First Week of School

Well, the first week of school is over and we are officially exhausted. Perhaps not as exhausted so much by the students as we would have been in Thailand, after all there are only twelve of them in my class and not thirty plus like I’m used to. We are more exhausted by slow bureaucracy and failing technology. Having signed our bank papers about three weeks ago, banked our travel allowance cheque and been paid, we have yet to receive ATM cards. The queues at the bank make it impossible to make it to the bank during school time, and it closes before we finish. This has meant that we have run out of money. We refuse to take any more money out on credit cards when we have our pay sitting in the bank down the road. Yesterday this all came to a head and our boss and superiors at the university heard about the situation. Our boss brought us pizza as she was convinced we had an empty fridge and offered us a loan from the petty cash. The female reverend from the university dropped in to school today to see if she could run us around and help us at the bank. Finally, Hannah, the Moroccan lady in charge of admin at the school arranged with the bank manager to go and collect some money for us. This is really a community that pulls together to support each other.

As for technology, this has nearly broken us this week. Nick more so than me as everything he tried to print, copy, or prepare seemed to fail. We have a photocopier that works about 45 minutes every day, a printer that often runs out of paper or ink and computers that lose connection with the printer for no reason and switch between French and English keyboards without rhyme or reason. When you have no books and no resources this drives you to distraction. It can take an hour to prepare something that the students finish in five minutes. We are with our students twenty-four hours a week and have little preparation time. This means that to get stuff ready for the next day we often have to stay an hour or two late. Writing our year plans and getting everything we need together for the semester is a distant dream right now.

Happily, it is not all doom and gloom. The school is beautiful and the time in the classroom is a pleasure. The school has 47 elementary students and has lots of space for them. A sand playground, football field and the tallest sloping-red roofs that contrast against the most incredible blue sky I have ever seen. There are ceder trees, weeping willows and pampas grass all around. it is stunning.  The students are lovely and have a far higher level of English than I am used to. Having twelve students in the class means that I already know how to get each student to work, how to control them, and what makes them tick. I’ve never had that chance before as there have always been so many kids I only get to know them properly when I tutor them. Here I am able to talk to even the most reclusive. After teaching boys for four years it's also really nice to have girls in the class. By the second day they would attach themselves like Velcro to me at the end of break. They are a really friendly class.

The administration building and lucnh hall. There is a staff room with computers, coffee machine and sofas.

The entrance

Outside my classroom window.

 

 At the end of last week we went to our first authentic Moroccan cous cous meal. Provided by the school, it was an opportunity forall the faculty to get together. With around nine people round each round table, they brought out a high sided plate that was about 50 centimetre diameter. This was piled high with cous cous, baked vegetables and tender beef and chicken. The traditional way of eating it is to all eat with your hands out of the one bowl. You have an area in front of you, like a slice of pizza. This is your space. You pick up the cous cous in your fingers and toss it in a backward motion into the palm of your hand repeatedly until it forms a compact ball. This you can then pick up and eat. This process took me so long and with my coordination meant that more went on the table than in my mouth. I quickly resorted to a spoon, as did most of the locals after the initial display of tradition.

As I mentioned before, one of the big highs of moving into our apartment was the huge great open fireplace that we have. After living in Thailand for so many years we are thrilled at the thought of having real fires when there is snow outside. When the temperature dropped last week Nick was checking the fireplace and found that the chimney had been cemented over. I was horrified. Apparently people couldn't live without the fireplace a few years ago, but now there is central heating it is more of a luxury. The chimneys were blocked up as there was a problem with birds flying down them and the university didn't want to pay for them to be cleaned any more. I’d be happy to pay for cleaning and take my chances with the birds if it meant that I could have a real fire. Sadly it doesn't look like it is an option. Instead we went out and bought some giant pine cones from one of the local souvenir shops. At the shop they went from asking for one cone for 100 dirahms to four cones for 120. When we agreed we were ushered quickly into a back room of the shop where we had to inspect pine cones. We left feeling like for the second time in a few days we had been involved in a back street black market deal.

As for the alcohol... the drought is over... a slab of beer and a couple of bottles of wine were acquired. Definitely not for the connoisseur, hopefully this weekend we'll make it down to Fes for more drinakble stuff.

Outside the classroom

View from the classroom

 

In the classroom