Started but never finished - 3/23/10

I almost beat more students yesterday than any other day since I came to Egypt. In my tenth grade class, we were reading over and discussing answers to the chapter questions for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Every two chapters they have a quiz, and I was making sure that they understand everything. One student, who by very specific circumstances is supposed to be mature and honest and responsible, sits in the very front row. His desk is pushed up against mine. I looked down, and I saw him with another girl's paper, copying the very questions that we were answering from her paper. Right in front of my face. I snatched the papers away, put them under something on my desk, and continued to talk as to avoid making a scene

I never finished writing this one.

Apparently the only time that I get to write blogs is during "Love Comes Softly" movies. Everyone dies and everyone falls in love. They enunciate clearly and say corny and fluffy things to each other. Here I am, sitting next to my husband Michael, and we are enthralled. This creep is sitting behind "Mrs. Lahaye," and I would like him to go away because I'm not over "Willie's" death yet.

Next Wednesday, we are going on a school trip to Alexandria. We're going to the library, the citadel, and some other place. We will also be able to go swimming. (I wonder how that's going to work out because swimming times for girls and guys at the school are different.) I'm looking forward to it. On Thursday night, we're starting our spring break by leaving for Zewak, which is the village in Upper Egypt where about 20 of our students live. I'm really looking forward to going because it will be so different from anything that I have seen. The guy SMs went to Zewak in November, and they came back with a lot of stories and new experiences. The students are SO excited for us to come, and I am really looking forward to see where they come from. Some of them... like Ashraf... I would just love to see where he comes from. He is the most sanguine ninth grader who is always smiling (and talking) who will one day be a smooth-talker, except for his grammar. He reminds us of one of those cute hyper little dogs that you can't help but love. He is one that just astounds me sometimes. I will be in the middle of teaching something, and Ashraf will come right up to my desk with a specific question on his homework that was due three days ago. Seriously? If he's talking too much during class and I subtract points from him, he says, "God forgive you, Miss." There's no point in trying to logic with him and convince him that God is not going to do whatever he wants God to do. I just love Ashraf... and all the rest. If I tried to explain these students to you... it wouldn't work, and it makes me sad. I'm so grateful to have other SMs here that understand. We joke about how we will just be able to text each other "Dawood" or "Chaleng" or any other student's name and we will crack up. Oh, I never want to forget.

Blunt ramblings about cultural differences I think are ignorant

I would like to vent. One of the girls told me that they were told in dorm worship that they shouldn't open their legs more than what looked like a 40 degree angle because then they might not be virgins anymore. Excuse me? They might not be virgins anymore? Man, I would hate to lose my virginity to... stretching or playing basketball or riding a bike... or accidentally falling down. (Was that too explicit/blunt/just rude/completely inappropriate?) You are a virgin until you have had sex. Oh goodness. I would like to thoroughly educate the world about hymens and how easily they can tear. Beth was telling us that during her rotation in OB, a baby was born with her hymen not in tact. Do not teach these poor girls that they are unfit to be married because they tore their hymen while running too fast. In very traditional Egyptian places, the parents come the morning after the wedding night to see the bloody sheet. Excuse me? Mind your own business. What is our way of determining his virginity? There is none. But I guess it doesn't matter what he does because it's not his fault if the girl is "asking for it." Leave the poor girl alone, and go home because you cannot see the sheet. I'm planning on talking to Pastor Tom about having a time when we can divide the girls and guys and just talk to them about certain things. I will tell Alec exactly what I want the guys to know. I want it very clear that a man determines the sex of a baby and that unstained sheets don't convict her of harlotry. I would like to speak very directly about hymens, anger management, physical and sexual abuse, female circumcision, and many more things. Oh poor girls. I've felt like such a feminist today. No... I feel like I'm just realistic. These girls are flabby and in terrible health because they "might not be virgins" if they actually move. Seriously?

I have come to see that a lot of people who are considered "good people" seem to believe that their goodness is allowed to be dependent on others' goodness. One girl told me that a guy was being inappropriate, and this guy is--so it seems--is one of the most upstanding guys in the school. She told him to leave her alone, and his response was something to effect of his actions being okay because it was her. That made me sick. I was absolutely infuriated. I vented and lectured whichever poor students were around me, and I ingrained in their minds that if they EVER EVER EVER EVER hit a girl, I would come back to Egypt and beat them. I was thinking that the only reason to ever get violent is because the person has no other way of controlling the situation. "My wife won't do what I want her to do or say what I want her to say, my boss yelled at me at work and I have no control, so let me hit my wife." I made it so clear that only weak men who don't know how to get control hit people weaker than them. (At least I made it clear that that was my opinion.) One of those guys asked me later to tell my class what I told him today. It gets me so worked up. I also considered that if a man is incredibly protective of his wife/girlfriend out on the streets, so protective that he would rip off his belt and beat someone for calling her a moza, and then he goes home and hits her, then his protection for her in the first situation was really only about himself. It was for his pride. No one should ever call his woman a disrespectful name. They had better not believe that he is weak enough to let someone do that. It reminded me of what I read in my book on Egyptian culture that my dad gave me to read before I got here. It said women should not sit in the front of a taxi. If they do, it is basically giving the cab driver permission to touch her leg because "no respectable Muslim woman would put herself in that place." I'm sure that not every guy feels this way, but it was just incredibly disappointing, and it makes me so very protective of my girls. I don't really get angry when it comes to things about myself, but if it concerns my sisters, my campers, my students, anyone who is "mine," oh... you'd better look out.

Tina is coming in May, and I'm so excited. I gave a worship thought on Proverbs 31:30--"Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised." I said that the pretty girls will one day be hags, and when you've had a bad day at work and come home to screaming kids, would you rather have a beautiful wife or a best friend? When you're too old for sex (I didn't say this part) and you just want someone to talk to you and encourage you, will it matter if she was pretty when she was twenty? As soon as I finished talking about this, I said that I was so thankful that Tina is coming to visit. The first thing that they shouted out was, "IS SHE BEAUTIFUL?!?!?!?!" Ya merari.

Much love to all of you. :)

Resenting Jessica while watching some other tacky movie

Jessica is gone with her family, and we didn't feel like we could watch the next "Love Comes Softly" movie without her, and we are quite resentful. So it's some other Christiany/Inspirational movie. I have not paid attention at all so far. I see a lady jogging on the beach, and she looks distraught. She's watching a funeral. There's another girl with fuzzy red hat.

We took Wael to the airport on Wednesday night, which was really Thursday morning, because he was leaving for America to be with his wife. He has been a really good friend to me and has taken care of me and of my family while they were here. It was... sad. We rented a minibus and all went to meet him at the airport. He is from Alexandria, and he had a small group come to bring him to the airport. The farthest we could go was just to take him to the place where he checked his bags, and then we said bye to him quickly. I watched his mom. Then I watched his dad and his friends. I just wanted to cry for them because he's going to start his new life in a new place, and who knows when they will see him again. The weekend before he left, I was in Alexandria, and he and I stayed up until 5:00am on Saturday night just talking about the differences between America and Egypt. I told him everything from how they give everyone water at restaurants to how people in America see it as feminine when men cross their legs the way the men do here. I said that the police can get involved if a man hits his wife because the only reason for someone to hit another person is that they can't gain the control that they want. I told him about canned foods and how the hand motion that means "wait" in Egypt means absolutely nothing in America. I pray that everyone will... be okay. I just mourn for his parents and his best friends. Mourn--that word sounds so... Biblical and sad, but it feels right. (I overanalyze my word usage.)

I love sitting in his family's shop and watching them work and the people come and go. The guys who work that joke around and laugh and tease each other. Friends come and are greeted with kisses on the cheek and then are invited to take a seat by the small table with Wael's dad. Some little kids come to buy things for their families, and just about every man above the age of 10 buys a pack of cigarettes. I've sat in that shop for many hours, and have drunk MANY cups of tea, Nescafe, cappucinos, and most recently Turkish coffee. (Alec and I drank some while we were there, and he said, "Huh... you can almost chew it.")

By the way, Alec narrated my life during that trip. Everything that was happening he would narrate in a deranged and chauvinistic and even Michael Scott-ish kind of way. I would be drinking my water, and he would say, "Sara slowly sipped her water, congratulating herself on her wise choice of beverages knowing that she, above all, did not need any more sugar in her diet." I looked at him angrily and said, "She also practiced self-control..." He finished my sentence by saying, "...by choosing to drink water instead of sugary drink." So cayad. I don't know how to spell the word "cayad" in English, but a "cayad" person is a troublemaker or someone who likes to make people angry. The students always call Krista "cayada" because she's tough. I have become quite fond of this word and now use it all the time, especially describing Abanoub, one of my 9A students that I like to joke around with.

I plan for my classes and grade papers in the morning from 7:30-10:30 when I have my first class, and one of the student workers is named Peter. He is in 9A, and he has an amazing work ethic and loves to learn. If we use a word that he doesn't know, he asks us how to spell it and then goes to look it up later. His class was watching "Gifted Hands," a movie of Ben Carson's story while Jessica was gone with her family, and he actually took notes and is going to write a report on it--for fun! Oh, we just love him so much. He's quite a breath of fresh air from the "I-don't-really-feel-like-putting-the-last-letter-on-the-end-of-most-words-because-I'm-careless-and-anxious-to-write-my-next-word" kind of students and the "I-was-run" kind of students. ("I was run." Hmm... really?) Peter is a younger student (Alec compares his voice to that of Mickey Mouse) and he is just the sweetest thing. Anyway, Jessica and I taught him to call us "woman" in a really demanding voice (like an ignorant chauvinist) because it was so out of character. Krista was helping him with his math homework during study hall, and I told Peter to ask her, "What's my homework, woman?" She then whispered something, and he turned to me and said, "Make me a sandwich, woman." I busted out laughing so hard. No woman in America wants to be told that her only place is in the kitchen. That's so ridiculous that its only slap-worthy or laugh-worthy, but nothing else. Some of the students heard that, and though they don't understand why it is so funny to say that, they still do. For some it sounds hilarious, and for some it sounds a little to close to something they might actually say. :)

I haven't really gotten to the point of what I wanted to say, but I'm exhausted, so goodnight.

I'm forcing myself to stick with reading Jeremiah. I have tried to read it, but then I have felt overwhelmed by my lack of knowledge and then quit. The more that I read in one sitting, the more it makes sense to me. I read about Manasseh in Jeremiah 15 and then turned back to 2 Kings 21 & 23, and it's really interesting. Try to read a lot in one sitting.