Kurdistan: Day 12, Soran to Khalifan, 15km

Another visit to the university, but this time to teach! I was taking the second year students for 2 hours, all 40 of them. These students had a reasonably good ability in English conversation, but like many Kurdish English speakers the pronunciation of most vowels were rather different to a native English speaker. By the end of the class they were producing some rather different vowels which they found rather amusing. For me, it's encouraged me to consider teaching English at some point in the next few years, and contacting a school directly seems to be feasible proposition. For this school, gaining access to a native speaker has been difficult, and English language agencies perhaps haven't established themselves here to the same extent as I have seen in China (even with comparable salaries). I'm sure the situation will be the same in many other developing countries.


I made a few other visits to classes, including some silent visits, and noticed a more committed, interested, and active class than I've seen in other Western classrooms. The teachers taught in an interactive, participatory manner and no students seemed to have dozed off like I had in the past in my classes.

I rode my bike that afternoon in the mud and rain through the 'Grand Canyon' of the Middle East, to the village of Khalifan. The ride was spectacular, as was my bicycle's new paint job. I stayed the night with Karmand, the head of the English department. I was told not to worry about my bike since almost everyone in the village was his cousin! After a delicious meal, we joked about the news on BBC about Gordon Brown and his 'bigot' mistake.  The evening was peaceful and relaxing, much needed as I near the end of my journey.