"Crash" strikes again

My New Years Resolution is to keep my blog updated inspired by all the e-mails, Facebook messages and wall posts urging me to update it. So, I am trying to be better.

Last week I was playing a game of keep-away with a few of the kids at the Dar Chebab, which turned into boys vs. girls and realized that I am really out of shape. I lived up to my nickname (Crash) when I managed to bruise my foot and jam my finger but I had a lot of fun doing it. I kinda was wishing they had some ice though.

Things at the Dar Chebab are constantly up and down. I have some students that come on a regular basis and others who just show up when they have a dire question or the power is out and there is nothing else to do. Since most days both classrooms at the Dar Chebab are occupied I am often left sitting in the office with kids crowding my desk, which is not an ideal teaching situation. Last Tuesday I though I would try something different, Tic-Tac-Toe! I had 3 separate games, one to review past tense irregular verbs, one for irregular plurals, and one for opposites. In order to put an X or an O they had to give the correct past tense, plural form, or opposite. It was also a good review of vocabulary. Hicham (one of my students) wanted to take my Tic-Tac-Toe boards to play with his friends. Overall I think it was a very successful activity and I actually found something that I could use while sitting at a desk that doesn't involve me being a walking dictionary! I was very excited and actually felt accomplished! I used it again the next day with a group of beginner students using numbers, I taught them the numbers as we played and it was a lot of fun.

A few days ago, I was talking to my parents on Skype and my neighbor Zuhir came in. He is a very sweet eight-year-old boy who is also the cousin of my host family. After admiring my computer, he noticed that he could see himself in my Skype screen. At first I think he just liked seeing his face on the screen and made some faces but then my dad started making funny faces back at him and that continued for about 10 minutes while my mom and I were talking. It was really cute. When I was leaving the cyber, I ran into him again and he made me play hopscotch with him.