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.