The first day!!

September 19, 2011

Great day! Miraculous even! I spent the morning in Golnoza’s class again, and we had a blast! I finished out some planning stuff for my own class, and went to the boys’ school with Seamus to turn in some banking paperwork. While we were there, I told Mr. Mahmoud that I was concerned about starting the direct deposit right away since my account would be locked until my Residency Visa was completed. So what does he do?! He walks in to Mr. Mubarak (the guy who is always so cranky) and they talk for a minute (he even made Mr. Mubarak laugh… I didn’t think it was possible), and he hands me my passport with completed, affixed visa inside!!!

(Since my entry visa is only good for 60 days, I was fully anticipating making a sketchy, less-than-fully-legal trip over the border to Oman, to get a stamp out and back into the UAE for another 60 days. It’s happened in previous years…)

So no shady trips to Oman!! I’m officially a documented Abu Dhabi resident, allowed to stay until September 2013. Yay! It also clears my biggest roadblock from going to Jordan with Sarah for the November Eid break. Fantasic!

September 20, 2011

Today was incredible. EASILY the happiest day I’ve had since I’ve been here (and I’ve had some good days, don’t forget). I hardly slept last night, between being so relieved about my visa, and my class coming today. I didn’t get to sleep until at least 2, and I was up at 5:30 because my mind wouldn’t let me stay in bed. I got ready to go and walked into my classroom at about 6:45 (school starts at 7:30; we had to be there at 7), and my first student arrived like 3 minutes after me. They trickled in for about half an hour, and then my room was suddenly packed. There are so many boys in my class! I had 21 of 25 kids today, and only 6 girls. And their names!!! Oh my gosh! You should see my attendance sheet. Some of these kids have like 5 names, and it goes most of the way across the page. Actually, a lot of them do. (Apparently, that means my class is more of an Arab class than an expat class.) And there are name duplicates: I have FOUR Muhammad’s!! Luckily two of them go by their middle names instead, so they are: Uraib, Shoaib, Mohammad M, and Muhammad A. The ‘A’ is for his middle name, Abdulramen… no wonder some of them can’t spell their names.

Side note: It actually is a pretty incredible thing here for a child to come into school already knowing how to write his/her name. Both Sarah and Tara have told me that they have kids in Grade 1 who can’t hold a pencil correctly, let alone write their names. I think the biggest thing we’re up against is the fact that Arabic is written right to left, but English is left to right. These kids have to learn both written languages right from the beginning, and that can be very confusing. I noticed a few kids today who write their names backwards (example: if I wrote my name ‘eitaK’). The “first” letter is capitalized correctly, and the letters are all individually correct, it’s just the wrong direction. It’s something we can definitely tackle. And it’s kind of cute. J

The kids colored or played Lego’s for a long time until I felt like we might not get more kids for the day, and then they cleaned up and sat on the listening rug so I could read a few stories. They listen so well! (And Ms. Nagat came in during story time to check on how the class was doing… perfect timing! They were freaking angels. I couldn’t have been more impressed with them.) There was only one girl who cried for a long time and one little boy who cried because the girl was crying and upset him, but they were both fine by snack time. When it was time to eat, they lined up to wash their hands and had snack (and one poor guy threw up, but hey! He made it to the bathroom, and then the assistant took him to the nurse), and then we came back to the rug. We sang a few songs, did a craft project, and introduced the letter ‘s’. (Clearly, our new curriculum doesn’t have us going in alphabetical order. Duh.) By then it was 11:00 and, for this week, that means time to go for the kids that take the bus. I had 6 go on the school bus, and then another 5 left shortly after to leave on a private bus, and parents started picking kids up from then on. (I know it seems early since school officially goes until 12:30, but they’re allowed leave after 11:00 for the first week.) The last four boys in my classroom played for a long time, and then started getting tired, laid down on the rug and got quiet. None of them fell asleep, but it was pretty funny.

Tomorrow I’m going to spend the whole day in the other classroom, with a new set of habibis, and then Thursday we will start the schedule of trading classes halfway through the morning. I hope my class tomorrow is as great as my first class! It’s almost like having two “first” days of school since we get two sets of kids, and they get two teachers. Today was amazing.