Last night, I was able to chat with my Mom and with my good friend Rob on MSN Messenger. Is anyone else out there using it? Let me know… I’m registered as: jallgire@hotmail.com
Today I had class for most of the day. I handed in my first assignment and then we spent most of the day talking about lesson planning. Tonight, I need to finish up my lesson plans to hand in on Sunday. I’ll use them for the 30 minutes I teach on Monday.
Beyond that, I didn’t really do much of anything. I came back home and chatted with Darren to get the news of the day. The young Presbyterian volunteers I’ve become friends with are leaving early on Sunday for a 2-week vacation in Cypress. Essentially, their organization in the U.S. is ordering them to go. Darren and I both think it’s a bit silly and a huge over-reaction. However, the 3 people going are all female and in their early 20’s, so they are having a different experience here than we are.
So that’s a bit odd. Just another reminder of how much things have changed in the past couple of days. I still feel safe, especially here in Heliopolis, since it’s quite a distance to downtown. Basically, I’m not going to find trouble unless I go looking for it. With that said, I’m still being cautious. I’m not volunteering that I am American and I’m only selectively saying that in public.
Sometime soon, I want to go back to the coffee shop I’ve been going to. They guys I’ve talked to there already know that I’m American, so it won’t be necessary to talk about my nationality.
Darren and I thought about going out for dinner tonight, but we got lazy as the evening went on, so we ordered Dominos Pizza. There’s a great website called otlob.com that lets us choose from quite a few local places. It’s even cheaper than ordering by phone!
I still need to finish my lesson plans, so I should get to that…
Yes, I’m still safe!
Saturday, March 22, 2003
Friday, March 21, 2003
Another entry for Friday…
Today didn't end up as I thought, but that seems to be a theme for me! *laugh* There were protests downtown again today and Darren and I tried to meet up with a friend of ours to play Frisbee, but we couldn't even get to her building. We think we heard the protesters in the distance, but all we saw were hundreds of riot police -- the big shields, sticks, etc. Crazy! So we stuck around for awhile and then were nicely asked to leave. No real danger, so it was interesting.
Yesterday, the protesters were right at the area by AUC, the American Embassy, and the big government building. Today, the police weren’t letting them get anywhere close! Dozens of trucks with many, many police for crowd control. No way the crowds were getting through today! On the way back, Darren got into a long conversation with some guy on the street who wanted to talk with him because he was white. The guy was fairly emotional and fairly anti-American, I guess. For some reason, people today kept asking Darren where he was from, and he answered “Canada”, which is true. People didn’t ask me, which is good. I’m not sure if I would have told people today that “I’m American”.
It’s tense here, that’s the best way I can describe it. Tense, but safe.
Just for reference, all of this is happening in downtown Cairo, which is nowhere near where I am living. Most of the time, I don’t make it down to that area.
Most of my day was spent working on a homework assignment for my teaching class. It's done and now I'll hand it in on Saturday. Thankfully, I also had some time to relax, too. Darren and I watched "Tommy Boy" here at our place tonight. What a silly flick!
I have class at 10am Saturday and I’m mostly done. My assignment is complete and printed out, but I should look over a couple of things in the morning.
Seems like I might be getting a cold. That’s not good, but we’ll see what happens.
Today didn't end up as I thought, but that seems to be a theme for me! *laugh* There were protests downtown again today and Darren and I tried to meet up with a friend of ours to play Frisbee, but we couldn't even get to her building. We think we heard the protesters in the distance, but all we saw were hundreds of riot police -- the big shields, sticks, etc. Crazy! So we stuck around for awhile and then were nicely asked to leave. No real danger, so it was interesting.
Yesterday, the protesters were right at the area by AUC, the American Embassy, and the big government building. Today, the police weren’t letting them get anywhere close! Dozens of trucks with many, many police for crowd control. No way the crowds were getting through today! On the way back, Darren got into a long conversation with some guy on the street who wanted to talk with him because he was white. The guy was fairly emotional and fairly anti-American, I guess. For some reason, people today kept asking Darren where he was from, and he answered “Canada”, which is true. People didn’t ask me, which is good. I’m not sure if I would have told people today that “I’m American”.
It’s tense here, that’s the best way I can describe it. Tense, but safe.
Just for reference, all of this is happening in downtown Cairo, which is nowhere near where I am living. Most of the time, I don’t make it down to that area.
Most of my day was spent working on a homework assignment for my teaching class. It's done and now I'll hand it in on Saturday. Thankfully, I also had some time to relax, too. Darren and I watched "Tommy Boy" here at our place tonight. What a silly flick!
I have class at 10am Saturday and I’m mostly done. My assignment is complete and printed out, but I should look over a couple of things in the morning.
Seems like I might be getting a cold. That’s not good, but we’ll see what happens.
...and now I do homework…
*ugh*
I have about 4 hours now to work on an assignment due for class on Saturday. I have to analyze the Past Simple and Present Perfect verbs to contrast them, discuss their use, and talk about an example lesson. We’re only talking about 1000 words, but I’m not looking forward to it.
Thursday was unusual. In the afternoon, Darren and I went to the Khan, the big bazaar for tourists and locals. In the really touristy areas, there was a serious military/police present. We saw a few dozen Western tourists, but they were not English-speaking groups. Maybe French and German.
So, we felt fairly comfortable and I was even answering the “where are you from?” question by saying “I’m American”. One vendor had a response to that, by saying:
”America attacked Iraq today – I give you discount!” *laugh* Many of the shops had their televisions tuned to the news, so we took a peek every so often. I was looking for a silver ring, but I couldn’t find anything I liked. Darren came back with a red and white checkered head scarf and a strap of sorts to keep it on his head. I think he’ll only be wearing that around the flat, so I’ll take a picture at some point.
I felt safe all afternoon and didn’t really see any problems. We came back about mid-afternoon and then I went to a study session for class. While I was there, Craig and Karen (my CR’s from MCC) called to say that there were “violent protests” going on downtown and that I should avoid the area.
It’s a good thing they gave me a mobile phone on Tuesday! It’s really come in handy these past couple of days. There’s no charge to me when I receive calls, so that’s mostly what I’ve been doing. It gets expensive quickly to make calls, either to a regular phone or another phone.
After class, I decided to go visit the Presbyterian crew that is all living together. It’s the group that held the “green food” St. Patty’s Day dinner party. They had been asked/told by their coordinators not to leave their residence yesterday, so they called to say that they were going to watch the news, watch movies, and make cookies. I went over and Darren was there already. He made the curious choice of watching “Pearl Harbor”. Not really the movie to take your mind _off_ war, but it was good to watch it again. I watched it not long before leaving Michigan when I borrowed the tape from my sister Heather. (thanks!)
On the way home, Darren and I stopped at KFC. He needed to take care of his craving for greasy chicken, plus they were watching the news on TV. We saw footage of the protests downtown and they looked fairly peaceful. I had popcorn chicken, which I’ve never tried before. They have chicken legs, breasts, etc like you’d see in N. America, but also many sandwiches. Sadly, they do not have biscuits. I told Darren about the many times that my Dad and I shared meals together at KFC together after Detroit Tiger baseball games or on days when we went to the movies.
Today, the church service I have been attending was cancelled. It will not be held on Sunday, either. As a precautionary measure, Westerners are being asked not to gather in places as they would on a regularly-scheduled basis. So, since church is always in the same location, at 9:30 on Friday morning, we’re not meeting today.
My CR just called as I was writing this. Apparently, there were 2 protests downtown yesterday. One group was composed of American University of Cairo students and the other was members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The police tried to prevent the 2 groups from merging, but they got together and started moving toward the American Embassy. One report is that they were stopped about 100m away, but that was the Associated Press, so we’re not sure about the accuracy of that. It wasn’t really violent, but there were reports of some of the protesters being hit by the police.
And with that report, I need to start on my homework. I hope that we still play Frisbee this afternoon so that I can take a break!
*ugh*
I have about 4 hours now to work on an assignment due for class on Saturday. I have to analyze the Past Simple and Present Perfect verbs to contrast them, discuss their use, and talk about an example lesson. We’re only talking about 1000 words, but I’m not looking forward to it.
Thursday was unusual. In the afternoon, Darren and I went to the Khan, the big bazaar for tourists and locals. In the really touristy areas, there was a serious military/police present. We saw a few dozen Western tourists, but they were not English-speaking groups. Maybe French and German.
So, we felt fairly comfortable and I was even answering the “where are you from?” question by saying “I’m American”. One vendor had a response to that, by saying:
”America attacked Iraq today – I give you discount!” *laugh* Many of the shops had their televisions tuned to the news, so we took a peek every so often. I was looking for a silver ring, but I couldn’t find anything I liked. Darren came back with a red and white checkered head scarf and a strap of sorts to keep it on his head. I think he’ll only be wearing that around the flat, so I’ll take a picture at some point.
I felt safe all afternoon and didn’t really see any problems. We came back about mid-afternoon and then I went to a study session for class. While I was there, Craig and Karen (my CR’s from MCC) called to say that there were “violent protests” going on downtown and that I should avoid the area.
It’s a good thing they gave me a mobile phone on Tuesday! It’s really come in handy these past couple of days. There’s no charge to me when I receive calls, so that’s mostly what I’ve been doing. It gets expensive quickly to make calls, either to a regular phone or another phone.
After class, I decided to go visit the Presbyterian crew that is all living together. It’s the group that held the “green food” St. Patty’s Day dinner party. They had been asked/told by their coordinators not to leave their residence yesterday, so they called to say that they were going to watch the news, watch movies, and make cookies. I went over and Darren was there already. He made the curious choice of watching “Pearl Harbor”. Not really the movie to take your mind _off_ war, but it was good to watch it again. I watched it not long before leaving Michigan when I borrowed the tape from my sister Heather. (thanks!)
On the way home, Darren and I stopped at KFC. He needed to take care of his craving for greasy chicken, plus they were watching the news on TV. We saw footage of the protests downtown and they looked fairly peaceful. I had popcorn chicken, which I’ve never tried before. They have chicken legs, breasts, etc like you’d see in N. America, but also many sandwiches. Sadly, they do not have biscuits. I told Darren about the many times that my Dad and I shared meals together at KFC together after Detroit Tiger baseball games or on days when we went to the movies.
Today, the church service I have been attending was cancelled. It will not be held on Sunday, either. As a precautionary measure, Westerners are being asked not to gather in places as they would on a regularly-scheduled basis. So, since church is always in the same location, at 9:30 on Friday morning, we’re not meeting today.
My CR just called as I was writing this. Apparently, there were 2 protests downtown yesterday. One group was composed of American University of Cairo students and the other was members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The police tried to prevent the 2 groups from merging, but they got together and started moving toward the American Embassy. One report is that they were stopped about 100m away, but that was the Associated Press, so we’re not sure about the accuracy of that. It wasn’t really violent, but there were reports of some of the protesters being hit by the police.
And with that report, I need to start on my homework. I hope that we still play Frisbee this afternoon so that I can take a break!
Thursday, March 20, 2003
War…what is it good for?
Absolutely nuthin’.
As I sat down to write this entry, those are the song lyrics that came to mind.
It’s 9:30 on Thursday morning as I write this and I’ve just learned about the beginning of the attacks on Iraq. I got up this morning, had breakfast, then went to the BBC for my news. I read through W’s speech, details of the reaction from Asia, and a summary of the first attacks.
After that, I needed to get off the phone line so that I could call and check in with my MCC Country Representatives who handle the administrative issues here. They asked that we call to check in with them once we heard that war had begun. So, I did that and they will be in touch if they hear anything from MCC in the U.S. or if anything big happens here in Egypt or neighboring countries.
Physically, we’re quite removed from Iraq so there’s little danger there but people are funny and tough to predict sometime. Just as there are “random acts of kindness”, there are also “random acts of violence”, and it’s impossible to predict what (if anything) will happen here. The government in Egypt has been effective with squashing the militant Islamic groups here over the past few years and has been known to arrest people during protest activities, so people seem hesitant to be vocal on issues.
What am I going to do today? Praying, I suppose…
While there will be some of that, I think I am going to go out and try to make myself available and not change what I had planned to do today. I want to pick up some groceries and then I need to be back here to study before going to a formal study session for my teaching class at 5pm.
Last night, I had a couple of brief conversations with Egyptians about the war. Usually, they don’t know what to say and I don’t know what to say. We end up saying that we are hoping for peace. I guess that is true now, as well.
That’s it for now. I don’t have any great insight on all of this, but I will try to keep writing my thoughts and observations.
Absolutely nuthin’.
As I sat down to write this entry, those are the song lyrics that came to mind.
It’s 9:30 on Thursday morning as I write this and I’ve just learned about the beginning of the attacks on Iraq. I got up this morning, had breakfast, then went to the BBC for my news. I read through W’s speech, details of the reaction from Asia, and a summary of the first attacks.
After that, I needed to get off the phone line so that I could call and check in with my MCC Country Representatives who handle the administrative issues here. They asked that we call to check in with them once we heard that war had begun. So, I did that and they will be in touch if they hear anything from MCC in the U.S. or if anything big happens here in Egypt or neighboring countries.
Physically, we’re quite removed from Iraq so there’s little danger there but people are funny and tough to predict sometime. Just as there are “random acts of kindness”, there are also “random acts of violence”, and it’s impossible to predict what (if anything) will happen here. The government in Egypt has been effective with squashing the militant Islamic groups here over the past few years and has been known to arrest people during protest activities, so people seem hesitant to be vocal on issues.
What am I going to do today? Praying, I suppose…
While there will be some of that, I think I am going to go out and try to make myself available and not change what I had planned to do today. I want to pick up some groceries and then I need to be back here to study before going to a formal study session for my teaching class at 5pm.
Last night, I had a couple of brief conversations with Egyptians about the war. Usually, they don’t know what to say and I don’t know what to say. We end up saying that we are hoping for peace. I guess that is true now, as well.
That’s it for now. I don’t have any great insight on all of this, but I will try to keep writing my thoughts and observations.
Monday, March 17, 2003
It's Monday night and in some ways, it feels like the end of a week b/c I don't have class on Tuesday, so there's a bit of a break. But it also feels like mid-week b/c it feels like the week started on Saturday, since I've had the 3 days of class. Very weird.
Today was the first time for all of us to be on our own, teaching students. We had a 25 minute block of time. Everyone was nervous, even the people who have been teaching. Some of the people in my group have been teaching for 6 years or more and are just now getting this certification. You can definitely see a difference when the experienced people are up there.
I did ok. For what we wanted to accomplish, 25 minutes seemed like not much time at all! I felt really rushed and then I started talking too fast and then some of the class got a bit lost. I also had a bit of difficulty with explaining some directions on an exercise I was having the class do. Hopefully I'll learn from it and improve the next time I teach.
The class was big today (and will be from now on), but the room was small. We ended up with 15 students, 1 teacher, and 5 observers in the classroom. That was a lot! Some of the students came in late, so we ended up pulling in desks from other classrooms so that they could all fit. One of the techniques we were shown and talked about for monitoring was to walk behind the students and look over their shoulder as they are writing. Sounds good, right? Yeah, except that it was physically impossible to get behind the students in this room! *grin* So we were stuck at the front of the room.
The students are all in the "adult learner" category, I guess. We talked about birthdays today and a few students were born in 1978, while 1 was born in 1983. Mostly university-aged students and a few people into their 30s.
Ah well!
I guess Dad has a computer now and will probably be online soon. Cool.
I've been getting my exercise and walking lately. It's about a 25 minute walk each way at a decent pace for my teaching class. Even if I took a tram, by the time I waited for it and then rode, it would be almost the same amount of time. But this evening, I did wait a few minutes and then got on one. I mostly just wanted to see how long it would take me and if it was worth it. I'll ride sometimes, but will probably walk most times.
Today was the first time for all of us to be on our own, teaching students. We had a 25 minute block of time. Everyone was nervous, even the people who have been teaching. Some of the people in my group have been teaching for 6 years or more and are just now getting this certification. You can definitely see a difference when the experienced people are up there.
I did ok. For what we wanted to accomplish, 25 minutes seemed like not much time at all! I felt really rushed and then I started talking too fast and then some of the class got a bit lost. I also had a bit of difficulty with explaining some directions on an exercise I was having the class do. Hopefully I'll learn from it and improve the next time I teach.
The class was big today (and will be from now on), but the room was small. We ended up with 15 students, 1 teacher, and 5 observers in the classroom. That was a lot! Some of the students came in late, so we ended up pulling in desks from other classrooms so that they could all fit. One of the techniques we were shown and talked about for monitoring was to walk behind the students and look over their shoulder as they are writing. Sounds good, right? Yeah, except that it was physically impossible to get behind the students in this room! *grin* So we were stuck at the front of the room.
The students are all in the "adult learner" category, I guess. We talked about birthdays today and a few students were born in 1978, while 1 was born in 1983. Mostly university-aged students and a few people into their 30s.
Ah well!
I guess Dad has a computer now and will probably be online soon. Cool.
I've been getting my exercise and walking lately. It's about a 25 minute walk each way at a decent pace for my teaching class. Even if I took a tram, by the time I waited for it and then rode, it would be almost the same amount of time. But this evening, I did wait a few minutes and then got on one. I mostly just wanted to see how long it would take me and if it was worth it. I'll ride sometimes, but will probably walk most times.
Sunday, March 16, 2003
Looking back on the weekend and today…
Ultimate Frisbee on Friday afternoon was fun. Beautiful and warm in the afternoon, so it was good to be out in the sun and running around. I’m out of shape, but all the walking I’ve been doing has helped to strengthen my legs, at least. I don’t think I was any more out of shape than anyone else who was playing, so that’s not too bad!
Started my teaching class on Saturday. We were in class for about 6 hours, I guess. It’ll be a lot to learn very quickly.
Sat. night, the Presbyterian volunteers who my flatmate has introduced me to were having a big dinner party for St. Patrick’s Day. We were each asked to bring a dish and it had to be green! Darren and I pulled the bachelor trick. I bought canned peas (imported from the U.S.) and put them in the microwave when I got to the party (but they were quite good) and Darren brought 2 big plastic bottles of Mt. Dew. But that’s b/c those having the party asked him to bring a beverage.
It was fun. Lots of good conversation and relaxing. After dinner, they got out a guitar and a few people played songs. Mostly praise/worship songs but also a good version of “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor. *laugh* It was sung in a French accent by a guy from Chile and a few of us on back-up vocals. This is the world I am living in right now. Weird stuff.
Class today was good, but long. We spent some time on methods and most of the afternoon observing one of our teachers in a class.
My first Teaching Practice is on Monday afternoon, so I need to put together some notes. It's pretty weird b/c 5 of us from my course will all be teaching the same class of students. But not at the same time -- one after the other. The first person has 25 minutes to do part of the lesson, then the next person to do more for 25 minutes, etc. I'm the last person, so hopefully we're not too far behind by that point.
We talked over it all a bit with one of our instructors this afternoon at the end of class, I'll prep some tonight, then we're getting together for 45 minutes before class tomorrow. It's our first day of teaching, so it's just to get a taste. A bit daunting, though!! All we've been doing the past 2 days is learning through observing other teachers and not getting a whole lot of formal methodology. So we'll see...
Grammar kicking my butt, I was talking all the technical names and explanations for things. Sure, I'm a native speaker but that means that I do a lot of things naturally and just learned them along the way. Once you start talking about the perfect tense of verbs, why things are continuous, and all that I get a bit lost. It's all very important when learning English as a second language but if I ever learned it at all, it was in middle school, so that's been awhile! Some of it reminds me of trying to learn the grammar for Spanish (and now for Arabic), but English is unique in many ways.
These next couple of weeks are going to be pretty hectic, so I probably won’t be emailing or doing journal entries as often as I have been lately.
Ultimate Frisbee on Friday afternoon was fun. Beautiful and warm in the afternoon, so it was good to be out in the sun and running around. I’m out of shape, but all the walking I’ve been doing has helped to strengthen my legs, at least. I don’t think I was any more out of shape than anyone else who was playing, so that’s not too bad!
Started my teaching class on Saturday. We were in class for about 6 hours, I guess. It’ll be a lot to learn very quickly.
Sat. night, the Presbyterian volunteers who my flatmate has introduced me to were having a big dinner party for St. Patrick’s Day. We were each asked to bring a dish and it had to be green! Darren and I pulled the bachelor trick. I bought canned peas (imported from the U.S.) and put them in the microwave when I got to the party (but they were quite good) and Darren brought 2 big plastic bottles of Mt. Dew. But that’s b/c those having the party asked him to bring a beverage.
It was fun. Lots of good conversation and relaxing. After dinner, they got out a guitar and a few people played songs. Mostly praise/worship songs but also a good version of “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor. *laugh* It was sung in a French accent by a guy from Chile and a few of us on back-up vocals. This is the world I am living in right now. Weird stuff.
Class today was good, but long. We spent some time on methods and most of the afternoon observing one of our teachers in a class.
My first Teaching Practice is on Monday afternoon, so I need to put together some notes. It's pretty weird b/c 5 of us from my course will all be teaching the same class of students. But not at the same time -- one after the other. The first person has 25 minutes to do part of the lesson, then the next person to do more for 25 minutes, etc. I'm the last person, so hopefully we're not too far behind by that point.
We talked over it all a bit with one of our instructors this afternoon at the end of class, I'll prep some tonight, then we're getting together for 45 minutes before class tomorrow. It's our first day of teaching, so it's just to get a taste. A bit daunting, though!! All we've been doing the past 2 days is learning through observing other teachers and not getting a whole lot of formal methodology. So we'll see...
Grammar kicking my butt, I was talking all the technical names and explanations for things. Sure, I'm a native speaker but that means that I do a lot of things naturally and just learned them along the way. Once you start talking about the perfect tense of verbs, why things are continuous, and all that I get a bit lost. It's all very important when learning English as a second language but if I ever learned it at all, it was in middle school, so that's been awhile! Some of it reminds me of trying to learn the grammar for Spanish (and now for Arabic), but English is unique in many ways.
These next couple of weeks are going to be pretty hectic, so I probably won’t be emailing or doing journal entries as often as I have been lately.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
