Yemeni Cricket Goes to School

You asked for a boring office-post, you've got it. Here it is - proof (or as close as it comes) that we work. Allow us to take you through our day.

Every morning we arrive at the school in the company vehicle.

Just kidding; I made that part up. We walk to school.

We're usually in the office around 9 a.m.; we then have two hours to mark tests or fine-tune our lessons or whatever. Here is the view from my desk: to the left of me, Tanya Boone, i.e. "the new girl," whom we kidnapped from Hartland NB in the summer. She is holding that fan because it is from China and she used to teach in China.




And straight ahead, over the top of the monitor, my darling wife Ruth is busy fixing many of the mistakes that we've all made here. She works in the office in the mornings, and teaches in the afternoons, while Tanya and I teach both morning and afternoon. First class is 11:00-2:00, and the second is 3:00-6:00.






Also ahead but slightly to the left is Nicholas, Acting Director of the Canadian Hadramout University College (that's us). Specifically, this is Nick getting his daily dose of frustrating news from our business partners in the Yemeni government.

Oh and here's me.














And now some classroom shots: here are Ruth and Sean earning money.































We're on an old campus and everything's made of concrete. Not the good kind, the crumbly kind. Yesterday a small section of my ceiling fell down and hit an empty desk, right beside one of my students. I was facing the board at the time and the impact was so loud I thought that the LCD projector had blown up, which it has threatened to do on occasion.

And here's me teaching a cat, because it was the only thing that showed up that day. Festivals are a little bit tricksy in this part of the world - you never know when one of them is going to jump on you. Sometimes we all get to work and then... no students. Surprise! It's a festival.

In the evenings, which are short because we're so tired, we relax in our flat and prepare lessons for the next day (Tanya's living with us for now, as her apartment is not yet ready).

And that's about it for five days of our week. We very rarely do anything adventurous or interesting on weekdays because we're working all day long.

So there you have it - Yemeni Cricket has a job:) If you want to know more about our school, let us know, because we don't want you to get the wrong idea - we really do enjoy our jobs a great deal, and we have a fantastic relationship with the students, and work in general consumes about 95% of our entire existence right now. But do forgive us if we slip back into presenting a slightly skewed version of reality here on the blog;) Ciao.