"I can cope with disappointment: it's the hope I find unbearable."

Placement tests today. Twenty three students, and we split them into three groups. My group complained straightaway, with some justification, about the quality of the sound recording on the listening test. We’ll have to put that right.

We’d arrived early – and couldn’t get into the temporary-temporary teaching block. Standing in the sunshine (the climate’s really lovely at this time of year), LM mentioned something he’d picked up from the DoS’s pep talk yesterday, which I’d missed: it’s envisaged that there’ll be 600 students in due course – but that only one in ten of applicants will meet the English language criteria. So that means, six thousand people doing “my” placement test.

So it’s in the light of this that T2 went from seeming a bit eccentric to acting downright weird later this morning. After the first testing session, (the listening, then grammar, reading and writing), we were in the temporary-temporary staff room and she said that she thought the first writing question – which simply requires the students to copy out some text in their own handwriting – was “patronising”. LM said that he had thought it was too simplistic until I’d explained it to him, and I was genuinely curious as to why she thought it was patronising, and was starting to say I was looking forward to discussing the test when she just walked out of the room.

LM looked at me in perplexity and said, “This is becoming a problem.” Indeed, she’s done this several times: for example, we’re having an on-the-hoof discussion about the best kind of folders to provide the students with, when she just walks away whilst LM is in mid-sentence.

Anyway, I didn’t respond to LM’s observation. It’s a management thing. Time will tell. Maybe she’s just ignorant, being from Manchester.

Back at the ranch, and two identically dressed skinny blokes get us connected to the Wi-Fi router, and thence to the Internet. Hooray! Except that the connexion’s so slow as to be next to useless. Bah! We’re promised that we’ve got 256mb, but that’s temporary, it’ll go up to a gig tomorrow. As someone once said (I wish I could remember who), I can cope with disappointment: it’s the hope I find unbearable.

First Day at Work

Our first day at the college. When it’s finished, it’s going to be very impressive. Perhaps it will be finished before my two year contract is up. The English and Key Skills temporary building will be more than adequate, with the big classrooms you get here. They should be ready by the end of March. For now, we’re in temporary-temporary classrooms. I don’t know when it’s anticipated that we move into permanent classrooms, or where they are.

The admin staff have inputted a password to enable us to connect to the college’s Wi-Fi network, but it’s obviously overloaded – I was able to have a look at my email account, but it froze me out before I could send anything much.

Still no Internet at The Houses. (We had a conversation today about what we should call it. There was no definite answer. When I was talking to Engineer Whatsisname in the the corner shop the other day, he asked if I was living “in this village”. I confirmed that I was, but like a bloody fool never asked him what this village was called.)

There’s a big fuck-off gate, which is locked at night. There was no one around at 7.30 this morning, so I couldn’t get out to get bread. Likewise, tonight, T2 had to ring me because she’d popped out to the shop and couldn’t get back in. We’re promised a full time gate-keeper in due course.

No telly either. The upside of that is, I’m listening to the local radio on FM a lot. The Arabic pop music is cheery enough, and some of the more serious music is ace. I just wish I could ascertain who the artists were. Another incentive for learning Arabic.

The no-internet, no-telly situation is the result of politicking between our management and the locals, and also internal bickering. So far as one can tell.