I'd actually been planning on posting more frequently, but I've been quite busy working at the Intensive English Program this term. I usually arrive at the IEP around 6:45 to 7:00 AM, and I usually get home around 5:30 PM . . . sometimes even later if a student needs to retake an exam or if I'm simply so behind on grading that I need to stay late to get it done. By the time my head's cleared on Friday, I find five days have simply vanished. It's a bit distressing, but it's the best job I've ever had so I shouldn't complain too much.
Plus, the IEP has been very good to me--helping me secure a high-paying career and all--so I feel working six ~50 hour weeks is a good way to start repaying my debt.
Here's some good news: Kobe Kaisei, the school that's hired me, has reported that the Japanese Immigration Bureau has approved my work visa, and the certificate is headed my way via airmail. Once I have the certificate, I need to take it to the Japanese Consulate in Denver so they can perform one last piece of bureaucracy on my passport. Then the last hurdle is cleared. I figured that I'd need to travel to Denver to perform all this, but a good friend of mine in Japan has informed me that I might be able to send a FedEx pre-paid envelope to the consulate, and they can get everything back to me in about a week. If this works out, no day off, no field trip to Denver, no need for a detailed blog entry (see the previous post).
In unrelated news, here's a funny anecdotal story about teaching Saudi students the intracacies of English Grammar: Earlier this week, we'd been discussing modals--should, would, could, might, will, had better, must, etc.--and appropriate situations to use them. On Wednesday, we were going over modals of advice using exercises from Betty Azar's seminal text, "Understanding English Grammar." Students were presented with hypothetical situations and asked to deliver advice using the forms we'd been drilling. For example, "what advice would you give someone who is getting a divorce?" or "what advice would you give someone who is failing their grammar class?"
My students--ten Saudi boys/men, a Korean guy, and a girl from Ghana--were performing admirably according to the tasks Azar presented, but everything fell apart at the prompt "What advice would you give someone who is traveling to Denmark?"
All of a sudden my Saudi students exploded:
"You SHOULD not go to Denmark!"
"You MUST not go to Denmark!"
"You BETTER NOT go to Denmark!"
Of course I was delighted to hear my students using the form correctly, but I was taken aback by the venom in their contibutions. Then I remembered the whole Danish cartoon controversy, and everything suddenly made sense. After briefly marveling at the collective emotion and cracking a few insensitive jokes, I politely asked them not to hurl rocks or firebombs at me and continued with the lesson.
It was kind of weird to see a fury similar to that shown on CNN evident in a classroom. I've seen the cartoons of course, and half of them don't seem too offensive, but I think the one with the Prophet sporting a bomb in his turban might've been a tad too provocative. Worse, it's utterly nonsensical: why would anyone think to link Islam and its adherents to explosive devices? I don't get it.
I suppose that's enough of a post for tonight. I think I'll end it by posting a beautiful picture I discovered on a CGtalk forum (check the link on the sidebar if you're interested). Anyway, I realize I'm likely infringing on some kind of copyright, but this picture is simply too beautiful to keep to myself. I commend the artist, Jason Chan, on this masterpiece and formally direct any intrigued readers to his personal website at www.jasonchanart.com.
Anyway, here's the image:
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