Another one?!

But Mr. Ben, it's only been two days!

Over and over again I learn that lazy time breeds more lazy time: if I have a half hour, or four hours, of freedom (which totally happens when you only teach 2 classes), the initial thrill of an unstructured stretch of time usually gives way to utter, useless lethargy. There's so much I can pack into the 45 minutes between classes, but give me a free afternoon and I turn into an internet zombie. Usually it's food TV shows that get me.

So after an inspiring conversation with Peter (Yale 2012; second-year teacher here) last night, I decided to pack today with Stuff. During my free class periods, I powered through handouts for the next few days and observed an awesome 9th grade history class, and in between times, I caught up on emails and prepared for Glee Club rehearsal. And honestly, it felt really good. And I think productive time often breeds productive time: if I spend a school day getting things done, the momentum carries through into the evening. So I'm writing this post!

By request, a few specific updates:

1. ARABIC
I can't speak Arabic, but I can read all the letters, and write full sentences on an extremely limited set of subjects, and I am gradually building an arsenal of vocabulary loaded with such indispensable ammo as "the United Nations" and "lonely." Fortunately, I also know "good morning" (and, as of today, "good evening"!!). Despite the fact that English is the lingua franca of the school, plenty of Arabic gets thrown around, and those little doses of practice throughout the day definitely help strengthen my pronunciation and conversation. I kind of thought I'd never get to be the polyglot I've always wanted to be, but it seems that at the end of this year, I might be conversationally capable in four languages. Definitely not fluent, but hopefully capable. It's a start.

(Also, a plug for Duolingo, which has kept my French and Portuguese alive in the desert. Try it!)


2. THE GLEE CLUB
Continues to surprise me. They are so much better at remembering their parts than they should be, given that most of them have never sung in parts before or never sung at all before. We are not a prizewinning ensemble, but boy are they dedicated - to be honest, I began the year feeling like I could do no wrong by them because they knew so little, but now I stress about every rehearsal because I don't want to let them down. I feel like we can't move fast enough; they're ready for a challenge, and fortunately there's a big one coming their way.

Our first performance is next week, at the Parents' Weekend Arts Showcase. Families and friends will make up the majority of the audience, and most of these kids have never sung for an audience before. Fortunately, there's strength in numbers, and they seem admirably excited to put themselves out there. I think it might sound terrible, but that's not the point. I am really proud of how far they've already come, and really excited to continue polishing them both as individual singers and as a group. I'm staying positive about next week's performance, however it turns out, because it's pretty awesome for 55 kids to be up there singing at all. Tonight's rehearsal was very productive and energetic; there's so much more to work on, but they've already taken big steps forward.

(If you're curious, we're singing my own 3-part arrangement of this musical masterpiece. Click now and you could be the 221,371,339th viewer!)


3. PICTURES FROM NICE PLACES

OK yes so a while ago I went to Jordan's finest tourist destinations, Wadi Rum and Petra. The former is a beautiful desert; the latter is a beautiful archaeological site in a desert. What follows is a photographical journey through them both:

1. The end of the walk down the siq, which is the path that traders once took to Petra down a long and forbidding canyon. Or something like that. Imagine traveling for miles and miles and days and days on camelback, and then getting a glimpse of this:

2. And then emerging from the canyon and it looks like this:

That's Ben and Chase in front of the Treasury! Indiana Jones fans rejoice.

3. Darien and his visiting cousin Aidan in front of the Monastery, which takes an hour's decent climb to reach from the base of the trail. Inside is a smallish, totally empty room with great acoustics. I will admit to singing a song in there, but I will not admit to taking video of it.

4. Wadi Rum in the evening. We were actually in a town called Disa, a little outside the official Wadi Rum reservation, but by all accounts it's exactly the same.

5. Sunrise over our camp entrance, Wadi Rum.

6. Camels! I rode one for a while. Check out how blue the sky is.

7. I think this one's the winner. If you need a poster for your movie about the desert, you know who to call. Wadi Rum, midway through our desert jeep tour.

I think that's more than enough for now. See what happens when you get too productive? Thanks for wading your way down here; hope you enjoyed the scenery. I'm going to go try to do something productive. Clearing my RSS feed by reading food reviews counts as productive, right?

Beginning Again

OK, everyone. Seems like it's been a while.

For days I've been dreading this post, because I was trying to figure out how on earth I could include my awesome trip to Petra/Wadi Rum and my awesome trip to Cyprus in one post. The answer? Skipping Petra and Wadi Rum, of course. Don't worry, I'll manage to put up pictures at some point, but for now, we're gonna take it easy. It is 10:20pm after all, and I've got to get my rest so I can out-crazy the kids tomorrow.

Got back yesterday from a fantastic week in Cyprus with 4 other teaching fellows. We flew into Larnaca, rented a car, and drove to Paphos (I imagine these names mean nothing to most readers; picture Cyprus in your head as a legless trumpeting elephant and imagine driving from his chin to his butt. Or something like that). Anyway.

Paphos is a cute beachside town full of decrepit empty bars, elderly (and sometimes decrepit) British couples, and, perhaps most importantly, a Cold Stone Creamery. We frequented the latter with some regularity, and the former not at all, though we did rent this lovely apartment from a friendly British couple:

The top-left corner deck in the right-most building (the one partly obscured by the tree) belonged to us. It was a great little apartment, cozy and plenty of room for the 5 of us, and many an hour was spent cooking, eating, watching movies, eating, drinking, and playing Bananagrams. Chase and I shared a king-size bed. Awwww.

We made the most of our trip, I think, with a reasonable combination of beach lounging and adventurous exploring. Among our more intrepid excursions was a 10-mile hike around the crest of Mt. Olympus (no, not that one), with views that looked like this:

And here's Aphrodite's Rock, where the goddess herself allegedly emerged from the sea:

As I mentioned, the week was rife with eating opportunities. Some serious highlights include the 6-course meze meal we ate at a restaurant called Seven St. George's Tavern (they said "we'll keep bringing food until you tell us to stop," and that's what happened), and an absolutely delicious meal in Larnaca on our last night. Walking around the streets just behind Larnaca's beachfront boulevard, we stumbled upon an alleyway full of happy diners at blue-and-white checkered tables, and took a seat. The people were friendly, the kebabs were delicious, and we all patted ourselves on the back for a great find.

But there was cooking too! Here's the pesto pasta with chicken that we whipped up for Chase's birthday (all credit to Jimmy, Meg, and Yasmine for this, though I did chop the peppers and cut the bread):

With an ice cream cake from Cold Stone for dessert. I was despicably, grotesquely full. It felt amazing.

Finally, here's a picture of a sweet cave from an archaeological site near Paphos called the Tombs of the Kings. They never held any actual kings, and it was cloudy that day, but I figured I'd include some of the ancient history for which Cyprus is so well known.

So that's a start, at least. I have pictures from Petra and Wadi Rum too, but they'll come. Suffice it to say we had a great time and walked around a lot and I rode a camel, which was more uncomfortable than I remembered. The Milky Way looks beautiful from Wadi Rum; I don't have pictures of that anyway so I might as well say it here. I would love to go back and really get into the desert. But I'm giving too much away.

I'm realizing (and I keep saying to everyone, so they're probably getting tired of it) that this October break was what I'd been aiming toward since getting the job. As soon as I said yes, I knew that after my first six weeks of teaching there'd be this break, and it's sort of been the goal on the horizon since I arrived in Jordan. Now, though, it's over, and all of a sudden things are about to shift back into gear. What do I head towards now? Winter break? It feels weird to always be working towards a break, but I think we often can't help keeping an eye on whatever Relaxation Time is nearest in our future.

It'll be good to get back into the teaching groove. I'm not really feeling like I'm there right now, probably because I haven't thought about school in a week, and a week is 15% of the time that I've had this job in the first place. So I'm looking forward to plunging back in tomorrow and getting the rest of this week sorted out. Bizarrely few weeks remain with this first term of students (this term ends at the end of November); that's another thing I have yet to wrap my head around. But one thing at a time. Let's make this week happen.

October

When the windows of the Ethics, Philosophy, and Religion department office are open, it's easy to hear the noise coming from the very not-soundproof practice room in the building across the way. Someone was just playing that song from the end credits of Spirited Away, and I wish they hadn't stopped. (I also wish they hadn't been playing it so fast, but let's take things one step at a time).

The first two-and-a-half days of this week, as well as the last day of the weekend, were so busy that I feel like I had fallen into one of those torrential jungle rivers that leads to a giant waterfall. I was working like a maniac just to keep my head afloat, and suddenly, just like that: emptiness.

Not that it's actually empty, of course; I still had class today and I still have class tomorrow. But a lot of the major work is all done. I submitted my 31 midterm comments (which really is nothing compared to some of my fellow EPR teachers, who had to write 70 or even 80); I succeeded with the Challenging Lesson of the week (a formal debate in class which produced reasonably impressive results); and now I'm getting a head start on next week because this weekend is not going to leave much time for work.

Because this weekend I'm going to Petra and Wadi Rum with a bunch of teachers! Hooray! And now that I am an official resident of Jordan, it only costs me 1JD to get into Petra (for non-residents it's like 50, which is nearly $80). It feels like a good time to get away from it all; this week has really put everyone to the test and I think people are thrilled at the chance to spend an evening under the stars. Hopefully I will take amazing pictures and post them here soon.

A little photo gallery of my recent adventures:

1. A few of us went into Amman to visit Jordan's National Gallery the other weekend - a pretty little contemporary art gallery showcasing a lot of really thought-provoking art, much of it from Arab artists. This was part of an exhibit by a Brazilian guy who uses paper and paper products to make punny or otherwise whimsical pieces; here, a jacket made of jackets! Get it? I thought it was cute.

2. A pathway at the park/sculpture garden that was also part of the National Gallery. It was a gorgeous day (as usual), and the breeze was full of the smell of flowering plants and rosemary and other such herbs. I wish we'd spent a little more time relaxing there, but alas, we had to go eat pizza. The pizza was pretty good.

3. King's Academy in the morning, on my walk to the gym. As often as I remember, I stop to appreciate the beauty of the place in which I live and work. Especially at sunrise and sunset, King's always puts on a show.

4. One of my favorite activities since arriving here was this past weekend's International Dinner, when students and teachers got together to plan meals from countries around the world. Under the inspirational leadership of a Chinese-American PG student, a diligent team of cooks prepared several hundred dumplings, as well as a couple meat pies. It was absolutely delicious and the dinner was a great showcase of all the different Asian countries that our students call home. It really could have been called the Asian Dinner (I heard there was lasagna but it was long gone when I arrived), and I was perfectly content to sample cuisine from Singapore and various regions of China. And it made me want to cook more often, especially with company.

5. Yesterday I tagged along with a co-curricular called "Out and About in Madaba" to visit some Umayyad ruins not far from school. I'm not totally clear on who the Umayyads were, but if memory serves, they set up a fortress here around 700CE as they made their relentless way north, conquering whoever stood in their way. Among the sights here: some beautiful mosaic floors; the remains of what may be the oldest mosque in all of Islam; and this cool-looking hole in the wall.

A couple more visits from my superiors this week; all of them went well, and I'm continuing to receive encouraging feedback. I'm starting to get more comfortable with my classes, too - as I get to know them, it's easier and easier to know how to deal with their idiosyncrasies (both individually and collectively). Next week we start messing around with epistemology and skepticism, and I only have to plan three days because we're watching The Matrix on the last day of class. I have convinced myself that this is a valuable use of our time.

And then it's off to Cyprus for our first school break! A week of relaxation is fast approaching. Don't touch that dial.