Rainy Week 13: You're Going the Wrong Way....

The attendance in class this week was horrible. Why, you ask? Well, for some reason we've been getting rain. A little here, a little there, but one day in particular was madness. My students who did show up told me that when it rains they love to go into the desert and play and I think that is exactly what many of them did. So there was that, and the fact that there was a football game. When Saudi Arabia is playing football the students seem to think its some kind of holiday. Its funny too because they literally think that we should legitimately allow them to leave class without marking them absent. Jokes on them this week though because Japan killed Saudi 5-0.

The rain this week was extremely refreshing. Its so rare here I would just go outside and walk around in it. One morning I got up early just so I could walk to the copy center in the rain and make tests for my students. When we drove to school that day it was like driving through a river. Traffic was crazy slow but it was interesting to see. Deserts don't handle a lot of water at one time very well. Saudi Arabia has actually seen some pretty bad floods in recent years.

Driving through the river.

Here are two of my students. They are both really funny. Despite the rain and road closures they made it to school. The student on the left is wearing this gigantic brown robe thing. I laugh when I see it because I don't think its that cold here (I don't even wear a jacket) and that is enough to keep any person warm in just about any weather. Whenever he wears a white thaube under it he looks just like Obi Wan Kenobi.

Here I am with another one of my students AND wearing my other students brown robe.

Here we are having a drink at a little restaurant during our break.

Above is my class getting ready for student presentations. This week the chapter of our book that we are studying is about dreams. So we've been using language that is about dreams and nightmares and stuff like that. We even talked about the story of Yusef (Joseph) of Egypt that is in Surah 12 of the Qu'ran. The details of the story would be familiar to all who know the Bible as well. So my class was supposed to get up and describe one dream they have had as well as talk about a dream, or goal, that they have for the future and how they will accomplish that goal. It was a lot of fun. The energy was unusually high because of the rain. I'm not kidding either because I felt it too. Everyone was a lot happier. I think its just because rain is so rare...its kind of like when it snows a lot and kids get excited because school might be cancelled (we did let everyone go home early that night incidentally, after they finished their presentations of course).

I love this student. He was extra zealous and made a power point for his presentation. I love that he wrote "Is it possible to feel a feelings of person close to you in a dream." Two of my students, one who had lost his mother, and another who had lost his father actually told the class about their best dreams. The one student told the class that in his dream his father who had died many years before came to him and they went swimming in the sea, the other student's mother was in his dream and they had a conversation in his kitchen.

Other dreams included drinking from the ocean but the water didn't taste like salt, zombies chasing them in school, falling dreams, getting good grades on test dreams, and flying dreams.
We caught a taxi home that night. The water had become much worse during our hours in school. So the drive was a little crazy. I took a few pictures but they are a little blurry.

You might not be able to tell but I thought if the water was just a few inches higher it might start seeping into our taxi.

Good times. Today was much clearer and sunnier. It didn't really rain, but it was still cool outside. I was proud of my students as well because they did excellent on today's test. Almost all of my students showed up to which is nice because most of the other teacher's classes were poorly attended.

Next week, if all goes according to plan, I'll be taking a little vacation in Oman so I'm looking forward to that and hopefully I'll have some more interesting pics to share. Thats all for now.