Get A Room!

Budapest, Hungary

Maybe I've just been living with the Arabs too long, but one thing strikes me every time I go out on the streets of Budapest. There are an awful lot of couples making out in public here! I don't just mean putting an arm around your significant other and giving them a little kiss. I'm talking about serious sucking face, here!

I mean, I'm happy for these people. I love that line in Thornton Wilder's Our Town when the mother says, "People are meant to go through this world in twos." And I remember the moment, in Jordan, when I decided that public displays of affection were an American right I had never fully appreciated, but that I would be taking advantage of as soon as I could get a boyfriend back in the States. (Of course, by the time Carter came along, I wasn't feeling the need to prove my American-ness quite so much, and didn't take advantage of that right quite as thoroughly as I'd thought I would.)

Still, I find myself staring with a sort of incredulous envy. On the one hand, I can't believe they're being quite so shameless in public. On the other, I wish I had someone to be shameless in public with!

I have to say, I can't exactly blame these girls, either. Maybe I've just been surrounded by Arab men for too long, whom I have trouble seeing as attractive given the disrespectful, sexist behavior I've seen so much of in the Jordanian bus stations. Whatever it is, I'm finding Hungarian men quite attractive. Tall, clean-cut, svelte…. It's so nice to be back in Europe!

CELTA-ology

Budapest, Hungary

When I went into the CELTA Training, I had very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I'd never had much for formal teacher training, and I knew it was hurting my teaching, regardless of how good my instincts might be. On the other hand, I remembered very clearly the education majors we'd tutored in the Writing Center, and was skeptical of just how much new information I'd get. But I've tried to keep an open mind, and keep my experience with Arabic classes at the front of my mind.

In the first year of graduate school, we used a very traditional textbook developed by Eckehart Schultz at the University of Leipzig, heavy on grammar and linguistics, and reading and writing. I loved it, and all my classmates hated it! The second year, we used the ubiquitous Al-Kitaab, which I found unsystematic, even chaotic, and endlessly frustrating. The rest of the class, however, was far happier with the new book's communicative approach of natural language. Upon consideration, it seemed pretty clear that the communicative approach really does work for most students, even if it doesn't work for me ... a good reason to learn how to teach it!

Now, more than half way through the course, I'm really glad I'm here, and I'm much more convinced that, given the kind of clear frameworks CELTA provides, the communicative approach really can work, and is an effective method for engaging and challenging students, as well as giving them skills to help them learn language from their environment. The communicative approach, as we've seen it here, also correlates quite closely with what I learned about inter-language and natural processes of language acquisition through the workshops I organized back in Indiana. While I still believe that the communicative classroom would drive me crazy as a student, as a teacher I'm becoming a convert!

What I'm interested in seeing in next week's sessions is how this can be applied to a beginners' classroom. With Beginner 1 students who only know how to ask and answer six questions, how do you make the classroom more communicative? Can beginners also learn through guided discovery? (I did that yesterday with my students, and it went brilliantly!)

I'm also hoping to have time to see some things this weekend. I've been in Budapest for more than two weeks. Other than one dinner out with Vicky and one trip to buy Kreinik braid at the mall for my cross-stitch project, I've only seen the city from my apartment to the school and back again!

Oy, vey!

Budapest, Hungary

Only a third of the way into my certification course, and all I can think is, "I'm so glad I don't have to teach today!" (Sorry, Sean!) This course is just exhausting! But ultimately I hope this will be a good thing....

Hung(a)ry without Hungarian

Budapest, Hungary

Yesterday I confessed to Carter how uncomfortable I am going to countries where I don't speak the language. "There are still places like that?" he asked.

Today, as I was trying to ask for the check for my goulash, I commented on how I feel like such a stupid American that I can't even ask for the check in Hungarian, and my new roommate assured me that with my German and Arabic, I was hardly a stupid American.

I could learn Hungarian, in between TEFL classes. I could learn just enough words to ask questions I wouldn't understand the answer to, add it to the list of increasingly random languages I know little bits of (Dutch, Kurdish, Swedish Battlestar Galactica subtitles...), and become even more confused. Or I could just spend the next four weeks asking, "English? Deutsch? 3arabi?" At least people will have options!

Not a Terrorist

Budapest, Hungary

When I first spotted him in line in front of me at the Queen Alia Airport in Amman, I was fascinated by his pants, which at first I thought were a pinstripe, Wahhabi-style (i.e. high-water) thobe. Then I realized they were extra-wide pants with an elastic waistband. I couldn't stop scrutinizing them from every angle, because I'd never seen anything like them (and I am my mother's daughter). Then I was struck by his long, Islamic cleric beard (I love how they stick out just like a pharoah's prosthetic) and how it contrasted with the rest of his head, which was shaved to mere millimeters. There was something oddly serene about the guy.

It wasn't until we were in the bus out to the airplane, he speaking in French on his phone with a plastic bag full of jumbo-sized Qur'aan at his feet, that the more ignominious thought crept in: "This is the kind of strikingly devout Muslim Arab we're supposed to be afraid of." And it was like the French philosopher's white horse. (Man could fly if he could just not think of a white horse.) Once the thought was in my head, despite my best intentions and years of getting to know Muslims of all stripes, both the devout and the more casual, I couldn't stop labeling him as a potential threat. He turned out to be sitting across the aisle from me, and every time he opened his Qur'aan or went to the bathroom, I thought, "This is the part in the movie where he turns out to be a terrorist!" Even knowing how ridiculous it was, I couldn't stop an edge of apprehension.

Imagine, then, what it must be like to work for the Transportation and Safety Administration. We spend a lot of time ridiculing and vilifying them for their post-9/11 paranoia, for all the things you have to unpack and take off to go through airport security today, for their alleged racial profiling. And there is something definitively Kafka-esque about the TSA. It's really pretty ludicrous to continue calling it "random selection" when every Arab or Muslim I know gets pulled aside for additional questioning every time they fly! It's our job as democrats and citizens to keep an eye on things, keep things from getting too Orwellian.

Still, if this were your job, day in and day out, to be suspicious of everyone, to be constantly under the pressure of preventing another shoe bomber, another liquid explosives ring, God forbid another hijacking...! If this were your job, wouldn't you be watching that devout young Muslim very carefully? Even with the best of intentions, with every reason to know that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful people who love their families and their neighbors, I couldn't keep the doubt from creeping in. Imagine if doubting were my daily bread and butter!

Egyptians and the American Presidents

Cairo, Egypt

I never bring up politics in the Middle East, because politics are taken so personally here, but it comes up all the time anyway. I blame Bush ... and praise Obama. That's what I heard all week in Jordan.
Obama? Thumbs up!
Bush? We're glad he's gone!

Among others, I had a fabulous long conversation with a tour guide on the train to Luxor about American politics abroad, especially vis-a-vis Israel/Palestine. Why does America unconditionally support Israel? she wanted to know, and she displayed a deep understanding of American politics and political philosophy. American democracy, she said, is supposed to be about protecting the rights of minorities, about defending those who don't have the means to defend themselves against the tyranny of the majority (or the tyranny of the rich minority). Why, then, doesn't America step in and help protect Palestinians against the abuses of the Israelis? Yes, as the world's leading democracy, America has an imperative to protect and defend other democracies, but is Israel really a democracy? And what about Palestinians' attempts to establish democractic rule that are so roundly and routinely crushed by Israel and her allies? Besides, if America so loudly declares that Jordan and Egypt are so-called democratic states, then shouldn't America be supportive of their attempts to help their Palestinian brothers achieve freedom and democracy and self-determination?

Herself an Egyptian Christian, she also talked at length about how much she would like to go to the holy sites in Jerusalem, to see the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and walk the Stations of the Cross. As an Arab, however, she can't. Few Americans realize, as they talk about the Jewish state and Islamic parties, how many Arab Christians are caught in the middle. As Palestinian Christians like to say, they were the first Christians, and there are still many of them trapped in the West Bank and Gaza. Still others, like this Egyptian woman, can't travel to see the sites in Israel/Palestine that are holy to them, because they are concerned that their Arab neighbors will accuse them of supporting Israeli occupation with their tourist shekels. I wonder if the Christian Right takes this into account when they declare that it is their moral obligation as Christians to support the establishment of a Jewish State in Israel and drive the Palestinians out of the Holy Land.

She, like me, was heartened by President Barack Obama's first press interview as president, on no less than the Qatari satellite TV station Al-Arabiya, vowing to listen to Muslim and Arab as well as Israeli concerns. At the same time, I fear that Arabs may be pinning too much hope on Pres. Obama. Yes, he is the head of one of the most powerful nations in the world, the so-called "Leader of the Free World," but he's just a man. Just one man with a dedicated Republican opposition and serious domestic concerns that also compete for his attention. He's done a great deal of good on domestic issues in his first 100 days, but already Americans are pillorying the man for not doing enough. What happens when we get to his first State of the Union address, the end of his first year in office, and he hasn't yet solved the economic mess or brought peace to the Middle East? Idealism is all well and good, but as Pres. Obama himself is quickly learning in his new job, one's idealism must be tempered by realism.

Behind the Digital Revolution

Egypt, Cairo

I picked up all my photos today from a Kodak center down the street from Megan's apartment, and I'm very disappointed. I don't know if I over-baked my film, or if it was already bad when I bought it, or if it was just the development process. I do know that this photo shop scratched my negatives, so I'm leaning towards the theory that they did a generally bad job of developing my photos.

I'm going to try going back to the developer in University Street in Amman, and see if he does a more professional job, and we'll see if Hungary's developers are any better, but I'm beginning to think my camera is irreparably obsolete. Even though I'm years away from being able to afford a digital camera as advanced as my current film camera, I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and buy a digital camera, or else give up on photography altogether in Jordan and rely on Facebook for my scrapbooking needs....

If anyone (Jad?) can recommend a decent film developer in Amman, I'm getting desperate!