To follow up on yesterday's post about students identifying me through my car, I was walking from the classroom building to the parking lot this afternoon, carrying a Xerox box full of language games when one of my speaking/listening students saw me and asked to take the box to the car. As we walked the 30 meters to my car, another young Sur boy saw us and made a big show of pretending that my student was too weak to carry the box:
Sur boy 1: Miss, can I help you? You need help. (tries to take the box from "Mah")
Mah: (clings to the box, determined to see through his offer of help) No, he is joke.
Random Sur boy 2: (walking alongside Sur boy 1, trying to usurp both SB1 and Mah) Hi, Miss! How are you?
Me: I'm fine. I don't know your name. (At this point, we have stopped walking and stand in the middle of the parking lot.)
Former student "Kha": (shouting to us from 5 meters to our right) Hi, Miss! How are you?
Me: (recognizing Kha and turning towards him) Hi, Kha. I'm fine. How are you? How is Sur?
Kha: It's good.
Me: How is your car? (He was one of the first boys in the class last term to get a driver's license and car.)
Kha: It's good.
Random Sur boy 3: He has Carolla. Do you know Carolla?
Me: Yes, I do.
RSB3: You have?
Me: No, I don't. But my sister had a Carolla a long time ago.
RSB3: His (Kha's) Carolla is very bad. It waves.
Kah: No, he is liar.
Me: Waves? What do you mean it waves?
Kah: No, no. He joking.
RSB3: It goes (makes a slalom motion with his hand)...
Me: Ah, Kha drives crazy!
RSB3: Yes!
From behind us on our right, Kha 2 (another student from last block) finds us and says, "Hi, Miss! How are you?" (We all turn around in unison to greet him)
Me: I'm fine. How are you?
RSB: Miss, ask him about Maxima! (Kha 2 has a white Maxima that he is very proud of and gives the other boys from Sur rides home on the weekend).
Kha 2: Where is your car, Miss?
I try to raise my hand to point to my car, which is now right in front of all of us, but am cut off by Kha.
Kha: Your car is blue now?
Me: My car is what?
Kha 2: Yes, your car is blue now. We saw it earlier.
Kha: You have two cars now? What happened?
I look at them with a confused face and try to think of what the heck they are getting at, and then I remember...
Me: Ah! Yes, there is a person with a blue Mazda 3 at the Language Center, but it's not me. I still have this one. (I point to one of the only teacher cars left in the lot; Mah shuffles the box from one arm to the other; I use the remote key to open the trunk and passive-aggressively indicate that I need to get going.)
RSB 2: There it is!
I share this parking lot interaction for two reasons:
1. This disorienting nature of speaking with a person and then being interrupted or cut off by another person who wants to vie for your attention is common to Omani culture. It's not hard to feel like I have tennis neck from trying to toggle between my students trying to get my sole attention, and in the case of these boys, the attention of me as their teacher and the affection of a female voice. To compete for attention time, they think of random things to say to dominate my attention -- it works!
2. I'd also like to note that these students are more obsessed with my car and keeping tabs on it than I am! Maybe it's a coming-of-age teenage boy thing, but they talk about and reference their cars as if the vehicles were dear children to them. Innocent enough guy talk, I would say.
2 comments:
How old are your students? I'm jealous that your students are so kind!
They are mostly 18 years-old, but some are 17 or 19. You can't get a driver's license until you're at least 18 years old, so when they get their license, they are very much ALL ABOUT the car! Hehe. I'm glad my students are so nice, too. It's very cute on most days. Some days, they drive me crazy!
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