Ramadan Ends

These days, the coffee shops close between 9 PM and 10 PM these days. They open in the morning rather than after sunset. The streets are remarkably quiet in the late evening. Step inside, the papered-over alcohol shelfs are now clearly visible. The population of prostitutes seems to have increased a few fold in the past few nights. There are fewer fights in the streets.

Ramadan is over.

Other than severely limiting my daytime consumption outside the house, Ramadan only really affected my life via teaching. Our intensive Ramadan term ended on Thursday last week, right before Eid al-Fitr. I'm proud to report my Advanced 1 students did quite well on the exam. Afterwards, in order to help them continue improving their English, I wrote up personalized evaluations for all those who have managed to find me online (a majority of the class in this case). Their responses gave me some warm fuzzies, but they also left me scratching my head a bit.

Thank you very much
You are a great teacher too
and a little bit crazy but it's fine
my writing was good thanks to you and your advice
and if you had any question about Darija, Arabic, or Moroccan culture you can ask me, I'll be glad to answer you ;D

I'm a great teacher, but I'm insane. That's a good combination, right? Well, he's obviously fine with it.

And another:

I will always be thankful to you .
For all the hard work and efforts you did . You are the bestest Teacher in the Alc .

I appreciate the thought, but the linguist in me can't help but notice that she calqued over "faire des efforts" ("exert oneself"/"try hard"/"put in a good effort") from French straight into English. And knowing the student, I'm pretty sure that 'bestest' is not a purposeful cutesy grammatical exaggeration. I'm left wondering if we should have reviewed superlatives this term.