Thursday, February 16, 2012

Teacher Rule #1: Let it Be

My students are all men this block. Every last one of them. Male and recently arrived to the country from Saudi Arabia to boot. And they're pretty young, 19 or so for the majority.
 This makes for some pretty interesting conversations (if you can call them conversations wtih such limited English).
Topics have included why I am working, how many wives they have (most of them none though they try to shock and tell you they have four, which they think is hilarious), why I don't drink coffee, when my baby is coming, what gender the baby is, if they can marry the baby, if I will stay home after I have the baby, what I will call the baby etc. etc. They are very interested in the baby.
Said interest takes one particularly endearing form:

If that little man in the picture above seems particularly heavily laden, he is. That's one of my students who will not allow me to carry my own bag. To begin with I objected, but I am over that now. Despite the fact that he is shorter than me, and has his own massive student size backpack to carry, he will purposefully march over to me, relieve me of my belongings, and march up the hill (it's quite a hill too). Once he gets to the building he will hand the bag over to another student who is in my class that hour and take off for his own class. That student then carries it upstairs to my classroom.
One day when we were going through this process of getting "Teacher Laura" to her classroom with her belongings, another student accompanied us and earnestly informed me that walking with my bag was not good for me and baby. He said it would make the baby go "whoosh." I told him I may try that come the end of April. He had no idea what I was saying.



Monday, February 13, 2012

Baby Rule #1: Keep track of important things

Someone should remind you on a daily basis after you find out that you're going to be bringing home a baby, that it really is going to happen.

Because holy cow batman, we're having a baby and I feel like no one told me.
Perhaps I should have looked at the evidence more regularly. (See above photo)
I get weekly emails from some website or another that remind me how many weeks I am, and consequently, how many weeks I have left.
Today they said I have 11 weeks left. My poor little brain goes haywire every week when I read those numbers.
Someone around here should really start getting their stuff together.

I guess that would be me.  Since, as you can see from his expression, Des has no interest at all.