Wednesday 8th November 2006

Hey guys,
Have been mega busy as usual, so I don’t know which of the many amusing anecdotes I shall regale you with today!

As far as school goes, it’s getting pretty ugly, long story, things are falling apart quite badly at the seams, aside from the teachers leaving, a number of people have been getting screwed out of money by the school and it’s all very worrying. I’m not quite ready to start looking for a new job, but it may come to that yet. Madame finally appeared after almost 8 weeks absence, but it still feels like too little too late in terms of management organisation.

Anyhoo, I don’t really feel like getting into all that just now, so instead I’ll tell you all about my Buddy Holly moment. I always felt that I had somehow missed out on the intense zeitgeisty-type moments that members of older generations had – the death of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, JFK, and, of course, The Day The Music Died.

However, I recently had just such a moment!
I was in the bookshop, looking for some resource books for my clasroom when I found this lovely Winnie the Pooh science book on nature. I was flicking through it trying to decide if it was too hard for my kids or not, when I saw this massive black mark across the
front of the title page. It was a brand new book, and I realised it was the same black pen/paint they use for censorship here. Now usually they censor things that have references to Israel, or Jews etc, but what on earth could be offensive in a children’s book?
I looked more closely at the picture, which had Winnie the Pooh and a giant black smudge on his back and then it hit me.

They had censored Piglet.

I literally couldn’t believe it.

I mean, I get that Muslim countries take not eating pork seriously, but I mean, it’s a fictional cartoon of a stuffed teddy baby piglet!!

(I had previously discovered when doing farmyard animals in class that the noises are: “duck?”
“quack quack”
“horse?”
“neigh!”
“sheep”
“baa baa”
“pig?”
“…. huh? …..”
“What’s that miss?”)

So there you are; for some people, Buddy Holly’s death really was The Day The Music Died, but I think I may have been the first person to truly recognise the significance of The Day They Censored Piglet.

Sad but true.

I guess I should leave off there, as there is so much more I could say, and only so much of your attention span left!

hope this finds everyone well and happy and healthy etc
tons of love and hugs and happy vibes
zeitgeist-Maya
xxx

p.s. – I’m in an uber-good mood at the moment due to the weather. The weather here has been hot and oppressive for so long that I just stopped noticing it completely and forgot
about other kinds of weather altogether. Day after day after day of the same hot blinding heat.
Then on Tuesday morning, I stepped outside to walk to work and it was cool!! Not just cool, but there was a refreshing breeze too!! I’m told the temperature has dropped to 28/29, which I know sounds hot, but it really is surprisingly lush after 40-something!!
It was completely sudden and was the same today too – I’ve been in a stupidly good mood ever since! I never knew it was getting to me so much until it changed!
The kids also started coming to school in jumpers, and the caretaker had a woolly hat on today – it made me laugh sooooo much – 29 degrees is apparently woolly
hat weather here!
hahahahahahahahaaaaaaaa!!!!

kisses
xxxxxxxxxxxx

Sunday 1st October 2006

Well, last Thursday night there was a full scale mob/riot outside our building that was INSANE!!!

Friday 2nd June 2006

Hello everyone,

Life here is fairly mundane at the mo, the temperature is rising steadily, last week it was around 44 celcius most days, and this week it’s been around 47 or 48 almost every day. The heat is completely draining and exhausting, and the air-con in our classroom is struggling to keep the temperature below 35, which is still a welcome 13 degree difference!

Playground duty is gruelling, but aside from that everything’s going well. We’ve had our exams, and now have two weeks left with basically nothing to teach them, as the syllabus if finished, so I’m just making stuff up (worksheets, wordsearches off the internet, and a random project on cars – next week we’re going to do a project on the world cup!).

Luckily, most of the governement schools have already broken up for the summer (the heat gets steadily worse so they break up as early as possible so everyone can go somewhere else for two months!) and it’s only the private schools that are still open, and as a lot of our kids have brothers and sisters in public schools, the parents just decide they can stay at home after exams.

My class of 16 unruly 8-year olds has gradually reduced, and on Wednesday only 4 of them showed up.

Which is nice.

Last Tuesday we took the primary kids to Aqua Park, which was totally awesome, and me and Tudor (a 55 year-old ex-headmaster) raced each other down the flumes for most of the day. Yay!

In other news, a rumour has got around that one of the teachers in SEN has a crush on me. The description of him that Michaela gave Bryn was (and I quote) “He’s about 40, going bald, pretty tubby with horrifically bad teeth. He fancies Maya because he thinks she looks innocent and naive. His name is Mohammed. Oh, and he likes porn with animals in because he grew up on a farm.”

Seriously, word for word.

Oooh I so can’t wait for him to make his move!

Sadly, as Bryn and I discovered when trying to spot him at the secondary graduation ceremony, there are literally about 7 guys called Mohammed who are going bald and have bad teeth! Not exactly a lot of talent out here.

Aside from that, not much is happening, although for some reason the heat here is making me swell up, and I have put on another 3 slobby kilos, (which I’m hoping like hell is water retention through dehydration, but I have my doubts)!!

I’m an enormous heifer at the mo, and may have to wear a red carnation at the airport so my dear family will recognise me, instead of craning there necks and saying “Where’s Maya?” “I dunno, I can’t see round this elephant coming through the arrivals door”, or something similar.

If you ever want to put your own weight into perspective, I can recommend this terrifying option – I realised yesterday that even if I lost 3 kilos, I would still weigh DOUBLE what Nicole Ritchie weighs!! She may be an anorexically thin celebrity waif, but nevertheless, I can fit TWO of her into my bodyweight, with 3 kilos of flab to spare.

Horrifying.

So, I’ll leave you with the terrifying question, How many Nicoles can you fit into your weight?

(Oh, and if I don’t come home in two weeks, it’s because I’ve decided I’m too fat to ever have sex again, except with bald Mohammed, and I’ve moved to a farm in the desert to live out his animal porn fantasies).

Lots of Love,

“Sheep have feelings too” Maya!