Hey, sorry that I haven't written in so long. I finally got my computer fixed so hopefully I will have more time to catch up on emails.
This English teaching thing is proving a lot harder then I thought it would be. Do you have any idea how many tenses these poor kids have to learn? Three continuous tenses and all these perfect tenses that I never even realized existed. Did you know that by the time I finish this job I will have been working here for six months? It's true, I will have been away and I will have been living overseas for two years. My students ask me why English needs about ten tenses when Arabic only has two. I am still trying to think of an answer.
I am teaching eight hours a day (and four hours on my "Saturday") and it's murder. I have a level 2 in the morning at YLNG (the gas company) and I have two level 6 classes at MALI so I have been really crazy busy. My level 6 classes are proving to be pretty challenging with all their stupid perfect tenses. But they are lucky-- especially my level 6B class-- because they are after my level 2 and they get compared with people who say things like “Yesterday I studying all the night ago.” Still, I am overworked and so I rarely get to plan a decent lesson plan. My students who are paying $150 a head to be in my class deserve more me coming into class five minutes lates, plopping down in a chair, rubbing my eyes and saying “okay, uh, so, what do you guys want to talk about today?”
I have taken to wearing a headscarf and balto around town. Women here wear three peices, a long coat called a balto, a scarf over their head, and most women wear something called a necab, which is the scarf that is worn over the face. Most nicabs are two parts-- a dark piece of cloth that covers the face and a sheerer cloth the can be pulled down over the eyes to completely cover everything. A lot of the women also wear gloves to hide every little piece of skin.
Now although I am against the idea of wearing this much (I think that the nicab is going a bit far) but I am more against the idea of being whisted at and stared at too. It does have it's moments, I will admit. One day I litterally managed to stop traffic while crossing the street. And the other day I went out without covering and actually managed to cause an accident. On the other hand, I went out and some guy grabbed my right breast. I went to punch the guy but Sonia wouldn't let me.
Anyway, although my housemate Sonia tells me that I will get over it, I love the balto. It's the first time in about two years that I can walk around the street without getting stared at. It's really nice. My old Samoa friends can probably relate. The best part is that if I wear a nicab no one can tell that I am not even Arabic, espcaically if I am not walking. My favorite place to get take-out, a fasoulia place down the street, is ony accessable by walking right past the apartment of my asshole ex-boyfriend. So if I don't feel like dealing with the world I throw on the nicab and I doupt that even my mother would recognise me. The hardest part is not walking like an American but I am getting good at pulling even that off-- you just have to walk like you are afraid that something really big is about to fall on your head.
My students also seem to really enjoy my wearing a scarf, although I am not quite sure why. They got used to it very quickly as well. The other day I was teaching my YLNG students, and came up with an idea. These are the students, by the way, who had me scarfless for about a month. Anyway, I was teaching using words like first, next, finally, etc., and after having them teach me how to use my cell phone and open a coke bottle, I came up with the idea of having them show me how to put on my scarf. I reached up to unfasten it and my students freaked out before I even got a pin off. Some of them went so far as to cover their eyes, and most of them looked away. All of them yelled at me to stop. I reminded them that they had seen my hair about a million times but they seem to have forgotten.
What Next?
