Waiting waiting waiting

The exam marking procedure in UAE is precise and definitely well run. The exam finishes and within approx 30 - 45 mins the answer schedule is emailed from ADEC through to the teacher in the school who has designated responsibility for exam control. A group of teachers who have knowledge of that particular subject content are called into mark the papers. Our team often help with the marking process by marking the multichoice questions. You don't have to be too sharp with Arabic for those answers. The papers are marked blind, and then rechecked and moderated by another marker the next day and a third person rechecks the mark totals. The teachers come up to the big staffroom area where our office is and sit, or in this case lie around, waiting for papers to arrive to begin the marking and moderating process. The whole process is quite a social scene with lots of Arabic food as well as customary Arabic tea and coffee. In July IELTS start, English language testing, as the teachers should have a score of 6.5. This next wee while many teachers take the opportunity to sit around and talk with us over coffee to improve their English vocabulary. In Mr Khalids case Thursday was the end of a long marking week and the senior grade science papers were late arriving, so he caught up on a few quick winks. He wasn't too asleep as he was able to tell me in amongst the laughter in quite audible English to "go away" and "leave a man in peace". No he's not giving me an obscene gesture, he was actually waving to me! The teachers I reguarly converse with tell me they learn lots of their English by watching American movies or listening to songs so words like bull shit and being p***** of*** occasionally infiltrate conversations! One of the maths teachers was telling me about a Freddy Mercury song. I hadn't heard of the song and his reply "by the time you get home Miss Jocelyn it will have just been released, thats how far NZ is and how long it takes to release songs down there". Thats one astute man!