Taking Care of Business

In the last two weeks, my job has gone from a means to an ends to the highlight of being here. After five schedule changes (a personal record), I now only teach one and a half undergraduate classes. Because of my low course load, I got assigned to observe my students teaching in the local primary school, as well as developing a professional development class on Globalization and the Classroom.

Getting off campus has been great. The university is very comfortable for me, since it's officially bilingual English- Arabic. This helps since my department has faculty from Turkey, Eritrea, Singapore, Egypt, Bahrain, and your lonely American. The elementary school is in a town fifteen minutes away, but is a completely Arabic environment, although they begin to take English classes in fourth grade.

The schools are strictly separated by sex, so they needed a male professor to supervise in the boys school. I've been very impressed by my student teachers- much better than my first year at Mission High! They can all do classic lecture- worksheet style classes very well, but it's harder to do group work or introduce technology, because the students aren't as familiar with it. In any case, there are far fewer discipline issues, and the elementary students seem to be interested in math at a level I have never seen in the US.

I'd like to claim I got to teach about globalization because of my experience with Thinking Beyond Borders. Actually, I needed to teach two more classes to be full time, and my supervisor said that this class was the only one with two unclaimed sections. The students are all full time teachers taking extra courses at the Ministry of Education to become master teachers. They could potentially be a tough audience, but so far they seem very interested and pretty energetic considering the time slot. The major issue is that I need to teach in English and their professional life is almost completely in Arabic. Sometimes the English teachers translate, and I try to use a lot of visuals and activities, but it's not always smooth. The other issue is that they teach all different grades and subjects, so my class is not always applicable to their job.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the level of responsibility and discretion I've been given. There are, of course, the usual weird things, like we need to use Power point in all classes, but mostly they trust my opinion. I suppose the years of adjunct work at three or four jobs was a good preparation. I'm physically in three locations for the next six weeks, spending a lot of time in my rental car listening to the BBC, but getting lost on the backstreets less and less frequently.

First impressions of Bahrain: Hot and Muggy

My first impressions of Bahrain were a little foggy. This was in part due to the 32 hour journey from San Francisco, but perhaps more because my glasses fogged up immediately upon leaving the airport. As they say back in DC, it's not the heat, it's the humiture.
My second impression of life here was that there seemed to be no actual Bahrainis. I was put up in a hotel for the first week while I confirmed my apartment. It was staffed almost exclusively by Filipinos and Indians. Everywhere I went, stores, cafes, and restaurants all seemed to be staffed by Filipinos and Indians. There are a lot of Americans near the Naval base, and almost every nationality in the diplomatic area, but very few Bahrainis.
Part of this had to do with arriving during Ramadan, the holy month of fasting. Since eating and drinking is allowed at night, many Bahranis stay up all night and sleep most of the day during Ramadan. Almost every place has shorten hours, and no restaurant or cafe is open during the day, as I found out the hard way. It's also forbidden to wear shorts and smoke in public during Ramadan-I'm still not sure why. I was surprised when my Human Resources person couldn't tell me the end of Ramadan. Because it's linked to the lunar calendar, they all wait for an official announcement over the TV that leads to four days of feasting to make up for lost time. A bit like snow days, I suppose.
I later heard that somewhere between a third and a half of all the people in the country are expats, and most of the Bahrainis stay out of the port area. This goes back to the early twentieth century, before the oil era, when Bahrain was a major pearl exporter. It became a critical link between British India and the rest of the Middle East, particularly Persia. As part of what was euphemistically called the informal empire, Bahrain's port of Manama became flooded with foreigners, and English was the easiest means of communication between communities. To this day, I use English with almost everyone I deal with, including the gas station attendent and janitors. While this makes life a lot easier day to day, it has frustrated my attempts to learn Arabic. The only Bahrainis I actually know are my students, who are always excited by any attempt on my part to speak Arabic. They don't think much of the Syrian speaker I imitate from Pimsleur, though.
The port area where I live has a certain Las Vegas feel about it: There are a lot of super modern tall box buildings, surrounded by empty desert areas. I ended up near the Navy base, so there are also a lot of American chain restaurants, including some I had forgotten about, such as Bennigan's, Benihana's, and TGIFriday's (weekend starts on Thursday here, though). And don't worry Dad, I spotted an Applebee's the other day, too. Despite eating good in my neighborhood, I have already lost about ten pounds. Probably water weight...