Another Week Bites the Dust

Another week passes and life goes on. I'm happy to stay here and travel, though I admit it will be great to return home again. I'm supposed to finish somewhere around mid August and before then I will have the opportunity to visit some more places (I'm looking forward to Turkey in a months time).

Because I like to put pictures on my blog, and also because I think it makes it more interesting for the handful of people who actually read it, I included pictures of camels in trucks that Chris and I took while driving through the desert.
School has been going pretty well. In many ways things are much more ideal this semester. I like my students. They are getting out of the shy awkward phase and are starting to become friends with the other students, which is nice, but it also means they tend to talk more while I'm talking. Of course, for some reason, my second class is always very quiet. I don't understand why...they are at a lower level...so I think maybe its just because it takes all their brain power to understand what I'm teaching them? I'm not exactly sure.

I wish I had more stories to write about them. They like to drill me with questions about America and how things work there. I wish I could help them understand, but I don't know if they will get it unless they go themselves. Movies clearly aren't the best way to show someone what America is like. Sometimes I get the feeling they think things are pretty dire there, like it is a very dangerous wicked place. They have never come out and directly said this, but once a student asked me why divorces are so high in America with kind of a twinkle in his eye, as if to say, "your country has some major issues." I share my opinions about why things are the way they are at appropriate times. I often wish I could take them to show them all the wonderful things about the US.

I got some new dark rimmed glasses awhile back. I didn't like them at first but now I do. One day I decided to wear contacts to class and my students pointed out how different I look. I had them write paragraphs about their favorite anything, sport, food, place, whatever. One student wrote about his favorite teachers: Mark, Jared, and Dan (me and the two other guys who teach his classes). It kind of made me laugh. It was nice, but I always wonder if students do this to have an "in" with the teacher. He wrote he likes me because I give him hope he can learn English. At the end of his paragraph he wrote a little note "Mark, you look handsome without your glasses" at which point I laughed out loud. I don't know how to take something like that here. I'm certainly in a different world altogether.

More camels. I think camels have to be the most relaxed animals I've ever seen. They always look like they don't have a care in the world. They always just go with the flow. Sometimes I think I need to be a little more like the camels. Jared, the other teacher had the students in my lower class write one sentence about themselves that the others didn't know. One student from a small town wrote "I loves the camells." He even had a picture of himself kissing a camel. He has 50 or so I think. Just so you know, a camel is worth a fortune in this country. Some can be over a million riyals which is about 250,000 dollars. The camels you eat are a lot cheaper though. Salam.