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Helens BlogAugust 04 An AccidentWell yesterday afternoon I was all set to go to the post office but unfortunately I slipped in the garage at home and twisted my ankle. I went to work assuming the pain would have gone by then but by the time I got there I couldn't even stand on my foot it was so painful. I thought I would wait until the pain went but Andy got the doctor who said I should go for an xray. So about 10 mins later (which felt like an hour I was in so much pain) we went to the hospital. I was seen almost straight away and they took about 6 xrays, finally telling me everything was ok so I thought I may as well just go home but the driver drove to another hospital again I was seen straight away and the doctor said he needed to put my foot in plaster this seemed a bit extreme for a sprain but I went along with it. After about an hour I was plastered up and on my way home. Andy managed to get a translation from the nurse and apperently I have fractured a bone in my heel and displaced a nerve. I am not suppossed to walk for 3 days and need to have the plaster on for 4 weeks. However they do not appear to give you crutches here so walking is difficult. Well at least I may be able to get a seat with legroom when we return to the UK in 2 weeks:) July 28 The Post OfficeThree weeks ago I got a note in the post to say I had a letter to collect but as we didn't have a car and I didn't know exactly the post office is we couldnt go to collect it. I spoke to the people at work to see if anyone knew where it was but they pretended they didn't understand or refer me to someone else who always said tomorrow (I have the feeling that they say tomorrow when they cant think of another word:)). On Monday I received another note saying I had a parcel to collect, I knew my friend in the UK was sending me something. Another of the expats here said he had seen it not far from our apartment so yesterday I went for a wander and found it. It was closed and opened at 14.30 until 18.30. So at 16.00 I went back only to find it still closed, there was a guard there who told me it would be open at 8.30 the next day. I have just got back parcel-less. I walked up there and yes it was open, I went to the reception desk to check that I could get my parcel here and was told that I could and needed a ticket. The machine is in Arabic and you have to press a button depending on which service you want. Not that taking a ticket made much difference, I got served 2 hours later only to be told that that my parcel wasn't here and I needed to go to the main post office in Rabat unfortunately he wasn't quite sure where it was. I give up, Andy says he will ask at work on Monday we'll see if he has better luck than me. Teaching in Morcco ContinuedTeaching here is very difficult I seem to bump into problems every day. First the room I was given was a training room and I needed to move out of it every time there was M & S training. So I was moved to the canteen, there was more room here for the students to move about but people are coming in and out to get drinks and food which is off putting for the students and they lose concentration. Also there are two breaks in the morning and afternoon so I had to rearrange the lessons around the breaks. Secondly as they are coming to lessons during their working day if they have a problem they need to sort out they cannot make it to a lesson so sometimes I have no students and sometimes I only have one. I also use my PC attached to a projector in order to show realia and that it is how I write my lessons but both my PC and the projector get hot and so I asked for a fan in order to keep them cool, I have been asking for 3 weeks and then my PC kept shutting down because it was overheating eventually it shut down and would not start up again. When I told the Personnel manager he provided me with a fan but talk about closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, it was too late. I am now not prepared to compromise my PC as its still sick even though Andy has tried his best to sort it out. On top of this I was told that would get paid on the 21st of each month it is now the 28th and still I have not been paid. I spoke to the accounts manager about this and was told it will definitely be there by Monday (ha ha ha I believe him) I asked him is this going to be like the water and was told that I was big enough and old enough to have sorted the water out myself. I actually would have done this if they had told me that but as you can imagine that would have been a struggle considering my limited french and the fact that English is the 3rd language here. Life As An ExpatWell I have to say life as an expat in Morocco is not good and I wouldn't recommend it. To start with Andy came here on his own while I stayed in the UK. So as part of working here he asked for a telephone, Internet access and a car. The car he got albeit intermittently as it was a company car and they used it during the day as they did in Sri Lanka but it varied as to when they gave him the keys in the evening so he would never know what time he could finish work. It took 9 weeks to install the telephone line and Internet which meant that at first we couldn't speak to each other. After a couple of weeks he was given a mobile phone which had a preset amount of hours to make calls (I think it is 4 hours) per month, however the person who had it before had used up most of these hours and the was only about 30 minutes left. We found this out when the phone line got cut off in the middle of a conversation. This meant I had to call Andy on his mobile in Morocco from the UK, which as you can imagine cost a lot of money. After about 2 months I decided it was better that I moved to MA than live apart.
The apartment we live in is nothing like the one we lived in in SL, there are bare wires hanging from walls and ceilings where light fittings are supposed to be, there's damp in the lounge and bedroom and cracks in the walls, we have 2 plug in fans one which falls apart when you pick it up and one that takes 20 minutes to start up. We also had a problem with the water a few weeks ago in the fact that the only plumbing for cold water is on the kitchen sink and the shower the rest is plumbed up for hot water including the toilets. We have a gas bottle to heat up the water and were changing it every 2 weeks. When we were in SL I think we only bought 2 bottles in the 2 and 1/2 years we were there. So I turned off the boiler and turned it on when we wanted a shower. After a week the boiler packed in and we were left with only cold water which meant cold showers, no washing machine and no flushing the toilet. When we told them at work they were too busy to sort anything out that day but would do it tomorrow. This was OK as cool showers are quite nice on hot days however the next day when they went to the apartment the boiler needed a new part which would arrive the next day (Wednesday, we had had no hot water since Friday) they disconnected the boiler completely and left it hanging off the wall. I needed a warm shower to wash my hair properly so we went to another expats apartment. On Wednesday they were again too busy to get the boiler fixed and so it went on all week. By this time Andy had been having 2 freezing cold showers a day and had a really bad cold and decided to take a colleages advice and fill the bath up from the kettle:). After about 2 hours he had an inch of water and the kettle packed in. On Monday someone turned up to replace the boiler and eventually we had hot water but the toilet was still plumbed up to the hot water, the plumber had a look and I was told that both the taps that were connected to the toilet were hot water and couldn't be changed. So we resigned not to use that toilet (we have 2 toilets and the other one is OK). To top things off here Andy has not had his car at weekends for 3 weekends which means we cannot go out at weekends. Last week another expat from SL, Lina, arrived and we had arranged to take her and someone from the UK out on Sunday but that was going to be awkward with no car. We got a phone call on Saturday asking us where we were going and when we said we didn't have a car we were told that they would get something sorted. At about 9pm that night a car arrived so that we could take everyone out.
Also twice this week one of the 2 cars have been in Casablanca so Andy and I have had to wait until they have taken the people who are staying in a hotel back then come back to drop the car off for Andy. On Wednesday we didnt get home until 9pm, I suggested we walked at 7pm but Andy had done that a couple of weeks ago and got "told off" for it. Last night there was no car at all and in the end a taxi was arranged and Andy would be picked up at 8am this morning but the car didnt turn up until 8.30.
Through all the problems we've had here we are dying to get home and should be leaving in 3 weeks.
Teaching In MoroccoAndy asked at work if there was a chance of me working here and the boss agreed. So I went into see him he said he had about 40 people who wanted to learn English and asked if I could do it I thought no problem 2 classes of 20 people simple , so we arranged for them to do a test to check their levels of English. I devised a form for them to take home and fill in and bring back the next day. However the personnel manager said that they must do the test at work and arranged a pokey room that fit in about 5 people at a time for them to do it in. The test took about an hour to do and as you can imagine with only 5 people at a time able to fit in there it took quite a while, also sometimes they didn't turn up. After 2 days of this the floor manager was complaining that it was taking too much time out of peoples working hour and could I cut the test down to a 2 minute test:) No was my answer as the test would be fair on either the others who had already done it nor me who had to tell how good their English was from only a couple of questions. So I again mentioned my original idea of the students taking the form home and bringing it back the next day. Apparently this was a good idea and I printed off the forms. The amount of students had now doubled to 80 but still. I went in the next day to collect the forms and as you can guess some of them had not returned them and others hadn't been given it in the 1st place. So my next suggestion was that all of them who wanted to learn come to the canteen after work and do it then. Good idea however out of 50 only 18 turned up. This was now the end of the 1st week and I had hoped to start the next week but I had all the forms to mark. I returned them on Monday saying that there were 3 groups, starters, elementary and intermediate. However another problem was that they wanted to learn during working hours and therefore I would only have 5 students in a class at a time. OK so we split them up into 5 starter lessons, 2 elementary lessons and 1 intermediate. I planned a timetable of 4 lessons on one day and 3 the next. No apparently they needed 2 2 hour lessons per week. So Andy and I worked out a plan to teach 16 lessons per week leaving me with a day and a half to plan the actual lessons. However then arose another problem in that the MD wanted them to have 3 lessons per week. This was impossible as it would leave me with no time to plan and there simply wasn't enough hours in a day, I was told it was easy to plan lessons as you simply pick up a book and teach. That's not the way I teach. So it was getting towards the end of week 2 and I still had no room, no projector, no whiteboard, no books infact the only think I did have was my own laptop, a tennis ball and some cards and I was called into the MDs office to ask why the lessons had not commenced. I could only laugh. July 27 MarrakeshLast weekend we went to Marrakesh with a few people from Andy's work. We all met up at the train station in Agdal ready to start the 4 hour journey. Fouzia is Moroccan and she went with Andy to get the tickets. First class was booked up so he bought normal class and when we got on the train we went into 1st class with the rest of the guys to see if we could upgrade. We actually didn't spend much time in 1st class anyway as we were too busy looking at the scenery which was beautiful. After about 2 hours the train stopped in the middle of nowhere and at first we thought there was something wrong but apparently there was only one track into the next town and so we had to wait for the train coming the other way to pass before we could go any further. While we were waiting a few Moroccans got off the train and disappeared into a field only to come back laden with sweetcorn:) When we arrived in Marrakesh we had to get to the Hotel, apparently it wasn't far so we decided to walk. However "not far" was taking a long time so we decided to get taxis there was 9 of us and we stopped one taxi (which was a bit like a fiat) and were told we could get 6 in one taxi, you can as long as you have a shoehorn to get you all out again, 4 in the back and 2 in the front it was epic. The Hotel was basic and cost 100 dirhams per night. Once we had sorted ourselves out we went to the Medina, I have to say it is huge you could wander round for 2 days and not see everything, we wandered round for about 3 hours before needing a break. We went to a cafe for a coffee and sat watching the crowd for a couple of hours. As we sat there and the sun went down the stall holders set up their wares for the evening which was basically food absolutely anything you can imagine, as you can imagine Andy loved it eating anything that he had never eaten before, brains etc. I stuck to things I knew like calamari and chicken. All in all we had a lovely day and cant wait to return.
July 06 Tex MexAs it was our mock anniversary last Saturday (we didn’t have time to celebrate the week before). We went to the Tex Mex on Michlifen Avenue, Agdal. It is very spacious inside and has a separate bar as well as a restaurant. When we arrived we found that the waiters spoke English which is a rarity over here. They showed us to a table and gave us a menu. As things are a lot more expensive here as oppose to Sri Lanka we went for beer rather than wine (or champagne that we had last year) and ordered beef fajitas. The beers arrived quickly and 10 mins later the food arrived on a sizzling platter with little pots of Salsa sauce, guacamole and sour cream. It was lovely. As the deserts looked so tempting we decided to have one each, normally Andy doesn’t like desert but he went for a lemon sorbet and I went for a double chocolate brownie. The deserts here are as fantastic as they sound I have to say better than anywhere we went in Sri Lanka but I shouldn’t really compare. All in all it was a lovely meal and a nice restaurant. However it is rather expensive, it cost about £50 for the meal and 2 beers, so I think we will stick with the Tapas for now. |
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