Miss Kim!! Teacher Kim!!

My head is all messed up due to the schedules in this country. The week starts on Saturday and ends on Thursday. I arrived on a Thursday morning and started work on Saturday. As a result what feels like, say, Wednesday is actually Monday. So I spent most of my first week feeling like it was going by really slowly. I can’t believe that I have only been here a week!

I am working at a local natural gas company, and we are training people to work with internationals at various spots. To do this, they need excellent speaking and listening skills, especially when conversing with people who are also speaking English as a second language. (The head of the training center is a wonderful Frenchman.)

The gods smiled on me when I got this assignment… it is probably one of the better teaching jobs in Yemen. To begin with, I have access to the best facilities and teaching tools… the office that I am in is comparable to my situation at Microsoft. Plus there is free tea and coffee, free soda and a free lunch everyday (sound familiar to anyone?) But the best part is that I am working with some of the smartest students in the country. These 90 students were picked out of a pool of more then 16,000 applicants, and so I am working with the best of the best. They are all college educated and without question brighter then I am. It is a bit of a shock to work with students who are so sharp. The first day, I allocated 20 minutes for “introductions”, which included a 5 minute section where I would allow the students to ask me questions. “Do you have any questions for me?” is practically a rhetorical question in many of the classes that I have taught in the past and I wasn’t expecting anyone to actually ask anything. Wrong. They questioned me for 45 minutes on topics ranging from my first thoughts about Yemen to what life is like in Samoa, requesting me to speak a smattering of the language and asking about the housing and the food. I finally had to cut it short to start the lesson, something that I don’t think that I have ever done before.

I have had so much fun with this class. Unfortunately, during the next session I am being moved to another group, a more remedial group. I requested this change simply because my students that I have now are so bright that I feel I am not challenging them enough. We will still be at the same center, but I will miss them nonetheless. I am sure that I will like my new students just as much.

Today we had an “activity day” where we played various games including a scavenger hunt and logic puzzles. I ran the logic puzzles, which consisted of matchstick puzzles (where you make roman n umber equations like “XI – IV = V” and have to move one matchstick to make it work: “XI – V = VI”). We also played Su Duku puzzles, previously unheard of in Yemen but imported from Samoa via Seattle by Dylan (thanks Dyl!) and which also proved to be a great hit. I lost my voice eventually but it was a real thrill to be called over with a “Miss Kim!” to to see a Yemeni adult grinning like a child to show off his latest solution and receive a pat on the shoulder and a “good job” from me.

I really love teaching here. I can’t say it enough. I really love Yemen. There are a lot of things that I don’t like—the honking of the cars takes a definite first and being the only unveiled woman (all the woman wear the full burka here, but I am asked not to in order to model a “western woman”) wandering the street… but I still love it.

My Arabic isn’t going all that well, and I think that most annoying thing is that I can say everything that I want to say in Samoan, and subconsciously I think that should be enough. My teachers and friends assure me that I just need to be patient and that I will have a breakthrough in reading, and that things will be easier after that. I can’t take the busses by myself because I can’t read the signs and I can’t find my way around the city because I can’t identify the landmarks. Everything looks the same to me, but it just gives me greater motivation to learn.

I get a week off now, and I am going to spend that time at MALI observing classes to get a better idea of the way that MALI teaches, and I also hope to pick up some more Arabic during that time.