what makes maggie happy?

What makes Maggie happy….
How does she really know she is out of her 20’s.

What makes Maggie happy….
How does she really know she is out of her 20’s.

Thursday's are my light days at school. I only teach five classes. Two of them are nightmares. They are classes that I am in only once a week and kids just misbehave all over the place. But the other three are with first grade. We are working on phonics and singing simple conversations set to song so it is fun at least for me. This week I invented a new game (this isn’t anything I don’t usually do) for phonics. I divide the class up into two teams and give them names and make a score box on the board. One little sheets of paper I wrote out the alphabet several times and mixed the cards up. Then I pass out the cards to the students. Each one gets about 7 or 8 cards with different letters on them. I say a different sound of a letter (or a word and they find the beginning or ending sound) and the kids who have the coordinating letter hold it up. Each team gets the number of points according to how many kids in that group have those letters. Teams also can earn points by sitting quietly or can loose points if they misbehave.
Today I was playing this game with 1A and I named one team the flower team and the other the cat team. I was trying to figure out a way to get the students to speak in English while playing…
Usually they show out “I have it” “ I have the letter D” , “I don’t have it” etc.
But today was feeling a bit rowdy since it was a Thursday afternoon and we were about to be let out for a three day break celebrating the Prophet Mohammad’s birthday. And one of the kids was trying to figure out how to tell the other team they sucked…
So I told him to tell the other team
“you are stinky cats”
which he did and they looked at me for a reply
so I offered
“you are dead flowers”
Oh my gosh you would have thought it was a south American football match.
They all immediately understood what these insults meant and LOVED it and started screaming at the other team and then THEY STARTED MAKING up their OWN INSULTS TO SHOUT….
These were really their first autonomous words spoken in English…
I couldn’t believe it….
It was a Thursday miracle!!!
Maybe not really something I should be writing home about but they could do it!!! They could speak English!!!! They could yell at each other in English!!!
Who knew that after six months of English classes sat in silence they would all blossom at one moment, well maybe explode?


It was raining as class got out and decided to walk home in the rain and just enjoy it. I pulled out my camera and took dozens of random shots of Ramallah in the rain. I stopped at the produce shop and picked up a few odds and ends and made my way home. And plugged my computer into the internet and chatted for a little while on line…
There were lots of friends on line, which was random fun.
I then started peeling and chopping up veggies for a few recipes that I wanted to try. I have gotten really into food-based blogs lately and the recipes have been looking really interesting.
Soon it was time to go tutor a new family…
They are twin boys from my second grade class. Tutoring is a great way to boost up my income but the real reason I love it is that it is an amazing way to get to know families. I get one on one time with students and learn what makes them tick.
The boys and I had fun learning the different terms for weather, what weather you find in each month and what season each month comes in..
I know that doesn’t sound like a fun lesson but we made cards for each word and played “snap” a common card game only instead of playing cards we used our vocab cards. They seemed more than shocked that “school” could be fun. They were so lost in the fun of the game they didn’t seem to realize they were speaking English…. Ahhh another successful lesson. I stayed after for a bit to hang out with the older sisters and mom.
I had gone to their house earlier in the week to work out the details and while I was there they told me that they had only moved to Ramallah a few years before from Gaza.
So as I was talking to them I told them I was in the middle of making a traditional gaza lentil recipe that I had seen on www.gazamom.com
They were fascinated and I showed them the website.
They told me about a spice shop next to my school that grinds their own spices. They said you can tell them what you are going to make and they will mix up the right seasonings for each dish. It sounds like fun and I can’t wait to go and check the place out.
We spent a long time talking, It was wonderful!!!
And then they brought me home and I started cooking..
I love living in a stone house, because I can hear the huge biblically sized storm outside and yet I feel as snug as a bug inside… Candles on as the lights flicker from the wind. My computer on, playing all my favorite kinds of music from around the world…
I am like a mad scientist randomly mixing things together from the cupboards waiting to see if anything happens.
I am just so happy and in my element!!!

Three whole days off of school….
Still not sure what I am going to do with them but since it is raining so hard, it just doesn’t seem like the right time to hang out in the old city of Jerusalem. It gets really really slippery and I don’t need to break my neck while I am here.
So maybe it is a good day to go and spend the day with Safwan…
I am so in my element!