Good afternoon readers (it's 4:30pm) where I am today while reading this and I don't have class tonight! I have a midterm instead. But it won't be bad. The professor will email it out at 5pm. It should take us 2-3 hours to complete, but we have 72 hours to return it. It's not nearly as bad as my other midterm this semester. I have four classes but only two have tests. The other two are very theoretical and broad concept classes so instead of papers, we have papers, many many papers over the semester. But my other class with a midterm was International Law, which in itself is an impossibly broad and theoretical class, as was its midterm. The midterm was emailed to us at 2pm. It was estimated that it should have taken us 6-8 hours to complete and we only had 24 hours to return it. In reality, it took much longer. I finished in just over 9 hours, and my 7 friends in the same class all took longer. There are 6 people that I know of in the class that pulled all-nighters to complete it. And now I sit, awaiting my grade. The professor emailed a couple of hours ago that he is in the process of posting the grades along with comments for each of us online now. Mine still is not posted... so keep your fingers crossed with me.
I have also been teaching English this semester as a volunteer in one of the churches in Coptic Cairo. It has been a lot of fun,and the new English semester will start in 2 weeks. I taught two classes (22 students each) on Wednesday nights. I will move up to the next level with my students. It was so much fun, and kind of challenging. I didn't realize how much of the English language that I don't know, and apparently others don't either. I would ask some of my friends questions I had, and NO ONE seemed to know the answers. For native speakers, it seems we take a lot for granted in our speech. Rules are not so much dictated to us as we grow up, but instead we just pick them up through listening and conversation. They exist no doubt -because we do it, but we don't KNOW them. So when trying to describe to my class why can't use this word here or can't say this, I needed more than "because that's what you do" or "because that SOUNDS more correct".
It turned out I would often look on the internet and find really weird or completely inaccurate statements, or none at all. On the internet! Are you kidding - NO ONE has asked this question on the internet before! So I would sit for a while and write example sentences of whatever grammar problem I was presented with, and try through trial and error to deduce a possible rule that might exist. I was successful in most cases. However sometimes I would THINK that I found a very concrete, clear rule, only to my dismay to find it mis-used in next week's homework, and i would have to start over again... frustrating.
The worst questions were the ones that came on the fly, and which I answered confidently and quickly. I learned to stop doing that actually.
"Mr. Randy - we can make 'she is' the contraction of 'she's', what is the contraction of 'she has'?"
"Oh class - that is also "she's"
Next week's homework: "She's a tall woman. She's brown hair."
Randy - CRAP!
Next week's class: "Okay class now you can only use "she's" for she is when describing someone - nouns and adjectives. And you have to use she has otherwise. You can only use "she's" for she has when using verbs. Such as:
She's been to China twice this year. OR She's ridden a motorcycle before"
This was my process week in week out. I would never have told you before I got here that there was a rule for when you could use she's for each of its forms. One for verbs and one for nouns and adjectives. It is just part of our speech. But now I have to know it - because 44 eager college students are depending on me to make sure they don't tell someone "she's brown hair"!
I appreciate my teachers all the more now - forced to come up with smart, engaging, concrete rules and answers on the spot for eager minds with many questions. It is harder than it looks people! Appreciate those who taught/teach you! I do! This one's for you Ustetha!
G'do
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Friday, November 5, 2010
Egyptians on Strike
So while I was sick last week - I didn't blog extra. First the one blog I did make wouldn't publish.... and I finally got it to publish today but had to take the pictures down to make it happen... boo. But anyways... last week was eventful on campus. The janitorial staff went on strike with a huge showing of support from the students and faculty. The law department I am in was in support. In fact the Department Chair helped to organize part of the strike and I believe was in the negotiation process. It was HUGE. The workers and hundreds of people gathered around them protested for hours each day outside the administration building. Without anyone to empty the trash, sweep, etc - in about 24 hours we were literally swimming in a sea of trash. Just to compound things a little - the weekend was to be the Alumni Sports weekend where the Algerian, Mauritius, Egyptian and Libyan national rugby teams were having exhibition games, there were exhibition games from the AUC sports teams, the sports awards, all kinds of things. And it was an excuse to bring out alumni (and their $$$) to see all the new campus and the athletic areas of campus.
So just to make sure the administration would be fully and completely embarrassed in front of the alumni - the students went the extra mile in dirtying up campus. Instead of just throwing your McDonald's bag let's say on the ground... you held it upside down and emptied its contents of wrappers, ketchup packets, napkins and few stale fries onto the ground and THEN through the bag on the ground. The idea was not only would the administration be embarrassed, but they would be forced to tell the alumni where their dollars were NOT going - to the staff that work 6 days a week and bring home $75 per month.
Yes - I said they net $75 per month. Some of the more senior janitorial staff bring home as much as $135 per month. It's truly outrageous really. When an undergraduate student pays 55,000 pounds each semester and a graduate student pays 80,000 pounds each semester to attend and live here - and the janitorial staff (80 of them combined- net less than 50,000 pounds together each semester). Yes the amount of money that ONE undergraduate student pays per semester to attend school and live on campus - pays the entire NET salary of EVERY janitor on campus for the same time period. It makes me a little nauseated and REALLY frustrated. That's why many of the American students were out in force - one because a lot of us have union parents and we know what it's like when they have to walk out on their jobs just to get treated fairly. And two - because we know it works. And three - because none of us could believe that our money was contributing to a system of such gross inequality.
Well needless to say they had to hire a private janitorial firm over night to clean up campus but it wasn't fully clean by the time the alumni got here. They were standing around in circles pointing to fountains FILLED with trash and garbage cans still overflowing on the ground. The added attention of the strike making it on to plenty of blogs... campus and Egyptian newspapers and even on CNN.com (http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-508913) the administrators budged. The students started a facebook solidarity page with 1100 supporters and an online petition with over 2000 student signatures. The workers got most of their demands met. The administration even went so far as to email the exact terms of the settlement to the ENTIRE AUC community because they just wanted to see the protests end and they knew that EVERYONE was involved anyways so they felt the need to save some face.
It felt really good to see the students mobilize around an issue so quickly and willingly. It felt really good to see Egyptians realizing they deserve rights and protesting and striking for them. This is something as I understand it - does not happen in a country with the authoritarian nature that Egypt has. I heard rumors of other places in Cairo being inspired by AUC and striking at their jobs too.. I don't have details but it was exciting to see the populace move in this direction. It reminds me of the famous quote - all it takes for bad people to win is for good people to not do anything about it. The good people of AUC and Egypt did something about it!
So just to make sure the administration would be fully and completely embarrassed in front of the alumni - the students went the extra mile in dirtying up campus. Instead of just throwing your McDonald's bag let's say on the ground... you held it upside down and emptied its contents of wrappers, ketchup packets, napkins and few stale fries onto the ground and THEN through the bag on the ground. The idea was not only would the administration be embarrassed, but they would be forced to tell the alumni where their dollars were NOT going - to the staff that work 6 days a week and bring home $75 per month.
Yes - I said they net $75 per month. Some of the more senior janitorial staff bring home as much as $135 per month. It's truly outrageous really. When an undergraduate student pays 55,000 pounds each semester and a graduate student pays 80,000 pounds each semester to attend and live here - and the janitorial staff (80 of them combined- net less than 50,000 pounds together each semester). Yes the amount of money that ONE undergraduate student pays per semester to attend school and live on campus - pays the entire NET salary of EVERY janitor on campus for the same time period. It makes me a little nauseated and REALLY frustrated. That's why many of the American students were out in force - one because a lot of us have union parents and we know what it's like when they have to walk out on their jobs just to get treated fairly. And two - because we know it works. And three - because none of us could believe that our money was contributing to a system of such gross inequality.
Well needless to say they had to hire a private janitorial firm over night to clean up campus but it wasn't fully clean by the time the alumni got here. They were standing around in circles pointing to fountains FILLED with trash and garbage cans still overflowing on the ground. The added attention of the strike making it on to plenty of blogs... campus and Egyptian newspapers and even on CNN.com (http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-508913) the administrators budged. The students started a facebook solidarity page with 1100 supporters and an online petition with over 2000 student signatures. The workers got most of their demands met. The administration even went so far as to email the exact terms of the settlement to the ENTIRE AUC community because they just wanted to see the protests end and they knew that EVERYONE was involved anyways so they felt the need to save some face.
It felt really good to see the students mobilize around an issue so quickly and willingly. It felt really good to see Egyptians realizing they deserve rights and protesting and striking for them. This is something as I understand it - does not happen in a country with the authoritarian nature that Egypt has. I heard rumors of other places in Cairo being inspired by AUC and striking at their jobs too.. I don't have details but it was exciting to see the populace move in this direction. It reminds me of the famous quote - all it takes for bad people to win is for good people to not do anything about it. The good people of AUC and Egypt did something about it!
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