Dec. 25, Dahab, Egypt

Hello. It's a sunny day in Dahab, Egypt, a small backpacker resort on the Red Sea Coast of the Sinai Peninsula. This is where I chose to spend my winter holiday. Dahab is known for affordability (about $6 per night at a backpacker hotel). I'm enjoying the sunshine. The snorkeling is fantastic, and there are a lot of interesting travelers - from all over Europe, Australia and Canada. Strangely, Americans are conspicuously absent, so everyone makes a fuss when I say I'm from America, and they refer to me thereafter as "Jon the American." I've been on two outings since my arrival last Thursday night. One day I went on a desert trek out to hike in some Canyons (very reminiscent of places I visited in Utah with my dad), and visit an oasis where Beduins have a little settlement. Bedouins are the descendents of desert nomads who do not really belong to any nation. They are given their own parcels of land where they are allowed to live in their traditional ways, kind of like American Indian reservations. We had lunch served to us by Beduoins. It was some kind of mildly seasons meatballs, potatoes, cucumber-tomato salad, and rice. It was pretty good. The other outing was to a different Beduoin settlement called "Ras Abu Galum," this one up the coastline beyond road access. You have to take camels to get there. The camel ride was fun. The way up was much better than the way back because a boy fixed my saddle for me so that I could ride comfortably. On the way back they were in a hurry so I just had to jump on a camel and go. Very bumpy, very rough. I actually got down and walked for the last half mile. Both of these trips were in the company of a French lady I met who lives and teaches in Alexandria. She didn't speak much English, and I speak no French, but we were both traveling alone and so we sort of looked out for each other. The snorkeling at Ras Abu Galum was really great. I saw fish of every color of the rainbow, and some amazing ones like "lion fish" that have a "mane" of white and black patterned skinny fins that come out of it. I wish I had taken some money to Ras Abu Galum because there were children there selling trinkets, and they just didn't understand that I had no money. They wanted to sell me something in the worst way - even the smallest price for the littlest little bead bangle... and finally one exasperated little boy just gave me a bracelette and said "Present - no money - no money." I felt funny accepting a present from this little kid with no shoes, living in a shack. The French lady went back to Alexandria the day before yesterday. I'm meeting other people every day. I met a girl from Saitama-ken (Japan) and talked to her for a while in Japanese. Also met a fellow named Robbin from Edmunton Canada, Swiss carpenter named Manwell, and a Dutch journalist lady named Jovanna. Everyone, of course, is just passing through, but it's kind of fun.

I have had number of conversations with Egyptians here. Many of them speak good English. English is required in their schools. Usually if you talk for more than 10 minutes, they will bring up the topic of Islam and ask me if I have read the Quran. You also see a lot of men with black and blue bumps on their foreheads from hitting their heads on the ground when they pray. They all assume that nobody from the west takes any religion seriously. Of course all they see here is tourists interested in having fun. I can't get them to even consider that there is more than one way to look at spiritual truth. I have no interest in getting into debates about which holy book is the truth. How tiresome. These conversations do tend to take the wind out of my sails with regards to learning Arabic. But I made a connection with a guy here in Dahab whose father was Egyptian and mother was English. He's fluent in both languages and gives lessons at a very reasonable rate, so I'm meeting with him for some practice. I find the language interesting, still.

I'm not sure how I'm going to spend the rest of my Christmas day. There is a place here advertising Christmas Turkey Dinner As Good As Mother Make. I might go for pizza instead. I'm hoping that my friends from Kuwait will come through in the next day or two. They're heading from here to Luxor where there are many ancient tombs and monuments, and I'll probably join them for a few days. Meanwhile, I'm managing to pass the time away on leisurely breakfasts, afternoon walks and catching up on some reading. There are a bunch of very tame, gentle cats living in the hotel where I'm staying. There's a space under the door to my room, and they just squirm through there, come right in and make themselves at home on my bed. They're good company. I might venture into one of the bars for drink or a game of pool. I'm not very good at shooting pool, but people are so laid back here I don't think it matters much.

I'm not always in the mood to be a reporter, so the blog entries, as you see, are less frequent. But I am getting along okay. It will soon be 2008 and I will already be through the first quarter of my contract period in Kuwait. That's a good thing! : )

my exciting life in an exotic faraway land

I’ve been walking to school for about a month now. The temperature cooled enough for walking, and in the past week it is actually chilly on some mornings. On the way, I walk on litter-strewn sidewalk, through litter-strewn sandy areas, and often right out on the litter-strewn streets. Cars park on the sidewalks and the people scurry in the streets trying not to get hit. I go past about a half dozen garbage bins where I get to see the mangy cats hanging around. There is garbage everywhere, so the cats have plenty of places to search for food scraps. While I walk, I pass concrete buildings, a shisha (smoke) bar, a lot of barber shops, tailors, and dry-cleaners. A sandy soccer field. At night it will be full of guys playing. Little “bakala” convenience stores. Some actual trees - mostly stocky palm trees with a lot of dead fronds hanging down, and many dead tree trunks with no green on them at all. Car mechanic shops that take over the sidewalk and half the street, so you have really have to walk to the middle of the street to get past them. All the taxi drivers beep their horns at you to see if you want a ride. By the time I get to school my shoes get white with dust. The building is designed like an open-air complex that you might find in Florida. I climb stairs to the third floor but here they call it the second floor because the ground floor does not count. The first thing I do is open the windows or turn on the air conditioning depending on the temperature outside. There are eight periods in our school day. I have a lot of planning periods, but for some reason it’s hard for me to get everything done in those in-between times. I’m not very efficient with my time, which makes teaching a very hard job.

Thursday we took a field trip to the Kuwait National Museum. We had about 24 kids and five staff packed into a mini-bus. The first section was set up like a wax museum where visitors could look at scenes from Kuwait before the discovery of oil. It wasn’t bad. The kids, of course, ignored the guide’s explanations, just raced through it, and complained how bored they were. Then we went to a planetarium. I enjoyed the planetarium the most. I love looking at stars. The third section was an archeological display of artifacts collected from Falaika Island, now largely uninhabited, but in ancient times a population center. I didn’t really get to look around there very much because another teacher and I had to deal with a kid who was picking fights and misbehaving. After the museum visit, we went to McDonalds for lunch. There’s a massive McDonald’s on the Gulf Road, right on the beach. This was the best part of the field trip for the kids. Next to McDonalds’s, some entepreneur has set up an inflatable mountain park where kids can pay some money and go bounce around. They loved that.

I had an interesting conversation with one of the teaching assistants. She put me on the spot by asking me about how I like Kuwait. I stuttered something about every day being different. I asked her about her hijab. That’s the name of the head cover that women wear. It’s not the same as the black veil that conservative Muslim women wear - that’s called abaya or burga. With the hijab, you can see the woman’s face, you just can’t see her hair. Once a woman puts on a hijab, she can never appear in public again without it. They’re big on permanent decisions in Islam… another example is that if you become a Muslim and then change your mind, you will be executed. Fun religion, huh? Anyhow, I asked her about how long she’d had her hijab. She said she put it on after she had her first baby. She’s from a very liberal family and she’s the only one wearing a hijab. She said it was a very personal decision, and she had been wanting to do it for a long time. I commented that it must be convenient not having to worry about what your hair looks like. She said that actually it is more of a challenge to look nice because your face or your figure show up more. I guess it makes sense.

McDonalds is immensely popular here. They import workers from the Philipines to work behind the counter. I tried to tip one of them but she refused. It must be against the rules. I thought I was past my stomach bug, and I was hungry. I ordered a “Big and Tasty” meal. That was a mistake. But McDonald’s was the highlight of the field trip for all the kids.

I’ve gotten a couple emails from people back home telling me to be careful what I say. I went into an international teacher’s bulletin board to see if there was in “inside scoop” about the teacher who is in jail for letting her kids call a teddy bear “Mohammed.” Apparently she is a wonderful teacher, very dedicated. Somebody is claiming that a school secretary got mad at her for some petty thing and pressed charges which led to this whole thing. That makes perfect sense. The Islamic world is a mine field. I’m not the most prudent person in the world, and I just hope and pray that I don’t step on anybody’s toes while I’m here. One thing is for sure, there is no appeal to common sense. You just have to play by the rules. My friend teases me that when the guy gets going during Friday sermon and is screaming and yelling at everyone, he’s really speaking directly to ME, and he‘s saying, “You chose to come to this country, so shut up and deal with it!”

Well I do have two trips planned - one to the Sinai for Christmas, and the other to the Malabar Coast of India for National Independence Day vacation in February (they take off a whole week!). Both trips will be solo.

Meanwhile, if I don’t get around to posting very many entries on my blog here, it may be that I have the stuck-in-Kuwait blues, but I will respond to any personal emails.

Maasalama!

dinner is served

It is a Tuesday night. I just made one of the strangest dinners I think I have ever eaten. I consisted of leftover salad that I put in a pan and FRIED, yes FRIED along with some frozen vegetables and chopped bits of shish kebab that my South African math teacher friend brought the other night when people came over to eat at my place. I didn’t make meatloaf and scalloped potatoes for them - just too hard. I made rigatoni, which we used to call “sewer pipes” when I was growing up (quite a disgusting name for a dish when I think about it) and a big salad. But people came with all kinds of their own dishes, since it seems that every meal turns into a potluck, and I have been eating leftovers every night since. Anyhow, tonight’s dinner of fried salad was a real shot in the dark. Hey, I cooked the hell out of it, salted it up, and it all tasted like a big shish-kebab stir-fry. However, I don’t think I’ll enter it in the Betty Crocker cooking contest.

So… here we are, it’s almost November. I looked at the Yahoo weather today and saw that it was 98 degrees in Kuwait. But it actually feels quite cool. The hot water heater is turned on, and there is a less miserable look about the trees and plants that people keep alive with trickling garden hoses. The mornings and evenings are dark. I still haven’t seen a drop of rain since coming to Kuwait, but I’m told there will be an occasional sprinkle come winter time. Supposedly it rains mud because of the sand and dust in the air, so it doesn’t sound particularly pleasant, but I suppose the desert weeds are happy with it. I still haven’t worn any of the long-sleeve shirts I brought with me. I am one of the dandiest dressers of the school, by the way, sticking to my neckties as a kind of trademark.

I am heavy into the juggling act of teaching and school work. I stay at work till 5:00, making for 10½ hour days. Behavior problems are nearly daily occurrences now. So-and-so throws a chunk of eraser at whats-his-name, and he misses and hits the other guy, who goes ballistic and attacks So-and-so. Before I came there was a big controversy over a vice-principal who was barred from leaving the country pending a court case over her decision to give a kid an in-school suspension. The powerful father said that she had put his son in jail. There was even an effort to get teachers to boycott their contracts in Kuwait, and a few teachers actually left. It’s because of something called “wasta” which means “top-down pressure.” People who have a lot of power and influence can basically do as they please and you’d better not get in their way. So discipline here is very touchy. You basically discipline as long as the parents go along with it, but if they object, you say “ok, no detention, never mind, have a nice day.”

Today I had my first encounter with a mother who wore full black cover. Most of the mothers don’t wear that, so I was caught off guard. I forgot that you’re not supposed to offer your hand to these conservative Islamic women. The first thing I did was smile and stick out my hand. She put up her hand in a gesture of STOP, and it just went downhill from there. Goodness gracious, was she full of anger and spite! I decided that since she didn’t want to be seen, I was not going to look at her eyes, so I looked at my desktop for the entire conversation. The conversation itself was surreal - it was about her son being exposed to bad behavior and comments by another student. She actually spoke good English, but her voice was shrill and quivering. She was scary! Whew, I was glad when she left. I will not look at the boy the same way again.

My Arabic teacher has the idea that Americans have mistaken ideas about Islam just because of 9-11. All the terrorism, he explains, is coming from bad Muslims who don’t listen to the Prophet. He thinks that American media is controlled by the Bush government to intentionally keep Americans from knowing that most Muslims are really nice people. I told him that I thought the call to prayer was too noisy and the women in black cover were scary. He and his son had a good laugh when I said these things.

Next week there’s going to be a lecture at the AWARE (Advocates for Western-Arab Relations) Center given by the Archbishop of the Holy See in the Vatican on the topic of Muslim-Christian Dialogue. I might go, or, since it’s a Thursday night and that’s fun night for teachers, maybe I’ll skip it to play games and drink special fruit-juice punch and eat snacks with my friends. I did go to mass again, and I have to say that it was 100% better. It was Mission Sunday, and the priest talked about “Mission Moment” and finding God and purpose in the Now -- pretty sophisticated and deep stuff for any Catholic church. The excellent homily made up for the fact that the Indian Catholics practically trample each other bustling and pushing to get to the Eucharist - it’s actually comical and horrifying to see how they act like they’re starving for communion. I blocked one man who tried to butt in front of me in line. I was going to tackle him and pin him to the ground to make him wait his turn. I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind at the last supper. When I think of how absurd people act out of religious intentions, it just makes me laugh.

By the way, if you remember from my previous entry, I got to know a taxi driver from Bangladesh named Mohammed who starts every sentence with “this is.” I was with another teacher friend getting groceries. There is a huge grocery store that’s right in the middle of a super high-class shopping mall, and all the people who buy groceries park in the underground parking and pay someone to push their grocery carts down there and load up their cars. We called Mohammed who had agreed to pick us up, and told him to come and get us. Would you believe the guy said he was too busy with his flower shop, he couldn’t come. We ended up pushing our carts through the mall and getting ride home in junky taxi with no AC that sounded like it was going to break down any minute. The next time we saw Mohammed, he said, “Sir, this is I wait for you long time at shopping mall, this is, why you never call back?” As a matter of fact, the teacher friend who had been with me that day was in the cab. We looked at each other mutually confused. “Mohammed, I said, we DID call you, and you told us you were too busy with your flower shop.” Then Mohammed said, “Sir, what are you talking this? I am taxi driver only I don’t have flower shop!” I took out the business card of flower shop Mohammed and said, “Isn’t this you?“ Would you believe it? It turned out, that there are TWO Mohammeds, both Bangladeshi taxi drivers of similar size, accent, and voice. One has a flower shop and one doesn’t. I don’t know how we ended up with two of them. We thought they were the same Mohammed. So flower-shop Mohammed had probably gotten a call out of the blue saying, “OK we’re ready, come and get us right now. Please park in the underground parking.” No wonder he said he was busy.

There are some pigeons living in the window-well outside the bathroom window. I want to feed them, but there is a fan installed in the bathroom window and you can’t open it. For a long time I couldn’t figure out what the noise was - it sounded like an overworked washing machine or some kind of squeegy or something. It was the pigeons roosting in there. I know I shouldn’t feed them because then there will probably be a hundred of them. But I sort of want to feed them. Any thing that survives here deserves a little help.

ho-hum Eid

If you are busy, come back and read this another time, or skip it completely, because there isn’t anything interesting to report, and I’m just dredging up some crumbs to keep the blog updated. It’s Eid vacation, and there has been no school this week. Those of us waiting for our residence cards knew that we would be stuck in Kuwait with little to do. I haven’t minded much. I went the gym a few times, practiced the banjo, did a little shopping. Ramadan is over, and mosque noise is back to its regular level, which is enough to bother me but not as maddening as it was during Ramadan.

I had an Arabic lesson with my tutor last night. He is a member of the Arabic staff at my school, and consequently makes only a fraction of what we foreign hires make. It’s a supply and demand issue, I suppose. Would I give up 25% of my income to see the salaries equalized? Well the reality is, I probably would not have come to Kuwait if the salary were that much lower, so I guess the answer is no. Unfortunately it does result in a huge inequity. From his point of view, I make a fortune, and get free housing, free benefits, transportation to and from work, everything handed to me. He gets the meager salary and no benefits at all. Of course there is also the fact that he and his wife produced five children who have to be fed and cared for. Anyhow, the fallout of all of this is that I think the money I’m paying for my Arabic instruction is an important chunk of income for him. Got the picture? Now here’s the problem…. he’s not a very good instructor. Since I taught foreign language for many years, I have an idea of how a language should be introduced to a non-speaker. My Syrian friend teaches Arabic to Arabic speakers, so he is more comparable to an English teacher who teaches Mark Twain to American kids…. but put that teacher in a room with Chinese people, and he/she may not know where to start. My teacher makes the mistake of thinking that because he has an impeccable knowledge and expertise in Arabic, there is nothing that I would ever need that he doesn’t know. The truth is, I need a good teaching technique, and that, I don’t think he has. I tried to steer the lesson in a different direction last night, but he quickly directed us back to his grammar lesson. Maybe I’ll look for another teacher to get some conversational practice on the side. Right now, I’m not learning very much.

Since the instant message conversation with the guy in UAE in which he told me that part of the tirade from the mosques had to do with outrage toward Israel, I have been reading up and paying more attention to that conflict. It really is a very interesting saga. There were once local Jews living in Kuwait, but according to the internet, the last of them left some decades ago. Oddly enough, there are practically no Palestinians in Kuwait either. Because Arafat cooperated with Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War, Kuwaitis expelled 400,000 Palestinians--a full 30% of the population at the time! Anyhow, I have never felt more than a general sense of disgust about the perpetual ugliness between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East--sort of a “Go ahead, blow each other up, be my guest!” attitude. I still feel a lot of that, but living here where the conflict is a bit closer does heighten the sense of drama. I think I would really enjoy visiting Israel, but we were told early that one loses entry rights to Kuwait if his/her passport has an Israel stamp in it.

I have to think of something good to make for dinner and have my teacher friends over. This is something we’ve gotten into the habit of doing. It’s kind of fun having these little dinner parties. We don’t sit at the table--that would be too formal. We sit in the living room and put our plates on the coffee table or hold them in our laps. I want to make something very American, since I am the only American in our clique. I’m thinking of meatloaf and scalloped potatoes. Seems like a lot of work, doesn’t it? But it’s something to do. I have a cookbook that I brought from home, so I can probably get the recipes from there. Prices are really very high here. I guess it makes sense, given that everything must be imported. I was at the grocery store yesterday, and I just felt like I wanted to get some fresh vegetables. Everything was so expensive. I figured cabbage was a sure bet. Cabbage is always one of the cheapest vegetables per pound, don’t you think? I paid 485 fils for a small head of cabbage. That’s $1.74. Isn’t that a lot for a small cabbage? But maybe it’s what one should expect given that it has to be transported from far away. Other things are cheap. You could build a house out of flat bread. There’s a tiny little shop across the street where men bake some kind of fresh flat bread in a fiery oven right there every night. You can get a pizza-size flatbread, hot and delicious, for about a dime. It’s best eaten hot though. It gets kind of hard and rubbery after it cools.

Tonight, we’re all going on the bus to Fahaheel, a district in Kuwait that has a very elegant shopping center with fountains and nice restaurants. I was finally able to withdraw some money from the bank now that Ramadan is over. I was pretty strapped for cash for a while because the banks were only open from 11:00 to 1:00 during Ramadan, and I was in school at those hours every day. In a few days we’ll be back in school for full schedule days again. I have a lot of planning to do. I’ll probably try to put a dent in it today before we head off to Fahaheel.

top of the morning to ya

It is the first day of Eid vacation, but I am not sleeping in. Can you guess why? Can you guess why I’m wide awake at my computer at 6:15 in the morning, and I’ve already been awake for over an hour trying to figure out the digital recording equipment that I bought a year ago, brought with me to Kuwait, but still cannot use? Yes, the mosques. The noise started about an hour ago. At first I just thought, my goodness the mullah today needs some voice lessons! Then I realized that it was just some old guy in the mosque that had been handed the microphone, and he was just crying out something over and over again, Probably “God is Great“ or “God is Merciful“ or something like that. And then, from what I could tell, the microphone was just held in the crowd so that people could yell “God is Great, God is Merciful“ into it over and over. I say people, but it‘s all men. No women in the mosques. It was not like singing or chanting, it was just a kind of desperate yelling, a whole crowd of people yelling it at the same time into the microphone, and this blared at deafening levels into the early morning. They sounded like they were in torment. I actually thought it would be a great soundtrack for Hell in a horror movie. I got out of bed and paced back and forth once, thinking that I had to do something because I was getting upset about it, and then I decided that I would try to get a recording of it, because I don’t think people would believe my description. Unfortunately, I only got more upset as I tried to figure out the recording equipment and soon determined that it would require much more concentrated studying that I was prepared to do. Gradually the “God is Great! God is Merciful!” switched over to an angry sermon, and we all got to listen to the mullah scream about whatever it is that is bothering him.

Now it has stopped. It is 7:00. All the Muslims will now go home and go to bed. I am wide awake, and I don’t feel particularly relaxed. The noise itself is a nuisance, but the emotional context of the noise is what’s really disturbing. My mother wants me to just wear earplugs, but what if you lived somewhere where you could hear your neighbor beating his wife and kids? Would you just put in earplugs and have a pleasant sleep? I am somewhat hopeful that all of the frenzy will die down once Ramadan is officially over. Maybe that’s today. It has something to do with the moon, nobody will say when Ramadan is starting or ending--it has to be announced from the mosque. So anyhow, maybe it will really calm down now.

To be very honest, I must admit something. The noise and disturbance outside is only a replacement for the noise and disturbance inside. It is like when I was kid and I stubbed my toe, and my older brother would say, “I’ll pinch your arm real hard, and then you won’t feel your toe anymore!” Life is awfully noisy and not usually very peaceful. If Kuwait is the arm-pinch, what is the stubbed toe that I’m not feeling? The fact that I am a single, middle-aged funny man without a life plan? But life plans don’t often go the way we want them to anyway, do they? Better not to have one, and trust God. After all, God is Great, God is Merciful.

interfaith dialogue

Here is a transcript of an online conversation I had with a Syrian man who is learning Japanese. We didn't talk about Japanese though.


K: hi jon , how is life ? how are you ?
J: depressed
K: oh, why ? could you tell me ? what happened !
J: why don't you tell me about yourself instead.
J: You're where? UAE right?
J: are you enjoying life there
K: well not that much
K: life here is expensive and my salary is low . so i can't do much activity
J: If you had the money, would there be a lot of fun things to do? What would you do?
K: hmm. I would go to swim in Jumeira beach each weekend and I would go to music shows .and
K: to a lot of shopping
J: There are music shows there? Nice. Kuwait is a cultural wasteland.
K: and enjoying parties
J: You're 20-something right?
K: you know night life also
K: i am 24
K: and you ?
J: me what? my age? I'm nearly twice your age.
K: i see.
K: and what do you do in your weekends?
J: not much.
J: Are you fasting?
K: yep
K: i enjoy fasting
K: have you visited dubai before?
J: no
J: but you're in one of the other emirates, I thought. you're in dubai?
K: i am in ajman city 50 km near dubai
J: are you still practicing Japanese?
K: yep
J: ganbatte ne
K: i make little advancments. still beginner
J: I am a beginner with arabic
J: but I have a problem with regards to arabic because I am finding the arabic culture to be too conservative for me, and this affects my enthusiasm for learning the language.
K: you mean no alcohol and not sexualy liberated , right ?
K: but still you can enjoy other things in arabic culture !
J: There is more to liberal thinking than sex and alcohol. Those are small things, really.
K: i understand. you mean money and politics
K: Jon , can i ask what you are working in kuwait ?
J: I'm teaching. What country are you from? You're not a native of UAE are you?
K: i am from syria
K: what are you teaching ?
J: does it matter?
K: hmm. just out of curiousity
J: I teach English to children with learning disabilities.
K: i see . nice job
J: Your job is technology related?
K: yep
J: My Arabic tutor is also from Syria. He is a nice man, but also very conservative.
K: you are lucky to have syrian arabic tutor.
J: Yes, I've heard that Syrian Arabic is very good.
K: ya , sure
J: Have you ever had any non-Arab friends?
K: ya, many ..
K: from france , germany and england.
K: when i was in syria. i used to make language exchanges with foriegn students who came there to study arabic.
K: with some of them , the relation develped from language partners to friends
J: nice
K: and you . have you ever had any arab friends?
J: No, I never have. I rarely even met any Arabs before coming to Kuwait. Now that I am in Kuwait, I have opportunities to meet Arabs, but there are few social venues for meeting them. My tutor is a nice man, though we have little in common.
J: I meet more Indians and Pakistanis.
J: Language is also a great barrier with the Arabs I'm meeting. Maybe after I learn more things will change greatly for me. I would like to meet Arab intellectuals.
K: i see.
J: Does that make you think anything?
K: i think that you want to understand the arabic mentality , that is why you want to meet intellectuals
J: I watched a program on CNN about life in the Middle East, and they interviewed people at a music festival. These people were interested in peace and freedom of expression. They said that while the news often shows us the segment of Arabic culture that is extremely religious, there is this other side of Arabic culture. I would like to find that other side. The side that likes to demonstrate their religioius piety is everywhere, but I don't see the other side much.
J: Do you understand what I mean by demonstrative piety? We also have many Christian fundamentalists in the US who take this role. I find it very distasteful. The idea of blaring a religious sermon over loudspeakers so loudly that forces everyone to hear your religious beliefs - I find it very offensive.
J: What are they usually saying during those Friday sermons when they are yelling from the mosques? Do you know?
K: you make me really laugh . yelling from the mosques!!
K: ya, i know what they are yelling !
K: do you want me to tell you ?
J: Do you think I am joking, Khalid? They are screaming and yelling in an angry voice. It makes me very upset, though I have no idea what they are saying. There are 3 mosques all around my apartment.
J: Please tell me.
K: ohh, three mosques around your apartment. you are trapped man !
J: It does not give me a very good feeling.
K: i see.
J: So what are they saying?
K: hmm. lots of things
K: first of all . mercy from God to all muslims.
K: peace , hope and love between muslims
J: I'm sorry but I don't believe that. That kind of message is not delivered in an angry voice.
K: and some sayings against Mr.bosh and his regiem
K: who made war in Iraq and who continues to interfier with middle east issues
K: messages against Israel and Jews
K: Jon, what do you know about Islam?
J: Have you ever met a Jew?
K: no , still pinning hope that one day i meet one
K: we don't see jews in arabic countries. rarely!
J: I have met many Jews. Every Jew I have ever met was very decent and good-hearted. I love Jews.
K: well. this is great that you have met many nice Jews. I hope I can also meet nice jews
K: where did you meet them?
K: In America ?
J: I think I have a pretty informed idea of Islam. I was introduced to Islam when I was a teenager. I had a good friend from Hyderabad who was a devout Muslim. Unfortunately the Jews often have a great feeling of insecurity. They call this a "persecution complex." It is because they have been persecuted for hundreds of years. As you know, there are many Muslims who savor the thought of killing a Jew. Yes, I met Jews in America. I had a very close friend who was a Jew when I was in college. He helped me through some very difficult times in my life. He died from heart illness at a very young age. I was with him days before he died.
K: I am sorry for your friend. really hope that God bless him.
K: but , how told you that Muslims savor the thought of killing Jews?
K: well, I really want you to learn Arabic in order to understand Quran
J: I saw it on YouTube.
K: what did you see in YouTube?!
J: There was a little girl who was trained by her parents to say that Jew were dogs and should be killed.
J: She was a very small girl, barely able to talk.
J: It was in Arabic with English subtitles. It made me very sad.
K: Oh, no Jon. Her father is realy sick
K: no good father will teach his little daughter those kind of things.
J: I agree with you about that.
K: he is for sure not a raw muslim model
K: It seemed that he had suffered a lot dear Jon.
K: that is why he turned to that bad state.
K: I really want you to study and to be perfect in Arabic . so that you can read Quran
J: Some people just have a tendency toward hatred. We have many Christians who feel the same way about people who do not think like them. They are fundamentalists. Every religion has fundamentalists.
K: but this is their problem not the Religion problem i think
K: it is their problems to be fundamentalists , not Islam's or Christanity's problem
K: In Quran for example, God has praised several time Jews
K: He is telling that lots of admired prophets were Jews.
J: Forgive me for saying this, but I don't believe the Quran comes from God. I believe it is a book of religious teachings like any other religious book including the Bible. I believe that God reveals himself to us in our lives. Our life story is God's communication to us. This is my belief.
K: Then let me say to me that Quran include your life story and my life story , and thousands and millions of other societies who were one day living creatures upon our beautiful planet
J: I can tell that you have a good heart and a beautiful spiritual attitude.
K: those qualities that you mentioned , Quran always taught me to be spiritual and to respect others .
K: I can be your arabic tutor for free. Just for one reason
J: Well, if you want to attribute everything to the Quran, that's okay. I think your decency reflects not what Quran has done with you, but rather what you have done with the Quran.
K: well even though I don't agree on that. I still want to be your tutor so that one day you will be able to read and judge
K: maybe you will change my vision on Quran , as I really seek truth
K: Truth and nothing but Truth
K: I am really open to all people.
J: When a person immerses himself in something, the ideas will inevitably alter his thinking. If you were to study Buddhism or Christianity or Judaism or even Hinduism very seriously, you would start to see truth there, and if you don't turn back, you would become a convert. I know that as a human being, I have an impressionable mind, and I could be drawn into any of these. But I don't want to go in that direction. Therefore, I look at the Quran as a kind of trap. I am not interested in studying it. I trust God to lead me in my life. I don't need to seek truth because it comes to me every day.
K: I see.
J: This is really true, Khalid. Also your life experience gives you the direction of your soul's journey. If it is consistent with the Quran's teaching from birth to death, it is still the story that life has given you.
J: Thank you for hearing my thoughts and sharing yours. I appreciate having this conversation with you. It is the first time I have spoken candidly with a Muslim.
K: me also. I appreciate it.
J: I have an idea. I know that Muslims pray at designated times during the day. I pray at undesignated times. But I always pray when I am going to bed and falling asleep. I will be praying soon as I lay down for my night of sleep. I will pray for your peace and happiness without any specific wish for any change in your religious status. Please do the same for me.
K: sure sure. I really pray for your happiness. Have a nice sleep . sweet dreams also. Hope to talk to you soon next time
K:
J: Good night!
K: Good night and take care
K: Bye
J: Masalaama
K: مع السلامة

in lieu of progress reports

I seem to have reached the point of routine. I must have adjusted to my normal state of being a teacher because I am terribly bored with school work and procrastinating like there’s no tomorrow. (Wait a minute… if procrastinate means “put it off till tomorrow” then how can you put something off till tomorrow like there’s no tomorrow? Oh well.) My progress reports were supposed to be done by the end of the day, but I just packed all my paperwork in my briefcase and brought it home and left it on the couch. It is still there, untouched. I have spent the evening with my banjo trying to figure out songs which are probably unsuitable for the banjo. Can anyone really play “It Ain’t Me Babe” on the banjo? I don’t think so. I sure can’t.

My favorite shuttle driver has been transferred to a different route. He was an Indian from Madras. His buddy, another guy from Madras, still drives us to the grocery store. Today I talked to this #2 Madras guy about his family. Communication is very dicey with these Indians. They mix English up with their native language because that’s what is commonly done in India, and they don’t slow down because they don’t know that it’s not normal English. I think he told me that he wanted to bring his wife and child to Kuwait with him, and his wife drank poison because she didn‘t want to come. She went to the hospital, and now she’s okay, but she didn’t come. So I guess her tactic worked. He told me that he is Hindu, and said that the other Madras guy is Hindu, too. I found this interesting because the other guy had told me that he was Christian. I wonder if Hindu religion is somewhat malleable. Maybe you can be a Christian for a while if you feel like it, the gods don’t mind. The grocery store was a madhouse. The funny thing about Ramadan is that everybody is fasting, but you have never seen so much food in your life. It’s because they have huge feasts at the end of each day of fasting, which amounts to every night for a whole month. They gain weight. Speaking of which, I haven’t been to the gym for about a week. I hate paying for a taxi to go to the gym. It seems like I should get paid instead of having to pay. I do carry my heavy briefcase around. But I should go to the gym, because the swimming pool is probably cool enough to swim in now. It still gets into the low 100’s everyday, but that feels like nothing to us.

The paperwork is a drag, but I like my job. The kids are cool. There’s one boy, a little tyke with black-rimmed glasses who loves to say his English words so he just says them over and over. “Good morr-neenk! Good morr-neenk! Good morr-neenk! How arrre you! How arrre you! How arrre you!” The staff likes to say that they are spoiled rotten brats because they’re all from such rich families, but the truth is they are really very eager to please their teachers. You can say to them, “Will you be good boys and girls today?” and most of them will smile and nod eagerly practically jumping up and down to let you know how much they want to please you. If you said that to American kids I think they would laugh at you and shoot spitballs at you. Not that we don’t have behavior problems. But even their behavior problems are kind of funny. Two boys will be fighting. “Sir, he hit my shoulder.” “Well, sir, he put dirt on my paper.” “But sir, he said that my mother was hairy all over.”

I’m sitting here looking at my messy apartment. I have to clean it up. Tomorrow the maid comes. It’s funny that I feel like I need to clean up before the maid comes. She’s Indian too. I know it’s time for her to come when I see the little cottony bits of dust here and there on the floor. There is a lot of dust in the air here, and it gets in through the air conditioners. The maid told me her theory that something was wrong with my bed and cotton was spilling out of it and ending up on the floor. I just nodded and didn’t say anything about the AC. I enjoy hearing her ideas. She is not shy about telling me what I need to do. I need to get a new iron, she says, my iron no good. Also she tells me that my apartment not nice other school’s teacher have much more nice apartment my apartment not nice like other school teachers. She’s very proud of her English because she never went to school herself, and it is pretty good English when you consider that. She likes to be paid at the end of the month in one lump sum, otherwise her husband will spend the money.

Last week she showed up really early and I was getting ready for school. There was a small basket of candy in front of my door. Today is Sweets Day, she explained. Somebody give you sweets. There is a day in the middle of Ramadan called “Girghiahn” when the Kuwaitis dress in their traditional colorful clothes and do something like trick-or-treating. All the kids wore their outfits to school. It was pretty cute. It was funny to see the boys dressed up like little sheiks walking around. A lot of them handed out very fancy gift packs of candy. Mostly the fanciness was in the packaging, and inside was actually very cheap junk candy and peanuts in the shell. One day I didn’t have any lunch with me and I ate that junk candy all day. But I don’t think that’s why I got my case of 27-hour hiccups. The hiccup marathon was a mystery. I have no idea where that came from. I had the hiccups from around noon on Tuesday till Wednesday evening. I was giving an IEP test to a sixth grade kid when the hiccups hit me. Actually it was the same kid with the black rim glasses. I asked him how you say hiccups in Arabic, and he said “Mafaaghe.” He didn’t complete the test, and I had to continue testing him the next day and I still had mafaaghe. He didn’t seem that surprised though. He just looked at me funny. He probably thought foreigners get mafaaghe for a long time. At least the hiccups stopped for about an hour when I had to be interviewed at the Ministry of Education office on Tuesday night. I thought it was just going to be a formality, showing my certification and getting some papers stamped or something, so I didn’t dress up - I was wearing jeans and an Alaska t-shirt. When I got there, all the other teachers were wearing suits and ties. And there I was, jeans, t-shirt, and hiccups. One of the custodians there took me into a small kitchen and gave me a glass of cold water, and I held my breath and took tiny swallows ten at a time. It worked long enough for me to get through the interview. As soon as I got home they started up again. The next day I went through all kinds of superstitious ideas and philosophical analysis about what it meant to have the hiccups for so long. They finally stopped in the evening. I don’t know if it was the foamy non-alcoholic beer I drank or the intercessory prayers for a cure that my brother offered up on my behalf after reading of my ordeal in a family email.

I still don’t know who gave me the little basket of candy. Unlike the peanuts and sour chewies that were in all the kids’ Girghian bags, this had really good milk chocolates in it. I think it might have come from the neighbor across the hall. She’s a science teacher, and she makes big bucks moonlighting as a tutor for physics and chemistry students. She was the one who talked to me about her career the day that I broke the window when I was locked in. I hope she isn’t trying to flirt with me. But the chocolate is very good. I wonder if she hears me playing with the banjo sometimes. I have to say “playing with the banjo” because you see, I’m not actually playing the banjo. That would require some kind of knowledge of how to play a banjo.

Tomorrow I am going to have to go to my coordinator and tell him that I had technical difficulties and couldn’t complete my progress reports.

boogie man

When I put all my CD’s on the iPod to bring with me, I realized that cassettes couldn’t be uploaded. There were only a couple cassettes I thought I might want to listen to and tucked them into my suitcase. One was “Funkadelic Disco Dance Party” that I thought might be fun to have. It is Friday morning and the mosques are blaring their sermons from incredibly loud loudspeakers all around my apartment. The imam or mullah or whatever he is in the closest mosque is screaming at the world, and boy does he sound pissed! I don’t know what he’s yelling about, but I think it’s some kind of Islamic fire and brimstone stuff. I’m so glad I have that tape now along with a cheapo radio cassette player that I bought at the store here, because it is a perfect counter to the angry noise reverberating through the walls. I can still hear the guy screaming and yelling, but at least there is a soundtrack in the background singing, “I’m your boogie-man, That’s what I am, I’m into whatever I can! Be it early morning, or afternoon, or at midnight - it’s never too soon.”
Yo, dude, brothah Iz-Lamm dude, yall gotta just CHILL now, know'm sayin? Just take CHILL PILL, un'astan? Cause yall be driving me frickin nuts wid all dat screamin and yellin!

And now I am going to get up and boogie.

another American jerk acting up

I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later -- losing my cool. It’s just something I do now ant then. Mom, I can see you shaking your head and saying, “Why do you do that?” I am a person who stays very calm and takes in quite a bit without making too much of a fuss, but when I reach the boiling point I generally cause a little commotion, yes indeed, yes it’s true, oh yes.

I must back up a bit to tell about the doors to the lobby. I was given a key to those doors but it never worked. The doors were generally unlocked, but when they WERE locked on those rare occasions, I noticed other tenants would sometimes just give them a very hard yank, and just kind of rip the door open. I did it once and it worked. I figured that in a fix it would work again. But today, when I went down to go buy some toothpaste and chocolate at the store up the block I found that I was locked in my building. The hard yank didn’t work because the doors open out. It was only 5:30 pm and the doors are not supposed to be locked until midnight, but they were locked. I went back upstairs and called the harris (building supervisor) and I got a recording that said he could not be reached. I went down again, determined to yank that sucker open, or push it open, whichever the case may be. First I tried my key again on both doors, just to make sure. Then I took a hold of the door handle, propped my shoulder against the frame, and heaved with all my might. Well, the door didn’t open, but the large glass window broke into shards all held tight in its steel netting. None of the glass came out, and I wasn’t cut or anything, but I was a bit in shock. I had destroyed the door and still couldn’t get out of the building. There was nothing to do, so I came back upstairs and chatted with a neighbor for a while about her career options.

An hour later, I went down to see if anything had transpired. The harris was there, along with the business director of the company that owns our school, and someone else. They were all shouting and arguing about what had happened. I might have just slipped by without saying a word, but I thought I really should let them know what had actually happened. First they told me, “Apartment key no working heer - must your other key.” Then I showed them that I had the other key and demonstrated that it did not work. The harris said, “If you have a problem, you should call me.” That’s when I something popped in my head.

“I tried calling you. I tried calling you before, too, when my refrigerator didn’t work and how long did it take? Two weeks. And you said you would get my TV hooked up, and get me a lamp, too. Finally you came last night and brought someone to hook up my TV, but he charged me a fee, and guess what? Now the TV isn’t working again!”

“Not working? Okay I will call.”

And here’s where I got ugly. “DON’T BOTHER. I DON’T WANT TO WATCH TV. DON’T HOOK IT UP BECAUSE I DON’T EVEN WANT TO WATCH TV. ALL THE CHANNELS ARE MECCA!”

I must pause to say that while my behavior was not very sage-like, I will contend that it is rather off-putting to flip through the channels on Arabic cable network and find just one after another after another after another--broadcasts of the kneeling rows of bodies at that big mosque in Mecca, aerial shots with continuous chanting of the Quran blaring over loudspeakers. I hear it out my window coming from three directions. If you take a taxi ride you will hear it the whole way on the radio. And for the short time that I had a working television, I found that when I turn it on, there it is, again and again. You can find CNN and a couple movie channels from Dubai… it’s not really that I feel deprived of my American TV. But if anyone living here is really sick of hearing that eerie, depressing Islamic chanting night and day, he better not flip through the channels, because he will see the same thing in exponential proportions.

What was probably inappropriate was the disgust in my voice when I said the word “Mecca.” I said it like I was referring to something worse than a mixture of shit and vomit. I could see by the look on the business director’s face that he was surprised and disturbed. But I just turned and marched off to buy my toothpaste and chocolate.

I ended up buying only toothpaste and no chocolate, but when I got home and went to talk to my downstairs neighbors to vent my anger and admit my shame, they had some fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. They were very consoling and recommended playing the whole thing down with a shrug and bit of humor. Young as they are, they probably have more sense than me. Also they showed me that if I press a certain button on one of the two remote controls, the channel menu will appear. I am back in my own apartment now, and I just did tried the button, and the channels came on. Of course it came on a channel of the some guy chanting the Quran. You just can't win.

Those poor Muslims, force-fed their religion 24 hours a day. I can complain about it and say "mecca" with a bad attitude, and then come back and find that movie channel from Dubai. Those poor blokes have to feel guilty unless they bow down and beg for more. I wonder if the business director's look of surprise and disturbance came from the fact that he's really sick of hearing all that chanting too. Or maybe he really was offended. Probably a little of both.

school days

Administration has turned up the pressure, and suddenly all my time and energy goes into lesson plans and curriculum. I started Arabic lessons last week, but right now all I can do is say “how are you?” “how’s your health?” “I am well, thanks be to God” and count to five. The fact is, I pretty much live in an ex-pat bubble, and even if I wanted immersion my job wouldn’t really allow it. But the fact that I have broken the ice at least makes Arabic a little less intimidating as a language. I’m told that it’s a very structured and organized language, so once I get some momentum, maybe I’ll make good progress. The writing system isn’t that bad. I pretty much knew the alphabet before I arrived. It is interesting to see again how a language really contains all the nuances and values of a culture. Modern standard Arabic, it seems, can hardly be spoken without constant references to Islamic belief. It doesn’t mean that everyone is devout. Just like when people say “how are you?” it doesn’t mean that they care. It’s just what you say.

I seem to be settling in to a bit of a routine. I catch a shuttle to school in the morning. I wear a necktie, which is not required, but I figure “earn a point here, lose one there.” Since my core attitude is not 100% party line, I’ll wear a necktie to help balance the scales. I try to keep up an appearance of being highly organized, though the truth is I haven’t studied all the IEP’s, haven’t worked out all the differentiated instruction I’m supposed to be doing, etc. and quite frankly I much prefer just taking a holistic view of it all, as much as I can get away with. I feel very good about working with the kids. Sixth grade is a wonderful level to teach. I really enjoy being with them. My students are reading at a 3rd and 4th grade reading level, but emotionally and socially they are just like the regular sixth graders I worked with in Pennsylvania. One thing that I find is that they do love to talk, and in an ESL situation that is a good thing. I just have to tell them to slow down and pay attention to their pronunciation. It’s easy for them to rattle on in a kind of heavily accented speech that’s practically an Arabic-English pidgin, and all the other kids will understand them but I won’t have a clue. So you get some boy telling a story that ends with some kind of a funny thing and everyone in the class bursts out laughing, and I didn’t get a word or it. The students are going to like me because I’m not a heavy disciplinarian. I’m just not. Sometimes you just can’t be what you’re not. I think I keep adequate control of my classroom, but I gain it through persuasion and loyalty, not discipline. My assistant is a young Indian woman and I think she feels challenged by the looseness of my classroom management style, but in the end I believe she will learn a lot from working with me. She has her own teacher credential and if she manages to move somewhere that doesn’t practice racial discrimination, she will someday have her own teaching job.

After school I typically take the shuttle back home and start wasting time for the rest of the day, but sometimes I go get groceries or go to the gym. I tried a yoga class last week, but it was too advanced for me. I like yoga, but if you can’t even get into the general range of the pose, it’s just a frustrating struggle, too jerky and reachy to benefit from the stretching and breathing that yoga is supposed to be. Like so many things, a good teacher makes all the difference. I wish I had kept up with tai chi. If I had, I could be teaching it now. The gym has its pros and cons. It’s never closed, so you can go for a midnight swim if you feel like it, and the water has cooled from hot to warm, so it’s not so unpleasant to be in.

Today is Thursday, and that’s like a Friday back home - no work tomorrow.
Movie night is postponed till tomorrow because we’re going to do some evening errands tonight. Things get put on hold because of Ramadan hours. One of the things I will probably do is make a travel reservation for Egypt. Everybody leaves Kuwait during the winter break. A few people go home, but most take advantage of the fact that Kuwait is a great base from which to travel. In fact, people often say that the best thing about being in Kuwait is the travel opportunities to other places. The young couple I’ve gotten to know here who live on the 4th floor told me they were going to Egypt and I could tag alone if I like. Now it looks as though we may have different ideas of what we want to do there, but I have the option to follow them around if traveling alone is too much of a drag. Everyone says to do the Nile cruise, but my friends are iffy about it. Anyone interested in joining me?

I’m at school now, and the Arabic language teacher who’s tutoring me just stopped in to give me a little practice. Hello, how is your health? I am well, thanks be to God, 1 2 3 4 5.

september twelfth

Ramadan starts tomorrow. It’s a one-month period of Islamic observance during which people fast during daylight hours. Kuwaitis take it quite seriously. You can be arrested for eating in public. It doesn’t matter if you are Muslim or not; they expect you to respect the tradition. The expats go along with this in good humor, keeping their sandwiches and Cokes behind closed doors. But it does require an adjustment, because all restaurants, whether they are fast food or sit-down dining, must be closed until sundown. To complicate things for me, my refrigerator stopped working about a week ago. First I noticed that the stuff in the freezer wasn’t frozen. Then the refrigerator section itself started acting “a bit dodgey” as my Brit friend here would say. I spoke to our harris. Have you heard of this word, “harris”? I never did before coming here. It’s something like a building manager. Our harris is from Sri Lanka. He lives with his wife and children in a tiny cramped unit that is about one third the size of our apartments. He is paid a tiny sum to take care of all building responsibilities and must be available at all times. He’s probably about 30 years old, but is missing teeth, looks gaunt and tired, and regards us all with a manner of humble servitude that makes me feel almost ashamed of myself for my privilege. But he is rather notorious among teachers here for saying one thing and doing another. Some have told me that I can’t really count on him to do anything unless I bribe him. So now I’ve been without a refrigerator for about a week, and I’m wondering if I need to give him a few KD to get things going. I came right out and asked him, “If I give you some money, will you get me a good refrigerator?” I saw the look on his face for a split second as he calculated what to answer. “No, no, Sir,” he insisted. “Company weel pay.” Meanwhile I’m hearing stories about residents here who have gone through four, five, six refrigerators - yes. Nobody’s really sure why they break down so much. One theory is that the dust coming through the air conditioning muddles them up. Another theory is that there are really only about a half dozen refrigerators that keep getting hastily repaired and rotated.

There are some good things about Ramadan. Because the children also fast, and it is a total fast during daylight hours--they can’t even drink water!--they are not expected to have the energy to do very much. So school days are shortened. Teachers are asked not to assign much homework, and things lighten up for everyone. Also, the evenings are festive, because once the sun goes down it’s a kind of reverse mardi-gras effect, everyone catching up for lost gluttony. Of course there are no drunken people wearing feathers, unfortunately, but I’m told the streets will be jammed with traffic from everyone going to family banquets and restaurants.

This is probably a good time for expats like me to try to lose a pound or two. It’s very inconvenient to eat during the day because you have to hide, and inconvenient during the evenings because you have to deal with the crowds. I had an appointment with a personal trainer, a buff Filipino guy (don’t see many of those, do you?) at the fancy gym where I paid too much for my membership. Filling out the card he said, “Of course number one thing, losing weight.” Of course. I have another appointment with him tonight. He’s a bit of a slave driver. I think he enjoys being in the position of commanding his rich customers to work harder, do more, move, move, that’s only 30 kilos, you can do that. Like I said, I paid too much. It was a year’s membership and cost the equivalent of more than a thousand dollars - it kind of makes me cringe now. It’s fancy and shiny and clean because it’s connected to a nice modern hotel, but the facilities are really pretty average. Not very spacious, few classes, and the pool was a big disappointment. Hot water. It would be a good public bath if it were in Japan, but it’s pretty lousy for swimming laps. Last night, however, it wasn’t too bad… cooled down to a few degrees above body temperature, a bearable luke warm. I swam about 8 or 10 laps… pretty pathetic really, but we’ll blame it on the temperature. Water temperature is a perplexing matter here in Kuwait. The taps are all marked with red or blue. Do you think hot water comes out of the red tap? Wrong. Hot comes out of the blue, cool from the red. I laughed about this and assumed that it was another of the goofy mix-ups that are common here. It was explained to me later. The red tap comes from the hot water heater tank, and the blue tap comes directly from the plumbing pipes that are run in the ground. During the summer, the ground is so hot that the water being piped in comes out hot enough for a shower, and the hot water heater is turned off so that it can serve as a holding tank and allow water to cool while it rests in the tank inside the air conditioned building. Strange, huh? In the winter, the ground will cool down, and the hot water heater will be turned on.

Yesterday was September 11th. I asked my students if they knew why it was a famous day in America. One of them knew about the Twin Towers. Some students asked me who did it? I know they were testing me. I wouldn’t be surprised if their parents tell them that the Jews did it and blamed it on the Muslims, or some such nonsense. I told them that terrorists did it. They wanted to know more, but I changed the subject. There is a list of subjects and topics ranging from BLT sandwiches to the Holocaust that we are forbidden from discussing in class, and while I’m sure I could probably manage to have the discussion without breaking the rules, I just didn’t feel like bothering with anything political. I am a natural wave-maker, and if I am as careful and prudent as I can possibly manage, I will probably do just the right amount of stirring to stay out of trouble.

long day, late night

Kuwait provides this challenge: if I want to complain, it will give me sufficient reason to complain for the duration of my time here. It’s not too hard to imagine myself someday boarding a plane and saying, “What a waste of two years of my life.” It’s entirely up to me whether I make this a wonderful and rewarding time or put my energy into negativity and complaining. In that way, Kuwait is a perfect opportunity for training my mind, nurturing my faith, and developing my ability to seek out the good in life. Of course there will be times when I will want to just give myself permission to bitch a little bit. I’ve been around people who put every thought and comment through a filter to make sure that they’re being up-beat and positive, and folks like that can get awfully tiresome, can’t they? Part of the fun of sharing an experience with friends is knowing you’re on the same wave-length regarding the unpleasant as well as the pleasant. I remember one time when I was in Japan, I went on a trip with all the other exchange students to visit some famous places. It became apparent that our trip was going to be all taken up with sitting on trains, being herded around with no freedom to explore, and made to sit and listen to dull lectures and speeches, and we started to adopt a gleeful irreverence. One sweet-faced blond girl won us all over with her explosive commentary chock-full of profanity and rude humor. I loved her! The trick is to do all the bad-mouthing you like in the name of fun, but in your heart you mustn’t believe it. So I might refer to this place as “kuHATE” and chime in when my comrades here rip it apart, but at the end of the day I have to remember that I am making a difference here, and Kuwait is making a difference in me. That’s a gift.

I met parents tonight. What a mixed bag of nuts they were. The last one left me with a really bad taste in my mouth. His manner was cold, rude, and arrogant. He showed no interest and had a look of mild disgust on his face. I told him about how his son had done a nice job on our first project. The boy was there, and I told him to translate for his dad if he needed to, but the dad said in good English, “Not necessary, I’m fine.“ As he walked out without a goodbye or even so much as a nod, I said, “Very nice meeting you, have a nice evening” to the back of his head. I considered that maybe he was ashamed of his learning-disabled son, and was embarrassed to be there at all. Who knows. I recently read that contrary to the official gratitude that Kuwait expresses to United States for our help in repelling Saddam’s forces during the Persian Gulf War, the majority of Kuwaitis actually dislike the United States, too pro-Israel, messed up Iraq, yada, yada, … yawn. People who judge an individual because they associate him or her with some government are just ignorant, what else is new. The man’s son is such a nice kid, really a kid you can’t help but like. The other parents were pretty friendly. Just about all of them spoke good English. One divorced woman wanted advice about how to deal with her daughter, eleven going on seventeen with a bit of a naughty rock-star girl style that is bound to create shockwaves in Kuwait. Oh my goodness, that girl is a walking sexual revolution waiting to happen. I don’t think they’re going to be able to keep her in a burka. All in all, I think the parents are glad that someone appreciates their children. And I do. I really like their kids. They are weird, wonderful special ed kids, unable to hide their hearts. But it sure was a long day, and I know I’m going to have my work cut out for me, and I wish I didn’t have to make such a conscious effort to spin positive, … and my refridgerator has broken down. Last night I had a very nice dream in which I had a baby daughter that was my own child (of all things!), and I was in a cottage-sort of a place, and my cat Peter was there with us, and my brother showed up and we were all very happy and I said, “I know I’m dreaming, aren’t I?” and my brother said, “Yes, you have been for about an hour now.” It’s late, and I’m tired, and I probably won’t be able to get those neurons to recreate that dream for me, but what the hell you never know. Signing out, oyasumi nasai means goodnight in Japanese, no idea what it is in Arabic, the burning desire to know hasn't come around yet.

how to lose your rant

Yesterday a few of us decided to work late and then called a recommended taxi driver to shuttle us around. First we went to the gym for a work-out, then we got groceries, and finally back to our apartments, or “flats’ as they are more commonly called here. The driver’s name is Mohammed. He’s a chubby Bangladeshi man in his 30’s, very polite and smiley. He has a habit of starting sentences with “this is.” This is very happy to be of service, Sir. This is I come back at six thirty, pick you up.

I was hungry so I bought a pack of chicken-hotdog crescent buns at the deli and waited with Mohammed while the others finished their shopping. I offered Mohammed one of the snacks. He put his hand on his heart and declined my offer. “This is I am very fat,” he said. I thought of his wife making big pots of curry and rice for their family. The conversation went like this.
“You have children?”
“Yes, sir, I have.” He beamed. “You have?”
“Me, no.”
“No?”
“No children, no wife.”
“But why, sir?”
“Some people don’t marry, Mohammed. You understand that.”
“But marry is life, sir. Before marry, this is no life. After marry, this is life. Why you no marry?”
For some reason I felt no particular sting. I was just touched by his sincerity. How does one begin to communicate the endless tangle and puzzle of something that can never be understood, even by the person who knows it first hand? I decided to borrow a completely insufficient answer and let him fill in the blanks.
“I am a funny man,” I said. “You understand, don’t you?”
He tried to look like he didn’t know what I meant, but I could see it register.
“Oh, come on, Mohammed. I know you understand. You know about this.”
“Ah,” he smiled.
“Yes, I know you understand. You are a very smart man. You understand.”
“Thank you, sir.” I think he smiled because I‘d seen through his attempt at playing innocent. He understood well enough. Funny man. It was a shallow and incomplete way of putting it. No matter. Wording was not paramount here.
The others finished their shopping and we loaded it all in the trunk and headed home. On the way we continued talking about children. Mohammed had “one children” -- a little one, three years old. His wife and child were with him in Kuwait on a family visa, but he wanted to take them back to Bangladesh. Bangladesh is green, yes? Yes, Bangladesh very green. Not like Kuwait. Kuwait very bad. Before nice, now no more nice. Everything expensive.
Mohammed had told us that we could pay him whatever we wanted. He did not set a price. My friends and I had agreed on a price of 4 dinars for the combined trips. That’s about $14 for three rides. He had picked us up at 4:30 and had mostly just waited around for us while we did our workout and bought groceries. It was going on 8:00 pm. Now I was thinking maybe we should give him an extra dinar for all the waiting, but I knew that my friends were trying to stretch their “settling in allowance” from school and had probably just spent most of what they had left on their groceries. I have a tendency to want to tip everyone here, because I know the money is worth more to the poor people here than it is to me. But I had a feeling I would be calling Mohammed for a lot of taxi rides, and if I gave him a big tip the first time, he might be disappointed in the future. I compromised and gave him a half dinar tip. I know he’s not that poor--after all he has a job and a fat belly. But he's from Bangladesh and has come to Kuwait to drive a taxi and accept what people will pay.

I’m finding it very eye-opening to meet and connect with people of vastly different socioeconomic worlds. Things matter differently. I used to be embarrassed to ever wear the ring my Aunt Dot gave me, because it was a bit flashy and gold and had a diamond. I wore it once when I was working at Mechanicsburg High School because I thought maybe the special ed kids there wouldn’t tease me, but they still did. Someone said, “Look, he’s wearing a gold Mafia ring!” and I didn’t wear it again. But here, the rich Kuwaiti kids at school don’t even notice it. They probably have one maid at their house whose sole job is just to polish all the family’s gold. So I don’t feel scandalized by wearing something “rich.” At the same time, all the political correctness and self-righteous indignation that becomes the coping mechanism of “funny men” at home just doesn’t translate here. You see too big a picture. Your pet causes start to feel silly. A few weeks ago I was sitting with my brother, sister, niece and nephew, de-stemming the wild elderberries that we picked on his land and discussing my distaste for weddings. I really don’t enjoy weddings. I had asked my other nephew if he would mind my not attending his wedding long before I knew I would be out of the country anyhow. I wanted to get my everyone used to the idea that I was not really into being a wedding guest. And I made the comment, “Since I would not legally be allowed to get married to a partner, I don’t want to go to any weddings.” Well, my family can go along with my liberalism, but only so far. My sister said, “You could get married in Massachusetts, couldn’t you?” and I had to admit the faultiness of my logic.

If anything, coming to Kuwait has made it even harder to buy into my own arguments. I am reminded by other people’s lack of understanding that I myself don’t understand very much. And when one admits that one doesn’t understand so much, it’s harder to keep a firm position. It’s a very vulnerable place to be. Assumptions evaporate. The women in their black burka covers start to look less sinister... they sort of remind me of nuns. The call from the minaret starts to have less of the sound of an evil chant, and I imagine that the guys doing it probably compare themselves to one another and harbor some vanity about their singing voices. And in this city of two million, there are certainly a lot of misfits who don't really understand what their role is in the larger scheme of things, but they don't get any further than wondering about it. I'm not sure I have any less in common with them than I do with the edgy radical types I've admired and emulated from time to time back home. The world's just too damn big and crazy. You can't figure anything out.

So now off to a party at the apartment of my friends who bought all those groceries last night. My contribution will be the bucket of mango juice to which I added necessary ingredients and let sit on a shelf for a week, according to another expat's instructions, for desired fortification. Cheers.

school has begun

I am sitting in my classroom, listening to some old Arabic music on the radio. The maid is washing the windows. People who do cleaning here are not called "custodians" or "janitors," they are called "maids." Maids are very inexpensive here. I am going to have one come to my apartment and wash the floors once a week. Dust comes through the airconditioning system and coats the floors with regularity.

Today will be my third day with the students. I have three classes of eight. Boy to girl ratio is about 4 to 1. The students are very polite and respectful. It is definitely a special needs population, but their ability levels cover a broad range. I have one boy who needed help attaching two pieces of paper with a paper clip; another boy has read all the Harry Potter books and wants me to teach him Japanese. They are innocent and sweet in a way that special ed teachers know these kinds of kids can be. I am going to enjoy my job. It will be the best thing about being in Kuwait, and that is how it should be. Yesterday afternoon I was telling one of the other teachers that if I had it do over again, I'm not sure I would have said yes to this offer. It is really not a very attractive place to live. Take a walk through the filthy hot streets and you can't help but ask why anyone would choose to come here if it weren't a financial imperative. But I know I will learn so much here. I spoke to the head of the Arabic department head about recommending a tutor for me. I don't know if I'll make a lot of progress with all the responsibilities of teaching and the amount of time it takes to do anything when you are operating in a foreign environment (buying a few groceries becomes a major excursion). But it won't hurt to give it a try.

We will be having open house on Sunday night, and I'll be meeting a lot of parents - the idea of talking to the mothers in their black abayas kind of gives me a strange feeling, but I'll get over that hurdle. Someone told me that when Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait, the majority of families took refuse in Saudi, and there they were preached at for having given in to modern evils and told that the invasion was Allah's punishment. Since then there has been a conservative trend, and now there are more women in black cover than ever before.

Gotta get ready for class now...

gimme that old time religion... well, maybe not

I went to mass. It was the most austere and conservative mass I think I have ever attended. What a total drag. No music, no homily, no smiles or handshakes during the sign of peace (only nervous nods), the church was full but you could have heard a pin drop. I saw only one other person who looked like she was of European descent, but I didn’t get a chance to say hello to her or anything. This was a very sober affair, and a glaring reminder of why people sometimes refer to themselves as "recovering Catholics." I think it is what mass must have been like decades ago. Nobody made eye contact going in or coming out. Outside I looked for a friendly face. Some people wandered to a courtyard in the back where they knelt on the cement and prayed in front of a statue of Mary. There was no church bulletin. Finally I went up to a lady and asked her if she spoke English. She did. I asked her if the service was typical for the cathedral. No music, no homily? She looked at me with disapproval, as if I had asked why there weren’t dancing girls and a disco ball. But at least she gave me an explanation of sorts. Though Catholics can fulfill their obligation to attend mass any day after Thursday (special rule in place here since Sunday is a work day) some masses are big masses and some are small daily masses. Even thought the church had been full, the one I had attended was a daily mass.

Ironically, the gospel reading had been about the parable of the talents. The servant who didn’t take any risks made no profit for his master, and he was sent away with nothing. To me, the spiritual lesson is so obvious. How can people read scripture and miss the whole point? I guess they’ve been doing it forever, focusing on prescriptions and rules. To see the these poor Asian immigrants, driven by poverty to leave their homes and take jobs in this cruel, hot city… they flock to church for hope and spiritual encouragement, and what do they get? A dry religious exercise. Maybe the eucharist is enough for them, but I think they could be given so much more. It reminds me of a movie I went to see with my dad when I was a little kid. “The Poseidon Adventure,” about a huge cruise ship that struck by a tidal wave. There were two priests in the story, one progressive and provocative, the other traditional and devout. The traditional priest was with the sick people in the infirmary when the tragedy struck. They all started shuffling their way to the upper levels of the ship. Meanwhile, the progressive priest was in the company of a group of survivors who figured out that the ship was filling with water and was going to flip completely upside down. They knew that the best chance for survival was to get to the bottom of the ship so that they would be on top when it flipped around, and they were actually working their way down instead of up. When the two parties crossed paths, the priests exchanged words. The young modern-thinking priest begged the other priest to bring his people and follow them, but even after the older priest understood that he was leading them the wrong way, he refused to change courses. He said that the sick people would never make it anyhow, so he was going to accompany them to their deaths. It seems saintly, somehow, to join the hopeless, but the lie in that is that people are indeed hopeless. I don’t believe they are. There has got to be a little more brightness to the message. Maybe it's there and I just missed it today. Maybe I’ll go back one more time for a big mass and see if they bring out the dancing girls and disco balls.

midnight at the oasis

We took a long walk tonight to go to a large bargain store. I bought some local sweets - don’t know what they are, but they looked exotic so I bought a variety of types. I’m going to eat one now.

Okay, here it is. It’s little ball of white doughy confection. It looks like window putty. It comes in a little white candy paper and all enclosed in clean cellophane with a tiny bit of Arabic writing on it in gold. Let me see if I can decipher the writing… I have learned all the letters of the Arabic alphabet, but I can’t always make them out. It looks like it says “Irwama” or something like that. Let’s have a little taste… Hm… not bad. I was kind of hoping that it would taste like Italian nougat candy, and in fact it does. But it has pistachios inside instead of almonds. Mm. Pretty good.

It sure was a long, hot, dusty, stinky walk to that store, so I’m glad something good came out of it. By the time I got home I was dying for a beer. I bought some Budweiser NA at the fancy foreigner’s grocery store yesterday. NA, sadly stands for “Non Alcoholic.” My supervisor says “All the calories and none of the kick.” But you know, it still tastes good. I’m on my second one now. I just had to open another. Beer sure is a funny drink. You know, it really tastes awful until one day you have a drink of it and all the sudden you like it. Maybe Kuwait will be like that.

I was in a bad mood tonight. I took a nap and woke up in time to join the bus for the Welcome To Kuwait reception for foreign teachers at AUK (American University in Kuwait). The lady who organized the program had scheduled a guest speaker who called and cancelled at the last minute, so she did the best she could and talked to us about teaching Kuwaiti children… it was kind of a drag, she didn’t have that much to say, but we did our best to be a polite audience.

Today I called the international clinic to make an appointment about my persistent cough and persistent back-ache. A chiropractor I saw before leaving PA mentioned that the two could be related, and it might indicate some kind of lung infection, so since I have medical insurance now I’m going to have it looked at. Kuwait employs a lot of people who speak English in various customer service jobs. You don’t always get real good English. You make a phone call and you hear the Arabic “chhashlllahmachhashlakan hummina hummina hummina” then “For English press two.” The girl answers the phone, a Filipino or something. She has an accent.
“Intearnational Kleenex, can I help you?”
“Yes, I made an appointment with Dr. Iman for the 18th because I know she’s on vacation, but I’d like to get an earlier appointment, even if it’s with a different doctor.”
“I’m sorry, madame, Dr. Iman is on vacation.”
“Please don’t call me madame. I’m a man.”
“Oh. I am sorry.”
“Do I sound like a woman?”
“Yes.”
“Oh… that’s embarrassing.”
“I’m sorry. Dr. Iman is on vacation.”
“I know. Can I cancel my appointment on the 18th and see another doctor please?”
“Yes, madame. What is your name?”
I told her my name and she made another appointment for me on Saturday. I think the doctor I’m going to see is Egyptian. I hope he’s good. My assistant told me to boil chunks of ginger and make a tea for the cough, and you know it really works pretty well, but it only lasts a little while, and the back pain doesn‘t really go away. I have been blaming it on the block of cement mattress I have in my apartment here, and maybe it will turn out to be nothing more than that.

Tomorrow I might try to get to the cathedral for mass. My assistant, the ginger tea recommender, is a Roman Catholic from Goa, India. She told me about seeing the relics of Saint Francis Xavier when his body was exposed for the faithful some years back. She says it was so wonderful to see him. I was rather appalled, but her sweet, devotional faith moved me. “Jon, you must go to mass while you are here in Kuwait,” she tells me. “Kuwait is a very hard place to be. You must go to mass while you are here.”
I think she’s right. I think I need to go.

hot fun in the summertime

It's 118 degrees outside right now. If it were 118 anywhere else I know, people would be panicking. Here, they just go about their business. I myself am starting to adopt a ho-hum attitude regarding the heat. A day or two after I arrived, I saw a construction worker out digging a building foundation in the intense oven heat with a shovel. The idea of toiling in this heat just boggles the mind, but you see them doing it.

One afternoon I walked home with my coordinator who lives in my building, and I didn't have a hat. I was worried that I was going to end up with burns on my head, but I was okay. If you spend hours inside in the air conditioning, it's actually kind of a rush to go through the sun and heat for a short while. It's sort of like those polar bear club people who jump into icy water in January. It's a feeling of being very daring. Of course the people who work out in the heat have none of that, they just suffer. But at least Kuwait provides public drinking water in big tanks on practically every street.

I went out to tell our shuttle driver that we were going to need a little more time before getting a ride home, and there was a distressed little bird on the sidewalk. I picked it up and put it in the shade where a water sprinkler was sending a fine spray into some planted greenery. (Yes, I did wash my hands immediately afterwards - don't want to get bird flu). Very little could survive here without drastic environmental manipulation. Desalinization of salt water from the Persian Gulf (called the Arabian Sea here, because the Arabs don't like Persians) and gargantuan airconditioning systems enable this city to exist.

Sometimes even the powerful air conditioning systems can't keep up with the heat. I joined the gym at the Holiday Inn, and I found it to be just a little too warm for a good work-out. The swimming pool there usually has coolers, but they are not working, so the pool is like a hot bath. I swam a few laps, but when you start to warm up from the exercise you just don't want to keep going. Hopefully they'll get that fixed. The gym membership was a bit of a splurge, and I'm not sure I'll get my money's worth. Can you believe people go there and sit in the sauna? I just have to laugh when I even think about it.

The heat at night is very different from the daytime heat. The wind starts blowing, and it's a very hot wind. It feels like a hair dryer. When the sun's shining intensely, the heat doesn't surprise you, but when it's dark out, you don't expect it to be so hot. Night time is when the skinny little stray cats come out of their hiding places and go scrounging for scraps in the dumpsters. They're never very big - kitten size. They're feral, of course, but you sense they know they come from a domesticated breed and once had a symbiotic relationship with people. They don't run immediately when you stop and look at them. They look back, momentarily confused, perhaps from some leftover feeling that tells them people will give them food. Or maybe people really do give them food sometimes, like we do with squirrels and pigeons, but I don't think there's a whole lot of that.

The speaker at the AWARE Center (Association for Western - Arab Relations and Exchange) told us that the women wearing those black-from-head-to-toe burkas aren't any hotter than the men in their white dishdashas. She postulated that black fabric forms a more shaded space and the sun doesn't penetrate, so the women are enjoying the shade as they walk around. Not sure about that one. Many of them wear gloves to cover their hands and put black gauze over their eye slits. Rumor has it that many of them wear Victoria Secret type sexy clothes under those robes. It wouldn't surprise me.

blah, blah, blog

Disclaimer: Don't know much about geography, and I'm not an expert on anything Kuwaiti, so as you read, please pardon my ignorance, and don't quote me on any of this. Thank you for your interest.

As I understand it, this is the last "weekend Thursday" in Kuwait. Until now, Kuwait has had its weekends set up to include the day before the Moslem sabbath, and the sabbath day itself. That was Thursday and Friday. I didn't even know that the work week went from Saturday till Wednesday until shortly before I arrived. I guess it's the same in Dubai, probably all over the Middle East. But Kuwait will be switching this weekend. From here on out, the weekend will fall on Friday and Saturday instead. I heard the government decided to switch it because of something to do with the stock market, and that makes perfect sense, since money is the whole point here in Kuwait.

I have been in Kuwait since Aug. 19th, and today is the 30th. The jet lag is over, the unpacking is done, the euphoria is over, and I'm fully engaged in my teaching job. I already feel like everything I can say about Kuwait is already cliche, because I've been making the same comments as the other new teachers have been making for the past 11 days, and the teachers who have been here for three or five or seven years seem to be making the same comments as well.

In a nutshell, Kuwait is strange place, a "boil" of teeming humanity in the most unlikely and inhospitable of natural environments imaginable. Mother Earth must have had a crazy idea when she gathered a full tenth of her biomass muck that would turn into oil reserves into a spot that would become a tiny nation of feuding desert tribes, eventually the most outrageous rags-to-riches story in the history of the planet. I was recently told that a mere forty or fifty years ago, the Kuwaitis were sword-bearing tribesmen, and that all their clan warfare persists today in the form of vicious family feuds. Kuwaiti culture, I was told, is a revenge-driven culture. Who knows if that's true, but it is something I will probably not forget hearing. I suspect that if it is true, it is quickly evolving into something else. There is tremendous wealth here, and I think managing their money is the full time job of many Kuwaitis.

Today the new hires went for medical tests and fingerprinting, and when I got back to school I told my assistant that to me it felt like an experience of apartheid. I had to explain to her that apartheid was the system that existed in South Africa in which ethnic communities were segregated and treated with blatant, unhidden racism. When we got to whatever facility it was where the medical tests were being done, there were hundreds of south Asians, I would guess mostly Indians, waiting. Hundreds. We arrived, Canadians, Americans, Brits, Australians, and (ironically) South Africans, on our little shuttle bus and were ushered past every one to the front of the line. It feels weird to have this undeserved priviledge. My assistant told me to be thankful to God for my good fortune, and I said, "Should I really thank God for an unfair advantage?" She agreed with me when I said it like that. The poor people here feel glad, I'm told, to have a chance to work and not starve. Regardless of how little they are paid or poorly they are treated, they are probably seriously better off than they would be in their home countries. Personally I find that I get great pleasure from giving them tips. A quarter KD (Kuwaiti Dinar) for a waitress or a driver results in such gratitude, it makes you feel like Santa Claus. It's a little twisted, I think, to bask in the satisfaction of doing a good deed for such a cheap price. It's Marie-Antoinettish. But I'd rather be guilty of that than not tip. The Kuwaitis do not tip. This I was told by the one Kuwaiti man with whom I have had a real conversation. The conversation was, incidentally, in Japanese. The world has always been strange, but it's getting stranger, isn't it?

I hesitated to do a blog for a number of reasons. First, I didn't want to take on the commitment. I figured once I started I might feel obligated to keep it up after I got tired of doing it. Secondly, it's very hard to say anything to everyone -- think about it. We all have complex lives with all sorts of interpersonal connections and relationships. You talk about different things with different people with whom you share different aspects of your life. Blogs are very public. Whether you make joke or express a personal concern, you are literally holding it out for the world to see. And that brings me to the third reason for hesitation. I have grown up in the United States, where free speech is enshrined in the constitution and much taken for granted. Here in Kuwait, it is possible to get oneself in hot water for saying the wrong thing. Shortly after arriving, I read in the Kuwait Times that a reporter had been arrested for his blog in which the Emir of Kuwait was insulted... and it wasn't even the blogger himself who wrote the insult - it was someone else who left a comment!! Both of them were arrested. The reporter was released after a couple days in jail and a public outcry from Kuwaiti citizens. So you see, self-censorship is necessary here. I will have to be cautious. To be fair, it's not just because of the freedom of speech issue. I wouldn't like it if someone talked about me in his/her blog, regardless of whether it was positive or negative. But it makes me wonder how long life as we know it will continue with our sense of having a right to privacy. So, even though I will feel like telling family and friends at home about my new teacher friends and new students, things will have to remain very general, out of respect and consideration.

Though it is not a workday, the school is going to be open today for teachers to prepare for the first day of classes on Sunday. I'm going in to work on curriculum and lesson plans. So far I've had very good feedback about my ideas, and I think I'm going to have a successful time with my job. My fears about the professionalism of the school have been abated. Though my school serves students with learning disabilities, it has an excellent reputation here. I recently learned that I'm going to have one of the grandchildren of the royal family in one of my classes.