So here we are, two days after Christmas, and it's hard to remember a)that it is and has been the Christmas season and b)that in other parts of the world it's winter time, and, you know, cold. The weather here is lovely, which is one of the only positives I can come up with at the moment.
We are losing staff left and right at school, which is hard, so we're all taking more and more classes. People are also sick a lot, so we're covering extra classes for them as well. The disaster continues, and we're not looking forward to the end result of everything. Finals are coming up though and then we have a vacation, which is also very exciting. I think that I'm going to end up staying in-country again, and will try to do more traveling around Saudi.
I've had some very interesting discussions with my girls these last few days that have ranged from whether school uniforms should be required to whether it's better to be single or married. We had a raging debate today about which came first, the chicken or the egg. It was quite funny, actually. I wish that they were as passionate about grammar as they were about their discussion. We've also had some interesting talks about Islam, and their attitudes towards Shi'as (negative) as well as the ins and outs of the marriage process in Saudi (complicated). Every day's an education on both sides, that's for sure.
Christmas has been interesting, with attitudes ranging from open to very very closed. Some seem to completely refuse to acknowledge it or take part in any sort of celebration because, "If we celebrate, it means we believe, and we don't believe." That's a whole debate in and of itself. Others of my students and fellow teachers were saying Merry Christmas and were very conscientious of the holidays. Huh. Shwaya-shwaya, I guess. Anyways, Happy Holidays to my people everywhere!
Monday, December 27, 2010
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Do they know it's Christmas?
Please notice that Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is not on this list.
http://us.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/12/10/top.christmas.places/index.html?hpt=Sbin
http://us.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/12/10/top.christmas.places/index.html?hpt=Sbin
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
TGIW
What a week! It's been midterm time, and wowee zowee what a mess. We got the wrong exam for my level, so there were lots of frantic phone calls and grading and giving another exam and more grading. Needless to say, my girls did significantly better taking a test on material they had seen before than on stuff that was completely new to them! I was so worried yesterday when I gave them the new exam that they would do even worse than on the first one! But they came through just fine, and I was never so proud! It's funny, because I have a new co-teacher, so she's usually taught in the pm, while I have the am. Now we do half and half to cut down on our planning, but we still refer to each group as "my girls" and "your girls". So as I was cross grading the exams, I was looking to see how my girls compared to hers. She won for the top grade, but I think overall mine did better, so I'm quite pleased!! :)
Anyways, all of this combined with some outside stressors made for quite a week. I've never been so happy to see the weekend as I am here. I can't believe we were on vacation just a couple weeks ago! I need another one!
Last weekend we enjoyed the hospitality of a friend and went to a Christmas party. It was like a little slice of home, which was really cool. And I got to play a piano!!! :) We also went traipsing through the desert again, and enjoyed some Christmas carols and meeting new and special people. It's always an adventure! Oh oh oh, I saw my first scorpion! I hope to God it'll be my last one too. It was kind of see through and green and alien-looking. Yikes! To go for the hike, we gather in one area of the city, and then people with cars who are heading out for the hike pick people up who need rides. My last driver was about an 80 year old German who loved to chat. He was super interesting though, having built many of the desalinization plants here inside the Kingdom.
This weekend should be fun, though I must confess, I am planning on sleeping in tomorrow!! Oh boy, I can't wait! As I was turning off my alarm at 6am this morning, I just lay there and thought about how much I dislike getting up that early. The sun wasn't even up! Lame. Then I thought, oh boy...another 8 months of this. Then I thought about how much I admire people in the public school system who get up that early and then teach ALL DAY. Wow. I don't think I could do it.
The pictures are from when I was in Al-Khobar, on the east coast of the peninsula. Yup, I've touched all sides of the Arabian peninsula. Check that one off the bucket list. :) Bahrain is in the haze behind me. It's as close to the outside world as I'm going to get for a while!
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Vacation Time!
Well, I have been vacationing with a vengence! We started break on Thursday, and found out soon after that King Abdullah extended the break to the 27th! This is most pleasing, though it throws our academic schedule off quite a bit. But I'm determined to not worry about it, and to just enjoy the extra 5 days of vacation.
Yesterday we got back from a camp in the desert. It was super SUPER cool. We got out of Riyadh to this nature preserve type area, complete with big red dunes. We got to dune board and see a falconing demonstration. That was really cool. There was also a huge feast and lots of delicious things to drink, including warm milk with ginger and sugar. It sounds weird, but it was incredibly delicious. We were with some of the Saudi guys from the company, other teachers and our hosts. We were allowed to play around in our regular clothes, because the abaya would've been impractical, and it was cool enough that we were fully covered anyways. But I think I scandalized some of the Saudis by instigating a soccer game, as well as being the first one who wanted to try everything new. Oh well. I enjoyed myself immensely.
I took a gazillion pictures, because the desert is just so ridiculously photogenic. See fb for full visuals.
We still haven't pulled together the rest of our trip, cause it's hard to get the group to make a collective decision. Now that we have a few extra days, we'll try to get moving next week. Today is Eid, so we'll probably lay low, and then we have another trip around Riyadh in a couple days, which will be cool.
I'm enjoying lazing around and watching movies and catching up on sleep. We're going to be changing books after the break, so it's hard to do any advanced planning since I only have one of the four books necessary. It also seems like there will be lots of staff changes, as we're losing people left and right. Let me just say the pregnancy is an epidemic around here...Anyways, I'm determined to enjoy doing nothing for a while, before heading back to work in a week and a half. :)
Yesterday we got back from a camp in the desert. It was super SUPER cool. We got out of Riyadh to this nature preserve type area, complete with big red dunes. We got to dune board and see a falconing demonstration. That was really cool. There was also a huge feast and lots of delicious things to drink, including warm milk with ginger and sugar. It sounds weird, but it was incredibly delicious. We were with some of the Saudi guys from the company, other teachers and our hosts. We were allowed to play around in our regular clothes, because the abaya would've been impractical, and it was cool enough that we were fully covered anyways. But I think I scandalized some of the Saudis by instigating a soccer game, as well as being the first one who wanted to try everything new. Oh well. I enjoyed myself immensely.
I took a gazillion pictures, because the desert is just so ridiculously photogenic. See fb for full visuals.
We still haven't pulled together the rest of our trip, cause it's hard to get the group to make a collective decision. Now that we have a few extra days, we'll try to get moving next week. Today is Eid, so we'll probably lay low, and then we have another trip around Riyadh in a couple days, which will be cool.
I'm enjoying lazing around and watching movies and catching up on sleep. We're going to be changing books after the break, so it's hard to do any advanced planning since I only have one of the four books necessary. It also seems like there will be lots of staff changes, as we're losing people left and right. Let me just say the pregnancy is an epidemic around here...Anyways, I'm determined to enjoy doing nothing for a while, before heading back to work in a week and a half. :)
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Eid al-Halaweaat
Well well well well well. Since the last blog post, things have improved somewhat on the administrative end. Not hugely, but enough to take the edge of things, at least for today. Getting paid--especially on time--does wonders for one's motivation.
My girls threw my co-teacher and I a party that was celebrating finishing a quiz, and the first day of November etc. etc. The fact that it fell the day after Halloween was entirely coincidental. We called it Eid al-Halaweaat, which means the holiday of sweets. They went crazy with cake and cupcakes and candies and doughnuts. They really are a ton of fun. We ate and studied, but it was really funny because the unit we were starting was titled Socializing. So when I said, alright ladies, we really have to get to work, they said,"But Teacher, we're practicing! We're socializing!!" It's hard to argue with such logic. :)
This past weekend was a lot of fun, because I got to go poke around the old city some more, and I saw the gold market. That was incredible! I've never seen so much gold in one place in all my life. I also got to see the camel market which was super cool. It was just camels of every color as far as the eye could see. It's right on the edge of Riyadh, but the city just stops so you feel like you're pretty well out in the desert.
Anyway, things are going better. There's still quite a bit of room for improvement, but we're making our way. I have to get serious about planning for my vacation time! I love vacations! :)
My girls threw my co-teacher and I a party that was celebrating finishing a quiz, and the first day of November etc. etc. The fact that it fell the day after Halloween was entirely coincidental. We called it Eid al-Halaweaat, which means the holiday of sweets. They went crazy with cake and cupcakes and candies and doughnuts. They really are a ton of fun. We ate and studied, but it was really funny because the unit we were starting was titled Socializing. So when I said, alright ladies, we really have to get to work, they said,"But Teacher, we're practicing! We're socializing!!" It's hard to argue with such logic. :)
This past weekend was a lot of fun, because I got to go poke around the old city some more, and I saw the gold market. That was incredible! I've never seen so much gold in one place in all my life. I also got to see the camel market which was super cool. It was just camels of every color as far as the eye could see. It's right on the edge of Riyadh, but the city just stops so you feel like you're pretty well out in the desert.
Anyway, things are going better. There's still quite a bit of room for improvement, but we're making our way. I have to get serious about planning for my vacation time! I love vacations! :)
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Saudi-Not for the faint of heart
So I've now been here for just over a month. A what a month it's been. I've made some fun friends and work with some very cool people. I've had some fun tromping around Riyadh, and some not so much fun being told I'm not allowed to eat in a restaurant because it's men only.
But all of this has been overshadowed by the huge frustration that is my working environment. The administrative aspect of my job is an unqualified disaster, and makes the day to day job a struggle. I come home most days absolutely gobsmacked by the inefficiency, lack of communication and apparent disregard for the well being of the students. This makes getting anything done challenging; I am still teaching without any basic resources other than a whiteboard and marker. My girls STILL don't have textbooks, because they have been changed now for the eighth time or so. I now am theoretically supposed to teach them two textbooks worth of material in the next two weeks. Now, I don't care if you're Superman--you cannot teach or absorb that much language in two weeks. Oh, and I don't have the textbooks either to start even trying to formulate a plan. And so I plan to do my own thing and hope for the best. If they can't be bothered to give me resources, then I can't be bothered to kill myself planning to stick to a syllabus that doesn't exist.
The girls themselves are really fun, and they make the administrative struggle worth it. For the most part they do really want to learn, though I have a few girls who couldn't care less. Homework seems like it's kind of a foreign concept, and they don't see any problem with copying each other, which is something we have to work on. They also have zero critical thinking skills, which we are now trying to develop. We started talking about argumentative essays this last week, and by then end of the week, my girls asked me, "Teacher, you really like to argue, don't you?" I think it's just not done here. But if I'm supposed to be preparing them to operate in the global community, then by golly they need to learn how to make a logical argument!
I usually end my advanced class with 10 minutes or so of free discussion. I try ask them questions about Saudi Arabia, and they love to educate Teacher about how things are done here. I've learned all sorts of really cool things, about camping in the desert, camel farms, Jenadryah festival (the big cultural celebration in late winter), and engagement customs. It's great, because they are so proud of being Saudi, and it really gets them all talking. They all want to teach Teacher!
But all of this has been overshadowed by the huge frustration that is my working environment. The administrative aspect of my job is an unqualified disaster, and makes the day to day job a struggle. I come home most days absolutely gobsmacked by the inefficiency, lack of communication and apparent disregard for the well being of the students. This makes getting anything done challenging; I am still teaching without any basic resources other than a whiteboard and marker. My girls STILL don't have textbooks, because they have been changed now for the eighth time or so. I now am theoretically supposed to teach them two textbooks worth of material in the next two weeks. Now, I don't care if you're Superman--you cannot teach or absorb that much language in two weeks. Oh, and I don't have the textbooks either to start even trying to formulate a plan. And so I plan to do my own thing and hope for the best. If they can't be bothered to give me resources, then I can't be bothered to kill myself planning to stick to a syllabus that doesn't exist.
The girls themselves are really fun, and they make the administrative struggle worth it. For the most part they do really want to learn, though I have a few girls who couldn't care less. Homework seems like it's kind of a foreign concept, and they don't see any problem with copying each other, which is something we have to work on. They also have zero critical thinking skills, which we are now trying to develop. We started talking about argumentative essays this last week, and by then end of the week, my girls asked me, "Teacher, you really like to argue, don't you?" I think it's just not done here. But if I'm supposed to be preparing them to operate in the global community, then by golly they need to learn how to make a logical argument!
I usually end my advanced class with 10 minutes or so of free discussion. I try ask them questions about Saudi Arabia, and they love to educate Teacher about how things are done here. I've learned all sorts of really cool things, about camping in the desert, camel farms, Jenadryah festival (the big cultural celebration in late winter), and engagement customs. It's great, because they are so proud of being Saudi, and it really gets them all talking. They all want to teach Teacher!
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Blackberry Nation
Well, I guess I'm now a real teacher! I started in the classroom last Saturday, and have taught taught taught! Well, maybe not that much. Usually only about 45 minutes a day, because everything is in massive states of confusion. Right now, I'm teaching without books, without a schedule, and with a super mixed-level class. That's made for rather interesting going, but so far no disasters (please, God, let there not be any disasters!!).
The girls are really sweet, and overall like to participate. They call me "Teacher" which freaks me out a little bit, but I'm getting used to it. Yesterday, as soon as I walked into the room, they said "Please teacher, no grammar today. Our brains are tired!" So they only got a little bit of grammar, and a lot of homonyms. With the other class I taught, we just did icebreakers (because it was my first day with them). There were lots of Yemenis, which was surprising. I asked them about Saudi, and they ALL wanted to talk, which was wonderful! It was great speaking practice for them!
They have lots of practice talking, because these girls are GLUED to their Blackberries. They have them on lanyards and wear them as necklaces. This, I think, will be one of my biggest struggles as a teacher. The fight against the texting in class! In other news, I got my skirt/dress to wear to school, after being told I couldn't wear pants. I actually really like the dress, even though it's hot pink and has blue pomegranates on it. :)
Today I took a field trip to downtown Riyadh. We went into the Faysaliyya and Mamluka towers, and got to look out over the whole city. It was pretty cool, cause you can see quite far. Then we walked around a little bit. I went into a record 3 malls today. That's a lot of mall time.
The other big excitement is that a) we got new couches today, and they're really uncomfortable (yes, this counts as excitement) and b) I met other teachers!!! We'd felt a little sequestered in the hotel, but now we've made contact! Hooray! Tomorrow will be filled with lesson planing, and hopefully another field trip. We have a vacation (!) in just about a month and a half, so I have to start plotting where I want to go. The adventures never cease for Jenny of Arabia.
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