Jones Family 5: 2008

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Busy Much?

Oct 8, 2008

So I haven't written a blog in a while and honestly, I don't expect to have much time to keep it up.
I have always been the type of person to give myself too much to do. I do like to keep busy, but this is kind of ridiculous.
A great deal of this business was NOT self appointed.
I am teaching 24 contact hours.
That means I am actually in the classroom for 24 hours a week. This does not include the lesson plans, the creation of materials, or any of the grading. Nah, that has to be squeezed into whatever time I have left after all my other work duties.
This semester I am team leader in charge of three semester worth of teachers and classes. Three semesters... My own teaching semester which is a higher level computer course, as well as a lower level computer course which has been changed curricularly to be moved from a two semester course to a one semester course (and I had to plan that too) as well as the continuing second semester from the previous year. Lovely.
I have been made Teacher in charge of Assessment quality control, which means I have to assume responsibility for each assessment in each semester, the creation (although I am doing a LOT of delegation on this part), and the analysis of whether it is reliable or not. FUN... well actually it would be for me if I wasn't so darn busy.
I have also been made an Assistant Professional Development instructor. Now those of you who have been following me from China know that I LOVE PD. I could exist solely as a PD instructor and would never bat an eye. I love teaching teachers. They are just about the best students to have. Especially when you are treating the students like professionals, and they act the part. I really do love it. Most of this consists of me assisting the instructor in helping the technologically illiterate or inexperienced to try new things and develop some level of skill in embracing the tech used at this school. However, I was also asked to lead on several topics including but not limited to "how to use Chat as an English tool" and "Fun with the Assessment Manager". :) Yeah ok, I can see a theme here too.

I am also in the local writing group which recently finished a writing assignment that lead to a murder mystery adventure that was absolutely amazing. We wrote up our own characters, our own motives, our own alibis and it worked. It really worked like fine spokes on a gear, just churned out this incredible story that was as much fun to read as it was to discuss. I need this for my writing. Because as much as I like to moan that I don't have time to write, I am good. I am still developing, but I am good enough to pull in readers who have never read my work and make them want more. I am keeping all of my writing from the group to help me in later development, but if it keeps going the way it has been I may very well finish that novel that I have been working on for so long. (I am up to chapter 22, so it may well end up too big... but I am liking it so who cares).

I am also doing my first Pantomime (British interactive theatre performance).

I am still waiting for the cast list to go up, but the are looking at me for the part of the lead male interest.

yeah, you read that right.

the male lead. :)

Well, technically the male lead is ALWAYS a female in British Panto, but I still think it is cool.
The Panto is a choice on my part. I decided I needed something beyond the work life. Something where I could socialize beyond my lovely family, where I could meet and make new friends and have a boatload of fun.

I know my reading was good (3rd hand accounts have come back to me about my performance... which was in front of a room of maybe 25 people) and I know that my voice and my accent is the clearest of anyone in the group. That includes my lovely husband, even though he already nailed his part. But of course he nailed the part. He gets to play the dame.

Some of my dear friends already know what a dame is and they will immediately know why Will nailed the part. But for those who don't know... and I know that is a few of you, think Dame Edna.
A Dame is a man in drag. Not just any drag. Big, boisterous, and with obvious sexual innuendo.
Anyone who has ever met or knows my husband will be able to picture this with some ease. He plays the dame beautifully. Seriously funny stuff. He has the same gift for timing that I do (yes, I am conceited). Now, the makeup and dresses may not be his thing, but the comedy certainly is (ala Grushnik).

The Panto is a family thing too, so the kids have parts as well. Wish I could invite all of you to come and see it. Actually, I am. You are all invited to come see Dick Whittington and his many cats in Ras Al Khaimah UAE. Let me know if you plan to fly in to see us all perform, I will arrange a couch for you to sleep on (really, I will) and see to it that you get free tickets to the show! Wanna come?

To top it all off, I was chosen as a member of a team of English teachers (yeah, I know... I teach computers. But I am still an English teacher) to take a certain professional development course online from Harvard. Not a particularly challenging course yet, but I expect it to get much harder as we go on. So when this semester is all over I get to add Harvard to my resume. Yeah for me.

I think that this year is the busiest I have ever had, and it has only just begun.

All my love to my freinds and family.
I hope your year is far less busy but just as rich.

Yours Truly,
Me

Sunday, August 17, 2008

When your good, they take advantage of you.

Aug 17, 2008

So,
I am finally back to work after a nice long vacation where I did absolutely nothing. I love long vacations. Next year I am planning to hit Italy and Greece, so there will be no time for relaxation. However, it won't be cutting into my planned budget after all. Why? you may unwisely ask. Because when you are good they take advantage of you. And I am good. So instead of the usual work load, I am doing overtime. Steady overtime for the year. That means a lovely large amount of money that comes at the end of the year, just in time for the vacation.
For the second time in my teaching career I am taking on 24 contact hours. For those of you who don't teach, most teachers put in 20 at the most, more often 10-15. That is contact hours...hours actually spent in the classroom, not including preparation, materials, test creation, grading, or any of the other innumerable tasks that await any teacher.
In addition to the numerous hours (as I said I have done this before) I get the additional joy of having far to many sections. Usually there are 2-4 classes, not often more than 100 students whose names you are expected to remember and who you are required to evaluate based on performance and work.
I have 8 sections, roughly 200 students.
All that being said, I am not expecting a particularly difficult year. This time around I started working with my darling husband to create a website that covers all of the materials of the class. That takes half of my load off my shoulders completely.
And to top it all off, I have been given a free hand in making the class into a content based curriculum. Meaning that my actual designation is still English teacher, even though I get to teach them computers.
So even though I have a massive load (or at least that is what my coworkers see) I am not really that surprised. I know how my supervisors think of me, and for that matter my boss as well. They think I am good and can handle it.

Next step,
I have to prove that I really am that good.

and on top of that, I still have to do publishable research and professional development trainings.

ah,

piece of cake.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

A little culture shock

Jun 10, 2008

I have a great many things in my life that I am grateful for, but today I have learned that there is so much more in life that I have never even thought of. Sitting at lunch with some of my colleagues we were discussing life in various aspects. Everything from students, to shopping, to beauty secrets, then the conversation turned to more serious topics. After mentioning my wedding anniversary, (Happy 12th Billy Bear) we were talking about our varied weddings, our children, and on to raising our kids.
Man, have I had it easy.
I have a great man who loves me and takes the time to care about me. I have three healthy beautiful children who are polite and well behaved. I have never had it really hard, not at school, not in any situation. Even those things that are less than happy have been normal and time has healed the wounds. Dad's departure still stings of course, but I can talk about him without choking up now most of the time.
Why would this even come up?
Because the people that I work with now, unlike the people I have worked with in the past, are NOT American. In China there were people from all over the world, but most of the foreigners were American. In Japan half my colleagues were from America, the other half from Canada. We had a lot in common and it was easy to relate.
In this setting I am working with very few Americans. I work with people from Australia, Britain, Canada (ok, they really are everywhere), Iran, Iraq, New Zealand, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Slovakia, India and more. I am learning more about life in other countries every day.
Today I learned to be happy with my experiences. You see, today my friend from Iraq told me about her experience raising her son. The story of when she gave birth and the hospital was too busy assisting the soldiers to assist her, kicking her out of the hospital a few hours after the birth because they needed the bed. The story of struggling with ration coupons and bartering to get enough formula for the baby, and how nappys (diapers) were simply not available, her experiences very similar to those of her grandmother following World War II. This was followed by the story of her son being about 6 years old, playing with other children in the street as they often did, and having the lights go out because of the missiles flying over. How he was terrified watching the fires from the missile flying closer and how the door wouldn't open and by the time she was able to get to him how he had developed a tick that would last another 10 years, showing every time a loud siren or noise sounded. More stories of how, by the time she left Iraq for Germany as a refuge, her son would hide behind her every time he saw a police car for fear that they were coming for them. How people would disappear in the middle of the night, including her brother who was gone for 4 months. How the neighbors were arrested on the street and unable to return to their son who was locked in the house. The boy was lucky enough that another neighbor heard his cries the following day and was able to take him to his grandparents. How his mother wasn't able to return for 4 years, his father for 8.
Sitting across from her listening to her stories I had a complete realization that I have absolutely no frame of reference with which to digest these stories. It is beyond my conception, and thank goodness beyond my ability to even register. So far beyond everything in my experience that I don't have any way of "wrapping my brain around it". Sure, I have an imagination. I have done a lot of reading and a lot of movie watching, but that is nothing more than a two dimensional representation of the shadow of reality. Sitting talking to someone who has really lived through these experiences is unbelievable. Here it is several hours later and I am still in shock. And feeling so happy to have lived through the experiences that I have.

Monday, May 5, 2008

My latest writing piece

May 5, 2008

First thing,
I wrote this story for my writer's group.
The sun sinks slowly into the sands, pulling up a mist of dust around it like a red brown shayla. The sands rise up, welcoming that glowing orb, pulling it down into the very earth.

On the hill there stands a monstrosity of cinder block and white wash. As the light slowly dissipates the monolith of despair stretches its mighty squat shadow like the slow car-wreck-shrug of a muscle bound thug.

The caterwaul of competing electronically enhanced voices rise up from the surrounding slopes, each on a differing note, on a differing word, in a cacophonous cry.

"It's haunted you know."

The voice I hear holds the firm knowing timber of experience, of years spent in the desert sun. It takes time to piece it together. A bit here, a bit there, each source knowing just the smallest bit but more than willing to share. The family that owned it could never live there. Even as it was being built things started to go wrong. The doors would fall from their perch, the windows would slam shut, shattering the very glass in the panes, the electricity has never… will never work properly.

Not for shoddy workmanship…no never that, though how this beastly creation, ripped from the darkest nightmares of Lothlorien and struck fast into the sands like a ghastly cork holding back the very gates of hell, has stood for so long I will never know.

Rather, as the story goes, it is infested with djinn. White buttressed arches rising smack against the side of the building, strapped to the very earth they were meant to fly up from, turrets aligning every side as though prepared for an attack, but what form that attack would take is in itself at question. It is almost as though the architect feared a direct attack from the goats and camels that populate this sparse dune buried expanse. As though someone handed laundry markers to a child and said "here, draw me a castle." The absence of elegance and style is so boldly declared in every striation of the facade.

"It's haunted" and so no one would ever be able to live there.

Except even as I heard those words I knew, I knew that it would be a foreigner who would move in.

If it were an American, they might turn it into a bed and breakfast and charge a fee for tours into the Djinn haunted areas… extra if your windows shatter in the night or double if the electricity inexplicably blows the curling iron across the room.

It is most interesting to me that the bearers of these tales of djinn and hauntings are not the locals who must live with the reality. Instead it is the Grundyish joy of expats who spread this tale of woe like a salve to a wounded pride for being forced to view this spectacle of architectural folly.

I rather dislike the house on the hill.

It's much bigger than mine.

After I wrote the story and presented it to my writing group this news story appeared in a paper. One of my writing group sent it to me by email.

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080501/PAGETHREE/138747329

Inside the haunted palace

Rym Tina Ghazal

* Last Updated: May 01. 2008 11:59PM UAE / May 1. 2008 7:59PM GMT

The al Qassimi Palace is said to be haunted by Jinn. Ryan Carter / The National

RAS AL KHAIMAH // Every request for directions to the haunted palace came back with the same response: "You don't need directions, it finds you."

As it turned out, the vast, sprawling mansion was easy to spot. Perched on a hilltop along the main road in A Diat, a suburb of Ras al Khaimah, it stood abandoned, with broken windows that kept watch over a driveway that began at a rusty gate.

The palace, said to be worth Dh500 million (US$70m), was abandoned more than 20 years ago by Sheikh Abdulaziz al Qassimi, because, as a family member put it, "there was no luck in the house".

Although abandoned, the house is not empty, said people who live near its looming walls.

"You hear a woman screaming as if she is being strangled and you see what looks like little children watching you from the roof as you walk by," said Khaled Abdullah, who lives nearby.

The "woman" is said to be a jinn, a supernatural creature that can take human form. The al Qassimi Palace is home to not just one, but an entire tribe, people here believed.

Mr Abdullah said he had seen the spectres, but only from afar. He has never dared to enter the palace grounds.

"These children always come out at night and just watch you and sometimes even call out your name," he said, gesturing with his hands.

"Khaled, Khaled, they would call," Mr Abdullah said, imitating the childlike voice he claimed to have heard. "Never. I will never go in."

The National was made of sterner stuff. A reporter and photographer set out to explore the building, accompanied by Sheikh Tarik Abdel Moneim Ibrahim, an Egyptian exorcist and Islamic scholar.

Entering the three-storey building, visitors are greeted by an engraved marble verse blessing from the Quran.

After the reporter read the verse out loud, one of the three large crystal chandeliers in the main hall suddenly lit up. The other two remained dark.

The light showed intricate colourful murals, and mosaics of animals, women, and green fields covering the walls of the hexagonal shaped palace. Many of the figures had their eyes covered with white sheets of paper.

"To block the jinn from seeing us," explained Mr Ibrahim.

There was evidence of other intruders. Statues of falcons with their heads broken off, tiles peeled from the walls and scorch marks on the floors of the main bathrooms, along with broken egg shells and twigs.

"All kinds of witch doctors from Africa and sheikhs from Saudi Arabia have come through here to try to cleanse this house," said Mr Ibrahim, pointing to ripped pieces of the Quran, and the remains of animal sacrifices.

I just thought it was a cute coincidence.
Hope you liked the story, and the story.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Driving in the UAE

Mar 5, 2008

Yesterday after work, at about 5:10 local time, a friend of mine drove to her home in Ras Al Khaimah.

She turned right onto a small road that leads to her housing complex. She turned left to enter the complex.
A man, an emirate, who didn't want to wait for her to turn decided to speed around her... on the left. He plowed into her car.

She was less than 100 yards from the corner. But he was going so fast that he crumpled the car.
As I am writing this blog, she is in the ICU. She has several broken ribs and a punctured lung. She has been unable to return to conciousness. They are transferring her now to a hospital in a bigger city for an emergency surgery.
She may not make it.
And this emiratey bastard had the unmitigated gall to get out of his car and start screaming at her for turning in front of him... until he actually saw what he did anyway.
I am not allowed to visit her...so I am patiently waiting for the latest updates.
Driving in the UAE is a dangerous thing. The drivers here have no concept of safe driving. They barely have to test before getting their license and then they drive as if they think they own the roads... and considering that they can walk in to the cheif of police and have any ticket ANY TICKET waived with enough wasta and money (like guanchi) they kind of do.
I hate the driving here. People are rude and nasty, there is more road rage than ANYWHERE else that I have been, and they drive as if they think they are in a movie. I have even seen people drifting on main roads... as if that was something that can be done by anyone. So many accidents, so many injuries, so many deaths.
On March 1st the UAE decided to "enforce" their traffic laws. If it is applied to any emiratey I will be more than a little surprised. It just seems to be a way to tax foreigners a little more.
I am fine. The kids are fine. The family is fine.
Just feeling down about my friend. I hope you are doing well wherever you are.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Changing positions

Jan 19, 2008

I am way too excited.

I have started and deleted this blog at least 5 times already.
So I am just going to start with my news.
My position at work has changed.
Last semester I taught English at some of the lowest levels that I have ever taught at before. It was quite challenging. I taught writing, reading, listening, and speaking. None of that was new. I did many of the things that I had done before.
This school has pretty awesome computer integration, so I was constantly using the computer, support programs, Smart board activities, and other things to enhance my classes. The girls had a lot of fun and it was good for me too.
This semester (which starts in two weeks) I will NOT be teaching English. yeah, you read that right. No English. My skills with the computer have always been a little more than the people around me, enough that even my coworkers come to me to ask for help and advice. So this semester I have been asked to teach the computer classes for the lowest level of students.
The administration believe that I can make the computer class another aspect of English class. I am so excited I can hardly think straight. In deed, I have been asked to be the team leader for the computer teachers and to work on making the computer class another method of integrated skills.
I will be teaching basic typing (using the vocabulary words and the papers they write in their writing classes) as well as how to use various programs. I am so excited about this change in my experiences. I love teaching computers, it is such a me thing.
I am so excited.

Jones Family 5