Sunshine, showers and sleeping students...

Sunday 29th Jan was a bright and blustery day in Abu Dis, and it was also the day of my first English lesson with the Dar Assadaqa Womens Group. I first noticed them standing in a group at the top of the steps and remember thinking "Ah it's nice to finally see more women at DAS", but I had totally forgotten that they were here to have an English class...with me...yikes!!

I stood at the front of the class looking out at the room of women and feeling like a total fraud, but the kind and warm nature of each and every single one of the women in my class soon put me at my ease. They were all adamant that they wanted to focus on English conversation rather than grammar or writing which suited me just fine, it's shocking how much you forget over the years and some of the school children of Abu Dis could definitely teach me a thing or two when it comes to diagramming a sentence!

The hour long lesson flew by as we learnt how to introduce ourselves, where we were from, how old we were, what we did, how many children we had (lots!), how old they were and what their names were...phew. This section definitely took the longest as the women of Abu Dis are lucky enough to have lovely big families :-)

Initially I was concerned that the language barrier would be difficult to navigate around but thanks to one or two excellent English speakers in the class (hmm will need to come up with something more difficult for their next lesson), it proved to be OK. In fact better than OK, I actually had a laugh with these women and was struck by the commonalities in our lives and situations rather than the differences. There are some real characters in my class and I'm really going to enjoy getting to know them over the next couple of months. 

I have a feeling it's going to be a real education, more for me rather than them I'm sure...

Please note Fairuza is no reflection on the quality of my teaching!!