It seems as if I am disappointing my readers. It is taking me longer to post now due to no longer having access to the internet from home. You see, my laptop has met with the most unfortunate accident...I never realized just how hard the floors here really are.
Lately it has been tough for me. There aren't a lot of opportunities to go out and do things, so most of my free time is spent at home. This isn't totally bad except lately I have had no access to the internet, no television, and mostly no people. There have been times when my roommates were home, but for some reason they have been gone most of the time. I was sure that I was going to go crazy, and perhaps I actually did.
I have been doing training for some of the teachers at the primary school here. And starting next week it will be admin staff. They are looking for pronunciation training. I am not sure how many of them actually need it, or what level they are going to be at, but I have to have the material ready for when they get here. Talk about having to do things tentatively and have a backup plan ready just in case something doesn't go well.
I don't get to see the university students anymore, except in passing. They wonder when I am going to teach them again. Luckily I know that I will be teaching them starting this Thursday. I hate that it will be such a weird day to start, but that is just the way things worked out in the scheduling. It will be nice to work with them again; I really do miss them.
One of the university students said that his dream vacation was to go to "tomato." Of course he got a very quizzical look from my coworker from this, and she questioned him about it. "Tomato," he replied, "you know, the capital of Canada." He was obviously surprised that a Canadian would not know the capital of her own country. "Oh! You mean Toronto...but that is not the capital of Canada, Ottawa is." At least I am not the only one who has problems with geography :)
My housemate is from Mosul. He is Iraqi, but as he is not from the Kurdistan Region, he does not speak Kurdish. One day he went to take a cab. This particular cab driver did not speak Arabic (which is actually a little strange here), but my housemate managed to tell him where he was going and was quoted the price of 15,000 IQD. He felt this was too expensive so he replied "11. I will give you 11." The driver did not seem to understand, so my housemate "wrote" it on his hand and said "eleven. one-one." The driver replied "no, 10!" So my friend agreed. He shut the door to let his wife get past first, and the driver shouted out "nine!!" If only I could negotiate with people like that.
All is mostly alright. The frustration level is raising as I have no way of relieving it. Hopefully I will find someway.
No comments:
Post a Comment