Happy Birthday to my Dad!!!!

It's Saturday and I just got back from my first teaching class. But more about that later...

This is a long-overdue post from Tuesday

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Craig and I are visiting Beni Suef today. We’re checking out St. Mark school for the possibility of having a teacher here. I’m shipping Arabic class to be here! *laugh*

It’s been worth it. We saw classes of children learning at a “language school”. That means all classes except for Social Studies are taught in English. The government has a mandate for Social Studies to be in Arabic. Among other subjects, French and German are taught. So, these kids could know 4 languages before going to University. We me t a brother/sister pair with extended family in Egypt, but their parents are in Italy. So they are here to learn in school and experience Egyptian culture – Italian plus 4 other languages = 5 total!

Kids here want to learn and they need to learn. One thing is for placements tests for admission to University. In the U.S., it’s a new concept to teach students to do well on standardized tests like the Michigan Educational Assessment Program. Sure, there are the ACT/SAT tests, but most intense prep for that takes place outside of school. It’s just accepted here that schools teach for the tests, I think.

Many students asked about my opinion on the U.S./Iraq situation. Maybe they’re more aware/concerned than U.S. students? Not sure about that… My answer was that I prefer peace and I hope that things can be settled through diplomacy.

It’s good to see how children learn, so that when I am teaching adults, I know a bit of their background. I’m also finding that my Arabic classes and tiny understanding of grammar will help me connect the 2 languages and see/hear the difficulties my students will have.

It will be interesting to connect with the church program in Tanta. The priest we are talking with today is very educated and is speaking on many topics. We’ve had tea and snacks a total of 3 times today, plus lunch! Lots of tea. Definitely a tea-drinking culture. In the morning, we were at the school, but now we are at a “retreat center”. It’s mostly empty now, but is busy at certain times during the year.

“Real” chocolate doesn’t seem to exist here for Egyptian-made foods. Only the candies imported from England taste like chocolate. But some of the items are pretty good. My current favorite is little wafers with chocolate between different layers and then covered in chocolate.

For lunch, we had soup and then a type of stew for the main dish. It was a tomato-flavored base with potato, peas, and carrots in it. We also had spicy slices of potato as a side dish and bananas for desert. The priest complained that there weren’t any oranges, but the staff didn’t return with them until after we finished eating.