speak any English?

By ways of an overdue update we have started English conversation hour at our school here! It is not "official" English classes because we are still waiting on our visas to be approved to actually work and teach here since for the first year we had student visas for language and culture learning. Getting the visas approved has been an exercise in patience and the some government big guys still have our passports...eeek! Trying to trust we will see them again. That and the need for much more planning, curriculum development, work on the application process, student interviews, legal issues for the NGO, accounting, etc will keep us busy for a bit before everything is up and running. And may I just say that starting a school from scratch is A LOT more work that slipping into teaching at an already formed org. Trust me I have seen both.....sigh....
But even though we are not fully up and running we have had tons of interest and our English conversation hours are well attended each week. Paula and I have been sorta winging it and coming up with different games (we tried a culturally adapted version of Simon says called "Abduli says" that was a major hit), topics (from family, education, sports, even globalization), questions and answers, and activities each week to help the students learn new vocabulary and practice (that is when Paula and I are not fighting over British vs. American English (obviously the latter being superior :). And although we are feeling so busy these days it is exciting to see our work here moving forward and getting the chance to know more people through the school.