Volleyball Tourney

My school is one of several "American" style schools in the country. We are the newest, and as such, we have had to fight to establish our place with the rest this year. From a bright pink school that is a gutted version of a large house, my students have been indignantly training for a volleyball tournament to which we were denied access. Over a week, our founder telephoned the other schools, repeatly requesting a chance - and receiving the same answer. Finally, the school in the capital city agreed to play us in an unofficial tournament.

We took the opportunity to rally our students, and talked up the tournament for a full week and a half. Our gym teacher Morad knew a volleyball player who came to train the students every day after school. We had official try-outs - although, with about 6 students per grade, everybody who wanted to be on the team made it. We even had the gravel shoveled to the side of a 10x20m rectangle in the gravel lot so we had an official court!

The tournament buses (actually two vans, filled with players, chaparones like me, and fans) left Saturday morning to make the 5 hour drive to the coast. It apparently was supposed to be a 4 hour drive, except that the local in the front seat didn't believe that any white people knew their way around. Abdul and Katie, two teachers at my school who used to teach at the capital school, tried to give directions - and were not heeded. We got there. Shwia b'shwia.

The school was amazing. My spirits were sinking as we walked in to the indoor gym area at the other school. They had a wood floor, a net, a SCOREBOARD. Their team had matching uniforms and kneepads, and they were practicing passing drills with their two coaches. Country mouse, city mouse?

After yelling with the students a bit and taking over most of the bleachers, Abdul and I left to find lunch for the students. We walked off the campus, immediately swallowed by the wonderful close atmosphere of the country, which had been walled out from the capital school. We walked to the local market, and bought ten kilos of meat while standing delicately in between the skinned bodies of our choices that were dripping blood from the ceiling. We took the meat next door to the griller to have him make it into 43 grilled sandwiches, and then needed to collect 30 dh exact change from each student. Oh, headache.

Abdul and I arrived back at the tournament to victorious yelling; the girls team had won their first game! I sat with some of my seventh grade students, and they led me through one drum-session on the bleachers of our school's funky-remix-type song. The girls played so well together; I was so proud of the teamwork they developed and the grace they showed one another and the other team! They won their second game, too, by quite a good margin, thus winning the tournament for the girls!


The boys, too, played well, although a select few of them had not mastered the teamwork that the ladies exhibited, and so not all the plays made were strategic. I had to leave to pick up the lunch, and thus did not witness the full tournament by the boys.

The day was concluded by pick-up games of soccer, basketball, volleyball, sprinting, and American football. Basically, we just wanted to play on the grass that the capital school has. I had a great time with my students in a less structured environment than the classroom, and I got to interact more with the older high school students that I don't teach. The shineyness of the capital school made me appreciate many of the rusty aspects of my school. It may not be as ritzy, but it has personality and charm.

The day was an excercise for me in narrowing the power gap between student and teacher. I sat with several different students on the bus, in closer physical proximity than I would dream of in America, discussing all sorts of issues and concerns of theirs, on a very non-authoritative level. I sang kareoke on the bus. The students came up with a game of impersonating teachers and guessing who was whom. Mostly, everybody behaved maturely and repectfully of everyone else the whole day; they all made me very proud.

Quarter-pennies

I have a plane ticket to Madrid. I got it (round trip) for a quarter penny.

Here's the story. I don't yet have my carte du sejour, my working visa, in this country. ...so, every three months, I get thrown out. Every three months, all of us have to leave the country for a day, then re-enter. Ridiculous. We are traveling on the weekend of Green March, the holiday commemorating the date in the 1970's when soldiers were forced to march into the desert to claim it as our own. All the new teachers, and some of the returners, will be traveling to Spain over the long weekend on a FORCED vacation. And we can do all sorts of crazy h'shuma stuff like wear short sleeves and go salsa dancing.

My roommates are awesome. The other day, we played for about a half hour with a dishtowel. I don't know how it started, but we were washing up after having dinner with Abdul and Ethan, and Candace threw the towel at Suzanne, who swatted it to the floor. Instant fun! The event was repeated, and it wasn't long before we had our singular red dishtowel out in the living room, all three of us swatting and kicking and diving back and forth. We thought it was hysterical, and it was the best toy in the apartment at the time.

Abdul and Ethan were playing backgammon. They were not amused.

But the squatty-potty is less stinky after Candace dumped bleach down it daily all week.

T.I.M.

Well, it is. I guess I'm not giving away too much.

We had a faculty meeting this morning to discuss the joint opening of the school's first official extra-curricular activity! We have a volleyball game coming up against another school, but that's not a regular activity; we put together a volleyball intermural specifically for this game. My poor seventh graders were stoked for the match, but the only team the other school wanted was the high school team. Rats.

Anyway, this new extracurricular is called the Renaissance Program, and it's a hodge-podge of whatever each teacher feels they can contribute. I love to dance, so I'm going to be teaching dance after school once a week. Somebody's doing drama, somebody readings in French, somebody science experiments. We've really gone from NO extracurriculars, to about 10 - as many extracurriculars as there are teachers.

Also at the faculty meeting, the founder of our school (who is still very much in charge of its development) decided she wanted some classroom time, and had a drawing for one of the teachers to take a day off. Aicha won the drawing, so she gets a day off where Michelle will teach all her classes. Only here. I have to admit, I laughed when I heard the proposition, but I would've been happy to have my name drawn, too!

EQUATION OF THE DAY!
________________________________________________
It's a good day so far. The equation of the day was tough today. One of the seventh graders solved it, but none of the sixth. See if you can get it.
14102009.

Today is the 14th day of the 10th month, year 2009. Take the 8 digits, 14102009, and make a valid equation by placing one "=" and any other operations you want between any digits you want. Here's the kicker: you can't rearrange any of the digits, or insert or remove any.

So, you could say,
. -14+1^(0) = 12 - 0*9
(The "^" means raised to the power of). Except it doesn't. -13 doesn't equal 12. Make it work! It's a challenge! *throws down glove*

Mid-terms

We are officially halfway through the first of the six terms that comprise this school year, so I'm working out grades to send home progress reports. It's more difficult without any form of technology. Even the report cards at the end of the year are handwritten - a printed spreadsheet that gets taken around to each of the teachers, who fill in the appropriate cell on each student's paper. I had a meeting with one of my student's mothers today, seeing as he is (like too many of them) failing both of my classes.

It began awkwardly, due to the extreme language barrier, and the fact that our translator was her son. I believe completely that he was translating what I told her about his progress, but I'm also sure that he was making excuses to her at the same time. Who wouldn't? It was a hard thing I was asking him to do, and eventually Najet came over and took over for him.

Our apartment was cleaned yesterday by Louisa's hadema, and most of the power-tool work has been done this week. I think we're on our own from here, which is fine with me! We're beginning at a higher standard than my apartment last year in the states, and the place here has great potential. We've killed 3 roaches so far. Tomorrow, a senior girl I'm friends with is coming over to teach me to make Chicken Tajine. I'm excited; I never cook anything. The khobz bread is so delicious I rarely eat anything non-sandwich-ed.

I'm nervous for my students. I want them to succeed. As their teacher, I should be able to make that happen. But I can't MAKE it happen. I struggle with wanting to negate this assignment, or delete that zero. The lack of work has consequences, and I need for my class to teach them that. Teachers at home, any suggestions?

Light of the World... or in our apartment

Here's the greatest story of the week:


We have all been doing our best to set up our new place so that it's relatively homey. The first steps were things like shower heads (ok, we still haven't gotten those installed) and garbage cans. Dishes. Keys. LIGHTBULBS.

In this country, there are two kinds of lightbulbs for sale: plug in and screw in. Safi.

The problem was that our light fixtures are very tall and a bit broken, so we couldn't see which kinds to buy. No problem, asked the guardian of the building, and he pointed at the screw-ins. It wasn't the screw-ins. We were visiting the hanout at 10pm when we discovered we had no lights in our house.

We returned triumphantly to put them up in the dark, so I broke out the headlamp. I got laughed at, of course, wearing my headlamp around the house, but I could see! I love those things.

Well, then we had the problem of getting the bulbs into the sockets, being three reasonably petite women. Here's how it played out. Check the variety and creativity here!

In the entrance hall, the walls were too far apart to climb, but nothing would fit to stand on. We have an extra frosh stand (it's basically a base of planks with four short legs (6"?) and a few cross-beams of about 2x4 size. We propped the frosh stand against the wall, and climbed the cross-beams like a ladder while Candace and Suzanne held it up against the wall for dear life. Balanced precariously on an up-ended piece of furniture, I could just reach the socket.

In the living room, no walls were near the socket, so a new procedure was needed. There's a wobbly table, and we put an end table (these are the only two pieces of furniture in the house besides the froshes and beds) on top of the wobbly table. Standing on both tables on my tip-toes, the light went in.

The kitchen was easy. The counter got me to the right height, then it was just a matter of straddling the big room with one foot on the counter, and one on the fridge to plug in the bulb.

The hallway was a repeat of the frosh stand, except it didn't quite fit so we rebounded off of it to wedge myself between the walls. Then I could stay long enough to get the bulb in place.

In my bedroom, there was nothing to stand on (my bed is about a foot off the ground), no nearby walls, and no room to carry in the table. Eventually, Candace went up on my shoulders to plug in the light. Suzanne stood in front and braced our leaning tower, and we were SO CLOSE. Standing next to the bed, we scuffled the mattress off to one side and stepped up onto the frosh-stand. Quite a picture.

In Suzanne's bedroom, we stacked the taller girls instead, with Candace up on Suzanne's shoulders, but it still required us to drag the extra frosh stand into the room, since Suzanne's bed had fallen apart earlier that day.

Shwia b'shwia.