Birthday cake

One of the students from my first class of the day was 16 today. At the end of the class she asked me to stay for a while as her brother was bringing her birthday cake. Though it was her birthday I was given the first piece of the cake once it had been cut. I was expecting an Arabic song but they all sang the usual English version of 'Happy Birthday'. Well the same apart from the fact that it was repeated a second time a hundred times quicker than the first. It's nice to feel included in everything though I have only been here for a short time which makes it all the more disappointing that I wont be here for Ramadan. With it being about a month away everyone is looking forward to it and talking about it. Nablus would be an amazing place to be at this point on the Islamic calendar. I will be teaching my year 8's about Islam when I return home so I'm hoping to ask some of my more able pupils to help me plan some lessons. In return this will help them to develop their English. Or so I hope.

My second class of the day was enormously good fun. We had some intelopers at the beginning (some adults that happened to be in the centre at the time) who couldn't seem to resist joining in. This did however add to the lesson rather than detract from it. Being here I have become so used to anything happening that it doesn't surprise me when it does. I have also mastered the art of teaching English with nothing more than a pen and board to write on- no worksheets, no visuals, no textbooks, no computers and definitely no interactive whiteboard! Today I was hoping to teach the class directions: left, right, straight ahead, etc. I decided that a variation of the minefield activity (though for obvious reasons I though it best not to use the mine theme) from my Prince's Trust days would be the most fun. So after a breif explanation of the various directions I let the class guide me around the classroom full of obstacles with my eyes close. The aim being to get me from one side of the room to the other without touching anything. The main danger with this activity is that the class don't take it seriously and it just ends up being a health and safety nightmare. The opposite was of course the case and they very diligently and enthusiastically guided me across the room. Each child then had a go with their eyes closed.

Having them in a line and trying to get them to turn left and right was highly amusing. As plenty of native speakers seem to have trouble with left and right I wasn't expecting perfection. Some got it straight away whilst others were constantly piroetting on the spot. Good fun all round though.

The most challenging class that I teach is an hour and a half long conversation class held on Sunday and Tuesday. It's more difficult because it's never that easy to get people to debate or spontaneously break into conversation, even more so when it is necessary that this happens in a foreign language. Today's topic was food and this proved to be one of the easier lessons because of the scope and range of things we could talk about on this theme.

I rushed back from the class to play football again but I not sure how good an idea us continuing with this is. We won again and locals are getting more and more frustrated. Perhaps a mixed team might be better next time. I keep thinking back to footage I saw of a UN arranged match between the peacekeepers and locals in Kosovo that ended in riot. We stopped countless times today whilst a few Palestinians argued about something or other. I couldn't work out what it was and just wanted to play football.