It's hard to plan a lot of stuff for that long and there is no way to do group activities. The 9th grader I have is mildly retarded and he's actually really sweet and tries hard, even though he's definitely not at the 9th grade level. My 11 & 12th graders are a blessing in disguise. If it weren't for them I would have left his place a long time ago. They are no ESL and have been learning English since they were about 5 years old or earlier. They work hard and they come to class everyday. I'm teaching them Literature, which is something new to me and I hated Lit in college, except the class I took on only Shakespeare. That was cool. This Lit is okay because the textbook gives a lot of ideas to the teachers so there isn't that much prep. Plus I'm preparing them for the SAT and that makes it not feel so much like I'm in a foreign country.
So the weekend here is Friday and Saturday and my days are ALL mixed up. I keep thinking that I'll have a long weekend, but I don't! I still taught 5 days this week. Today is Thursday here so it's the start of the weekend, but then on Sunday when I start to work it's like a Monday. But what's cool is that I don't have to be all glum about Monday because it's like being Tuesday. Does that make sense? So tomorrow me and Kate are going to go to the ancient catacombs on the outskirts of the city. We started to go last week but we didn't make it to the catacombs in time. We got there at 4:30 & they were closing at 5. We did go see Pompey's Pillar, which was a big umimpressive pillar standing on a big dusty hill. We had to pay 15 pounds to get in ($3.00) which is no big deal, but then listen to this. The tourist police were situated on the ruins and one of them asked us to come over where he was. We should have known something was up. Me & Kate talked to him because I saw a Korean couple being escorted around by another tourist policeman and I thought everything was okay. So we went with this guy and he showed us some stuff that wasn't impresssive because I don't remember it. His English wasn't great, but he knew enough to explain some of the things. Well, the guy took us down to the library which was a hallway in the ground with a looooooong stairwell down. Me & Kate & the tourist police guy were standing there chatting when another police officer walked to where we were. He didn't come all the way up to us but turned a corner before he got to us. I couldn't believe what I saw next. The freaking tourist officer that went behind the corner was doing sign language and sending some kind of a message to the guy we were chatting with. I know this because there was a light shining in the corner and I could see his shadow perfectly! Plus our guide stopped talking and was looking at the corner. I FREAKED OUT! I grabbed Kate's arm and we started running out of the library. Poor Kate didn't know what was going on, she just knew I was dragging her along with me! As I was runnning and saying "Let's get out of here!" the officer who was with us was asking, "Kwayis mudaresa?" Which means is everything okay teacher? I didn't answer him we just hoofed it out of there. Then the a^&*())& had the nerve to ask Kate for a tip for showing us around. #$%^&*()_!@#$%^&*()_@#$%^&*()_+ WHATEVER! See what I mean that people can't be trusted?! These were tourist police officers. I don't know what they were signing about and I'm just glad I saw it. Now I watch EVERYTHING and everybody. It sounds like I'm being paranoid, but not really. I'm just being observant and making sure not to trust anyone too much because people here are VERY VERY different from Americans. The women are cool, but the ones me & Kate have been hanging out with are really pushy. They want us to spend our weekends with them. Like the whole weekend. This will be the first weekend that me & Kate will go to the catacombs and not spend the day with them. These women will get mad, but we don't care. Women here are really pushy and will try to be overbearing and want you to do whatever they tell you to do. I don't know if it's a cultural thing because that's what they do with their husbands & children or what, but it's annoying. They keep telling me & Kate to do everything together, not to go out alone, and not to travel in Alex by ourselves. Okay, so that means we need to be stuck in the house and depend on someone to take us everywhere? That is NOT the American way (or the New Zealand way!) These women have never traveled outside of the country and never will. Only one is a Muslim and she isn't covered and the other women are Christian, so it's not like they are trying to keep us at bay because they want to convert us to Islam or anything. I don't know what the deal is, but like I said, it's annoying! We'll see if they still call us friends after tomorrow when me & Kate dare to venture off by ourselves.