Sooo... the past few days: Sunday was my first day at the school... but not really. I showered for the first time in my apt, sans water heater. THAT was quite an experience, considering it's proximity to the squatter. You practically have to have one foot in the squatter as you shower, and since I refuse to do so, it's quite the acrobatical act! Anyhoo, I got to school and started helping out in what I think was the first grade class, helping them with their English. I read them "Green Eggs and Ham", and then drew a sheet for the letter "W", with the capital and lower-case letter, and some pictures of stuff that starts with "W". I drew an awesome whale, wagon, and a glass of water. I also tried to draw a woman, but when the teacher looked at it, she said "That's not a woman, that's a girl!". And then whenever another teacher would come in she'd show it to them and they'd laugh and say the same thing. So, I erased it. Shlash called me after I'd been there for about 30 minutes and asked for me to come let him into my apt because... da da da DA, a plumber was installing a water heater!!! Then he wanted me to come run some errands with him. He took me to another school for kids with disabilities where his cousin works. It was actually kind of awkward, he introduced me to her, I sat down in her office, and then he left for 2 hours. His cousin (whose name I forget) is very cool. She's really good at English, and is also almost fluent in Spanish. So she's been working on an English/Arabic/Spanish dictionary, and wants me to help her out with that project! How sweet it that?! Afterwards I was back in my apt bored, and some guys came and knocked on my door. Apparently I'd been invited along with K&C for lunch, and none of us had realized it had happened. So I called them up quick and we headed over. As always it was really good, and as always we ran out of Arabic small-talk after a little bit. So, we just sat and pretended to watch some Turkish soap opera, dubbed in Arabic, which was WAAAY over-dramatic. Everyone here watches TV all the time. Usually it's the news. After that we wandered around for a bit until we got a ride back to Defyana, which is the village K&C live in. We had dinner with a family (who may or may not have remembered that they invited us... awkward!). It's interesting, because Carissa always has to go into the other room for dinner, with the rest of the ladies. I'm pretty sure that when it's just the family, everyone eats together, but when there's a large gathering, they eat segregated.
Monday we hitched a very smooshed ride back to the school. This time I kinda just sat there and did random jobs that the teacher wanted me to do. I feel kinda useless; I feel like they give me little things to do because in reality they don't need me and don't know what to do with me. After school, K&C and I stayed for a while to use the internet. We talked to Loren, our "boss", about our take on the program thus far. Basically, we feel that we don't have the resources to help little kids right now, and that a better focus would be to develop a teacher training program. There's a lot of cultural things that are frustrating in terms of elementary education. For one thing, the kids, especially the boys, behave terribly, and the teachers don't do anything about it. I'm talking about stabbing each other with pencils kinda behavior. And the teachers notice, but the attitude is "well, boys will be boys". Also, the kids all yell out answers all the time, even if you're talking to one kid. So it's hard to measure understanding in a group setting, you'd have to do it one-on-one, which isn't feasible. Now, let me say that the kids are so sweet! It's been great being with them. In the class that I help with there're two kids, a boy and a girl, who always fight to sit next to me, and often wrap their arms around my neck to kiss my cheek. It is so sweet! But that almost makes it harder, because I want these kids to have good education! We did some one-on-one tutoring, and my student, Abdullah, had MAJOR attention issues. I was trying to go over the ABC's with him, and unless I was shaking his shoulder for his attention, he was staring blankly out the window. He knew the first half of the ABC song, but had no idea what the individual letters were, let alone what sound they made. As much as I love kids, this is making me think that I'm really not cut out to be an elementary school teacher. Good thing I wasn't planning on it anyway, right? After we finished using the school's internet, we locked up and started walking to Defyana. It's probably a 3 or 4 mile walk, but we really just wanted to be outside and stretch our legs. In the first quarter mile of walking, at least five cars stopped to offer us a ride. Two of those offered us dinner as well! They all looked at us like we were crazy when we told them we wanted to walk. We finally accepted a ride about a mile later once it was getting kind of dark. They gave us these lamb quesadilla things, which were actually pretty good. We got home and just talked for a while.
Now, before I go on, I need to tell you something about the house K&C live in. It's pretty big (3 stories), and mostly empty, except for random furniture. So we joke about it being the perfect site for a zombie apocalypse movie. There's a lot of random noises that make it pretty creepy. So, Tuesday (Yesterday) morning, I was woken up at 5:30ish by a bang and a moaning sound. I was SOOOO creeped out! I just laid in my [makeshift] bed, trying to convince myself it was nothing and to go back to sleep. But, a few minutes later, Carissa came into my room. She told me that Kevin was sick and had passed out on his way back from the bathroom (thus the moan). So I walked over to our AWESOME neighbors and asked for a ride to a doctor. He took us to a local clinic type place, which was super shifty. The guy that helped Kevin, we're not sure if he was even a nurse. He kept asking out neighbor, Dr. Faisal (NOT a medical doctor) questions, like he wasn't sure what he was doing. And apparently, everyone in the area just assumed everything is a cold. The lights kept going out, and there were a lot of flies and mosquitos. Oh yeah! When Kevin was barfing, Carissa couldn't take the sound of it (we're both barfers of the sympathetic variety) and so I started playing Journey on my iPhone. It was so funny... we felt like we were in a movie. After a few hours and an IV drip line, we went home, where Carissa and I both proceeded to ALSO become sick. Hooray! So yesterday was mostly the three of us sleeping, lying down and talking, whining, and then going back to sleep. Also, we didn't eat anything; the only food we had in the house was "chocolate" cakes that barely have any chocolate and mostly taste like fakeness, and we really didn't feel like chicken and rice, which is all our neighbors make (although it's always good... I'm not whining about that). It's just, when I'm sick, I have a very specific appetite. So now here I am on a Wednesday morning, feeling a bit better, but still with an awesome headache. Hopefully we'll be heading into Amman today and sticking around for the weekend. I really want to go.
Sorry if that sounded a bit whiny. I suppose that the honeymoon is ending, and I'm realizing that it's not 100% amazing out here, and that there's some American luxuries that I miss, that I never realized were luxuries before. But I still stand by previous statements of positive things: the people here are awesome and very hospitable. I'm excited to be getting better at the language. But there are some things that bug me, and I suppose that's life. That's about it for today. Thanks for reading!
يرمي
Monday we hitched a very smooshed ride back to the school. This time I kinda just sat there and did random jobs that the teacher wanted me to do. I feel kinda useless; I feel like they give me little things to do because in reality they don't need me and don't know what to do with me. After school, K&C and I stayed for a while to use the internet. We talked to Loren, our "boss", about our take on the program thus far. Basically, we feel that we don't have the resources to help little kids right now, and that a better focus would be to develop a teacher training program. There's a lot of cultural things that are frustrating in terms of elementary education. For one thing, the kids, especially the boys, behave terribly, and the teachers don't do anything about it. I'm talking about stabbing each other with pencils kinda behavior. And the teachers notice, but the attitude is "well, boys will be boys". Also, the kids all yell out answers all the time, even if you're talking to one kid. So it's hard to measure understanding in a group setting, you'd have to do it one-on-one, which isn't feasible. Now, let me say that the kids are so sweet! It's been great being with them. In the class that I help with there're two kids, a boy and a girl, who always fight to sit next to me, and often wrap their arms around my neck to kiss my cheek. It is so sweet! But that almost makes it harder, because I want these kids to have good education! We did some one-on-one tutoring, and my student, Abdullah, had MAJOR attention issues. I was trying to go over the ABC's with him, and unless I was shaking his shoulder for his attention, he was staring blankly out the window. He knew the first half of the ABC song, but had no idea what the individual letters were, let alone what sound they made. As much as I love kids, this is making me think that I'm really not cut out to be an elementary school teacher. Good thing I wasn't planning on it anyway, right? After we finished using the school's internet, we locked up and started walking to Defyana. It's probably a 3 or 4 mile walk, but we really just wanted to be outside and stretch our legs. In the first quarter mile of walking, at least five cars stopped to offer us a ride. Two of those offered us dinner as well! They all looked at us like we were crazy when we told them we wanted to walk. We finally accepted a ride about a mile later once it was getting kind of dark. They gave us these lamb quesadilla things, which were actually pretty good. We got home and just talked for a while.
Now, before I go on, I need to tell you something about the house K&C live in. It's pretty big (3 stories), and mostly empty, except for random furniture. So we joke about it being the perfect site for a zombie apocalypse movie. There's a lot of random noises that make it pretty creepy. So, Tuesday (Yesterday) morning, I was woken up at 5:30ish by a bang and a moaning sound. I was SOOOO creeped out! I just laid in my [makeshift] bed, trying to convince myself it was nothing and to go back to sleep. But, a few minutes later, Carissa came into my room. She told me that Kevin was sick and had passed out on his way back from the bathroom (thus the moan). So I walked over to our AWESOME neighbors and asked for a ride to a doctor. He took us to a local clinic type place, which was super shifty. The guy that helped Kevin, we're not sure if he was even a nurse. He kept asking out neighbor, Dr. Faisal (NOT a medical doctor) questions, like he wasn't sure what he was doing. And apparently, everyone in the area just assumed everything is a cold. The lights kept going out, and there were a lot of flies and mosquitos. Oh yeah! When Kevin was barfing, Carissa couldn't take the sound of it (we're both barfers of the sympathetic variety) and so I started playing Journey on my iPhone. It was so funny... we felt like we were in a movie. After a few hours and an IV drip line, we went home, where Carissa and I both proceeded to ALSO become sick. Hooray! So yesterday was mostly the three of us sleeping, lying down and talking, whining, and then going back to sleep. Also, we didn't eat anything; the only food we had in the house was "chocolate" cakes that barely have any chocolate and mostly taste like fakeness, and we really didn't feel like chicken and rice, which is all our neighbors make (although it's always good... I'm not whining about that). It's just, when I'm sick, I have a very specific appetite. So now here I am on a Wednesday morning, feeling a bit better, but still with an awesome headache. Hopefully we'll be heading into Amman today and sticking around for the weekend. I really want to go.
Sorry if that sounded a bit whiny. I suppose that the honeymoon is ending, and I'm realizing that it's not 100% amazing out here, and that there's some American luxuries that I miss, that I never realized were luxuries before. But I still stand by previous statements of positive things: the people here are awesome and very hospitable. I'm excited to be getting better at the language. But there are some things that bug me, and I suppose that's life. That's about it for today. Thanks for reading!
يرمي
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