Not quite holiday - part one

Buckle your seat belt, this could be a long ride. Picking up where we left off last time, we were all of a sudden in front of a classroom of students in room 18. The English teacher Abdul was surpised that there were English speakers in his class, and right off the bat he started to ask questions and have the students ask them as well. I answered a couple, Tony did as well and then Tash was up next. They asked her what she was studying and she said the Bible. Let's just say that we were off from there into the world of spiritual interest, questions, religion and so on. Picture it, five westerners in a city, in a public school classroom answering questions about Jesus, spiritual things, Islam, Muhammed, the Bible etc... Another prayer of ours that God heard as He set apart this teacher, school and city for us to arrive in. After about an hour and a half of interacting the students the class was over and we were invited back to Abdul's place to spend the night. He shared a flat with a couple of other guys and we saw the place. He stated that there was a surprise planned for supper, we would be meeting another English teacher we'll call him Jarid, a friend of his who lived with the computer teacher Hamed, another guy that we had met. We all headed off for the other flat where three more teachers lived together, and after chatting, laughing and settling in we enjoyed what we thought was supper around 8:00. Turned out that we didn't eat until 11:30, to say the least we were spent at that point. In the hours between food the 9 of us chatted about life, culture, teaching and spiritual things. Being devout Muslims the guys went into a bedroom to pray, and they invited us to watch and ask them questions if we would like to. I have used the term surreal before and I will again as we observed their reverance and faith.
There was some confusion around this time, one does not expect to be ushered into a room and watch men of other faith pray and worship, but it was eye-opening definitely. The noodles were ready at 11:30 and we ate some, most of us were too tired to dig right in. We were off to bed by 1:00, our friends still chatting, laughing and having a great time, us being bumps on logs who had traveled and expended much emotional energy. I don't think it is the norm to have time constraints on mini expeds, but we did. Abdul had invited us back to his classroom for 10:00 the next day, hence we all got up, got ready and were out the door by 9:50. Upon arrival to the school there was some discussion as to whether we would be allowed back in. We heard the word Christian in the discussion but also know that part of the chat was because we did not have any paperwork allowing us to waltz into a public school and speak. Out of nowhere Abdul showed up, said it was OK and we were off once again to room 18 for another English class experience. This time after talking in Arabic for 30 seconds or so he said he was going to hand it over to us to teach the remainder of the lesson on 5 sentence paragraphs. Being the primary teacher that I am my head immediately turned to hamburgers and was their colored chalk?
There was so I had Abi (an amazing artist) draw a hamburger on the board and I started talking slowly about what a hamburger was, they didn't get it until I used the universal McDonalds. Then we were all on the same page, and off we went into the Ox Bow renowned hamburger writing method of paragraphs. About an hour later after doing an example, making mental pictures, listening to our group examples and pounding home the elements of 5 sentences the students were off writing their own this time. They did a fantastic job, everyone of them gave a great effort, I knew because Abdul was so excited about how they were performing. Many read their paragraphs out and we all clapped after each one. Following a rendition of the Hokey-Pokey and a monologue by one of the girls the class was over. I had just taught 20 Arabic speaking middle schoolers a lesson that I used with my own students in the U.S. it was an exhillirating time for a teacher like myself. later
earl