A few jokes, and teaching!

Ten days since the last post. My apologies!

I've heard a few jokes in the past few days that I liked and thought I would pass along. One is simply "your handwriting is really nice"... but what is understood is that you're (jokingly) accusing the other person of writing for the secret police. Useful when someone asks you a sensitive political question or something like that...

Here is a nice regional take on a classic:

A journalist goes out on the street to interview passers-by, asking about the recent electrical outage. He asks the first passer-by, an American, "What is your opinion on the electrical outage?" to which the American replies "I'm sorry, what do you mean by outage?". Then the journalist asks an African (yeah I know it's not a country this is how the joke was told to me :p) who replies "I'm sorry, what do you mean by electricity?". Finally the journalist asks a Syrian who replies "I'm sorry, what do you mean by 'what is your opinion'?".

On the subject of teaching, one of the students in my program knows a priest at the Chaldean (a Catholic sect mainly in Iraq) parish in the old city of Damascus. Within two weeks of landing in Damascus, this student started an English program on his own from the ground up, dividing the students into three small classes, and initially teaching each class one hour a week (a lot of work!). Another student in the program (also with a Teaching Arabic degree) took over the lower level class, and increased its hours to two meetings of one hour a week, and hopes to do three. Then, this week, I took over the intermediate class from the founder of the program, and have agreed to do two hours a week as well.

Unfortunately, I hadn't met the students at all before I went in to teach, and in fact I was only told that I would be teaching the day of. The lesson I prepared was a bit over their heads, so this coming week I'm going to take a step back and review a little bit. We're doing a very hard topic in English, which is when to use the simple past (I went) versus the present perfect (I have gone). I had planned to teach "Where have all the flowers gone" last Thursday but we didn't have time. Hopefully this week!

The students are great, I have to say. I watched the lower-level class before I taught my own class, and I was a little dismayed by discipline problems in that class, which is I suppose natural considering that the kids are between 14 and 18 years old. Luckily my class ranges from 16 to 20 something, and so the students are more focused. I think with a more appropriate lesson plan it's going to be a great experience!

A little bit about food

(My apologies for the formatting mess. The way I avoid the blogspot ban to
post pictures doesn't allow me to be any fancier with the formatting.)

Summer in the Middle East is a wonderful time for food, and especially for
fruits and vegetables. Among the (many) pictures I have of foodstuffs from
the past month, I thought I would send a few along today.

Foodies and environmental nutters in America are very much interested in
the issue of the diversity of crops grown. Where we once had hundreds of
varieties of apples in America, today you can think of 5 varieties that
account for the vast majority of production, increasing vulnerability to
diseases and pests that, say, red delicious is particularly susceptible
too. And so I always enjoy seeing new varieties of familiar fruits and
vegetables, like the 3ajjour, which is a very slightly sweet cucumber that
looks like a tiny watermelon!

Of course, summer-time staples include apricot, though its season is just
now ending. If you want to know what is coming, you need only look at the
trees. Ripening pomegranates give an idea of what is to come soon!

My favorite fruit on the planet is probably figs, which just came into
season this week. I'm slightly allergic, but watch that stop me from
eating half a kilo at a time!

Heat wave!

So I'm slowly getting into the habit of posting here more regularly. It's a work in progress.

I laughed today when I saw this article:

http://www.alternet.org/story/147495/air-conditioning_is_terrible_for_the_earth_--_here%27s_how_to_live_without_it?page=1

It's about how AC uses a lot of electricity in wealthy countries, but especially the US. I laughed because my roommate and I had already taken their advice and, out of a mix of bullheaded stoicism and stinginess, endured the daytime heat here until a few days ago.

Now, let's clear up once and for all the idea that the whole Middle East is intolerably hot for six months a year. Of course, there are parts that are like that, but they are well to the south and inland from here. Damascus can see the occasional frost in the winter, and sees summer-time highs in the 90's. Of course, this is a dry heat, meaning that daytime high of 95 lasts for about 2 hours, so at 9 pm it might be all the way down to 75. Some summer nights it's downright chilly!

So thus my roommate and I were just sweating out the hot afternoons each day, waiting for the evening to come, when two days ago it became intolerable. Temperatures had gotten higher, there was no breeze during the day or at night, and so the brick oven (almost literal) of this city had gotten unbearable. We used the AC for two days and then I went back and checked what the weather had been. It turns out that both days it had been above 110! I would like to take this opportunity to assure my readership that I do not feel the slightest pangs of guilt about it. Happy July in the Northern Hemisphere! Hope it's not 111 where y'all are!

The SHUSHI Armenian Dance Ensemble

This past Thursday night, I headed with a few friends to see the SHUSHI Armenian Dance Ensemble, from none other than New Jersey.

The program was a long but enjoyable three hours, with large numbers (involving some 50 dancers), small numbers, as well as singing. The hardest number for me to swallow was their finale, in which they danced in military uniforms while waving no less than FOUR Armenian flags on the stage (plus a Syrian one for the locals). For anyone with a little historical perspective, the mix of militarism and nationalism is intimidating and in this case under-considered.

The dancers were nearly all Armenian American kids, ranging from grade school to high school. I saw in their participation a very American pattern of assimilation, especially appropriate for the second and third generation, when ethnic identity is still prevalent. For many people in America, arts from the home country become one of the only ways to construct an ethnic identity, and take on an importance that exceeds their importance in the home country, where one's Armenian identity is taken for granted in a way that it can not be in America. In America, we wonder, if you don't DO anything Armenian, can you still BE Armenian?

I was also touched by the comments of a friend who had done Peace Corps in Azerbaijan (neighboring Armenia). She was forbidden to cross the border at the time due to the cold war between the two countries, but she remarked on how much the people's faces (as the audience was majority Armenian-Arabs), the music, and the dance all reminded of her Azerbaijan. In any case, people blindly hate the other side even if they share so much at the end of the day.

My barber and more music

Sorry for the sparse posting! I now have reliable internet at home, so I should be able to do better.

I had the best conversation with a Syrian earlier this week with the barber. Right from the start, he's talking to me about the American Civil War, whether it really was about slavery, whether the North - South split in America has gotten better or worse with time, and on and on and on! A really wide range of basic factual knowledge and smart conclusions built upon it! He's a man after my own heart, a self-taught history buff, and we talked a great deal about what is going to happen in the Middle East in the next 5, 10, 20 years, be it in Lebanon, Palestine, or here. Btw, he's not expecting a Palestinian state anytime soon.

One of the best things about classes so far is that we get to hear a LOT of music. From my wide-ranging youtube listening in the past, I've been pleasantly surprised that I have previously heard much of what we listen to in class. Links to what we've been listening to:

http://www.arabicmusictranslation.com/2008/07/julia-boutros-arabic-arabi.html

Ronza singing the very eager "A trip! We're taking a trip!":
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE2va0DN95c

Lastly, a link to a song by Lena Shamamian, who I'm going to see (for $2) tonight:

http://www.arabicmusictranslation.com/2009/10/lena-chamamyan-before-dinner-qabl-el.html