OMG, Our science teacher has twitter.

Well, there are reasons why my blog has been silent lately.  Oh, it's not that I haven't had the desire to write, but I've been faced with the overwhelming desire to sleep.  I found a wall, hit it and haven't been able to get up for a while.

There's a point in every new teachers' life when he or she takes stock of his or her situation and realizes that they're living in a utopia.  No, not the Thomas More version with gem filled rivers that's more akin to John Lenon's Imagine than reality, but the true meaning of the word... no place.  Once I started doing my marking on the bus ride, the pyramids vanished from my consciousness and I entered a world of sleep, teach, eat prep, sleep ... (repeat daily).  It's so easy to lose yourself through the process of ensuring that you have the best possible lessons for your students that you end up spending all your waking hours focused on teaching.

And I have to admit that the new teacher chasm is incredibly enticing.  Oh, there are occasional grumbles, but overall, my students are awesome.  At least once a week, there'll be a class that goes exactly according to plan.  I see the growth in my students' knowledge and skills, and end up with a covert ear-to-ear smile.  Oh, that's not something that I could communicate to them ... I'm not sure that anyone but parents and teachers could ever experience that vicarious joy.  But, there does come a time when you have to realize that only by finding some measure of balance in your life can you continue to experience those moments.  Well, it's a 5 day holiday, and tonight is my designated sleep and relax night.

I haven't taken any real time off in a while, so I decided at school to take a peek at my g-mail.  Lo and behold, Twitter sent me one of those "here are some people you might know" e-mails, and one of my students was listed there.  Either inspired by fatigue or a very mischievous pre-holiday mood, I couldn't resist taking a peek.  Before I continue, as a 21st century teacher, I do recognize the caveats and protocols involved in social media, so I know how to deal appropriately and openly with my students through this medium.  So I was creeping through some of their profiles (modern day term for covert viewing - sounds far more malevolent than it really is) and noticed a reference to me.  Well, I couldn't help myself, I had to reply.  I knew it had to happen, and as word spread through the Twitterverse that I actually had a twitter account, eventually, someone tweeted the title above.  To safeguard my students' privacy (and due to my lack of time), I don't intend to view their profiles very often ... but a little reminder to them of the internet's "you never know who's viewing your messages" reality can't hurt.

Well, I've probably missed a number of pass-on-able things but in the interest of sharing some of the joys of living in Egypt ...

The second feast (Eid) is the major one and lasts for 5 days.  I've been warned that Friday morning will be filled with the bleating of sheep and that travel by foot thereafter will make me feel like I've stumbled upon one of Dexter's crime scenes.

I saw traffic signals for the first time but I still don't understand how traffic flows so smoothly.

There was something strange on the bus' windshield today.  It might have been vanishing stone chips ... or some kind of water.  I believe it is called something like ... rain.  I blinked and it was done.

Breakfast on the road is $0.15.  In areas of bumper-to-bumper traffic, people wander along the highway selling bread, date buns and other breakfast options.  They're yummy.

Prices vary depending on location and mother tongue.  I stopped visiting my local convenience store as they charge 1 LE more per item than the kiosk that is a 3 minute walk away.  The kiosk doesn't adjust prices based on nationality but my local store does.  My $5 purchase at the local convenience store ends up costing $4 at the local supermarket.  Of course, they never did deliver it, but I'm sure it'll happen sometime and once they know where I live ... can the ultimate in laziness (calling in my grocery order for delivery) be far away?

Miscellaneous prices:

• Gasoline:  $0.30 / litre
• Fantastic Mexican meal that is too large for 1 sitting:  $9 with tip
• Mars bars:  $0.60 
• 1.5 Litre bottle of water:  $0.50
• Yoghurt cups:  $0.30 each
• Pepsi:  $0.75 / litre or $1.20 for 2 litres

Finally, the best part of today was my chance to make some of the Heritage employees smile.  The janitor who cleans my room and never stops working.  The security guard on our floor always says hi to me from halfway down the hall whenever he spots me.  I recognize that I couldn't do my job without them and they've done everything they can to make me feel welcome at Heritage.  So, to celebrate Eid, I passed them along a small gift.  Two dinners for me is the same as 5 days' salary for them - a small price to pay for the kindness they've showed me so far.

Well, time to leave the keyboard for a while and relax.  Sleep is not far away (I barely avoided it on the bus ride home).  Oh, it's a working holiday, which may not seem too exciting until you consider that the 40 to 50 hours I spend planning now will result in a month's worth of night's off in November.  Or ... I might even head out and enjoy myself ... naw, that still seems way too far fetched.

It's Trigonometry ... There's Nothing Obscene about Trig

Well, the routine has been set.  There are times when it results in far less sleep than I would like (and enough illness that I haven't been around much lately), but my teaching life has become somewhat predictable.

What's wrong with this?

Overall, Heritage did a fairly good job of preparing us to deal with our students.  We learned many of the do's and don't's of living in Egyptian society ... and they have helped a ton.  Not that I would ever refer to my students using an animal reference, but there are colloquial phrases that might have been uttered ... and these are seen as grave insults in Egyptian culture.

Similarly, never show the soles of your shoes to someone as it implies that they are worth what's stuck to the bottom of them.  Given the collection of refuse on the streets, I can see how this might be extremely offensive.  But ... what could possibly be wrong with trigonometry?  Seriously?

The unit circle is our friend too.

Well, for those who haven't heard about my teaching style, it's rare that I will resort to the pedagogy that I enjoyed as a high school student.  I have an intense dislike of drill work so my students will rarely get a list of 50 repetitious questions to do the next day.  I'm also not a huge fan of rote memorization of formulae - if it can be developed, discovered or learned in any other way, I'll always encourage my students in that direction.  Add my liberal arts background, and I'll throw anything I can at my students from any discipline I can think of to ensure that they find a different way of seeing things.

Well, in trigonometry, there are a group of "special" triangles.  Usually, these angles (30º, 45º, 60º) are taught as another set of rote formulae.  So when I learned about the trigonometry hand, I was immediately a huge fan.

My version's better

Without going into extensive details, point your baby finger horizontally, point your thumb vertically, and your fingers will naturally point towards 30, 45 and 60 degrees.  Even more exciting, if you fold over the finger of the angle you want to work with, by counting the fingers above and below that finger, you can find the sine and cosine.  Many of you may not be terribly excited, but I can assure you that the math and physics teachers out there are gushing with excitement once they learn this

So I'm in front of my class, showing them this for the first time, and I fold over the 30º finger and ask them what the sine and cosine are of 30º.  Since one of the girls in my class missed a significant amount of school, I folded over my 45º finger and asked her what that meant.  Well, she became very silent and looked down.  A few of the guys in the class started to giggle a bit ... and I knew that something was amiss.  Well, picture the middle finger's connotations in North American society, and add some parental nuances ... Once I realized what I had done ... I was slightly mortified and couldn't apologize enough.

Aside from these very rare moments, I'm having a great time with my classes.  Oh, they have good days and bad days, but overall, they're an awesome group.  The hour bus ride to and from school has become my marking time and I'm hoping that I can finally start the habit of getting most of my lessons planned for the week on the weekend.  I finally learned the lesson that 4.5 hours sleep only does you for so long.  It took a week of stomach issues transitioning into a week of cold/flu issues for me to learn the lesson, but I did actually get some rest time towards the end of last week, so life is at least a lot more rested.  I also purchased a new course to help learn colloquial Arabic ... and this one doesn't seem to require an Arabic teacher.  Plus, I try to find a way to learn a word or phrase per day from one of my classes.

Well, paperwork is caught up so it's time for a quick nap before I start prepping my classes for next week.  12 smartboard presentations, 12 accompanying worksheets, some pencasts, and a few quizzes ... and I'm ready for the week.  Although I have a snowball's chance of completing all that tomorrow, I'm finally healthy enough that I can knock off half of that on a Saturday.  It's going to be a great week :)

Problem based learning (or experience is a harsh teacher)

So, I was having a fairly good day today.  I found an optometrist that would fix my glasses for free (I have been wearing my back-up pair).  That same optometrist helped me find a barbeque lighter so that I can actually use my stove.  Found the recommended emergency stomach medication, found alarm clocks at a good price and even located a couple of promising clothing stores.  Wow, things were looking up for me today.  Sadly, I tried to stretch my luck a bit too far.

On the way home, I met our doorman in the hallway and figured that I'd ask him to borrow a screwdriver to repair my shower curtain rod.  Although the mathematician in me appreciated the opportunities to consider triangles in more than one plane, the shower rod functions far better when it's parallel to the ground and not threatening to fall out of the wall at any moment.  I was thrilled to realize that he understood my need for a screwdriver and he even popped upstairs to help me fix it.  Unfortunately, when he needed to return downstairs to find some shims to fix it, I followed him into the hallway and the door closed behind me.

Well, I learned very quickly that I hadn't needed to obsess so much about my door not being locked when it was closed because I couldn't open it from the hallway when it was unlocked.  So there I was, outside my door with very little money in my wallet, no ID, no cell phone and no keys.  Given that all of my contact information was on my cell phone, I had no way to contact anyone.  For the first time, I experienced a huge dose of 'what can I do panic.'  After some time trying to discuss things with my doorman (who doesn`t speak English), we found someone who directed him to someone else who would try to break into my apartment.  I wasn't comfortable with the process, but I was getting desperate.  After waiting a half hour, the fellow arrived and within 10 minutes realized that he couldn`t break into the apartment.  Silver linings were appreciated today.

The second hour of being locked out of my apartment saw the start of my wanderings.  I had some vague ideas of where a couple of people lived in my area ... but I learned quickly that I couldn't figure out which buildings they lived in.  I wasn`t quite at the point of desperation, but it was coming soon.  I had a feeling that I knew where one person lived but they were a 15 minute cab ride away and I wasn`t quite ready to risk a trip there when I wasn`t certain that he would be home.

Hour three gave me a huge reminder of why I truly enjoy living in Cairo.  As I had nowhere else to turn, I wandered down to the local pharmacist as he speaks fairly good English.  I was a little worried when the afternoon pharmacist wasn`t there and the night pharmacist`s English wasn`t as good.  At that moment, a customer asked me why on earth I would be looking for a locksmith in a pharmacy.  Once I explained my situation to him, the customer translated my situation to the pharmacist ... who knew of a locksmith in the area.  So, my journey to the appropriately named Freedom Fish Market started.  Within an hour, I had found the locksmith, they had given me a ride home and my lock cylinder was replaced.

Well, teachers` college taught us to be reflective so ... here goes

• Lesson 1:  Always have a spare key or two.  I now have three keys to my front door - one for my key ring, one for my wallet (as I always have it), and one that I will place with someone for safe keeping just in case.
• Lesson 2:  Carry your cellphone everywhere - even within your apartment.  As someone that isn't used to carrying one, I never realized how valuable it was until I was lost without the ability to contact anyone I knew.
• Lesson 3:  Keep back-up contact information on hand.  I had been intending to place some contact information in my wallet for the past week - it`s now been done.  
• Lesson 4:  Take a deep breath.  Had I sat back and considered my options more fully, I would have likely found the locksmith (that was only 3 blocks away).  Now that my mind is a bit clearer, I can remember all the times that I`ve found someone willing to help me (even when I didn`t require it) and likely could`ve found someone to direct me a lot sooner.  In addition, the initial attempt resulted in additional damage to the door.

So, after a long day, it`s time for bed.