I’ve avoided this topic as long as I possibly could. I guess it was just naive of me to expect I could avoid it forever. But today was the day it finally happened. My students at Qassim university, located in one of the most conservative cities in the world, asked me the difference between “cook” and “cock.” Wallah literally can’t teacher today.  I had a female student who knew what was going on explain in Arabic the difference between the two. I can control what I say in my classroom, but I can’t control what they say to each other in Arabic. She started explaining to her peers what the word “cock” meant, and suddenly the entire room erupts in “ohhhh”s and giggles. I asked my student “What did you say?!” Her response was “I promise I didn’t say the word!” I guess I’ll have to take her word for it, since I will never know what she said…

Salaam,

KC