It’s All Okay, Teacher

I gave a quiz yesterday, and when one of my students handed his in, he told me “It’s okay teacher, you can take as many marks off as you want.” Gee, thanks, I’ll do that.

“It’s okay” is sort of the unofficial mantra of Yemenese students. If you’re late, gazing out the window, sleeping, or just don’t feel like coming to class this can be remedied by a reassuring “It’s okay, teacher” and a slight nod of the head. I am curious what the Arabic translation is because once I learn it I think that I could get away with murder.

This is due to the fact that they manage to pull some sort of Jedi Mind Trick when they say it. I have had students bring me their homework a week late and after I already handed out the answers, and when I point this out they simply utter those three magic words and before I know it my hand is reaching to take their assignment before I can stop myself.

There was one time that I took my students outside for an activity and while I was supervising them one of the students wandered off and answered his cell phone. When I went over to yell at him he gave me the Yemen “wait” gesture (bring all your fingers together to make a point, then hold up your hand in front of your face) and told me “Okay, it’s okay, Teacher” and continued talking. I walked away and it took me about ten seconds before I turned back and confiscated his phone after I came to my senses and realized that actually it was NOT okay.

Now we know how those guys managed to get past security in 2001:
“Hey, you can’t take that on the plane!”
“It’s okay, I can go ahead.” Nods.
“Uh, yeah, it’s okay. You can go ahead.”

Just goes on to prove how weak-minded myself and the rest of America are.

Well, it’s okay, I guess.

Surreal Yemen

I just nearly got decapitated by one of the massive “Safety First” signs that was hanging on the wall as it was blown off by the wind. They laminate those posters and then attach wooden poles to both ends to get the thing to lay flat, so I really was in peril. When I went to rehang it I couldn’t find the nail. Either it fell out or it never existed.

And that is just one of the many surreal things that’s going on around here. I am currently trying to teach oil and gas terminology to a group of oil and gas engineers. For you computer people out there, try to imagine teaching computer terminology to a group of students—you have to tell them what a loop is, a statement, etc. Now imagine your mother (who presumably knows about as much about computers as I do the oil and gas industry) teaching the same material and you will see the problem here. A “loop” is suddenly something that is found in a bit of string. For example, one of my students asked me what “spud” meant. I told them that it was a potato. They all looked really confused and I told them to use it in a sentence. The word from their readers refered to people spudding in wells.

Today I asked my students what they had learned in thier other class and was pretty appalled when they all started shouting “F*ck you! F*ck you!” at me. Turns out that they were trying to say “vacuum”. Fortunately we got that one cleared up before I turned in my resignation.

Meanwhile, my class at the main center is going really well where I am continuing to teach regular, basic English. Today on the plate is the grammar of “going to”. I am going to have them practice this one by pretending that they are physic and having them make physic predictions for each student. I am hoping that I will teach full time at the center instead of working at both places as the main center is quite a lot less strange…

It's getting pretty surreal outside Yemen as well. As far as I am concerned the only thing stranger then the JonBenet Ramsey case ten years ago is the fact that it has made front page on all major websites for the past few days, even through there is nothing to report that is more interesting then "John Mark Karr got on the plane..." "John Mark Karr got off the plane..." John Mark Karr reportedly had a drink on the plane..." This breaking news was briefly interrupted by Tiger Woods victory in some golf thing and finishing it up with the news that "Hillary" might run. This wouldn't bother me if it wasn't for the fact that there was a deadly train crash in Egypt, a war (which is admittedly in ceasefire), and Iran was testing bombs and Korea is about to start testing nukes again. Nope, change the channel; let's hear about what John Mark Karr picked out of his nose in LA this morning instead...

Cafeteria Workers Write the Darndest Things

Today the menu said that we would be having "chicken, rice, vegtables, homos and bread". I guess that must be one of the ways that the punish people leading alternative lifestyles in this country. Needless to say, I avoided the meat.

Students Say the Darndest Things

I just had a student approach me urgently and say “Teacher, I need to know a word. I need to know the word for a man who can not give birth.”

Assuming he meant impotent, I gave him the proper word and he skipped away happily.

Earlier, in class, I had the students practice memo writing and one of my students was obviously very proud that he knew the meaning and usage of the verb “to erect”. His memo stated that he needed to erect a volleyball court and needed people to help with the erection. I read the rest of the memo, trying to hide my childish urge to giggle every time the word “popped” up, but lost it near the end of the memo when he called for people to “help me with my erection”. I decided that it wasn’t worth it to explain to him why he shouldn’t use the word that way and just crossed it out on the paper.

Just Another Manic Monsoon

I think that the rain here is just as heavy as the rain in Samoa, but it’s hard to tell. One thing that is for sure… it is a lot worse here because Yemen isn’t designed for heavy rainfall like Samoa is. With the exception of the thatched Samoan roofs, they do quite well to build the triangular shaped metal coverings complete with rain catchers and water tanks. Yemen, on the other hand, is known for an architecture style that includes flat-roofed houses. When it rains, the water pools at the top and eventually will leak into the home, having no where else to go.

This problem is one of the reasons why my friend is leaving his current place, and I always thought that he was exaggerating when he talked about his water problems especially since he wasn’t at ground level but rather about a half floor up. I was at his place helping him pack when the rain started. First, the roof leaked and caused a small waterfall that went down his front stairway and started to flow into his apartment. We tried to make a little dam but it was quickly washed away. After giving up the hallway for lost, we worked for a while and I went into his kitchen to get some more plastic bags for padding and found that a small lake had formed. The reason? Well, there was a “light well” outside his kitchen that had a area that was about 6 inches deep and about 10X10 feet, and after an hour it had completely filled up and the water was coming under the door. There was a drain, but it was blocked. After about ten minutes of rooting around in the filthy rainwater we found it and the water subsided. I never had these problems in Samoa, where it rained twice as much.

Moral: Being prepared for stuff like this really does make a huge difference. Samoa, I applaud you.

Things here are pretty quiet and good otherwise. Sorry that I don't have more exciting things to publish to this Blog, but all in all I guess that that is a good thing.

Castles in the Clouds

We’ve been having a lot of rain here, pretty dramatic stuff. The day will start out blue and beautiful and then the wind will pick up and we will get angry rain for about two hours. The other day it got so bad that they had to cut classes short and send the trainees home on busses due to the fact that the streets were quickly filling up with water. Tonight we are going to try to get to the Old City and take some pictures. There is a main road that runs through it that turns into a river during the rainy season.

Last night the power went off and we spent the first half hour doing class in the dark, or rather in the quickly fading twilight. The power popped back on right before it got too dark to read. I had gone home to rest before class, and it’s funny how much you rely on electricity without thinking about it. I walked to the kitchen in to make some oatmeal but the power on the water heater was out so I made a sandwich instead. After that, I walked into the TV room to eat while watching the news and pressed the "On" button about three times before I remembered that the power was out. I walked back into my room and decided to make coffee instead. I poured water into the coffee maker—you can see where this is going. After that failed I decided to listen to music and pressed the power button on the radio… well, you get the idea.

Yesterday morning we were waiting for our driver and I commented to the other teacher, Hutham, on the beauty of the day. She pointed to clouds that were comming over the mountains that surrounded Sanaa and said that that meant there would be rain later, and she was right. I noticed that there was small structures dotting the mountains. I asked Hatham about them and she told me that they were military installations. I asked her if they were currently operational and she said that they were. What did they protect against, I asked? She told me that they protected Sanaa. “From what?” Hutham just shrugged. I smiled and told her that hopefully they would never be used.

“They will be,” Huthham told me. “Someday.”

“I hope not,” I said.

“They will be,” Huthham repeated. I asked her what she meant and she just smiled cryptically. I couldn’t help but get the feeling that she knew something that I didn’t.

May creatures all be of a peaceful heart

Not to sound like a total Space Cadet, but I have been doing a lot of reading in Buddhism recently, and I just wanted to share with you one of my favorite quotes. This is from the Karaniya Metta Sutta (or the Sutta of loving kindness) and was translated by Ñanamoli Thera and taken from the Access To Insight Website:

In safety and in bliss
May creatures all be of a peaceful heart.
Whatever breathing beings there may be.
No matter whether they are frail or firm,
With none excepted, be they long or big
Or middle-sized, or be they short or small
Or thick, as well as those seen or unseen,
Or whether they are dwelling far or near,
Existing or yet seeking to exist.
May creatures all be of a peaceful heart.

مشجولة!!

One of my students gave me head scarf, and here's a picture of me wearing the thing. The odd thing was that after I put it everyone oohed and aaahhed and told me how beautiful I looked. I thought that was really odd-- shouldn't it be the other way around? Wouldn't they be tired of seeing women with their heads covered? Is my hair really that messy and gray?

Anyway, the student that gave it to me had my name embroidered in it, but also strangely had his own which sent a very odd message to me. Not that I think that any Yemenese man within their right mind would want to have anything to do with me as I would bring a ton of shame into their family (being loudspoken and completely unable to cook.) He was pretty mortified that I had put it on right away, but what did he expect! Anyway, the next day people were pretty surprised that I wasn’t wearing it. I am not sure what they had expected either. The thing was pretty uncomfortable and kept slipping off. Most women here tell me that if I don’t have to cover I shouldn’t bother.

“مشجولة” means busy (mash-ghoul-a), and that’s what I am these days. I picked up an extra class at MALI during the 6:30-8:30 shift, so basically I am going for fourteen hours a day. This is only for five weeks, however, and then MALI is really going to owe me one. I am pretty glad to be working at MALI, it gets me a foot in the door at that community. Also, because the students are so diverse you get more a taste for Sana’a life. The students at YLNG are friendly and bright, but they are also terribly busy and don’t really have time for socializing. Plus, they are all men and it is very challenging to have male friends here in Yemen if you are a woman. After my first day at MALI I met a very charismatic woman from Gaza who promised to invite me over.

So, things go on as normal. Everything is wonderful, and I am having a great time.

Ooops

"Ooops" is one of the words that I actually had to teach my class, which surprised me, being the klutz that I am. I figured that they had heard it about a zillion times by now from me alone!

So I was teaching yesterday and one of the assignments was to listen to a phone conversation and correct an email address that is shared. In the book, there was a yellow piece of paper that the email was written on and I asked the student what that particular office supply was called. They gave guesses and I wrote “Post-It Note” on the board, and explained that sometimes products take on a brand name as their common name, and could they think of any? The class came up with Kleenex and Q-Tips and then drew a blank. Not thinking, I blurted, “how about Tampax?” My own horror at what I just said was eclipsed by the look of confusion on my students faces and I quickly stabbed the play button and started the listening before anyone had a chance to write down this new vocab word that I had unwittingly given them. It occurred to me later that not only did the entire class not know what this word meant they probably didn’t know what happens monthly to a woman that would cause the need of this particular item.

This was just slightly worse then last term when I had the students do some creative writing in class. We were playing the game that Sarah and our friends used to play back in grade school where you write the first line of a story, pass it to your friend, and they write the next line and fold the paper so that you can only see what they wrote. They pass it on and so on. Anyway, one of the students had written that the main character “ran away and quit his job and became a huge rubber.” I burst out laughing and told him that he meant “robber” and that a rubber was something very different. “What is it?” my students demanded. “Well,” I said, “in England it’s an eraser, but in America its a… um…” I stopped suddenly and turned bright red as I realized where I was going with this. “Well, it’s something very different,” I finally said lamely and quickly signaled my student to keep reading. “It’s a condom, right?” he offered brightly. I confirmed this with a nod and then stabbed my finger at his paper to get him to read and the rest of the class shared snickers at my embarrassment.

Thank God I have a class of guys, otherwise I might be on a plane back to Samoa right now.

Apparently the World is Going to Hell in a Handbasket

Well, I am back at YLNG and teaching Technical English. My classes consist of explaining to students that a light is "burnt out" rather then "broken" and needs to be "replaced" rather then "fixed". It's actually rather fun and proving to be quite easy. I thought that the next three months were going to be hellish. You see, before the break there were six different groups and they were at six different English levels and there were six different teachers to teach them. As any teacher will tell you, the amount of classes doesn't really matter, it's the amount of prep needed that will kill you. Anyway, I thought that I was going to be teaching all six different levels and was wondering how the hell I was going to manage to prep for all this and still be able to sleep. The first day I didn't even bother to plan something out. I figured that I would just do intros and some assessment to find out what the students needed. When I got to class, it was a bit of a shock because the classes had been scrambled up like eggs. In any given class I have 2-4 students from each level. I quickly learned that although this made teaching the class more of a challenge, overall my job was easier. You see, because the classes were so mixed they were basically all the same level and I could literally teach the same thing six times in a row. In addition, YLNG decided that six hours of teaching was too much and brought in another teacher, so now I only have three hours of teaching and I get three hours of prep time.

So in my spare time, I have been reacquainting myself with the news. Although I have CNN on the TV at home, they are pissing me off because every time that I turn on the channel they are doing some sort of "human interest" story. For instance, the other day I switched it on and there was a half hour segment interviewing some woman who returned to Beirut to start "a new life" and was complaining about the fact that she had to turn around and go back to New York after only being there for three weeks. I mean, I felt sorry for the woman, but at least she had somewhere else to go, and at least she got out of there! What about the people that were stranded… or worse, the people that actually LIVE there that have no where else to go and whose entire personal worth is in their house that just got bombed? I think that the problem here is that CNN is still an American station and when I sit down to watch it is about 2AM on the East Coast and they don't want to bother with the really good stuff. So in other words, I spent the last two weeks pretty uninformed.

First off, I was wondering why all my friends were suddenly bitching constantly about the heat. Then I read that there is a heat wave that is paralyzing the nation and there had been a national emergency called in New York. Also, even my more conservative friends are writing to warn me that Samoa might be underwater in about ten years. I guess that a lot of this is due to the "Al Gore Movie" although I doubt that even Al Gore has the power to alter the weather to make his point. One of my more conservative friends here was railing against the government claiming that they had covered up most of the evidence that could suggest that global warming could be a problem. (The weather here, by the way, has been quite pleasant although a little rainy.)

Plus, we are starting to look at a full-scare war in the Middle East involving yria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Iran with the US right in the middle bogged down in Iraq. Now so far, everyone that I have talked to seems to be okay with me being American due to the back that I didn't vote for the guy. However, I have started telling people who ask that I am a Canadian from Vancouver, just to be on the safe side. But I read today that Syria is calling up its reserves. Of course, all this drumming could be because it happened to be the Syrian Army National Day. And everyone is ignoring North Korea again, which is generally about the time when they start to do crazy things like fire rockets into the Sea of Japan.

I remain safe in Yemen. I honestly feel safer here then I did in Samoa, which is about to join Atlantis, or in Seattle, which is possibly within range of Kim Jong-il's rockets.