An early Friday morning!

So it is Friday, my big day off, and I get up at 5:15am! Of course there really isn't any reason to get up, and there really isn't much to do, so I get online and start chatting with friends back home and checking emails and such. At about 7:15am or so, the power goes out, so I decide to take a shower before going to turn on the generator. As it turns out, however, I do not need to turn on the generator because the power came back on just as i was finishing getting dressed! Oh, the timing of things can be so perfect sometimes.

Yesterday, I neglected my blog writing duties. It seems that after going off to trivia night Wednesday, my brain was too drained to do anything else. That night was great, though. I came in second place (with almost no help from my team :P ), and then we spent time talking with some of the teachers from the primary school. It was actually quite a relaxing evening.

Yesterday was test day at school. I gave them the test in the first class, in the second class they complained about it and didn't to work, and in the third class it was almost the same. So, we read two more pages in the Wright Brothers book and then talked about lullabies and nursery rhymes as well as wedding traditions of Kurdistan. I told them that we could bring a bride in for my Russian Teddy Bear Mishka and have a wedding for him. We could plan it and have it in the cafeteria (all done in English of course). I have to type up a planning sheet...this will help me learn a little about Kurdish culture, as well as teach them something of American culture. I am sure my company will not like the idea as "classrooms are for education only! Students are not allowed to have parties at anytime!" Who says parties can't be educational?

I corrected the tests and only four got above 50%! They are still not getting the whole using words thing. They don't like to read, so when they see a blank, they just freak out and right anything in the line. Even giving them a word bank doesn't seem to work....the thing is, they know all the definitions! It can be quite frustrating. We are going to work on it more, but the test was obviously too difficult. I should ask if I can add 10 points or so to every test :)

I also had to invigilate a test for the dean's class. The other teacher was supposed to be going to the lab (though she didn't actually leave until almost 3:00pm and the class ended at 1:00!), so I had to do it instead of her. It was a lot of fun actually. The dean said it was an oral class, but the test was a written one, and they are only doing the class for personal development purposes. This and coming from a system where "group work" is encouraged, the cheating was rampant. I decided that stopping it wasn't in the students' best interest, so I decided to make it a controlled cheating. I let the students ask me questions about what they were supposed to do, and even the answers. I found that they didn't always understand the questions, but when they talked it out, they could answer them. I didn't tell them the answers, but I did help describe what they were saying. I will be interested to know what format for dates the dean is teaching them DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY. There was a question about this, and I saw both used by different students. Technically both are correct in the English speaking world, so I am guessing he said as much. I am curious as to how the students did. I can see why the dean has so much fun with that class (it is laid back; the students, who are all women, are there for something to do while their husbands and children are away; and it is a time people just want to enjoy themselves!).

Last night, I went with the dean's wife and another teacher (who is originally from here but has been living in Canada for 15 years or so and has returned leaving her husband and two kids behind) to a local restaurant. We spent way too much money, but we had a good time. We went back to the teacher's house and watched a DVD of the primary school Fun Day that was shown on television here for three days. It was great to hang out for a change. I came home, did a little work and went to bed as there was nobody home.

All in all it has been very enjoyable. I just need to get a hobby. I am working on that right now, but it may take some time. I didn't realize how much of a problem not having Windows on my computer would be, so I have to find a way to set it up so I have it. It hasn't been going so well so far. Then I will attempt to do some learning of Kurdish and/or Arabic. (I was given an audio program for Kurdish yesterday...one of the first phrases they try to teach you is "Stop or I will shoot." This sort of puts into context what they thought would be important at the time the recording was made.)