It’s a lovely British summer’s day. The temperature is 26°C. It’s only the end of March too! About 3 weeks ago, we had a similar warm day and 2 days later the school was closed for 2 days because of a snowstorm! Living in the mountains means that the typical springtime showers and cold fronts sometimes turn to snow. There is also so much dust in the air, it had settled as a layer of orange powder over everything.
The children have been very badly behaved this week. Monday saw the end of the exam period (3 weeks of revision and exams), so for the rest of the week they’ve been very restless and talkative. Most of the class has seen grade rises in every subject. This is probably due to the nature of the work this term – it’s been fairly easy. I’d also like to think it’s down to my hard work and teaching! But lots of factors come into play.
My special needs kids performed lower than the average, but they are improving. In the English Listening Exam one of them got 86% which is an improvement on 16% the last time I did such an exam. He is still struggling in Maths though, failing it overall. I suppose some people just don’t find numbers easy to comprehend (myself included).
I have begun to learn Arabic script now. We decided to start learning it as we had done so much spoken Arabic we couldn’t not remember everything we’d done, let alone new things.
As far as I can understand, the Arabic alphabet has 28 letters. Each letter has 4 forms (Initial, medial, final and independent – English, as you know, only has upper and lower case). To make matters more complicated, vowels (in Arabic they often take the form of punctuation) can change the way a letter looks too. So, each of the 4 forms of a letter have 3 short vowel forms and 3 long vowel forms. In addition, there are several types of punctuation that change the way a consonant is pronounced. On signs (like at the side of the road), the punctuation type marks are often omitted, you have to know they are there to read it correctly though. Arabic script is also totally different from spoken Arabic, in the way things are said! Once this is all in your head, it’s easier than I thought it would be. I can read and write basic words and phonics now. Just a note, please, if anything in the above if wrong, don’t waste your time emailing me, I’m still learning!
The local Druze people are very fond of a drink called Mate. It originates in South America. Some Lebanese went there and brought it back to this area of the Lebanon. The people here drink it more that tea and coffee. It’s made from a type of holly bush and the drink is green and slightly bitter. You’d drink it through a straining straw, often communally, passing the cup around. I’ve gotten used to the taste now and quite like it (it’s very good for you I’m lead to believe) and it’s amazing how much more the people here respect you if you drink it too. Your friendship with the other staff here instantly goes up a notch if they know you drink it. Shopkeepers are much more friendly (not that they weren’t anyway) if you buy it. I suppose it’d be the same as our attitude in the UK, if a foreign friend became a connoisseur of tea.
This week, we’ve begun teaching the Easter story. After telling my class about Jesus riding into the city on a donkey, I asked if there were any questions. I has a flurry of hands go up and lots of questions like: “Did Jesus speak English or Arabic?”, “Were the soldiers in the story Lebanese?”, “What is that thing the man is holding in the picture?”. None of them related to the main learning point of the event, but it was good to answer their little questions to aid their understanding of the story as a whole. They ask much more questions than British kids do I think.
I’ve had several more encounters with Lebanese animals over the past month. This includes a tarantula in the bathroom. It had creepy black shiny eyes. The whole multitude of them watched me intently as I shovelled it into a bucket and hurled it off the edge of the building into the scrub. The mountains are currently alive with great heaps of wriggling black caterpillars. They are all over the place, in mounds, bristling with hair. If they all turn into butterflies, I’ll be a sight not to miss.
I’ve also been pursued across a mountainside by 3 fierce shepherd’s dogs. The herd of goats came near us and the dogs with them must have assumed we were about to attack them. They were like blonde bears (I actually thought they were when they came bounding down the mountain towards us). They chased us for a good way, and the shepherd rescued us from them twice. The 3 of them had the power to kill us all, given the chance.
I’ll sign off. I’m going to search my flat for tarantulas and any of those fat wasps that are waking up from hibernation (Pete shudders),
Pete_k
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