This past sunday and monday were spent in this little area of Detroit. Why was I in this little area of Detroit? Oh that’s easy, I was setting up a classroom.

My friend graduated from the Wayne State teaching school last year. She spent one year working as a paraprofessional, working with children that needed extra help with school.

And now she’ been offered a first grade teaching position at that school.

Yayyy!!!

So exciting!

The school itself is actually pretty nice, despite being started recently. And walking into that building felt incredibly weird. All these memories from my younger school days rushed back to me.

But the most exciting part was when I walked into my friend’s classroom. The place was still a mess, but there’s something about walking into a classroom that’s still being set up and knowing that it belongs to your friend.

It’s like being on the other side of the wall, and seeing a classroom from a different perspective. Wondering about how the kids will react when they see the room, whether they’ll read the posters, and what would look best.

The entire closet was cleaned out and re-organized.

After much deliberation we decided to set up the chairs in groups. My friend wanted to do rows in the beginning, and I called her the Devil teacher. (Little kids should not have to sit in rows)

But then later she said she was only joking.

I don’t know if I believe her.

We tried setting up the tables and chairs in a U. And then we tried doing groups of three.

We decided to go back to doing groups of four and five.

AND of course no kid is ever going to appreciate how close she came to sitting in an ugly row.

There’s also this bookshelf that another friend had arranged earlier. I love books, so looking at that bookshelf packed with books, was like my happy place.

When I was there this past monday, the school was actually having an open house. Everyone was asked to remove their cars from the parking lot, and park on the streets.

All these different moonwalks were being put up. I was tempted to stay till later just so I could go on one of the moonwalks.

The whole thing was just a great experience. Like I said, there was just something about walking into that classroom and setting up things that gave an excited feeling.

It’s like playing teacher when you were little. Only now it’s real life, and you have more than enough people to fit the roles.

Or maybe I’m just really proud of her?

She’s really happy too, but terrified at the same time. She’s afraid she’ll make all the kids dumber. AND if that ACTUALLY happens, it’ll be really funny.

Um not so much for the kids.

But at least I’ll be laughing. And not in the MUHAHAHAHA evil kind of way. More like a LOLLLL I can’t believe that actually happened kind of way.

I mean the chances of an entire class (by the way, she got the smartest students of the grade apparently) becoming dumber is something you find in comedy movie.

Not something you find in real life. At least not with someone who badly wants to be the “Best teacher”.

edit: ahem ahem. something was deleted because I didn’t realize people would take it the wrong way.  that’s all. ahem ahem.

So I’m back in Detroit. And now have more city names to add to my list.

The drive to Missouri wasn’t so bad. We stopped and spent the night at a motel. But the drive   here was kinda annoying. We drove the whole day Wednesday. And we took a lot more stops. Especially considering I have a younger brother that NEVER needs to go when we’re actually stopped at a restroom area and then needs to go really badly half hour later.

“Do you need to go?”

“No”

“I think you should go”

“I don’t need to go!”

“I STILL THINK YOU SHOULD GO!”

“BUT I JUST WENT HALF HOUR AGO. I DON’T NEED TO GO”

“I’M NOT GOING TO STOP FOR YOU LATER!!!”

“FINE!”

“ARRGHHH”

So that’s always a fun conversation to have with your brother.

But it was a nice drive. It was nice seeing like trees, lakes and hilly areas. It was kind of like driving through Virginia.  Nothing at all like driving through Michigan.

We passed by a city/town called Pocahontas. I even got a picture of it.

And we passed by Kingdom City (It’s like some computer game fanatics named it), Greencastle (people ate too much white castle and got sick lol), and Effingham ( Get it ? Effing Ham? lol

Insert old British accent: By Joe,The King is almost here! Where is the Ham? MAID! MAID! Where’s the EFFING HAM?)

And here’s the best one…. St. Elmo !!! (Or atleast it’s the best one if you read it as Saint Elmo haha )

There was a whole bunch more . I put my younger brother in charge of writing them down. But he refused and said he would memorize them. Of course, he doesn’t remember any of them.

And besides seeing grass, fields, trees, occasional hills and restroom stops,

I saw the biggest cross in the world.

Ok maybe not the whole world.

But it SHO was BIG.

P.S. I like southern hospitality. I might not see another ethnic person for miles, but people sure are nicer.

10 hour drive.

Started from Michigan on Friday and drove through Indiana, Illinois and reached Missouri on Saturday.

On the way I saw a city called, Bluffs Detroit.

I couldn’t help but lol at that.

It’s like ‘Hah Hah!’ you don’t have the real one, WANNABE’S!!!

I also saw Hannibal. Which I don’t get. How do you decide to name a town after a cannibal? Like what goes through your minds at the Town Hall meeting?

“Who votes for naming it after a fictional canabalistic murdrer? Say Aye”

“AYE!”

“From henceforth this town shall be named Hannibal!!!”

::Cheers:::

Maybe the founder of the town was named Hannibal.

In which case, why would you name your child Hannibal?

We stayed at a place called Joliet for the night. Nice little traveler’s town.  We got to decide between staying at The Red Roof Inn, Super Motel 8, Joliet’s Budget Inn or motel 6. Budget Inn was the cheapest but smelled so bad that we unanimously drove over to Red Roof Inn.

Right now I’m at Columbia, Missouri.  A college town. It’s soo empty here. And we passed through the most empty and random small towns to here.

I saw HAY ROLL. Actual hay rolls. They’re like Hay Stacks, only rolled up.

And fields and fields and fields of corn and I think even wheat. And there were horses.

Beautiful Horses (clearly I love horses).

And we drove through a town called Pittsville.

Do you know how to tell that you’re in a small town? You have more never before heard of convenience stores and gas stations and hardly any of the brand names ones.

It was great.

(edit: this post was typed last week. Internet here just sucks)

I’m not writing this post to condemn Germany. Nor am I writing this post in the belief that Muslims are the only ones victimized. Because, I know unfortunately violence of this nature happens everywhere and by people of different types.

The reason I am writing this post is because of the lack of attention it got from the world, specifically the European media. While if the reverse had taken place, the media would have been crawling all over it. And that is one of the things that frustrated me the most.

This is a bit old now, so bear with me.

On July 1st, Marwa el- Sherbini, was in court in Germany with her three year old son and her husband. She was a 32 year old Egyptian native, working on her PhD, and expecting her next child in January.

A couple months ago, she had a won a case against Alex W. She had sued him for insulting her with terms like, “terrorist” and “Islamist whore”, at a park.

However during the appeals on July 1st, while she was on the dock, Alex W. leapt across the courtroom and stabbed her with a knife 18 times. Ms. Sherbani’s husband rushed in to save her, was stabbed by the assailant and was also accidentally shot by German police.

While Ms. Sherbini had died, her husband had been rushed to intensive care.

So that was the story. I mean besides the fact that someone managed to get into the courtroom with a knife and pulled that stunt off (try pretend stabbing the air 18 times and see how long it takes) in front of a three year old son, there was almost no mention of the case in Germany. On the other hand, Egypt was up in arms about it.
When I came across the news article from facebook, I searched BBC news for it. I mean it has an article talking about a mafia boss being shot, it must have some mention of a woman being stabbed 18 times in a court room.

And it did. Under the middle east section. And the article was about a woman being hailed as a martyr by Egyptians, and their outrage over what had happened and “Germany’s silence”.

Where was the focus on Germany? And Germany’s reaction? It happened in Europe, to a person living in Germany. Why was it in the middle east section? Why did it focus on her martyr status, instead of what had happened?!

A week after being accused of being silent, Germany defended itself saying it was not silent and that the German chancellor would apologize to the Egyptian president.

I think Alex W. is being tried for attempted murder.

I think Marwa deserves to have her story be known to you. The fact that this occurred in a court room boggles a friend of mine, my brother is boggled by how long it takes to stab someone 18 times, I’m boggled by what I feel was a silence over a case that happened in a developed country in front of a three year old kid.

So the entire world has seen this video.

And might have caught this segment of the Today show

Well now we have another version. Which I think everyone and their great aunts has seen. But I still had to show it again. Just in case there was great aunt who went hiking went everything happened and missed this video.

Kinda makes me want to get married. Kinda also makes me want to do some crazy stunt on Wayne State’s campus.

Hmmm Maybe on Halloween?

I love my campus on Halloween. Last Halloween there was a guy dressed in a knight and suit armor. I wanted to take a picture with him or her.  It was like love at first sight…just with a costume.

Edit: fixed the video

Cool right?

At least I think it is.