Wednesday, Sept 1

Today was the first day of school, well, with the the kids at least. It should turn out to be a pretty fun year. We spent the day in our homerooms, myself with 10th graders and Emily with the 11th graders. Not much was accomplished though. Mostly we tested their knowledge of English, math, and science and attempted to learn all their names. This proved to be very difficult. I had about 4-6 Ahmeds, several Mohameds, and a handful of Amrs. Even though we have become somewhat familiar with these names, they are still very difficult to say correctly.
The students are quite an interesting bunch. About half the students are very comfortable with each other because they went to school together last year and enrollment was around sixty kids. It is still a fairly small program. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 130 kids, grades 6-12. It is kind of funny because the principle is worried about us having more than 20 students in a class. This would be small compared to a typical American high school class which could be 30 or more. I think that kids are kids no matter where they are from. We have the goody-two-shoe students who ask too many questions, the groups of girls who can't stop talking, the seniors guys who are just too cool to participate, and everything in-between. One positive/negative aspect is that the parents are spending a lot of money by sending their kids to our school so they will be very active in their children's education.
Tonight we started our search again for a new apartment. I think we will try and look at one new place everyday until we find something. We were very surprised that we were able to talk to the bowab of the building we were looking at. It was an unfurnished, three-bedroom apartment that was very big, but also a little expensive. We may try and talk the landlord down, but I think we can find something a little bit better.