Back to School!

I have successfully completed an entire week of school! Classes started on Wednesday, and now it is Tuesday night.

I found that my grad classes will be time-consuming, but not necessarily difficult. All of the instructors are quite well-respected in thier fields, so it is very interesting learning from them. Coming from a small university, it is a little strange to be at such a prestigious institution. The director of the Enlish Language Institute (the part of the school where I teach), said that TEFL/TESL conferences and seminars are almost like AUC alumni gatherings, where it is common for half of the people there (presenting papers, attending, etc) to be AUC graduates.

The class I teach is... interesting. When I ask the students why they came to AUC, it is because of the presitige. A lot of them want to be Petroleum Engineers, which is a new term for me. Apparently it's the people who work in the extraction of fossil fuels. One girl said the Minister of Petroleum Engineering is her hero because he recently said women can be Petro Engineers.

I've also noticed that in Egypt they call a lot of people engineers who we might call technicians in the States. The guy who comes to fix the copy machine, for instance. They also use some other strange terms, like a computer projector is called a 'data show'.

Back to my class: They all seem very eager to learn. So far they have been well-behaved, not talking a lot or using too much of thier first language. I like them! I've already identified at least 2 overachievers and 1 socialite. Today after assigning the homework, one of the students came back in the room and told me that he and all his friends think the homework is too much. I told him I would think about it, and send out an email. I reduced it because I was already concerned about it being too long, but I'm afraid they will still be stressed out. We'll see!