Morjes!

Welcome to my blog. I write about fitting in, sticking out, and missing the motherland as a serial foreigner.

What do Bill Gates and Queen Rania have in common?

Teaching is going so well. I'll tell you what, I love teaching, and I love teaching in the UAE. I know the answer is probably "a lot of places," but allow me to rhetorically ask you, where else, when you assign students to give a presentation on a successful person they admire, would you get a variety such as this?










Quite a few students talked about successful people who are not famous, like dads, moms, and aunts. I loved just sitting there and listening to them talk about someone they admire, and why. The most entertaining presentation was the one about Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, aka Dubai's crown prince, aka the UAE's (and possibly the entire Gulf's) most eligible (albeit engaged) royal bachelor. His picture (third one from the top, above) went up on the first Power Point slide and half the class - the female half - about sighed itself out of their seats. After the presentation, the students got into some kind of minor dispute about something His Highness did and it only came to an end when one girl snapped, "He's handsome, so maalesh [no problem]!"

Like I said, I love teaching in the UAE.

Diwali

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