Eid (pronounced like ede and aid mixed together)
This Saturday the Muslim month of fasting, Ramadan, ended. The Muslims spend an entire month fasting from any food or drink during daylight hours (and from a number of other things during both daylight and nighttime hours, as well). Their month ends with four days of celebration (eating, drinking, meeting with family, having get togethers into the night).
For the school, Eid meant that we had a four day break from Sunday through Wednesday. During three of those four days I did little other than eat, sleep, play violin, watch movies, play video games with some of the students, and visit a few people's homes for meals. The fourth day was spent grading papers, and putting any finishing touches on lessons plans I had thought through for the next couple of days. Eid marks the end of School: Round 1 and the beginning of School: Round 2. I've spent a large portion of the last five weeks catching up on work and developing simple relationships with my students. More recently, a number of us have started hanging out on a more regular basis (such as with the video gaming I mentioned a moment ago - I'm becoming more convinced that video games are a great way to develop early relationships with youth - especially guys. Plus, I love doing things where I can taunt them for losing to a teacher...).
Round 2 of the school year will be significantly more busy than Round 1. This week I'll be starting up two or three Bible studies, an after school outdoor club, and an English tutoring afternoon with the other English teachers. I'll be leading a Bible study for the 8th grade boys (they're the one's I've been bonding with the most these past few weeks). There are 12 boys in the class, and together they make up a whirlwind of chaos that is impervious to any exhortations to self-control. So I'm splitting them up. Two groups of six will be easier to manage and better for discussing some of the deeper issues of life. They are a great group of guys. They are smart, witty, full of energy, and quite often bored out of their minds (a good combination for someone interested in their lives). I'm also thinking about leading a Bible study for the 7th grade guys, who are night and day calmer and more attentive. That Bible study would be much easier to run, and I've come to love some of them as well (though not so much as the 8th grade guys).
I love living here! I still miss things like southern fried chicken (we had KFC the other day... awful. I can't believe I paid ten dollars to choke down something similar to deep fried pinecones). I miss boating with my family and having furniture in my house. But I love life here. More often than not I forget that I don't understand 80% of what is happening around me socially.
I should have taken pictures of the Ramadan lights around town (they look like Christmas lights in the States - except that their stars are next to crescent moons - complete with blinking lights strung along from window to window), but I forgot. The month flew by; I can't believe I've been here for more than a month!
Instead, here are some other pictures:
Your first view of our school
Yes, there are bars on the windows.
Like most schools, we try to create a prison-like
feeling among the students... for morale.
I took these pictures on a Friday,
which is why it looks so desolate
That's right, we have an olive orchard around our soccer field.
How fitting.
Our students, heading home for the day.
As teachers, it is our duty to beat the students in everything,
which is why the teacher on the left is the one who caught the ball.
Not the student :)
The blue-shirted guys are my students.
Front: my 9th graders (trying to be gangster)
Back: my 7th graders shooting hoops (I always try to get these two
on my team because they are such good shots)
in response to, "do something cool"
This 7th grader almost beat me in chess
(phew! that was a close one)
