Done, Not Forgotten

Amman, Jordan

This is it. Officially resigned from Bell Amman, beginning to pack for my move to Jordan, already starting the rounds of farewell dinners, brunches, drinks and a party. Only 2 more days to enjoy Jordan before being dropped in the melee of Cairo!

I'm pretty certain that I'll be back. I've got the whole month of August off from the CASA program, and I expect I'll grab the opportunity to teach for part of Bell Amman's Young Learner Program. I wrote the course for the IB / IGCSE Program, fully expecting to teach it and very excited about the idea. Every time it was put off again was a huge disappointment. Now, though, it turns out I might be able to teach a part of it after all. (Also, the money isn't bad!)

Nevertheless, it's odd to think that I'm leaving after all this time! I'm really gonna miss this country and my friends here!

Free Lunch!

Aqaba, Jordan

No, I can't debunk the old truism, "No such thing as a free lunch." I worked hard for these last three lunches ... but in the end I didn't shell out the cash for them.

Peter and Rebecca came to visit me this weekend, and to have a well-deserved mini 48 hour semi-vacation. I say "semi" because Peter was constantly on the phone with the company, having recently become the director of Bell Amman. He is in the middle of a serious culture change in the company, an opening up of dialogue between departments and with the CEO that I think will eliminate many of the most frustrating aspects of the business culture there that I was beginning to despise. It almost makes me sad to be leaving Bell Amman for this fellowship in Cairo. (In addition to already being very sad about losing my very nice salary, just when I was getting used to having money to save, and even a little money to throw around. So much for lasering away my leg hair...!)

Anyway, Peter was mostly writing a paper for his PhD on his "vacation," but Rebecca spent most of it on the beach with me, and we had 3 fabulous lunches in the various restaurants of the Intercontinental Hotel. It was so nice to have someone else to spend the weekend with. While I generally enjoy the company of me, myself and I, we do occasionally tire of each other and need to see other people....

Hospitality Is In the Eyes of the Beholder

Aqaba, Jordan

My Lower Intermediate students were reading a text in New Headway Plus about the souqs of Marrakesh. It describes how the carpet seller welcomes you into his shop, pulls out rug after rug, brings you tea....

“Now, there’s real hospitality!” my students said. It was a good salesman, they said, who anticipated his customer’s needs before the customer, who brought out tea, who engaged the customer in conversation.

It started an interesting conversation about differing ideas of hospitality. To most Westerners, what Arabs consider good hospitality and customer service is too intrusive, too pushy. When we walk into a shop, we want to be left alone to look by ourselves, with the shop assistant on hand to answer our questions if we have them. Arabs consider this extraordinarily bad customer service; they expect the shopkeeper to strike up a conversation with them from the moment they walk into the shop, and they don't feel that such a conversation constitutes pressure to buy something as we in the West often do. It was one of the many cultural adjustments I had to make as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and one that I still struggle with 4 years later!

The BMI Index

Aqaba, Jordan

My archaeologist friend Chris likes to say that Jordan runs on the BMI Index: Bukra (tomorrow), Mumkin (maybe), Inshallah (God willing). I've been here long enough to recognize it when I see it. In fact, a colleague was just commenting Thursday on how naturally and with such conviction I replied "Inshallah" to the latest news on plans for Aqaba. But nothing makes a bad day worse like the BMI Index.

This is the height of hay fever season in Jordan. I'm allergic to jasmine, lavender, olive pollen and ragweed, all of which are now in full bloom, in Aqaba most of all. Add that to my ever-present dust allergies and the stress and pressure of this project in Aqaba, and I was already set to have a bad day.

I was up at 5am to pack the last of my clean laundry, shower and get some coffee before the 4 hour drive to Aqaba. I didn't manage to sleep in the car as I'd hoped. By the time we arrived in Aqaba, despite being drugged to the gills on allergy remedies, my sinuses were packed full and aching from the swift drop in altitude of the last 100 miles. I stepped out of the car in Aqaba to a wall of stifling heat and humidity, half deaf and off balance from ears congested by allergies, to discover that the accountant had not actually made firm appointments to see any apartments.

We spent hours wandering around Aqaba, calling phone numbers spray-painted on walls, and looking at squalid little studio apartments above "Chinese massage parlors" (blatant code for something seedier). None of them had washing machines, and the accountant conceded that this was a necessity for a 5 week stay. We did look at one that would have been acceptable, except it was 50% over our budget, and the landlord wouldn't be bargained with. We'd been in Aqaba for almost 4 hours when we finally met up with the real estate agent who supposedly had some apartments to show us in our price range ... but who had only one apartment to show us, which was twice our stated budget.

Eventually we found an apartment that was in our price range. The kitchen counters and walls are coated in a layer of aged cooking oil, the cabinets full of mildew, and the kitchen lacking any kind of dishes or cookware (which was the point of having an apartment and not a hotel room). But I was informed that it's all the company could afford, and I didn't have a say in the matter.

Also, we were unable to arrange for any Internet access.

I sure hope the teaching goes well, because it's gonna be a long five weeks in that apartment! The German word "ekelhaft" comes to mind, somehow so much more evocative and appropriate than "disgusting"....

Ready ... Set ...

... Just One More Thing Before You Go....

Amman, Jordan

I suppose I've been in Jordan long enough that it shouldn't surprise me. I suppose that I should be used to the last-minute flurry of changes to every program we've ever done at Bell Amman. I probably should have even expected it. But I don't think I will every like it. I'm the daughter of a woman with a color-coded agenda, a woman who always has a plan and a back-up plan. We can fly by the seat of our pants with great success, sometimes even aplomb, but by nature (or by nurture?) we plan.

Of course, I arrived at work today to find that plans had changed again for Aqaba, the project I'm starting on Sunday. The client wanted more hours, different hours. The issue of Internet access was still unresolved (aside from a vague assurance that I could have one hour of access a day at the client's site). I found myself racing around to collect more materials, more options ... and consequently forgetting several of the things that had already been on my list.

I'll be so glad when this program has been settled and started! I always feel so much better about these kinds of things once I start teaching. Maybe Mom's right. Maybe I really am meant to be a teacher. It's certainly where I've found the most calm and equilibrium in the last few years!

No Honor Among Teachers

Marj al-Hamam, suburban Amman, Jordan

I find all my conversations turning to education in Jordan recently. Perhaps it's partly Nas's recent posts on education and the long comments I left on this one. As Jordan slips further into recession, and slips on the Freedom House scale from "partly free" to "not free," reforms of all sorts seem more important and elusive than ever. It may just be because I'm a teacher, but I feel very strongly that none of these reforms are possible without a foundation of education reform.

King Abdullah II's Jordan First and National Agenda programs both included comprehensive education reforms, and the Amman Message also calls for more critical thinking in religious and civic curricula. There have been significant (though hardly sufficient) improvements made to the national curriculum and teacher training, both in universities and in-service training (for those teachers who can actually attend). But none of that means anything if teachers aren't appropriately compensated.

The average public school teacher makes less than $350 a month, and is technically forbidden by the Ministry of Education from holding another job. In practice, of course, most male teachers are also doing private tutoring or teaching at after-school centers, as salaries are well below the cost of living for most people.

The student who comes most regularly to Bell's free Conversation Club on Thursdays is a physics teacher, Firas. Today he explained to me that he has 3 jobs and works an average of 18-20 hours per day, sleeping an average of 3 hours a night. In addition, he's taking English classes in hopes of being able to get a higher-paying job, perhaps $500 a month, teaching at a private school. He's also taking an International Computer Driving License course, a U.N. certification he will have to obtain to keep his teaching job with the Ministry.

Teachers in the U.S. or Europe would have gone on strike 5 years ago, when wages had already been stagnant for 8 years, and the cost of living suddenly doubled as a result of the Iraq War. As far as I can tell, though, there's no teachers' union in Jordan. Teachers have been voicing their discontent, but the government's response has been less than encouraging.

A prime example is this week's announcement by the Minister of Education. In response to teachers' complaints about wages, he made a statement on public television. Perhaps, he opined, if teachers shaved in the morning and ironed their clothes, it might be worth giving them a raise. He said this on public television.

As a result of this and other abuses, teachers feel undervalued and unsupported. They work 7:40-2:00, and whatever can't be finished in that time doesn't get done. They never take grading or lesson planning home. In fact, where lesson planning goes, after their first year of teaching, they just copy last year's lesson plans into this year's notebook. Any education reform, no matter how well-intentioned or theoretically sound, is doomed to failure in the face of completely understandable teacher apathy.

Firas was telling me of his and his friends' attempts to marry. When his friends have gone to meet the fathers of the girls they're hoping to marry, of course they are asked about their jobs. They are all teachers. Fathers say, "I've even had taxi drivers want to marry my daughter and turned them away!" Even as cheap as taxi fare is here, and as high as the overhead is in that industry, taxi drivers can still make 2 or 3 times as much as a teacher.

It's a real shame, given the history of the Arab world. Students would come from the very ends of the known earth - China, Morocco, Tanzania, Zanzibar - to study with the great Arab masters in Kufa, Basra and Andalusia. Abbassid Baghdad was a Mecca of great learning. Teachers and scholars garnered the highest respect in that world. How different the world would have been if they hadn't been able to preserve all the masterpieces of the Classical world? That kind of respect inspired greatness. JD150 a month inspires apathy. Can you blame them?

Longest Work Day Ever!

Amman & Aqaba, Jordan

We started before 6am, didn't get home till half past 11 at night, and spent 10 of those hours on a very uncomfortable bus!

Somewhere in the middle we gave placement tests to about 90 bank employees. I'll be heading back to Aqaba in a couple weeks to spend a month or two teaching about 60 of those bankers, so stay tuned for posts from the beach!

I'm really looking forward to these classes, and the opportunity to strut myself as something of a free agent. I've learned a lot in the last year at Bell Amman. As I kept saying during our inspection last week by Bell Cambridge, I'm a completely different teacher than when I started a year ago.

Without Nina and Rula's belief in me after the professional and psychological abuse I suffered at the Modern American School (more on this to come), I might never have had the confidence to teach again.
Without the CELTA that Nina, Rula and Rebecca fought tooth and nail to get the Luminus Group to pay for, I wouldn't have recognized how good my instincts as a teacher already were, or be putting nearly as much thought into lesson frameworks and unifying lesson objectives.
Without Peter and Rebecca's teacher training and phenomenal support, I wouldn't have known about task-based teaching, or have had the guts or imagination to try it in an ESL setting, and this methodology has completely transformed my classroom in the best ways.
I've learned a great deal from full-time and part-time teachers, and others at Bell.
My extensive involvement in the months of preparation for inspection also taught me a lot about the big picture elements of education and curriculum design.

In the next two months, I'll be putting the new "Teacher Maryah" to the test in Aqaba, and I can hardly wait to begin!

Rainy Bliss

Amman, Jordan

From A Rainy Day In

I love rainy weekends. Not just because Jordan so badly needs the rain. I love the sound of the rain. I love being snuggled up in my bed listening to it out the window. Despite the cold, I've got my window cracked open so I can hear it better.

I like the rain as an excuse to sleep in, relax, catch up on my blogging, my emails, my job apps, my reading, my PBS Frontline and Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me! episodes, my cross-stitching, my scrapbooking, my creative writing. It gives me an excuse to not get dressed, not leave the house, not speak to anyone but my roommates, without feeling too terribly like a hermit.

I think it's time I revived Introvert Days. It was something I discovered the first time I was in Jordan, and that got me through grad school. Once a week, I would stay home, in my pajamas, and do things purely for myself, by myself. It took a long time to convince my neighbors in the village that this was a good thing. Arabs are generally terrified to be alone, and so they assumed that I was, too, and it took me a long time to convince them not to send their daughters over to my house to keep me company on Friday afternoons. But it was a necessary psychological defense.

These days, with Bell Amman growing by leaps and bounds, I think I need that refuge again. We've got full schedules, and most of our part-time teachers teaching full schedules, too. When I go to Aqaba to teach this intensive course, it's hard to say just what we're going to do to cover my classes. All of this is a good thing. It means that we might start to turn a profit sometime soon. In some ways, though, it makes work more stressful than ever, and regular Introvert Days more necessary.

Plus, check out the cool photos I got of an impressive thunder and hail storm:

From A Rainy Day In

Meanwhile, my roommates Ryan and Melanie had a very different idea of how to spend their rainy day:

From A Rainy Day In

Never Tell a Western Woman....

The Teletubby and Col. Ibrahim

Amman, Jordan

Earlier this week at Bell Amman, we had a new group picture taken for the Website. The photographer decided it would be interesting to line us up at the top of the stairs between the two levels of the center, but to fit us all in the shot, he had to use a wide-angle lens. Now, I haven't seen the picture, but I have a pretty good idea of how it looks, thanks to Saleh. He's the consultant business manager, and he walked into the Teachers Room to get a drink of water, saw me at my desk and asked, "Have you seen yourself in that group picture? You look like a Teletubby!"

"Saleh!" we exclaimed. "Never tell a woman that!"

"No, no! I didn't mean it that way! I just meant that the picture distorts...." We continued to pick on him for it, and the poor man kept coming back into the Teachers Room to apologize over and over.

That was yesterday. Today, Col. Ibrahim needed to see my residence permit to check the expiration date, and as we were going down the hallway to get it, he says from behind me, "Maryah! You got fat! Why did you do that?"

You've gotta love the Arabs for the their bluntness, I guess. At least you never have to wonder what they really think....

Kristen Conquers Her Fears

Dead Sea & Wadi Himara, Jordan

Our new Bell Amman colleague Melanie is determined to get Kristen to conquer some of her fears and phobias this year, and become a generally more self-confident person. To that end, she set Kristen a challenge as a New Years resolution: Do something that scares you every month. Today we addressed two fears: cycling and heights.

From Kristen Conquers Her Fears

First she cycled 25km without getting off the bike once (voluntarily OR involuntarily), without going below 3rd gear, and still beating a third of the group!

Then we went for her fear of heights. Like Philip before her, Kristen got this far and decided to sit down and wait for us to come back:

From Kristen Conquers Her Fears

But Ammar, bless his heart, would have none of it. He convinced her to give it a try, and coached her over the big boulders, and she made it all the way up to the little waterfall.

From Kristen Conquers Her Fears

I figured she wouldn't climb up the waterfall with us. After all, I didn't on my first trip up Wadi Himara, and I'm not nearly so afraid of heights. In fact, I was so sure that she'd stay at the bottom that I left my backpack with her when I went up.

From Kristen Conquers Her Fears

But Kristen's student, who happened to also be on the trip, was absolutely right when he said, "Just don't watch, and she'll come up when she thinks no one's looking!" We hadn't been up at our final destination for long when we turned around, and there she was! And let me tell you, it was worth the climb for the spectacular waterfall!

From Kristen Conquers Her Fears

Not to mention the galayat bandoura and wood-fired tea!

From Kristen Conquers Her Fears

Like a Real School

Marj-al-Hamam, Amman, Jordan

It struck me as my last class was on their break, and I went walking down the second floor hallway past Kristen and Fadi's classrooms.

We all had at least 9 students, grouped at tables, hard at work. Despite the post-Ramadan slump (everyone's maxed out their budgets on Eid al-Fitr gifts), we've got nicely packed classrooms. We're starting to look like a real school around here, and it's quite satisfying. (Not to mention, a relief: it means we can feel fairly secure about our continued employment!)

And with the corporate contracts pouring in, I feel fairly confident that it will only get better.

Remember Me?

Amman, Jordan

Sometimes you can't predict the people who will remember and recognize you.

I needed a note from the college's doctor to go home early, and I knew the clinic was on Level B1, but I didn't know where, so I asked a security guard. She said, "Are you Maryah?"
"Yes," I said. Since my Peace Corps days, I've become accustomed to being the White Elephant, the person everyone recognizes in a crowd of locals.
"Don't you remember me?"
I get this a lot, too, and while I'm good at recognizing familiar faces, I'm very bad at figuring out why they're familiar. "You look familiar...."
"I'm Kawthar!" she says. "From Mshairfeh."
I take another look, and now I can see it. "Kawthar? How are you? What's new?" Four years ago, she was one of my students in the 10th grade at the girls' school in Mshairfeh where I taught as a Peace Corps Volunteer. "Do you come here every day from Mshairfeh?"
"Ali works here, and I come with him." Clearly I'm supposed to know who Ali is, too, so I smile and nod as if I understand, and change the subject a little. "There are two girls from Bleela [the village down the hill from Mshairfeh] who work at the college and come every morning, too!" She doesn't know them off hand, but maybe she'll figure it out and they can share the carpool burden that much more.
Ultimately, Kawthar can't help me find the clinic, and I really need it, so we part ways, but now I'll be sure to say hello when I can.

It's not a surprise that Ghadeer, Alia, Aaliya and Aiat remember me, or Amal whom I visited to congratulate on her Tawjihi results, or even the girl from my 8th grade class I encountered on the bus the other day. It's not surprising that Hadeel, Ziad, Khaled, FaraH and other little kids from my neighborhood remember me. But if you were to ask me which of my students was most likely to pick me out of a crowd in Amman and introduce herself, it wouldn't be Kawthar!

My 8th graders, May 2005

You see, the Jordanian 10th grade classroom is a very polarized place. By this time in their school careers, students like Alaa and Senabel knew that they would likely pass the Tawjihi and go on to university, and they were a joy to teach, really motivated and diligent. The other half of the class, including poor Kawthar, knew they would fail the Tawjihi, and that their only option in life was going to be to get married and have babies. They weren't going to get the pick of the litter in husbands, either! These girls came to school only because they could spend those hours with their friends instead of scrubbing floors, changing diapers and cooking for their mothers at home. Consequently, they were much more interested in socializing than learning, making them a classroom management nightmare.

It was my first year of teaching, and as a product of the American self-esteem culture, I guess I figured they just hadn't been given much of a chance to see themselves as learners. I had seen how other teachers treated this class, only letting Alaa, Senabel and a few other "smart" girls answer questions, not caring whether the rest of the class was keeping up or not. I used to try to include Kawthar and other troublemakers in classroom exercises. In retrospect, perhaps they thought I was trying to embarrass them, setting them up for ridicule, or trying to make a point about how "stupid" they were. In any case, it never went well, and it didn't help classroom discipline.

I do remember quite clearly how the headmistress lined Kawthar and other 10th graders up in front of the whole school at morning assembly one morning, and had each of them publicly paddled for failing to behave in my classroom. I was appalled, needless to say, and when I walked into their English class a little later, I found those girls, Kawthar chief among them, in furious, mortified tears. They berated me for taking a private matter of classroom discipline in front of the whole school. I'm not sure they believed me when I said that I had not uttered a word to the headmistress about their behavior in weeks (frankly, I'd given up thinking any such thing would make the least bit of difference), but that clearly one of their classmates had decided that the issue of their failure to respect their teacher had to be taken further up the chain of command. (I'm pretty sure it was the headmistress's daughter who tattled.) Ultimately, as I could have easily predicted, this public humiliation did nothing to improve the classroom environment.

Given my history with Kawthar, I would fully expect her to, at best, not admit she knew me, or at worst, to deliberately avoid me. I'm pretty sure I would in her shoes. But maybe, when it came right down to it, I really did make a positive impression on her and some of the other girls I felt were beyond my reach. I hope that's true. It seemed pretty hopeless, as a Peace Corps Volunteer, to make much of any effect on our students' English language within the constraints of the Ministry of Education's curricular requirements. We tried to focus on living as examples of strong, independent, ethical men and women giving back to communities in need. We tried to fan every spark of learning we spotted. I used to tell myself that if I couldn't get every student to pass their English exams, I could at least do my best to convince even the students who struggled the most that they could at least learn something. I hoped that maybe they would pass this on to their own children, and stop the cycle of "Don't ask those students. They're stupid. They can't be taught."

Whose Education Is It, Then?

Amman, Jordan

I've said I like teaching business people because they know the value of their own education. They know how many hours they had to work for the money to pay for it, and they know the exact monetary value of success. But sometimes even business people have to be reminded.

My Beginner 1&2 classes are my favorite classes, because students come in knowing almost nothing, and make visible, often remarkable progress. This was especially true for a class we designed especially for Abu Dia3 and his colleagues, who arrived without even any confidence in their knowledge of the alphabet. Now he's in Beginner 1 proper, and while he finds the much faster pace challenging, in part because he's well into his forties, he was recently regaling his classmates with the new study habits he learned with me. "Miss Maryah, I copied out the whole text we did yesterday, spelling and punctuation and everything, and translated every word, and now I really know it!"
"Miss Maryah!" said another student. "Why don't you give us things to copy for homework? It would be so useful!"
"Why do you need me to assign it for homework, if you know it's useful? Why don't you just do it?"
"Because you need to threaten us with a big stick!" he laughed.

I have to say, it really hit a nerve. In my school-age students, I can understand it. Kids, whose parents are paying for their educations, too often see education as a burden, and will do as little as they can get away with. Unfortunately, when teachers resort to a big stick as motivation for completing homework, it has repercussions for the way those children see the world and education even as adults.

So I tucked my chin and lifted my eyebrows in my best disappointed schoolmarm face. "I'm not responsible for your education. I'm responsible for your lessons, but you are responsible for your education. If you think it would be a helpful exercise, you can certainly do it yourself."

You should have seen the sheepish looks on the faces of these businessmen half again or even twice my age...!

Money, Money, Money!

Marj al-Hamam, Jordan

The Managing Director has been fretting and fussing over money and clients. Just as world economies were tanking, we were trying to open a new business. As the daughter of not one but two small business owners, it has been fascinating for me to watch this big business unfold. I know that a huge amount of money must be poured into a new business: investment in overhead, staff, marketing and training. In opening a school, you must also invest in a lot of "disposable" assets like books, paper and other materials for students.

We're very fortunate that the CEO knows this about business, is convinced of both the need and the market for what Bell can offer, and is willing and able to invest a great deal without much return. In fact, as I was discussing with colleagues recently, I don't think his businesses are really about money at all. Of course profit is a motivator, but I think he has a very strong, progressive vision about the future of Jordan and the role progressive ideas of education have to play in that future. Despite the many bumps and growing pains we continue to encounter, I believe that we're off to a promising start on a bright future.

Nevertheless, at present we are hemorrhaging money at an alarming rate, and the CFO is frantic. It's his job to be frantic, of course. He's supposed to make the books balance, and Bell is seriously upsetting that balance. For us, it means we're tightening our belts everywhere, and the strain is starting to show on the staff. I know I'm feeling it!

Still, things are looking up. Our Young Learners program has been a huge success, with about 4 times as many students as our maximum projections. I spent most of the first day of the program calling every English teacher I know in Amman (which is many, fortunately!), and having them call all their friends, to find 7 more teachers for the second day of classes. We are also beginning to sign more big corporate clients, and there's beginning to be talk of making a million by New Years ... talk that doesn't seem too terribly over-optimistic! The students we have keep re-enrolling, and say very complimentary things about us when they do. I'm becoming quite fond of our corporate students, even when their companies can make our administrative duties frustrating, because corporate students have such a dedication to really learning. They need English, now more than ever to keep their nice corporate jobs, and for the most part they're willing to do almost any silly game or activity I've asked them to do in the classroom.

It's been incredibly exciting to see this place open and grow, even as it's been frustrating in other ways.

of Hapsburgs & Hashemites

Budapest, Hungary

As the airport shuttle wended its way around the castle, over the river and through Pest, I wish I'd taken more time to see the city, to just walk around drinking in the sights, maybe playing with my camera a bit. I'll never be a photographer like Jad - let alone Moayad! - if I don't play around a lot. (Of course, that's much easier to bear when you don't have to pay for developing!) I wish I'd taken more time to contemplate and document what I would call the Hapsburg feel of Budapest. I've always said that Vienna is one of my all-time favorite cities, in part for its majestic architecture. Driving through Pest this evening, I almost felt like I was in Vienna again.

I'm finding it harder than expected to go back to Jordan. I really love Europe. I feel so comfortable there, even in a country where I don't speak a word of the language. (I think 'geselem' means 'thank you'....) I've been remembering when I was going back to Jordan after Sma's wedding, and from the Dulles Airport shuttle I saw a woman in a jelbaab and hijab and I thought, I'm going home! Now I look around me in the airport at the muhajjibaat, listening to the patter of Arabic, and I barely feel anything. Perhaps it's just the hour. I've been dreading this midnight flight for days ... maybe weeks! An overnight trans-Atlantic flight is fine. It allows for about 4 hours of sleep; you wake up disoriented, not well-rested, but having rested a little. Tonight I'll be lucky to get 2 hours between now and 5am.

Still, I'm returning to this new block of Beginners classes at Bell, full of new ideas, new strategies, and ready to take on the verb "to be" in new ways!

New Students!

Marj al-Hamam, Jordan

Today we started Block Two of our unofficial opening at Bell Amman. It's almost like I have real classes! This evening's Beginner 1 class has 9 students in it, and we could actually do group and pair work and some of the other fun things that are hard to do with a class of 3 or 5, as I was teaching before. I think my ideal class size would be about 12, but we're working up to that, and hopefully we'll be at least that successful with our official opening in April.

I'm also very excited about finally moving into our new facilities upstairs soon.

Are You From Bleela?

Amman, Jordan

Today was our third day of placement testing at Bell Amman. The placement tests themselves have been pretty popular, though the numbers of people who actually enrolled in classes is still disappointingly low. But there are three young women I'm going to come after personally if they don't register for classes!

The first question on the placement test is, "What's your name?" Sometimes the names are vaguely familiar to me, or I can place them as Palestinian or Syrian. The first girl in my 6:00 speaking tests came and sat down with me and told me that her family name was Magableh, and immediately I said, "Magableh? Are you from Bleela?" She gave me a puzzled look. "Yes. How do you know it?" I smiled. "I lived in Mshairfeh for two years. My two favorite teachers were from Bleela and named Magableh." Sure enough, she knew exactly who I meant, and it turns out that this student is a cousin of my Peace Corps counterpart and her sister. So we chatted a bit about this relative of hers and that one. Her English is quite good, almost too good for the classes we're offering on our soft opening. My very next student was also a Magableh from Bleela, a first cousin of the first girl, and it turned out that they went on the same vacation to Aqaba last summer.

(Only much later did I remember that I knew another Magableh from Bleela, Emad, the Mshairfeh English teacher I thought was just my friend, but who didn't have a category for 'female friend' in his worldview. He proposed to me repeatedly for months, and then took a teaching job in Kuwait because "it's too hard to live in the same country as you, Maryah! I'll come back when you leave." He's still in Kuwait, according to my headmistress in Mshairfeh. Now I suppose he'll probably find out that I'm back, and won't be able to come back to Jordan once again.)

Then, right after the Magableh girls, I had a third young woman come in for testing with the surname Mohasneh, which I recognized as being the name of one or more of my colleagues in Mshairfeh, but I wasn't sure from which village. When I asked her the third question, where she was from, I expected to get some clue, but she said Amman. But then, like a good intermediate student, she kept going, saying that she lives in Amman now, but that she came from a small village in Jerash, I'd probably never heard of it. So of course, I had to ask which one! And when she said Kufr Khall, I said, "I worked in Mshairfeh with some teachers from Kufr Khall!" She was less impressed than the Magableh girls, however. (It wasn't until much later that I remembered it was one of my favorite teachers, the teacher of the class for the deaf, who came from Kufr Khall, and I think perhaps one of the Arabic teachers was the Mohasneh I knew.)

It's a small world, isn't it? And if those three young women don't register for classes, I'm going to hunt them down and demand to know why not! (I already cornered two of the students I tested to find out if they were registering or not!)

I Love My New Job!

Marj al-Hamam, Jordan

After teaching at the Modern American School, I wasn't sure I ever wanted to teach again, but after just two days preparing for the opening of Bell Amman, I can hardly wait till we have students and I can start teaching the syllabi I'm writing!

At the start of our first training session this morning, the boss asked, "How did training go yesterday?" My co-teacher, John, was a good stoic Englishman and said nothing. Then she turned to me, and I just couldn't keep the grin off my face. "I love this job!" The boss looked surprised at my enthusiasm (there I am, being too American again!), so I explained:

When I interviewed at MAS, I was offered all the support I could need. When it came to actual training and teaching, almost every time I asked for help, I was told, "You're a good teacher. You'll figure it out." When I ask for help at Bell, I get twenty minutes of the boss's time, and only then does she say, "See? You're already a good teacher, and you didn't need my help after all!"

More Fun With Arabic

Speaking of yesterday's training, we did most of it together with the Customer Service hires, learning about the company and the services we provide. The whole Customer Service Dept are Jordanians, and they would chatter along to each other in Arabic, and from time to time their conversations would make me grin or laugh.

"Do you speak Arabic?" I was asked several times. I would just nod, not wanting to get into it, but one girl really made me laugh when she asked, "How many words do you know?" I shrugged, and said in Arabic, "In colloquial? Pretty much all of them." So then, of course, I had to demonstrate, and they all got quite a good laugh out of my peasant accent.

Employed!

Amman, Jordan

I signed a contract today to be an English teacher for the newest location of Bell International here on the outskirts of Amman. I'll be doing much the same thing I've been doing for AMIDEAST, teaching English to adults, but Bell provides full-time contracts to their teachers, with opportunities for vertical and lateral movement that are much harder to get with AMIDEAST. If I work with Bell long enough, I can move up to be a Senior Teacher or administrator, or could apply for contracts to teach all over the region (or the world!). Bell has facilities in Libya, Qatar and Saudi Arabia at this time, and may expand into more of the Middle East if I stick around.

I'm also really excited about their professionalism. They screen their students much more carefully to place them in the right classes, and there will be a full week of teacher training before we even start registering and testing students.

I should have more variety in teaching assignments, too. I will start out teaching adult beginners; I was hired in part because my command of Arabic will allow me to do so, whereas the other teachers don't speak much, if any, Arabic. However, I was also hired for my experience teaching writing, and with young learners, and will be given the opportunity to do both as Bell's classroom space is finished and they begin expanding their palette of courses.

They may also ask me to teach some basic, taxicab Arabic to foreigners later this spring. I was thinking about this and laughing about teaching foreigners my hick village accent. It won't be so bad for the men, because village Arabic is a sign of strength, but the women in the city are supposed to speak a far more delicate accent that I've never mastered. I was reminded, though, of my experience teaching Arabic to my cousin Gwen; despite my thick Swiss accent, she managed to come out of my lessons speaking a more sophisticated Berliner German, because everyone else she encountered spoke that way.

Not only has Bell re-awakened the excitement about teaching that was nearly killed by the Modern American School, but my financial worries have been solved for at least the 6 months of this contract. This is the most generous pay package I've been offered in Jordan, which will allow me to start my student loan payments and pay off my credit card debt without effecting my lifestyle here at all. I should have some money to travel with, as well, and I have hopes to visit friends across the region this spring: my current roommate Megan in her Spring Semester at American University Cairo, Ann who will soon be studying in Ramallah on the West Bank, and Chris who is thrilled to be studying at American University Beirut. (Plus, there's that Swiss Chics reunion in Switzerland this summer that I'm hoping to squeeze in....)

Best of all, but I got a nice Christmas surprise on my way home from signing the Bell contract yesterday. I stopped off to check the balance of my bank account at the ATM in Safeway, and was quite disturbed to see that I had only about 150 dinar left to tide me over till my first paycheck from Bell in February. Then I remembered that I should have a small paycheck waiting for me at AMIDEAST for proctoring the SATs on the first of December. I was walking over there when they called me to say that there was a check waiting for me, but when I arrived, the SAT checks weren't ready. What I picked up was the November paycheck I thought I'd already deposited, a nice cushion of 600 dinar to keep me till February. So I won't be buying extravagant gifts for my friend Chris's family in Madaba, where I've been invited to spend Christmas, but at least I can get them something, and not have to pinch pennies too strenuously!