Glasses

I've noticed a phenomenon here that I haven't seen since my days of living in Milwaukee. In Milwaukee during the winter, walking from the cold outside to the heated inside, glasses fog up and you have to wait a minute or two to see. For the most part, I've been wearing contacts for the past ten years so it hasn't affected me much, especially since there isn't that much of a temperature differential in Japan. Now, I have the same thing happen to my sunglasses when going outside from the air conditioning into the sauna that is Abu Dhabi. I have to walk from the building where my desk is to the building where my classes are and my glasses don't have time to acclimate. I have to cross the student parking lot filled with BMWs, Mercedes Benzes, and huge SUVs. I'm worried that with all the horns blaring and general 18-year-old aggression behind the wheel I'll get run over.

Also, I'm having to adjust to the students' names. In Japan there was a first and last name only, both of which were easily to read through phonetically. The worst I had to deal with was wondering if Yuki was a boy's or girl's name. Here, it's the opposite extreme with about five or six names per student to sort through. Plus, the names aren't as easily read. There are a few new sounds to learn to pronounce. I generally project my computer screen with the attendance on it onto the SMART board and have the students tell me when I see their name. So far it's worked. In a class of less than 20 it's easy enough to match the people present on the attendance to the people sitting in front of me. I still don't see how I'm ever going to remember their names.