My English classes are continuing to go okay. I have a couple of local volunteers helping me with some classes. The volunteers I am working with are Wajeeh and Muhammad. (Not the one I was with on our road trip, but another one. It’s a reasonably common name in these parts.) Both of them have been a real help, particularly in explaining things like what “present continuous” means. (It’s something to do with “ing”.)
I’ve foolishly been left to my own devices in some other classes, but I’m still happy enough with how they’re going. It’s got to the stage that I can even have a wee laugh with my “students”, such as when I had to explain the difference between “drank” and “drunk”. After explaining what “drunk” meant, I said, “This is a word you will not need to use in Nablus.” Cue lots of laughter.
Talking of which, there was an Oktoberfest beer festival in Taybeh that a few folk (all Westerners) went to on Saturday. I decided not to bother going. After all, I had decided before I came that I wanted to immerse myself in the local culture as much as possible, and the least I can do is go without a beer for a few months.
Incidentally, if you want to support a Palestinian business and have a bevvy at the same time, look out for Taybeh beer. (See link below.)
6 comments:
How could you not understand 'present continuous'? How did we miss that on the trips to the dictionary round the dingin table?
It's what you are (keeping) doing. Not what you do (once).
I blame myself...
Dinging = dining of course.
I still blame myself...
I reckon MTG has expounded pretty well on the 'ing' words. I was sharing some thoughts with Kathryn last night about the 'pluperfect tense' and what is genetive, dative or ablative (from my Latin years ...)She was lost ... But it was all grist to the mill as she begins to teach her five-year-olds the rudiments of English Grammer! Power to your elbow - and such like colloquialisms ...
"Power to your elbow"? Someone must explain that to me and I think I probably need a crash course in English grammar as well to keep up with the rest of the family! I had wanted to post a comment on your last post about the artist but for some reason it didn't work. What I wanted to say was that the paintings you posted were very moving. The two I was struck by most were the one of the hands reaching up to the lady's face and the one of the man in the room staring out. They really convey very strongly a feeling of being trapped, isolated and oppressed. Sometimes it's easier to portray that in pictures which is very powerful. I can't imagine how that would feel. It really makes you think twice about moaning about the mundane things in life which really don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Loving the pic of you too, you are looking well. Glad the classes seem to be going well. I can picture you like Robin Williams in Good Morning Vietnam "I would like to buy some butter and some cheese" which really makes me laugh. Brilliant. Better go and do some of my own work now. Love and hugs. M x
I'm not gonna even bother with pluperfect.
Nor am I. I've just taught my kids the alphabet and that was stressful enough! =)
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