First day of school

Scott’s Two Cents

What an experience I had the other day! As part of our language learning program, in lieu of a formal track specifically for foreigners (which doesn’t exist in this country), our team has been finding creative ways to get deeper exposure to the language. Some of them started attending local grade schools, so I asked our neighbor, who is 11, if he knew of one I could attend in our neighborhood. I was aiming, with the many local adults who haven’t finished school, to join an adult night school program. Instead, the neighbor’s 16 year old brother came over and offered to ask his principal if I could join him. Sure enough permission was lined up and at 7:50 this morning, I became an 11^th grader again! Katie couldn’t go as schools here are separated by gender. After I thanked the principal, we marched up to the second floor of the 3-story-tall high school. The first class was math where the students learned all about mean, median and mode: nawendi, nawrasti and baw. It struck me, as I caught bits and pieces of the lesson, that I learned these things in 6^th grade in the States. These kids only attend school 4 hours a day, and that in shifts—some in the morning, some in the afternoon—and they cram in 13 subjects. To make that work, they have each subject maybe once or twice a week, and since each class lasts only 40 minutes, you can see why just now these 11^th graders are learning about basic statistics. My conclusion is this: there are more schools and many more teachers needed!

After math came Arabic. Now, this might come as a shock to most of you, but I’m not, nor was I ever, what you would call “cool.” I still wear shirts I got 10 years ago (fortunately here they’re just coming into style). About half my jokes flop, and what I saw usually comes out fairly jumbled unless it is simple: me hungry, me tired, etc. But, I realized in Arabic class that I was becoming the buzz of the classroom in a good way. I remember in my high school the foreign kids kind of being made fun of. Of course I never did this, but it happened. So being wary of this reality, I tried to ignore their comments and listen. Meanwhile the entire class was talking over and generally being disrespectful of the teacher, who was growing angrier by the minute. He really was an angry guy. In our language there are a few ways to politely ask someone to be quiet, but he was saying to the class the equivalent of “SHUT UP!!” about every 2 minutes. My neighbor, who was sitting a few chairs in front of me saw me mouth “he’s really mad,” but didn’t understand what I was saying. So he got up to find out and when he sat back down, the teacher asked what I said! I could have slugged him, but my neighbor told the teacher that I thought he was really mad. The teacher was ready to slug me then, so he tried to embarrass me by trying to get me up in front of the class to speak in our language. I thanked him and said no, and then he came to where I was sitting to have a nice little talk and explain why he was angry. “If you’re not angry, they’ll eat you,” he said. I told him I had insulted him and apologized several times. Then after class I walked with the teacher a while and re-apologized. He wanted to know why I would sit in an Arabic lesson if I wanted to learn our host language (95% of the Arabic lesson was not in Arabic). I might skip next week and spent time with the principal instead.

After that, we were supposed to have a computer class, but a really nice and good teacher grabbed us and said, “Come to my history class.” He had me share a bit about me at the beginning and then did a 25 minute lecture on the 10 eras in local history. It was really informative and the students really respected him, in stark contrast to the Arabic teacher. After this was a cake walk for me as we had English. I did well in that one! Getting some new words and being able to affirm the teacher were highlights. Then we had “werzish,” or sports, class. My popularity soared and I felt like the Fonz! These guys gathered around me almost like they were going to gang-beat me, but were really nice and wanted to talk and joke around. The gym teacher was standing in the doorway with little concern for organizing anything so I asked if they wanted to play basketball; that was a dumb call on my part. They wanted to play full court but 3-on-3. I was a bit winded after the first minute of chasing these kids. I am a bad-to-average basketball player, but these guys were all in the horrid category. I felt pretty good out there—at least my missed shots were hitting some metal instead of air. Then we went inside, sweaty and hot, for another section of English. Afterwards they all were asking what I do so I told them about the LIFE Center. They brow-beat me with questions, and many were interested in coming to register—interesting when they hardly remember anything or show interest in their FREE English class at school. But after talked about the LIFE Center a guy asked me if I am Muslim or Christian. When I told him Christian, he asked me what is becoming a more common question, “Why wouldn’t you become Muslim?” This question has bothered me ever since I was asked it in a store down the street. My gut response is the opposite, how could anyone not want to be Christian? When I respond saying I have many reasons, they tend to revert to the defense they’ve been told all their lives. Who can blame them? I grew up with the societal right to choose, and I chose Christ for many, many reasons. And while my upbringing gave me the opportunity to choose Christ, He drew me to Himself. I am finding more and more that our host culture does not accept change in this area; the barrier isn’t so much with what to believe, but the acceptability of believing it.