This past week Lahore kicked it up a notch with the heat. We hit around 42 C (well over 100 in Fahrenheit although no one seems to be able to do the math). It wasn't just that hot during the day, but at night as well. It seems the Lahori architects could use some help, because they've built all the houses to keep heat inside. Maybe they've confused the formula for houses with brick ovens.
Anyway, our one ancient AC unit was not working properly, and therefore we spent the whole week baking. AC also didn't work in our company car or the office, and even in the training room at the five star hotel I teach at. I was trying to go the hotel an hour early just to sit in the air conditioned lobby and get a break from the unrelenting heat. I wasn't sleeping well during the week and finally dragged my mattress out on the veranda to sleep outside. The numerous ant bites, or whatever they are, were worth those precious hours of sleep. Really I was just so out of it. On Wednesday the water and electricity (which runs the fans) was on and off all day, and as soon as I escaped the house I was at the hotel where there was also no water to drink and no AC. Usually one of my students arranges drinking water, tea and any admin stuff I need to do for the class, but he had gone missing. I was just trying to keep myself standing up in the class! Thursday and Friday were more of the same, including electricity and water problems.
Lahoris are ensuring me that it gets MUCH hotter than this, up to 50 or 55 Celsius which I can't even imagine or calculate due to my current state. By saturday I was just delirious most of the time. Slipping in and out of heat induced sleep. Woken up by the phone. People speaking Urdu. Apparently 'cause we're foreigners we're being watched by the army or the secret police. Or something. Did I dream that or was I awake? Pretty sure I was awake. It took a lot of mental effort to understand the security guy who was speaking in Urdu, but shortly after speaking to him I passed back out on the couch. If this is April, what is it like in July?
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Mmmm Ant Surprise
Ants have become a problem here with the increasing heat. If you leave one crumb of food in the sink you'll have a few hundred ants in a matter of five minutes. You're thinking, no problem, just make sure you always do your dishes right away and clean out the sink. Well that would work if the water ran regularly, but there's a quite a bit of fluctuation in the water supply meaning that you never know when you'll get running water to wash the dishes. So, they stay in the sink and the ants are having a field day.
The other night one of my housemates was eating a Bounty bar (chocolate & coconut) as he went to sleep. He fell asleep with one last bite in his hand. A few hours later, he woke up and felt the chocolate still in his hand. Mmm why not have a midnight snack and finish it off? With his eyes still closed he popped it in his mouth, but to his surprise there was a strange crunch and the candy bar seemed to be moving inside his mouth. He opened his eyes to see his hand completely blackended from the ants which had covered it and spit those little guys right out! His entire bed was covered in ants and he spent the next two hours trying to get them off of himself and out of his room. Lesson learned: don't leave food anywhere near your bed unless you want to be sleeping with them. And don't leave food in your hand unless you want to be getting some of that extra protein ants can provide.
The other night one of my housemates was eating a Bounty bar (chocolate & coconut) as he went to sleep. He fell asleep with one last bite in his hand. A few hours later, he woke up and felt the chocolate still in his hand. Mmm why not have a midnight snack and finish it off? With his eyes still closed he popped it in his mouth, but to his surprise there was a strange crunch and the candy bar seemed to be moving inside his mouth. He opened his eyes to see his hand completely blackended from the ants which had covered it and spit those little guys right out! His entire bed was covered in ants and he spent the next two hours trying to get them off of himself and out of his room. Lesson learned: don't leave food anywhere near your bed unless you want to be sleeping with them. And don't leave food in your hand unless you want to be getting some of that extra protein ants can provide.
Friday, March 24, 2006
It's worse than an "F"...it's a "G"
I’ve been enjoying my role as an undercover agent seeking to expose plagiarizers to the world. Ok maybe not the world and only my co-workers at the Centre, but I’ve felt like a spy googling to see where a few of my students got their lesson plans from. I told them it was okay to get ideas and inspiration from outside materials, including the net, but that their lesson plans must be in their own words. In order to ensure this I gave them a specific format and then asked them to evaluate their lesson in light of the theory they had learned in the class. Despite this, a few of the papers were still marked “G” for “must go home and google.” Sure enough, within seconds (ok minutes the internet here is slow) I was able to find the internet sources of what was handed in as original work.
One student handed in a “lesson plan” which looked like a powerpoint presentation. No more than six lines on a page in font size 50 or 60. Turns out the only original words in this fat packet were on the overly elaborate title page. The rest came directly from ESL About.com, the British Council, and a teacher named Susan Cavahlo from Portugal. Funny thing is I was wondering why the lesson plan was so incoherent. That’s what happens when you cut a third of it from a pronunciation lesson, a third from a speaking lesson, and another third from a talk on student motivation. Hmm and wasn’t the assignment a listening lesson?
Another one was obviously not prepared and tried to design a listening lesson the spot. Problem is she just asked people up to the front of the room and asked them to tell their favorite colors, favorite foods, and a few other favorites. She even tried calling me up but I was so shocked that she hadn’t even prepared a lesson I was busy writing notes on her observation form like, “What is going on in this lesson? Did you spend any time preparing this at home?” To no surprise, she had “forgotten” her lesson plan and asked to turn it in on the following class day. The lesson plan which was handed in is word for word from a lesson on reading Shakespearean literature and discussing the Globe Theatre. What that has to do with our favorite foods I have no idea. Do they think I don’t know how to use Google?
A third case of plagiarism was not quite as blatant, and this one was in their essay assignment not for the presentation. I may not have noticed it had the student not quoted the researcher whose paper had been presented in class, forgot to change the font so it didn’t stick out like a sore thumb, and left in phrases such as “prosodic structure” which this student obviously would not know the meaning of. Almost got away with it…well okay not really.
My favorite blunder was on an “acknowledgements” page of a lesson plan. Not acknowledgements like giving credit to the person who originally created the lesson, but like thanks to my mom and dad etc. Find the mistakes in the following:
“I would like to thank Miss.H.Michelle Walts for his commitment to convey knowledge to our class, his efforts in this regard cannot be described in words. And finally, we are forever indebted to our parents for their understanding, endless patience, encouragement and support whenever it’s required.”
If this student was trying to impress me with flowery thank you’s, having the right gender pronouns might be helpful. Does she think I’m a drag queen or something?
Several of them decided to record their own voices on audio tape, and the listening passages were completely incomprehensible to me. Others read passages laced with grammatical mistakes. The fishes story is just too good:
“Ahmed reads in class 8th. He was very fond of fishing. Once morning, he walked to the river to catch fish. By ten o’clock, he caught six fishes. He was very happy. The biggest fish weighted more than 3 kilos. On going back home, he said to his mother, ‘Mother, I have caught a very big fish.”
Anyway, despite about 7 students who plagiarized, cheated, or just don’t have sufficient English skills to take courses in English, the rest of my students are brilliant and will make excellent teachers. I’m excited for them to enter into the education scene here in Pakistan and make a big difference in employing their creativity and modern teaching methodology. I look forward to teaching these girls again, and I’m hoping to get out of the next term so I can just have the top students in next year’s program. Although, then that means my Google sleuthing days are over….and what will I do to amuse myself?
One student handed in a “lesson plan” which looked like a powerpoint presentation. No more than six lines on a page in font size 50 or 60. Turns out the only original words in this fat packet were on the overly elaborate title page. The rest came directly from ESL About.com, the British Council, and a teacher named Susan Cavahlo from Portugal. Funny thing is I was wondering why the lesson plan was so incoherent. That’s what happens when you cut a third of it from a pronunciation lesson, a third from a speaking lesson, and another third from a talk on student motivation. Hmm and wasn’t the assignment a listening lesson?
Another one was obviously not prepared and tried to design a listening lesson the spot. Problem is she just asked people up to the front of the room and asked them to tell their favorite colors, favorite foods, and a few other favorites. She even tried calling me up but I was so shocked that she hadn’t even prepared a lesson I was busy writing notes on her observation form like, “What is going on in this lesson? Did you spend any time preparing this at home?” To no surprise, she had “forgotten” her lesson plan and asked to turn it in on the following class day. The lesson plan which was handed in is word for word from a lesson on reading Shakespearean literature and discussing the Globe Theatre. What that has to do with our favorite foods I have no idea. Do they think I don’t know how to use Google?
A third case of plagiarism was not quite as blatant, and this one was in their essay assignment not for the presentation. I may not have noticed it had the student not quoted the researcher whose paper had been presented in class, forgot to change the font so it didn’t stick out like a sore thumb, and left in phrases such as “prosodic structure” which this student obviously would not know the meaning of. Almost got away with it…well okay not really.
My favorite blunder was on an “acknowledgements” page of a lesson plan. Not acknowledgements like giving credit to the person who originally created the lesson, but like thanks to my mom and dad etc. Find the mistakes in the following:
“I would like to thank Miss.H.Michelle Walts for his commitment to convey knowledge to our class, his efforts in this regard cannot be described in words. And finally, we are forever indebted to our parents for their understanding, endless patience, encouragement and support whenever it’s required.”
If this student was trying to impress me with flowery thank you’s, having the right gender pronouns might be helpful. Does she think I’m a drag queen or something?
Several of them decided to record their own voices on audio tape, and the listening passages were completely incomprehensible to me. Others read passages laced with grammatical mistakes. The fishes story is just too good:
“Ahmed reads in class 8th. He was very fond of fishing. Once morning, he walked to the river to catch fish. By ten o’clock, he caught six fishes. He was very happy. The biggest fish weighted more than 3 kilos. On going back home, he said to his mother, ‘Mother, I have caught a very big fish.”
Anyway, despite about 7 students who plagiarized, cheated, or just don’t have sufficient English skills to take courses in English, the rest of my students are brilliant and will make excellent teachers. I’m excited for them to enter into the education scene here in Pakistan and make a big difference in employing their creativity and modern teaching methodology. I look forward to teaching these girls again, and I’m hoping to get out of the next term so I can just have the top students in next year’s program. Although, then that means my Google sleuthing days are over….and what will I do to amuse myself?
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Aftershock
Last night I awoke to what seemed like the house shaking violently. I was in that half sleep state, and was wondering what kind of vehicle would be going down our street that could make such a racket. There was about 10 seconds of shaking followed by a pause and some more shaking. During the second jolt I wearily pulled open the curtains to see if there were any tanks rolling down the street. Seeing nothing, I just went back to sleep thinking that I’d imagined the whole thing.
I forgot about it until I read the paper this morning. On the front page over a small two paragraph blurb was the heading “Aftershock.” Upon reading the headline the midnight shaking came back to my memory. Apparently there was a 5.4 magnitude aftershock last night centered in Kashmir which is NE of Lahore. One of my co-workers also felt it and had a similar reaction. We’ve been working so much on launching this new program that we both attributed the shaking to the malfunctioning of our burned out minds. For once, we were wrong. For a split second during the night I did think it might be an earthquake, and wondered what I should do if it was. Since the shaking wasn’t that bad I had just passed it off and gone by to sleep!
I can’t imagine what it must have felt like for the people who live up north, where one of the most severe earthquakes in history hit last fall. The terror they must feel each time the shaking starts in the night. Many are still homeless and some villages still have not been reached by aid workers. The lone pot that your family owns starts to rattle in that telltale way. Grab the baby as she cries. Wake the grandparents and urge them to move quickly. Make sure to cover your hair as you run out of the house; it’s just a reflex for you by now. Wonder if your sister and brother in law are alright in the next village, knowing that if this earthquake is as big as the last one you might never see them again.
I'm sure this is not exactly what women in the northern areas were thinking yesterday, but who knows, maybe I'm not too far off.
I forgot about it until I read the paper this morning. On the front page over a small two paragraph blurb was the heading “Aftershock.” Upon reading the headline the midnight shaking came back to my memory. Apparently there was a 5.4 magnitude aftershock last night centered in Kashmir which is NE of Lahore. One of my co-workers also felt it and had a similar reaction. We’ve been working so much on launching this new program that we both attributed the shaking to the malfunctioning of our burned out minds. For once, we were wrong. For a split second during the night I did think it might be an earthquake, and wondered what I should do if it was. Since the shaking wasn’t that bad I had just passed it off and gone by to sleep!
I can’t imagine what it must have felt like for the people who live up north, where one of the most severe earthquakes in history hit last fall. The terror they must feel each time the shaking starts in the night. Many are still homeless and some villages still have not been reached by aid workers. The lone pot that your family owns starts to rattle in that telltale way. Grab the baby as she cries. Wake the grandparents and urge them to move quickly. Make sure to cover your hair as you run out of the house; it’s just a reflex for you by now. Wonder if your sister and brother in law are alright in the next village, knowing that if this earthquake is as big as the last one you might never see them again.
I'm sure this is not exactly what women in the northern areas were thinking yesterday, but who knows, maybe I'm not too far off.
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