Reality check

Today is a rainy and warm Sunday, a perfect time to pull together everything that I'll need for the start of classes tomorrow. Indeed, the students know that they need to be back tomorrow, and the professors are geared up to meet them. However, it's widely acknowledged that the students *may* choose not to show up and that no real learning will take place tomorrow. We won't meet at all the following week for the religous holiday, so the first time I'll distribute the syllabus and begin teaching in earnest will be the week of October 6.

I'm extremely excited about my classes and confess to having high hopes for this semester and the next. The professors that I'll be working with are just as fired up as me, and it looks like we're all ready to try new things. Interestingly, ESI has a dual charge of being a place of teaching and of scholarship, but the positive approach to student learning seems to resonate more closely with the Community College approach that we have in the United States. It's very different indeed from the Research I approach, but the group of students is also different.

The "Schools" in Morocco are of a higher caliber than the universities -- they have entrance exams limiting attendance to the best students, are funded by individual ministries and don't take from the "university" pot of money, and have better resources and facilities all around. I still can't imagine that ESI students hold a candle to the students we have at Rutgers in SCILS, but perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised. I have every intention of pushing them as far as I can this year, and given the suppleness of the semesters here, I expect things will self-adjust as we go.

As for the rest of the reality check: the winds last night blew out the pilot light on my new water heater (in the middle of a bath, actually). In all honesty, the water heater only heats the water going to the tub using the butane tank pictured at left; none of the other faucets in the house can get hot water at all. But, I'm back in a situation of not having bath/shower water. I'd try to call someone, but the screen on my cellphone died this morning, so I can't read my address book. The phone was old (it's the one I bought when I moved to NJ and got unlocked when I came here) so it's not a huge surprise that it chose to die. However, with stores closed today, I don't have much occasion to hope to get any of this fixed until Tuesday at the earliest due to classes all day on Monday.

Moral of the story, despite the stellar school where I'll be teaching, the great digs I landed, and the wealth of people who are ready to help me out, I'm still in what is technically considered a developing country and there are just going to be occasional bumps in the road that reflect this reality. For example, my landlady promises me a new stovetop apparatus next month, but for the moment, I'm using a camping-style stove for my stovetop cooking. The new stovetop will also use butane tanks, but it will likely be its own piece of furniture. Like the water heater, it will be different and new, but basically the same as the current model.