Sometimes I feel like I'm running out of things to say about my time here. I'm experiencing some new things, but not nearly at the rate I was before.
Also, my perchance for taking pictures has gone down. So here's a simple post with text (ok, and a picture of the cookies I made yesterday... not so burnt and very delicious!).
These days I've been less energetic, mostly due to constant school work. This weekend (which starts now!) should help revive me, but the week after Spring Break is a tough one.
My new experience for today was volunteering with Reach Out To Asia and my Community Service Learning class at the Jaidah Group, a company that brings in foreign workers. We are teaching an English class to a group of about ten men from India, Jordan, Egypt, and a few other places in the Arab World.
It is similar to many things in Qatar in that communication isn't high, so flexibility is at its peak. We were late because of traffic, and then Abid and I were put with the intermediate language learners instead of the beginners. So our plans went out the window. Thankfully Arti, a teacher from India, was another volunteer. We went through the lesson, with her introducing the topics and all of us helping in the smaller groups.
The subject for part of the lesson, slightly ironically, was the use of "may" versus "can." I'm American; we never use "may"! Even in restaurants, it's "Can I help you?" So at the end of the class, as we were wrapping up, I announced, "Can I have your attention?"
Yeah, so much for modelling good grammar.
The learners were very energetic and willing to be there. We would ask them to do something, and they would not turn us down. Their skill level was also much higher than I expected.
That changed after break, when the very large beginner class had some of their better students come over and join us. We spent the last hour with the "old" students teaching the "new" students, which was a circus in itself.
We left to go back to campus, took some random cut-throughs, and I finished the evening by - what else - meeting with Khaled to do some networks. I was not a very productive partner.
Isn't it sad that I used to end my days with shawarma and ice cream, and now I end them with programming?**
**After Abdalla read this, he took me out for ice cream. So I guess my life isn't so bad after all...
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