Shout Out

First a shout-out to Sonia's bf who is one of my biggest international fans at this point. Sonia's my housemate and apparently he is reading the blog to find out interesting gossip about her, of which I have none. She has kicked our asses (another word that can be found in the Penguin Readers that I unwittingly assigned my class) into doing Pilates everyday do to the fact that we are all gaining weight from Ramadan. How can one gain weight from fasting, you ask? Well, fasting all day and then eating a three course meal topped off with about three different types of deserts is a bit like eating a Big Mac and Chocolate shake and then walking up the stairs on your way back home hoping that you will balance it out. Here's a picture of us (top row from the left, unknown, Becky, Miriam, unknown, me, Sonia, unknown, unknown, Adbulla, Sukaim, unknown) at one of the dinners that we went to. Sonia is the only one in the house that is fasting, so I am trying not to eat around her but I probably shouldn't bother. She starts cooking at around 3PM and the smells that come from the kitchen drive me crazy even though I have eaten that day.

Ramadan is tough on teaching as well. I am back at the Gas Company for a 10AM class (not fun considering that I still have my 10-12 class at night and I have to wake up at 8AM) and my poor students have mostly been up until 5AM. During Ramadan, you stay up all night to have the sunup meal and then sleep all day, unless you're them. They get four hours of sleep and then wake up at 9AM to go to class. (They get an extra hour of sleep because they are guys and they don't have to bathe.) Needless to say class participation has been down. I find it helps to randomly start jumping up and down and screaming "Wake up, Wake UP, WAKE UP!!!!!" I get a five minute reprieve from 16 sets of glazed eyes and open drooling mouths.

Miriam left, and if she is reading this then she should know that her email address that she gave me is bouncing, so please send me an email!!! It's very sad without her. Becky and I were watching "Crocodile Dundee" and we didn't have anyone to make fun of during the viewing. So a shout-out to Miriam: "Crikey, G'day mate! Is it true that people grab each other's genitals in the bush?" It's really sad about her, she was the brightest spot in Yemen. Right now she is working in Korea (or as I like to think of it she is scouting out Korea as a possible destination for me after Yemen.)

There was an earthquake and Tsunami in Samoa but apparently everything is okay.

Night Well Spent

Well, it has come to this... my and my housemates spent an evening looking up rude words in the student dictionary. Yes, Yemen is that boring.

It all started when I found that I couldn't write a Story Quiz for the book assigned to my level 5A class. The reason that I couldn't make a story quiz was that the administration didn't bother making me a copy of the book. The book was "The Body" by Steven King, which the movie "Stand By Me" was based on.

We weren't actually reading the Steven King book, of course. We have these "Pengiun Readers" which are based off of more popular works. They are pretty terrible, as you might imagine. Think of the awful books that always come out after a popular movie which is a retelling by some hack who can't come up with their own plotline. These are like that but about ten times worse. Occasionally there is even a "book" that is based on a movie, and those are the most painful (especially when the movie was originally based on a book and pretty much everything good about the story is lost.)

I am not sure why they do this. There are plenty of great books that are written at my students level that don't need to be patronizingly rewritten. One of the reasons, I think, is that because these books are designed for adult learners they want to introduce more adult themes. Unfortunately, in a society where women aren't even allowed to use Tampons these "mature" themes are a inappropriate. Miriam had to teach the Penguin Reader version of "Seven" (that movie with Brad Pitt and whats-his-name) and the deadly sin of "lust" was a bit much for the class (and had been edited out pretty much to the point where no one knew what the hell was going on.) Currently, I am teaching a version of "the Breathing Method" by Steven King where the protagonist at one point pulls up a woman's skirt while laughing manically in front of a bunch of horrified onlookers as he goes to deliver the baby from a recently decapitated woman. Not exactly culturally sensitive stuff, here. And I am also teaching "The Body" where four boys... well, read on.

So anyway, since I was supposed to give a quiz on Saturday and still didn't have the book on Wednesday, the last day of class I was in a bit of a pickle. Since giving a quiz with just two questions reading "what is the title of the book?" and "how many kids are in the book?" was not an option, I grabbed a copy of the book while the students were on break and flipped through to figure out what I was going to do. At the back of the book was a bunch of "discussion questions" that included having the students look up different definitions as well as writing about why the characters made the choices that they did. Without reading through the questions fully, I assigned those questions in lieu of a quiz.

So, imagine my surprise when, the next Saturday as I sat down to mark the papers (still without a book) I realized with horror that one of the words that they were asked to look up was "pussy". My housemates found this really amusing and Becky decided to look up the word in the comprehensive Longman's dictionary that was handed out to all the students. The first definition that came up was "a cat", which was harmless enough. The second definition read something along the lines of "a cowardly person" which was word for word what the student whose paper I was holding had written. I thought I was in the clear but Becky went on to the third definition which read "a rude slang for a women's genitalia" and added helpfully in small caps "Do NOT use this word."

I groaned and wondered how I was going to explain in my next interview how it came to pass that I was fired from my last job for having my students look up rude words as a homework assignment. Meanwhile, Becky was intrigued by the "Do NOT use this word" and immediately started to see what other words in the dictionary held the same helpful advice. Only this word had this particular warning, plus another offensive word for a homosexual man. We were pretty impressed by the listings for f*ck, however. They not only spent a half page defining the word but they included many of the idioms associated with it and even provided examples ("These speakers are really f*cked up" and "After three years with John I was totally f*cked up.")

Sadly, this was the most entertainment that we've had in a week. It's pretty quiet around here during Ramadan.

Happy Ramadan!!

Well, Ramadan is here and today is the first day. I was going to fast, but when my alarm went off at 4:30 to remind me to eat breakfast before the sun came up I turned around and punched it off and went back to sleep. (At least that is what I am assuming happened, considering I don't really remember the event.) I woke up starving and thirsty at 10AM into bright sunlight. Since I messed up the whole day I decided that the whole month was blown so I made coffee and oatmeal and decided to give up refined sugars and cigarettes instead. This was blown about three minutes later after I made the oatmeal and discovered that I was out of artificial sweetener.

The Yemenis know how to make it through this holiday. Although I think that fasting and feeling hunger is sort of the point, they get around this little inconvenience quite well by simply moving the workday to night and sleeping during daylight hours. This would explain why I am sitting in the computer lab at 9:35 PM waiting for my 10PM class to start that finishes around midnight. I have four cups of coffee in me and I still feel like I am going to pass out. I am not a night person. (I'm not really a morning person for that matter either.)

So as far as I can tell, the average Yemeni will get up around three or four in the afternoon (except for the women who have to cook for about three hours prior,) break fast at around 5:30PM, then start their day. Most people go to work at around 8PM and go to sleep around 4AM, as the sun is coming up before they have their "early" morning meal. It's the way to do it, I guess.

Election day went off without a hitch. The incumbent, Salah, got somewhere between 75-85% of the votes (depending if you are talking to a supporter or not) and there was no real violence. As my student put it, "just three people where killed". I guess that is a improvement over the last years. I went out and met a Aussie named Ben (an Arabic student whose blog can be seen here,) and although I suspect that they "Hey baby I love you" were a little more frequent then usual the city was pretty quiet.

Anyway, time for class.

Happy Patriots Day

Well, my blog seems to be getting quite the following as of late, with people all over the globe sending me messages. I guess that this means that I need to start writing more about Yemen and less about the infantile humour that resolves around the sexual things that my students inadvertently say.

So the elections are coming up. The date, I believe is September 20th, although I could be wrong. The hype surrounding the elections is quite impressive. My friend the Protest Mobile has been running around the city blasting Arabic music and pimping it's candidate... kids run around the streets waving flags and singing. Three-four story posters are erected (he he) on the sides of walls that show pictures of the desired candidate. Nothing like anything I have seen in America, although I missed the 2004 elections. This is all a bit much considering that the winner has already been all but pre-determined. The current incumbent, President Salah, has been in power for twenty-plus years now (yes, I know that I should know more about the history of my adopted country) and neither him nor the voters of Yemen are making any big plans to change things around now.

This election was supposed to be a touch more exciting because the President swore that he would step down after this term, leaving a nice big vacuum for all of Yemen to fight over. However, all my Yemenese friends grumbled that this would not be the case. There would be a couple of planned rallies and marches, I was told, during which the President would swear to uphold his promise to step down. Finally the pressure would be too much for him to take and he would reluctantly run again due to the fact that the people has insisted. And that's pretty much exactly what happened. It would be impossible to change the President anyway. There are pictures of him in practically every building in Yemen. Just replacing those framed posters would be enough to put this country way in the red.

We did comparatives today in my Level 1 and I taught my students to say "I am smarter than Bush" and "Bush is dumber than me", with "My President is more intelligent than yours" for the more advanced students. So maybe I am a traitor to my nation but at least my students managed to nail that particular grammar point. Oh yeah, happy Patriots day, everyone. Yet another holiday that for some strange reason isn't celebrated here.

Still at YLNG

Well, my replacement ducked out at the last minute and so I am still at the Gas Company, which I really don’t mind. I am only working for three hours in the morning and then I have a class at 2:30 at MALI. They are giving me an upper level course at MALI, which is a big complement because generally they save these for the more advanced teachers. Also, the upper levels are where it becomes possible for the teachers to make real friends out of the students because the students can say something besides “I like cheese.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the class I wanted at YLNG (see below) , but that class did send about five representatives storming into my classroom today asking—demanding, rather—that I teach them instead of the other teacher. I laughed and started to tell them to talk with the boss when my own class had a fit and said that I was THEIR teacher and that I would teach another class over their dead bodies. (OK, well their English wasn’t quite that colourful, being Level 1, but you get the idea.) I broke up the riot and told everyone I was staying put. All and all it was a huge complement. I think that this class needs me more anyway, they have a lot of potential and they need someone with a lot of energy to wake them up. The class is called "Samha" which is sort of a cross between "Dharma" and "Sangha" so I take that as a good sign.

Other then that, things are going well, getting over a breakup, preparing to travel to Mukulla, looking forward to Ramadan which starts in about three weeks. I am not really looking forward to teaching students who haven’t eaten in eight hours, however. I haven’t decided if I am going to do the fast or not, although I probably will.

Happy Labour Day!

Yet another holiday that isn't celebrated here... I didn't even remember about it until my friend from South Africa reminded me... I am not even sure what day it was (Monday, right?)

I am not going to be working at the Gas Company next term, they are bringing me back to MALI. This is a good thing because it means that eventually I will be able to work in Mukulla-- the capital of Hadramount, one of the more rural areas of Yemen, where I think that I will be able to pick up Arabic a lot more quickly and learn a lot more about the culture. I have been teaching one class from 6:30-8:30 at MALI, and the MALI students are a lot different. They aren't so bright as the students here, but they are more diverse and come from many different backgrounds and situations. Plus, I have a few women in my class!

Other then that, I am actually feeling a little depressed and lonely so please write me and cheer me up.

Watch out!

Inshallah, this is my last week teaching Technical English. We've spent the week working on writing paragraphs, which has been a lot of fun but also pretty challenging (see last entry). To teach the students to write a topic sentence, I would write an outline on the board and request a opener. It worked pretty well as I picked really controversial subjects (like "Should the USA have invaded Iraq?") and write pro and con arguments. This would undouptly start a plethora of angry sentences against the action that I would read out loud, agree with, then coldly reject. Eventually the students would get the idea and finally someone would write "There are a lot of different opinions about whether the US should have invaded Iraq" and they would get a round of applause and a prize. Perhaps in a month we will have worked them down to supporting sentences.

Next week I will go back to teaching Basic English again. Some of the new students just bribed me with chocolate cake and coke in a plea for me to be "easygoing" with them. (a very popular term here to to the fact that it is highlighted in the Cambridge Interchange Series that everyone in Yemen uses for teaching English). They were lucky because it was chocolate cake, so their little scheme will probably work pretty well. Actually, they are not my students but rather the students of another teacher. However, many of them approached me and asked me to teach them instead, saying that they had "heard about me." I was really flattered!!! I told them to speak with the boss and hopefully there will be a switch, otherwise, I am sure that whoever I teach will bring much joy. Here is a washed-out picture of me with two of my hopefully-future students. The one on the left is the Yemenese version of John Travolta.

As a goodbye gift to my technical students, I have prepared an exam where they have to write "should" and "could" statements based on the safety icons like this one, to allow them to practice writing statements such as "You shouldn't get to close too the rotating bar or your body could get sucked into the machinery and unless you are Elastagirl you are pretty screwed." (To my students: if you write that on your exam you flunk.) Took me the better part of an hour to find some really gory ones, and this one was my favorite. Hopefully they will find it amusing on what is generally a pretty dreary test day, especially considering that it is their Saturday. (We work Saturday to Thursday, with only Fridays off. Thank God for religion.)

In my hunt for icons, I came across this classic: http://www.safenow.org/. Brought back some good memories.

It's the Term That Never Ends!

This is the term that never ends
Yes, it goes on and on, my friends
Some people started teaching it not knowing what it was,
And they'll go on and on a'teaching it forever just because
This is the term that never ends
Yes, it goes on and on, my friends...

This term has been extended for yet another week due to the upcoming elections. This is the second time that this has happened, I should be on break by now. I guess that I really don't mind teaching it, but if I read one more bloody article on Gas and Oil I am really going to lose it.

Here is a sample of what I am having to read 45 copies of every other night:

Distallation or pick of oil and gas is a complex operation includes: rifining, distillation and distribution. After finishing the well which exsits at the oil and gas field and contains crude oil or natural gas, that have to pumped to plant of process by using a huge pumps that have a different characteristics to pump the hydrocarbons from the well...

After two hours of this I was nearly in tears.

I actually caught a plagiarist today and I got really excited tracking him down on Google. He was pretty slick because he didn't just lift it from one paper but rather from a bunch of different sources off the web. It was the most exciting thing that happened after reading 45 paragraphs on the oil and gas industry that I almost felt bad turning the essay into administration, considering that the student brought me my only bright spot of the day.

And the winner for the worst paragraph in the class is this masterpiece:

Oil Field Development

The oil and gas is very important to use in our live and we take oil and gas from field on from under ground to our plant and do many process for oil and gas to separate energy from another one and take that fuel to used take the natural oil to used as fuel and use the gas as fuel for transportation and as fuel for factory in the generating.

I would point out that there isn't a topic sentence nor is there a concluding sentence or supporting arguments due to the fact that the entire paragraph is, in fact, one sentence.