During my time here, we aren’t just hanging out and eating good food. (Hard to believe, right?) The purpose, funded by Fulbright DAT, is to research methods in teaching writing to native Arabic speakers, perhaps by using oral history as the tool and motivating factor. Many of the native Arabic speakers that I have taught in the past have struggled the most with writing. As I speak to more people, anecdotally I have been told that many Arabic speakers have a…
Just in case you’re wondering, here’s this week’s forecast!
It kind of reminds me of “Always Accurate,” a great Woot shirt Will likes to wear…
The VERY first thing we did the morning after arriving was to register the kids at school. We weren’t sure what city we would be located in until about 3-4 weeks before we left, so we didn’t start contacting schools until that time. The first 2 or three schools just flat said no. Registration for private schools begins in March. The kids can’t go to public schools because we aren’t local citizens. Luckily we contacted someone who was able to…
Forty-eight hours in our home for the next 4 months, we have finally settled in. As Dan said, we walked through the apartment and it looked fine, but when we got in and started looking at everything, it has only been superficially cleaned. It was apparently a disaster before so I’m glad we didn’t see it that way! The next morning, we headed first to register the kids at school (more later) and then dug in cleaning. Stripped the beds, bleached every…
Ok, today we are going to jump right into it. Right in early at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Ok, that was kinda funny because it isn’t really bright and early. It is 2 o’clock in the afternoon! That is not bright and early! So much for jumping right in! But it is kinda early because we usually do it at 7 o’clock at night and that is kinda a really big deal. Today I am going to talk about…
We made it to our apartment! The location is ideal — it’s in a very safe neighborhood, incredibly close to the kid’s school, just down the road from a nice supermarket (just about as close as the Carnival was when we lived in Fort Worth — a block and a half maybe?), and very near a taxi stand with servees (shared taxis) running to the city center for 3 shekels a ride (about 75 cents). What wasn’t so ideal was…
So, we have been here for a little less than a week. We still haven’t gotten to our final location, but we will be by tomorrow night! I have however noticed a few things in the interim. My children are completely unconcerned about everyone else speaking a different language than us. Maybe this is normal for children, but most adults I know get freaked out and are constantly asking what others are saying. There seems to be a ingrained part…
Today I’m going to talk about my lunch. I know, boring. But actually it was not so boring. I ate kebabs with lamb. Live lamb. I’ll be living the rest of my life on the lamb. Actually, it wasn’t live – it was dead and delicious. The restaurant was peculiar. It had many things and was decorated with many things. I saw a chess board and also a mannequin head. We walked to the restaurant in the Old City. None…
At the airplane, it was so fun. We went into the airplane and we got to sleep overnight. So after we slept, they served breakfast. It was 2 in the morning. That’s really early. So this guy, I don’t know what his name was, but this is funny. So he held up my mom’s name. So we got to go to one of those convertible things, that isn’t an escalator. Instead of the stairs it is just going straight so…
Normal family travels (even or maybe especially to Target) include a lot of short calls saying, “Where are you?” We got to Amsterdam and quickly realized that none of our phone solutions worked unless BOTH of us were connected to wifi and the connections kept dropping. We had a couple of misadventures and even got directed to the “meeting point” once. Dan’s fix is to have a meeting point wherever we go. My plan is to not split up until…