Ok, the long-awaited, at least by me anyway, blogging period is ready to begin. As I type these words, I am actually sitting at a swim meet in Ayresville, Ohio. (Which someone referred to as” Ayrestucky”, earlier today.) My daughter, Grace, soon to be a sophomore, has just finished swimming the 500 free and I did what I could, of course, to embarrass her with some polite, but loud cheering.
Yesterday, our Jordan travel group finished its 8th day of predeparture training. Class went from 9 to 5 every day. This is a long time. I haven’t been a student in a classroom for that amount of time in a very long time. For my students, current and former, who are reading this, I have a renewed respect for those of you who are actually able to sit still for an entire day of class. Congratulations. I can’t do it. I constantly found myself fidgeting, staring, yawning daydreaming etc. I guess if I’m confessing my sins, I probably should also mention that I almost yelled out loud when Landon Donavan scored the equalizing goal in theUS/ Algeria soccer game. I was streaming the video onto my laptop. When I looked up I saw three other happy faces behind their laptops. If any of my instructors are reading this, I humbly apologize. I was very rude.
Anyway, roughly half of that class time was spent learning to read, hear, speak and write Arabic. Needless to say these lofty goals were only met in small, but I think meaningful ways. We’ll see in a few days. The rest of our class time was spent learning about Jordan, about the Near East in general and about Islam. It was all very interesting and even without going to Jordan at all, I will be a much better Social Studies teacher due to the huge increase already in my understanding of these areas.
So, Thursday morning, the day after tomorrow at 6:30am, I’ll hug the kids I can rouse, jump in the van with Heidi, pick up two of my travelmates and depart on a grand adventure.
Type at y’all later!
Salaam,
Dad/Lane/Mr. Hakel
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
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