The schools here have an unusual finals schedule where all the children (K-12) attend school for 1/2 days for two weeks, taking one final exam per day. I don’t know how much you remember about 2nd and 4th grade, but rigorous final exams usually aren’t part of the mix. Since these are pretty much down weeks for Will, as he’s not needing to study much (he’s not taking the Arabic language finals), I checked him out of school early on…
The past few weeks have been a whirlwind with all of the end-of-semester activities. Regular readers know that as the Fulbright spouse (that’s a thing, right?) on this adventure, I’ve been remotely teaching my college courses back in Mississippi. I’m so grateful that my college gave me this opportunity as there aren’t many institutions who would have allowed such flexibility! Teaching my courses remotely has been wonderful, but not without its own unique set of challenges. Now that the last…
When you arrive at a school for your first visit, usually someone will become your sponsor and walk you around. They will introduce you to the principal, all the English teachers and find classes for you to visit. Meeting with a principal is always interesting because there is the expected sit down and chat (How do you like it here? Oh, so your children are here! What school do they go to? Are you doing ok?) which eventually moves to…
Last week, I tallied up the school visits I have been able to accomplish. So far, it looks like I have had 18 visits to 5 different schools. I was able to teach a sample lesson at 1 school already and I have 1 more this week. I feel like an old pro at school visits. It was tough getting permission to visit schools at first. I mentioned before that since I am only the 2nd group of Fulbright DATs…
Teachers will understand this. There are a lot of feelings associated with teaching. For example: Then there are the first day of school Pinterest photos showing the utopia of teaching. What I miss though is the day to day because I really *like* teaching. I avoided this career. I come from a family of teachers. I mean EVERYONE is a teacher (mom, 3 aunts, grandmother, multiple cousins of all generations, you get the picture). My dad was planning on being a…
The cold snap has definitely begun here in Palestine with lows dipping into the 40s. Regular readers might recall my excitement in September about being able to always get a breeze blowing through the apartment, eliminating the need for air conditioning. Our think stone walls and tile floors kept the apartment nice and cool. That was a fantastic feature of this 4th floor apartment on top of a hill back when the temperatures were in the 80s and 90s. Today,…
This is Thanksgiving week. If it was just us here, I think I wouldn’t have bothered with a big meal because all the things I like to cook for the holidays my kids won’t eat anyway. However, we have been invited to a friend’s house for a potluck American Thanksgiving, so that gives me the chance to cook up all the things that I like to eat anyway! Namely, I have volunteered to make: Lemon pie (without meringue because I…
I did not actually zip line if you were worried. I did do a 4-mile marathon though. My dad ran too. (Huff, puff) I’m going to start at the beginning now. I went to school and blah, blah, blah. Let’s cut to chase. We were raising money for schools in Jericho that got torn down. They called it white boards on wheels. I got a medal for running. It had a hand holding a torch on it. Now time to…
Getting around town by taxi and servee is actually really easy. The transportation system takes a little bit to figure out, but it does work. We’ve been here for a little over two months now and we can pretty easily get anywhere in town we need to go without a car for just a few shekels. That said, I didn’t realize how much I had missed driving until this past weekend!
I yakked a lot. A lot of yakking. On Monday, I yakked a LOT. I yakked about being in Palestine and there were a lot of jokes. I yakked with my whole Pathways class. So, this was my powerpoint: