My Last English Class

The semester is winding down. I presented my final paper for one class yesterday, and now all I have left to do is write another final paper and take an Arabic final exam. It sounds like a lot less than it is, because both of these are more than a little difficult, and I still have classes to attend and homework that is not final-related to do and I must pack for my move out of the university apartment and get new batteries for my watches because both of them have now died and when I don't have a watch on I feel naked and disoriented, not to mention the tameya eating contest to which Roommate 2 challenged me. As you can see, I am very busy. But I make time to teach English.

Today was the last of those classes until February, and I finally managed to remember my camera (although I forgot my car sickness medicine - luckily I didn't need it). I tried to take pictures from the bus on the ride out to 6th of October City because the scenery is fascinating, but it turns out that photos snapped from buses traveling 100 miles an hour can be a little blurry.
The sunset over the Nile was beautiful today, thanks to the various pollutants in the air I'm sure, and this picture does it some justice. The next picture, however, is meant to demonstrate how the pyramids are visible from the highway. It's always disconcerting when they peek out at random times, past the buildings, looming in the distance. The picture, however, is blurry and a half. But look in the middle - antiquities!

I love teaching the class, although I'm not sure how much the students get out of it. They tend to look very confused, but I manage to drag a few sentences out of them. Today, for instance, I grilled everyone about their families. Many of them have huge families - six sisters for one (and at least two brothers on top of that for nine total - at least!), eight brothers for another, and one gentleman has five daughters. I wish I could hear each of their life stories, but it's pulling teeth to get them to say "My sister lives in Canada. She is married. She is studying to be a pharmacist." Some day they will be able to say more - I hope. I forgot to take pictures in class (though I'm not sure how I would have managed that anyway), but when I took out the camera after class some of my younger students were very excited to see it and came charging over to be in pictures with me. One then instructed me to email him the pictures - I had already given my class my email in case they want to practice English or to ask questions, and the young man (he's maybe 17, maximum) who is in white, standing next to me in the group picture yonder has already emailed me twice since class got out tonight. I'm very glad I was warned before classes started not to give out my phone number (although I don't think I would have anyway because it's hard enough to have conversations in person) - Imagine if those were phone calls! Of this group picture, only two of these dudes were actually in my class. The others are their friends, I guess, and random guys who came running over when they spotted the camera. The girl is my (and Roommate 3's) co-teacher, who grew up in Modesto of all places. Today, when we were teaching numbers we all said our days and years of birth. Co-teacher was born in 1988. One of my students was born in 1990.

I feel very old right now, and it's past Grandma's bed time - I have to get up early so that I can write brilliant papers and learn the entire Arabic language while juggling oranges and balancing the dictionary on my head.

The Arabic-English dictionary, of course.