sorry for the delay...

Well. It has been a while. I’m sorry about that. Life has DEFINITELY gotten busier… and it has gotten busier in a way that makes me want to spend all of my time living my life… not writing about it. When I am not busy living… I am generally busy sleeping… because I haven’t been getting too much of that.

I am sure I will forget to tell you about plenty of the little adventures that I have had. Things like… getting in a fight with a cab driver because he wanted me to pay him 50 piasters (about 10 cents) extra even though he did not take me where I wanted to go… and… I don’t know… my time at the Maadi Grand Mall… which locals call the Not So Grand Mall (personally…. I found it delightful in a all-things-tacky kind of way).

Instead, I think I will focus on the things that I think will occupy the majority of my time when I am here. As I have now been here for almost two months… I think I may FINALLY be in a place where I can begin to understand what my time might look like.

I have been teaching for four weeks now and I think I am finally getting a handle on things. I have 83 11 and 12 year olds… this consists of 3 classes (Yellow, Blue and Green), 4 Ahmed’s, 4 Omar’s, 3 Mohameds, 3, Abdels, 3 Ali’s, 3 Mariams, 3 Youssefs, 3 Marawans and 58 other names that sound ALMOST the same…. Like Rhana, Rana, Rna, Rania (all pronounced differently), Amira, Amr, Ayah, Amir, Nada, Nagham, Nadine, Nour, Nouran… it is a TOTAL disaster. Add to the mix that they all have about 6 last names… example: Donia Hesham Mohamed Yehia Abou Huseen… and the fact that I, a crazy westerner, wrote their names in my grade book as their first and LAST last name (Donia Huseen) but they write their names as their first and FIRST last name (Donia Hesham)… I am still trying to sort out who is who.

The good news is: they speak truly remarkable English. Also, I am pretty sure that 98% of them would list high school musical, Hannah Montana, Zack Efron, the Jonas Brothers and Camp Rock as their top 5 favorite things on the planet, so we have that in common… and I LOVE them. I mean… some are adorable. Some are brats. Some are unbelievably obnoxious. Some are brilliant. Some are MISERABLY slow. But I am just completely in love with all of them. I find myself smiling when I should be yelling…. And making silly faces when I should be somber… oops!

Teaching is an unbelievably huge amount of work. I mean, I knew that it would be… but still. I have to be completely engaged and running the show for the entire class period (which is an hour right now… but will be an hour and a half after Ramadan) or the class will go crazy. So…. That means planning so that they never have a single free moment. They have to be working while I am checking their homework or they go crazy. They have to be working while I am writing the assignment on the board, or they go crazy. Each of the classes is exhausting. Very fun… I get SUCH a kick out of running the classroom… and when they are jumping out of their seats to raise their hand to answer a question…. I burst with pride…. And when the teachers next door get annoyed because my class is yelling out the correct answer in unison…. I cant suppress my smile… but like I said… it is exhausting. And when I go home at the end of the day… and I spend an additional 3 hours grading their homework and entering their grades…. That is exhausting. And when I spend an additional hour making worksheets and planning activities…. That is exhausting. I worry that I will burn out…. But as for now…. Honestly… I love teaching. I like lesson planning. I like leading the class. The only part I don’t really like is grading.

The school itself is not great. Everything breaks all of the time and that makes planning difficult. I made a bunch of worksheets that I couldn’t print…. So I had to wing it in class and make them write down the questions. The next day, to be prepared, I printed everything at the McIntosh’s house and brought it to school to make copies. They won’t let us make the copies… they have copy girls. So I gave them the copies… and asked for them ANY time during the day. That was two days ago. I still haven’t received them. As for class rooms… I don’t have one. The kids stay in place and I travel to them. So…. Anything that I want hung in the class room… like rules, or vocabulary words, or grammar chats… I have to make three of. Which I did…. And then I hung…. But NOTHING will stay on the damn concrete walls. And the rooms are always loud because we have all of the windows open to try and get some circulation in the room because there is no air conditioning.

The people are all really sweet. Then again… I learned today that the entire Egyptian staff calls me “the angel”… because apparently I look like one. None of the other English teachers have nicknames. Then again… I think I am the only one that speaks to, smiles at, or waves to the Egyptian staff (my contact with them is pretty much limited to smiling and waving and “thank you” because I don’t speak Arabic and they don’t speak English).
I have not really been able to do much beyond teaching…. Which is frustrating because I did have so many other plans for how I wanted to spend my time here…. But at least I enjoy it.

When I am not teaching, I am usually tutoring three wonderful home schooled American girls (I teach them pre algebra, pre cal and SAT math…), hanging out with the McIntosh’s, or hanging out with/ beginning to train for a marathon with Nathan, my fake brother, and Cameron, one of the Youth interns for the church. Nathan is the fake adopted son of the McIntosh’s…. and because I am the fake adopted daughter… the two of us have decided that we are fake adopted siblings. Cameron is a girl from Alabama that has quickly become my closest friend here in Egypt. She and I get along unbelievably well and just kind of “get” each other in a really comforting way. It has been an incredibly huge blessing getting to know her… especially after my trip to Hurghada with the teachers… which I will have to write an entire separate entry on…. But later…. Because writing this took long enough.