Yesterday, I gave my first spelling test. I have ALWAYS wanted to administer a spelling test since I was a kid, and this was my moment. It was quite satisfying. I circled around the room as I gave the words, and you better believe I put each word into a sentence. "Stain. He had a stain on his shirt. Number three is stain." It was brilliant. And I was very adamant that my students be quiet during the test, and they actually were! I was very impressed with them. I also told them to keep their tests a secret because I have a few "answer-sharers" in my class.
So, teaching is difficult. Sometimes it's actually physically difficult because you use every muscle in your body to do something. It's like you're on stage and are performing, and my voice feels raspy at the end of the day because I'm talking ALL DAY LONG and louder than usual.
My day consists of me looking at my schedule and saying, "All right, well let's do this." Plans hardly ever turn out as expected, so "winging it" will become a skill I will add to my resume. I have 26 students, and my room is very small, so things get a little tight now and then. And loud. I have kids in my class who could talk to a stone wall, they're so chatty. Why, oh why, must you come up to me while I'm doing something and tell me something completely irrelevant to everything else? Why, oh why, must I give directions 800 times and you STILL don't know what you're supposed to do? These are the kinds of questions I ask myself throughout the day. So as you can imagine, I sometimes get impatient, so when a kid does something ridiculous, I put a splash of sarcasm in my voice as I say, "What are you doing right now? Why are you over there? Sit down." I do a lot of finger snapping too. If someone's talking while I'm talking or asking a question without raising their hand, I snap in their direction, and they cut it out. I'm not quite sure where I picked that semi-strange thing up.
Anyway, about the UAE (or at least Sharjah)...It's not quite what you'd expect from a Middle Eastern country. Everyone made it seem so scary with tons of rules and everything, but it's really not. (I'm sure in some parts it is, and you must be careful), but this place is like a hodge-podge of cultures and people, and it can't really decide what it wants to be. Near my building is a big mosque, but then right around the corner is TGIFriday's. Our grocery store is right next to our building, so we can walk to it, and the only time you realize you're in the Middle East is when you walk through the sand parking lot to get there. Oh and of course the shady men who work in the grocery store who have no scruples about openly staring at you because you're different. There are dress code rules, but they're not really super enforced. When I'm around Sharjah, I try to wear knee-length pants and shoulder-covering shirts, but when we go to Dubai, it doesn't matter. It just feels weird to get into a taxi in Sharjah in something Sharjah would deem "inappropriate". Everyone also speaks English here (or some version of it), so Arabic is not required of you. To be honest, I feel like Germany was more of a culture adjustment because there everything is in German and not German and English, and they didn't have peanut butter or tissue boxes. Here, everything is in English as well as Arabic; I can buy Jif peanut butter; and my goodness, they use tissues for everything under the sun (like drying your hands or wiping your sweaty face) which are too big of jobs for tissues to handle. This country hasn't figured that out yet I guess.
Oh, and disappointingly enough, I hear the call to prayer every day, but I have yet to see people stop what they're doing to kneel and pray. Bummer. Lastly, I have a parent in my class who wears an entire burka so all you can see are her eyes. After I met her, I saw her the next day and actually RECOGNIZED her. How you ask? We don't know. I must be getting good. Future resume skill section: 1. winging it 2. recognizing women in full burkas
Friday, September 20, 2013
Saturday, September 14, 2013
I hate taxi drivers
Taxis are very easy to come by. I just walk out of my apartment door and one will be right there ready to be hailed. There are so many of them around, and it's very convenient. Unfortunately, we spend a ton of dirhams to use a taxi because we have to use them all of the time. There isn't much more of a public transportation system than this.
One thing is for sure-if you pick up a taxi in Sharjah, GUARANTEED they will not know where they are going. It's almost uncanny how bad of taxi drivers they are. They pretend for a little while, but you can tell that they just suck. They have to call their friends and sometimes have to actually STOP and ask another taxi or a passerby. Now, I had the crowning taxi experience of my time here in the UAE. I was heading to Dubai to go for drinks with someone, and this taxi driver (from Sharjah) pretended to know where he was going. When I told him where I wanted to go, he had to have me repeat it a few times, and then he called a friend to see where it was. Then he kept driving and thought he knew where he was going. Then he took me to a place nearby where I was going, but he still didn't know, so he had to stop a parking director and a hotel attendant to ask where he was going. We continued driving for about 10 more minutes (this journey has been about 30 minutes so far, and Dubai is more like 20 minutes away). He's on a huge highway, and I'm chilling in the back, thinking everything is ok. Then I see him shake his head, and he tells me, "I don't know this. I don't know where I'm going. I'll drop you off here, and you pick up taxi." I was PISSED. Imagine my delight when I was promptly dropped off on the side of a highway where there was a bit of construction and left to my own devices!! I thought, "ok, I'll just wave for a taxi when one drives by." First of all, hardly ANY drove by. And even if one did, I would flail and flail, but none would come to my aid. So, I'm stressing at this point. I'm a young, blonde, American girl in the Middle East on September 11th on the side of a huge highway with no options at my disposal. I am wearing a short tight skirt and a tank top. Therefore, I felt like I would be either taken or arrested. I start yelling out loud to myself, "What the frick am I supposed to do? I am in the middle of the fricking middle east, and no taxi is helping me. Great. GREAT!" And you can be sure I was using excessive hand motions as I ranted and raved. I had to start walking down the highway, shaking my head and saying, "Why do these things always happen to me? Why? Why?" Eventually, I see a taxi coming and I flail my heart out, and he stops. Thank the lord. I run down to him, and am breathless in my gratitude. Geez, that was a close one. (this side of the road experience lasted about 15 minutes)
I told him my tale, and he said that a lot of people from Nepal and Bangladesh come and become taxi drivers almost illegally because they don't have to take a test, so that's why they don't know anything.
Needless to say, I was a little late, but I arrived in one piece to have drinks. This hotel was right in front of the Burj, and afterward we went and saw a fountain light show. Gorgeous. Can't believe I live here. But the taxi drivers still suck.
One thing is for sure-if you pick up a taxi in Sharjah, GUARANTEED they will not know where they are going. It's almost uncanny how bad of taxi drivers they are. They pretend for a little while, but you can tell that they just suck. They have to call their friends and sometimes have to actually STOP and ask another taxi or a passerby. Now, I had the crowning taxi experience of my time here in the UAE. I was heading to Dubai to go for drinks with someone, and this taxi driver (from Sharjah) pretended to know where he was going. When I told him where I wanted to go, he had to have me repeat it a few times, and then he called a friend to see where it was. Then he kept driving and thought he knew where he was going. Then he took me to a place nearby where I was going, but he still didn't know, so he had to stop a parking director and a hotel attendant to ask where he was going. We continued driving for about 10 more minutes (this journey has been about 30 minutes so far, and Dubai is more like 20 minutes away). He's on a huge highway, and I'm chilling in the back, thinking everything is ok. Then I see him shake his head, and he tells me, "I don't know this. I don't know where I'm going. I'll drop you off here, and you pick up taxi." I was PISSED. Imagine my delight when I was promptly dropped off on the side of a highway where there was a bit of construction and left to my own devices!! I thought, "ok, I'll just wave for a taxi when one drives by." First of all, hardly ANY drove by. And even if one did, I would flail and flail, but none would come to my aid. So, I'm stressing at this point. I'm a young, blonde, American girl in the Middle East on September 11th on the side of a huge highway with no options at my disposal. I am wearing a short tight skirt and a tank top. Therefore, I felt like I would be either taken or arrested. I start yelling out loud to myself, "What the frick am I supposed to do? I am in the middle of the fricking middle east, and no taxi is helping me. Great. GREAT!" And you can be sure I was using excessive hand motions as I ranted and raved. I had to start walking down the highway, shaking my head and saying, "Why do these things always happen to me? Why? Why?" Eventually, I see a taxi coming and I flail my heart out, and he stops. Thank the lord. I run down to him, and am breathless in my gratitude. Geez, that was a close one. (this side of the road experience lasted about 15 minutes)
I told him my tale, and he said that a lot of people from Nepal and Bangladesh come and become taxi drivers almost illegally because they don't have to take a test, so that's why they don't know anything.
Needless to say, I was a little late, but I arrived in one piece to have drinks. This hotel was right in front of the Burj, and afterward we went and saw a fountain light show. Gorgeous. Can't believe I live here. But the taxi drivers still suck.
Mega Delayed
Dear friends and fam! I apologize that it has taken so long for me to post, but here I am now, ready to update you with all of my current happenings.
Let's start from the beginning. It took me two 6.5 hour flights to get here with a stopover in Paris. Nothing super exciting, but they almost didn't let me on the plane in Philly because they were looking for some international documents attached to my ticket and couldn't find them!! But, all is well as you can see.
If we're Facebook friends, you can tell that things are going all right. This was the best decision I could have made, so thank you to all who encouraged me to do this. Something my dad has said to me a few times before keeps coming to mind: "If you want to keep the party going, just go to grad school." So this is like my version of grad school. It's awesome :). I used to think I lived in a city. Nope, I basically lived on a country road compared to this. Sharjah is secretly huge, and unfortunately I haven't seen 95 percent of it because on the weekends, we usually head to Dubai to see what we can see. But, I've got two years, so I'll get there. The Burj Khalifa is beautiful, but I'm sorry, my first thought when I saw it was, "Hmm... I thought it'd be bigger." My apologies to the architecture world, but it doesn't look as big as you'd expect!! Dubai is amazing. Very flashy--no matter where you go, you feel like you're a millionaire just cruising around. It's a good feeling. I don't think I've gone dancing as much in my life, and if you know me, you know that that has made me extremely happy.
About teaching: It's a zoo. This school is starting with new curriculum and new management, so people are getting adjusted to how things work, and...it is nothing like an American school. We didn't get much support, nor do we have many resources. I walk around all day going, "Sooo...I don't actually know what I'm doing, but here we go." My class is a bunch of friendly little pals, but they are chatty, and many of them raise their hand during lessons to say things like, "Miss, my mom's birthday is in February." It takes everything in me to not say, "Well, I'm sorry, but I really couldn't give a damn." And another girl told me one day when I was wearing my blue jacket, "Miss, your jacket makes you look like a pirate." Dear lord, so they keep you on your toes. It's very entertaining, and this past week was full of me sometimes making things up on the spot of what to do. We are reading James and the Giant Peach, and you better believe I'm changing my voice to sound like the different characters. So, we have a good time, and I'm sure things will improve!
Anyway, that's enough for one blog, I'd say. Oh, and yeah, it's HOT. ALL OF THE TIME. My school is open air almost (not my classroom), so it feels strange to come from the teachers' lounge holding a cup of tea and have the pure sun just beat down upon you. But I'm sure Becky Nickles completely understands.
Talk to you all soon!
Let's start from the beginning. It took me two 6.5 hour flights to get here with a stopover in Paris. Nothing super exciting, but they almost didn't let me on the plane in Philly because they were looking for some international documents attached to my ticket and couldn't find them!! But, all is well as you can see.
If we're Facebook friends, you can tell that things are going all right. This was the best decision I could have made, so thank you to all who encouraged me to do this. Something my dad has said to me a few times before keeps coming to mind: "If you want to keep the party going, just go to grad school." So this is like my version of grad school. It's awesome :). I used to think I lived in a city. Nope, I basically lived on a country road compared to this. Sharjah is secretly huge, and unfortunately I haven't seen 95 percent of it because on the weekends, we usually head to Dubai to see what we can see. But, I've got two years, so I'll get there. The Burj Khalifa is beautiful, but I'm sorry, my first thought when I saw it was, "Hmm... I thought it'd be bigger." My apologies to the architecture world, but it doesn't look as big as you'd expect!! Dubai is amazing. Very flashy--no matter where you go, you feel like you're a millionaire just cruising around. It's a good feeling. I don't think I've gone dancing as much in my life, and if you know me, you know that that has made me extremely happy.
About teaching: It's a zoo. This school is starting with new curriculum and new management, so people are getting adjusted to how things work, and...it is nothing like an American school. We didn't get much support, nor do we have many resources. I walk around all day going, "Sooo...I don't actually know what I'm doing, but here we go." My class is a bunch of friendly little pals, but they are chatty, and many of them raise their hand during lessons to say things like, "Miss, my mom's birthday is in February." It takes everything in me to not say, "Well, I'm sorry, but I really couldn't give a damn." And another girl told me one day when I was wearing my blue jacket, "Miss, your jacket makes you look like a pirate." Dear lord, so they keep you on your toes. It's very entertaining, and this past week was full of me sometimes making things up on the spot of what to do. We are reading James and the Giant Peach, and you better believe I'm changing my voice to sound like the different characters. So, we have a good time, and I'm sure things will improve!
Anyway, that's enough for one blog, I'd say. Oh, and yeah, it's HOT. ALL OF THE TIME. My school is open air almost (not my classroom), so it feels strange to come from the teachers' lounge holding a cup of tea and have the pure sun just beat down upon you. But I'm sure Becky Nickles completely understands.
Talk to you all soon!
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