Backgammon in the Cairo Cold

A non-stop day today and a full 12 hours in the school.

Trainees had to start handing in their language analysis sheets yesterday with their lesson plans and so the last thing they needed was to have to hand in the first written assignment this morning too. Poor things.

It's the time of the course when people start to flounder a bit and this afternoon I had to grade a lesson a weak pass. It was clear that the trainee had worked really hard on preparing his lesson, has a good rapport with the students and he really wanted to help them. It was also clear that he didn't really know the answers to their questions on the language he was teaching. I really felt for him. He's been working hard on keeping his teacher talk down, grading his language to their level and resisted the temptation to head off on a lengthy, too complicated explanation...so clear progress in that respect. Now he needs to start teaching language though.

The group continues to be a delight to work with and the first two weeks have flown by.

We have our assessor with us a bit earlier than usual on this course and so I stayed on at the end of the day to get ahead a bit and prepare some things for her visit. Next week will be busy.

I met Bb for dinner in Hana's Korean in Zamalek and as I was walking to the restaurant I spotted these two guys playing backgammon in the cold. They must be keen!