Another "Love Comes Softly" Movie

Well this is the third movie of the series. Here I am between Krista and Michael watching this corny Christian love movie that has a new actress playing the girl. It's like with Home Alone... except worse (because at least all the characters were new in "Home Alone 3")

This past week... I don't remember right now. Hmm. Well, I discovered that many of the students in 9B can't write sentences. I've been teaching them grammar. I feel like I've been working so hard and forcing them to write and write. I've used so much repetition, but now when I have them do some other writing activities, and they can't formulate sentences. "Why did you go to Hergada?" "I is like to swimming." Ya merari. (Ya merari is an expression that they say here out of frustration and self-pity. They don't know what it means, but I know that "merari" means "bitter.")--Oh, this movie is almost painful. I can't tell if this antagonistic cowboy is trying to sound threatening or seductive. Anyways, I don't know what to do with 9B. The class has gotten a little smaller because some people have been moved out (up to 9A and down to ESL), but it's still such a mess. I feel like if they can speak proper English, they will write it, but oral activities are so hard with them. We have these Side by Side workbooks, which remind me of my old Spanish books, and they have many oral activities. They give an example and then new information to plug into the conversation. They don't know how to do it. It is a disaster. I need to keep working at it, but when it takes a student 234 hours to do one of them outloud in front of the class, I do some on the board and then have them try to speak them by rows. It's a rather egregious cacophony because the ones who get it try to show off and say it faster than everyone else and some kids just repeat the same word the whole time. It's a mess. They will not be ready for tenth grade at this rate. Is it my fault? Partly... but mostly not. I would usually blame myself, but not this time. Most of them don't put in the fffort. The ones that do are actually improving.

Tenth grade is going really well. After we split up the class, some of the students in my class came up to me and said that they were so happy and they felt like they were really going to learn this semester. They said that the class was so big that they never got the chance to answer. Now the really shy ones and the ones that felt self-conscious about the possibly being wrong raise their hands and try to answer all the time. And the ones that have a really difficult time reading seem to like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I have so much more control in my tenth grade class now that there are 17 as opposed to 38 last semester.

On Thursday night, our drama class performed a bunch of funny skits for the students. They were so cute. We did the statue skit, "My son/daughter is dying," the doctor's office, and some others. We also did one of those skits where there's a curtain and one person's face show but with another person's arms. We had two guys who were getting ready for school, and in the end they "ran" to class with their notebooks. It was so funny. They did a really good job. I noticed that none of them were very eager to get messy. The guy who was the statue in the skit shoved what he could in his mouth but only took a few bites of what he could. The guys in the hand skit didn't use toothpaste when brushing their teeth. It was just funny to see the differences.

After the skits, all of the girls came to our apartment, and we gave them chocolate chip cookies and juice while they watched "Mulan." We were encouraging their feelings of feminism and girl power, and they really loved the movie--even the ones that couldn't understand it. We're going to work our way through girl power movies and then hopefully work our way up to "Enough" (the movie where Jennifer Lopez learns to fight and ends up killing her abusive husband). That won't happen, but we like to joke about it and fantasize about making the girls feel empowered. I'm not one of those uber-feminist girls that thinks that she can build a house better than a guy and can do more push-ups, but we are of equal value and deserve to be treated like it. And I want to make these girls aware that there is a different way and that they are allowed to speak and actually leave their houses. I don't want them to be just like Americans--that's not my purpose in coming here, but I want them to feel beautiful and important and validated.

So all of the girls know how to do their cultural hip-shaking dances, though they would nearly die if the guys heard that they could. But before we started the movie, some were making some rhythms against the table, and some girls started to dance. Then they pulled some others in. I couldn't even begin to move my hips like that. haha. I thought it was just the funniest thing. There's a reason why I couldn't marry an Egyptian man--I would feel self-conscious of my pathetic hip-shaking dance skills. He wouldn't want me. I think that I'm just sounding confusing.

I really like Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster. It is very practical and good. It has helped me in my spiritual life, and I recommend it.

I'm clinging to Egypt for dear life. My time here is slipping away so quickly.