When living abroad isn't as cool as Facebook makes it appear

     It's Easter Sunday and I'm at work.

 

      Don't get me wrong, if AUIS had decided to give everyone today off, I'd still be feeling kind of blue.

     It's one of those days when you want tradition to prevail, and I want to be surrounded by family, to celebrate like I've always done. I feel badly that I feel this way. Christ has risen! I know that fact as well here as I would in Virginia. However, the picture isn't computing. I did not wake up to go to church, to my dad presenting me with the most adorable/practical Easter basket (Who doesn't need travel-sized lotion and 5,000 yards of floss at my age?!), no late lunch with family out of town. I am prepping to give a quiz to my dear grammarians in level 2 and trying not to cry from homesickness.

     On any normal day I can go about my business knowing that's exactly what my friends and family back home are doing. Holidays are tough. It's on these days when you realize what you are sacrificing for a cool job that allows you to jet set to Europe and Africa on your semester breaks.  No amount of vacation or cool baubles from exotic locales can every replace that feeling I have when I am home.

 

     It is a growing opportunity, I am sure of it.  Teaching me to rely less on myself and others, and more on God; becoming aware of how little those things I often place first in my life really are, and how important those little things become when you are far from home.

 

    

When life won't play along, and right keeps going wrong, and I can't seem to find my way...I'll keep dancing anyway (Move, Mercyme)

Capital City

Just outside those two gently rocking rivers, the witnesses to the birth of civilization, sits a city of many names.  It is the capital city of Kurdistan, Hawler; Erbil in Arabic and English.  Many claim it to be the oldest, continually inhabited city in the world.  It's citadel proudly set atop a tel speaks to the many generations who have called this place home.

I'd like to tell you of the many great sites of culture and society I pondered on my first trip to Erbil, but if I did I would be lying, and lying is not cool!  

I went from one mall to a bigger mall, and then promptly got back on the bus at dusk and was whisked back to Sulaimani.

One of our lovely coworkers here at AUIS had arranged for a small fleet (two) of buses to take anyone who wanted to go to Erbil this weekend for a shopping trip.  

While Erbil is not a huge city in terms of what an American might picture, it is more developed in terms of infrastructure and international business than Suli.

So I was journeying in hopes of reaching the renowned Carrefour...Carrefour, did you see what I said? I have an inexplicable love affair with this French-owned hypermarket.  I witnessed its majesty from afar in Sevilla, I experienced its hypnotic wares in Cairo, and now it was my chance to revel in their goods in Kurdistan.  It was not an opportunity to be passed by.

All in all, it was a successful trip.  Things that are readily available at any and every store in the states can be down right impossible to find in Suli, but sometimes appear in Erbil.  I picked up jars of salsa, knock-off Lucky Charms, goat cheese, sliced roast turkey, tortellini, cookie sheets, and some new all cotton bed sheets, all of which are scarce or non-existent most of the time where I live.

There is never a dull moment at the two story house of dreams.  I felt very fancy ordering my lebnah and feta cheese with zatar in Arabic.  Because Erbil has such a diverse population, with Kurds coming from Turkey, Syria, and Iran; and hospitality and retail workers coming from everywhere, many languages are understood and spoken.  My Kurdish is still very basic, so it was a treat to order in Arabic and have the cheese guy perfectly understand me and not walk away with four kilos rather than the quarter kilo I actually wanted.

Over in their delightful seafood section, they had an open tank of live fish, just chillin'  and minded their on business, until a friend and I walked over and proceeded to stare and talk about how they are killed.  One apparently didn't like that because it attempted to jump out of the tank and attack us...The guy behind the seafood counter found our shrieks of horror quite funny.

Over all, my favorite part of the trip was the drive there.  It was a cool and foggy morning, with an air of quiet dignity surrounding the mountains.  It was very easy to picture the many peoples who have traversed this oft contended land.

Families were out for day long picnics, and the sky was dotted with children's kites.  Tents were set up to shade mothers and aunts from the noon day sun that eventually peeked out.  Many that I saw were wearing the traditional Kurdish garb that is still popular with both the older and younger generation.

I was able to witness more culture through those little glimpses from my bus window than I did all day, and no matter how fabulous Carrefour is, they can't compete with that.


The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
-Carl Sandburg

Things are rarely what they appear to be

Second week of a new semester here at AUIS, and I am (thankfully) teaching Grammar 2 again.

I don't know what they were up to in Grammar 1 last semester, but this new group of students are going to be doing some magical things; I can feel it in my teachery bones!

Spring semester is always a bit lighter in terms of numbers, as fewer new students enroll at this time of year.  Instead of starting with 85 students like last semester, I began with 70.  This is still a lot, but there will always be a few 'no-shows' and of course a few students always drop throughout the semester.

I received an email the other day telling me that a young lady in one of my classes would be taking a leave of absence.  She had been attending every class, participating, and seemed very invested.  I immediately feared that there was some type of personal or family issue that was going to prevent her from continuing.  

Our community at AUIS is so very small and close knit, and most of us (the faculty and staff) are expats with a desire to live and work abroad.  I often forget that I am in a different culture all together, and that what I see on a day to day basis and how I interact with people is not the cultural norm here.

It is still very common for women to get married quite young (by western standards) and to not seek higher education because of family responsibilities.  And while Sulaimani has shown itself to be a safe and inviting place, I have students who are from Kirkuk, Baghdad, and other places close to or in Southern Iraq where the daily threat of violence is still a very, very real thing.

So when one of my students drops out suddenly, I often fear the worst.

I was eating lunch later that same day in the cafeteria, when I saw said student.  She quickly came over to my table and asked to speak with me.

She proceeded to tell what the email had said, that she needed to take a leave of absence.  "I have to go to Indonesia for training..."

Wait. What?

"Yes, I play Karate and my competition is this summer, and I need to train."

"That's amazing!" I said, and she proceeded to pull out her phone and show me a picture.

"Wait, is that a black belt?!" I exclaimed.

"Yes.  I am the first female black belt in all of Iraq."

BOOM! Yeah, my mind was blown too.  I looked at this petite young woman and thought she perfectly embodied 'never judging a book by its cover'.

So, she is off to train and compete and will hopefully be back in the fall to continue her studies in the APP, and then eventually on into the academic program.

I look forward to hearing about her adventures.

"It always seems impossible until it's done"
-Nelson Mandela

Shine! Make 'em Wonder What You Got.

One of my Kurdish students from Iran told me that people back in her city told her she “dreamed too big”…that what she wanted to accomplish in her life was crazy and that she did not live in reality. People laughed at her for wanting what many take as a simple fact of life.  It broke my heart that someone so young should be told there are limits to what you can accomplish, limits to what someone should desire out of their own life.

I couldn't imagine being told as a teenager that what I wanted to do in the future was silly or impossible.  That I should set my sights lower, on something more 'reasonable' for someone like me.  I grew up in a culture that tells their children they can be the president one day if they want to.  That all things are possible if you go after it.

One of her "too big" dreams was to attend AUIS; She just completed her first semester and will be enrolling in IT classes in the fall. I’d say she’s on her way to showing those doubters what drive, direction, and the unshakable belief in one's self can do.

“A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else thought they could.” –-Unknown

She Taught Me Good!

My first semester is officially done.  Finals graded, grades submitted, and graduation cookies have been eaten.  At our last faculty meeting, we were given our student evaluations.  Having written these as a student, it was a new experience to be on the receiving end.  Out of my 80ish students, only two weren't very pleased with the class. One said I should laugh less...

Overall, it was a very rewarding semester and I genuinely hope that some of my students left my classroom no longer fearing grammar.  I am aware that most people despise it, so if they left with only a mild distaste for the subject matter, I'll take it as a success and move on to tweak and improve where I can for next semester.

A week of fun (at least I hope fun and not riots) in Cairo awaits and I'll shall leave you with yet another awkward (awesome?) exchange I had with a student this semester.


This student approached my desk during a group assignment to eventually ask me about 'burps' via farting....the conversation went like this:

Student: Hi teacher...aaah Ok, you know the air down there?... (motions behind him while pointing down)

Me: the..air...down there???

Student: Yeah, the air down there... (whispering) it's called farts...

Me: Are you really asking me about farts in the middle of an exercise?

Student: No disrespect...aah, ok?

Me: oooookay...what would you like to know?

Student: Well...the air up here (motions to throat)..what's called?

Me: Burp...That's a burp...you can also use that as a verb...

Student: Oh. Okay! Thank you teacher!

Just to be clear, the assignment they were working on involved neither of those bodily functions.

I will miss my level 2's dearly, and wish their level 3 teachers lots of luck!

"You look like Adele!" and other strange things my students say

What does a twelve week semester with eighty students at a university in Iraqi Kurdistan make a teacher? 

That would be slightly crazy and a tad sleep deprived.

My first semester at AUIS is almost at an end, and as I'm starting to see cross-eyed, I think that's a good thing.  It's been a whirl-wind semester and rather than beating myself up for not posting to a website that no one reads, I decided to post stories about my students and my classroom.  

I  am amazed, entertained, enraged, deeply moved, enlightened, frustrated, or a combination of all of those on a daily basis with this great group of young adults, and some of their antics should be recorded. 

The following is an email exchange between a student and myself. The student in this case did not pay attention when I assigned a verb chart for homework:

(Note: Mastaw is the Kurdish phrase for brown-nosing)

Meer: Hi Mrs.Ramey

I Just want to ask you about the Home work sheet that you gave it to us... which verb should we use?

Me:  MEER!!! There were two, I wrote them on the board!!! I want you to call a friend and ask them. If you still can't find out what they are, email me back and I'll tell you...you've got to write down what I put on the board! 

Meer: I'm really really sorry.. I don't have any phone number of my friend.. I was sharing work sheet.. I didn't know ! 

Can you tell me? Please!!   

Me: To decline and to decrease. They better be the best verb charts I've ever seen!! :D

Meer:  Ohhh, thank you so so so much!!!.. I don't know how much I love you!! :) , trust me it's NOT (MASTAW) :D.. 
Thank you !

Me:  If you don't know how much you love me, there is a problem with your memory :D The phrase should have the pronoun you as the subject :D And you can show your love by doing your homework and getting an A in my class! 

Meer: Ow My God !!! I did a huge mistake... I meant (You don't know how much I love you) .. :D

Good Night :)

My battle this semester, along with teaching grammar, has been to encourage my students to think for themselves, use context clues, and above all READ THE DIRECTIONS!  Needless to say, it's been a struggle.

Teaching in Kurdish Iraq

        It's Thursday and the last day of the first week of teaching at AUIS (weekends here run Friday/Saturday).  I have about 65 students spread over four level 2 Grammar classes, and so far it's the best, most exhausting teaching experience I've had so far.  We get in early and leave late and go home to grade papers!  The other instructors here really work together within the disciplines and within the levels, and they have been a great support in my transition back to an EFL teacher from ESL in Virginia.

     My students come from different parts of Iraq and Iran, and are eager to begin their academic studies in IT, engineering, mathematics, etc.  Our program runs on trimesters, so I only have 12 instructional weeks to move my students to the next level.  We will be exhausted my February, but InshAllah, we will all have learned a great deal.

APP Orientation