Starting to Resemble a Classroom...

Everyone has been asking for new classroom pictures. I was waiting until it was done but here ya go!

I was so anxious to get the keys and was asking everyone but it seemed that it was not going to happen – everyone said they would talk to someone but nothing ever came of it. I am getting used to this. Then the director came in one day…he is the kind of man that walks around like he owns the world. He struts around holding his jacket over his shoulder and has this commanding (but very kind) voice. When he speaks everyone jumps. So he starts asking how I am and if I am happy. I know that I should not bother him with something as trivial as NEEDING to get into my room immediately just because I want to stand in it and feel what it is like to be in the space, to envision the great year ahead. I try to stop myself but before I know it I am “casually” mentioning how much I would love to get into the classroom. He immediately calls out something in Arabic and within 45 seconds guess what I am doing…..standing in the middle of my classroom starting to move my desks out of rows….ah magic! I vow never to resort to this method for anything else ever again but grant myself this one!

(This is Mr. William and Mr. Ryan- the two other Western teachers- working in my classroom- The alphabet behind them is going to be my Word Wall)

The school is great - all the resources you can imagine and it seems that it is the best of everything they can buy. We have Smart Boards in every room, including the science and computer lab, all the best language programs on our computer, even the cabinets have been

sent back a few times so that they are the best that there is. The math manipulatives that are available are apparently cheap and so ours are coming all the way from the States. When I comment on all of this my principal jokes that she is a shopper…which of course I can relate to. I was allowed to go pick out whatever I wanted them to buy for the science lab. We get to this strange building and take an elevator (with hieroglyphs all over the walls) up and go down this long narrow hallway where we come to these giant sliding wood doors. It looks like an apartment building kinda…anyway it does not look like somewhere you go to look at science equipment. We go in and sit in this dark room with the man who is selling the equipment on these leather couches where we stare at each other for a minute (he offers the foreign teachers something to drink but we decline of coursebecause no one else can drink anything). He leaves and comes back and then brings us to this tiny room with boxes full of all these cheap math manipulatives. We explain that we are there for science equipment and so he shows us a dozen types of microscopes. We tell him we don’t want this and so we go to another place that is equally strange. Anyway it is certainly not the way ordering equipment for a school would go back home but the Egyptian teachers seemed to think nothing of it. I ended up ordering a bunch of equipment out of a catalogue. Much less odd. They have actually hired a science lab technician whose job it is to make sure that all the materials we want for the lab are always stocked and ready to go when teachers need them. I am very lucky to be at this school and I am reminded of this every day.

My carpet is the newest addition to my classroom and I am very excited to have it. I also got very lucky - I have the carpet with the environmental message - I would have fought for it if I knew there was one but this one was just delivered to me by chance. Everything is falling into place...

My first day at the school I was told that I would need to be extremely flexible -that the government routinely closes schools and we need to be able to go with it. This has proven to be true already. We were just told that the government is not allowing us to open next week as scheduled. Instead we will be waiting until the Egyptian public schools open - on Saturday the 18th. So this is my new start date. I am grateful for the extra time especially because I am still waiting for some materials and furniture. Some things are stuck in customs, other things are several weeks late on the deliveries (apparently the day the book delivery was due there was a car accident and it seems they just never tried to deliver again). I have learned quickly to accept these things and I do not worry about it. Everything will arrive eventually. It is a great exercise in patience and acceptance. Still I am very excited to meet my little ones!