STAR Program--Teaching music to refugees

Today I had my first class as a music teacher, for refugees (well, refugee). I volunteered to work with the STAR (Student Action for Refugees) program as a music teacher a few weeks ago and actually attended a class last week, but I could only sit in on the class since there was only one student. This week, however, I actually had my own student, in my own classroom, without the main teacher of the music program. I have to admit I was really nervous going in as I have never taught music before and had no idea what I was getting myself into. I didn't know how well my student(s) would speak English, if I had any idea how to teach music, or how I was supposed to even try without a piano available.
A few minutes before the class was supposed to start, I met up with Abas, the main music teacher, who is a little Sudanese man, himself a refugee, who speaks a very accented English in a very quiet voice. He is almost impossible to hear and understand sometimes, so I often only catch about 20% of what he's saying. He went over a little more of what I was supposed to be teaching while I mostly smiled and nodded since I didn't hear most of it; I knew what he was explaining to me anyway since we was talking about the basic music theory I started learning in elementary school and solidified during my first few semesters as a music minor at GW.
I then went up to my classroom and met my student, Elias, a refugee from Ethiopia who has been living in Cairo for about 5 years and has never had any training in music. I started from the very beginning with him, moving quickly through rhythm and pitch until we got to the concept of a 1/2 step (the smallest space between 2 pitches in Western music; Asian music and others have quarter tones, which are smaller). Without being able to use a piano, it was a very difficult concept to teach; I didn't have any source of absolute pitches, so I was relying on my voice to differentiate between a whole step and half step by pulling notes out of the air, which was very difficult. By the end of the class, he had grasped the concept, at least in theory, and was able to build all of the major keys. We finished the last major key with about 3 minutes to spare before the class was over, so we called it a day and planned to meet next Tuesday, as scheduled.
Next week, Elias will hopefully be bringing a keyboard as Abas told him that purchasing one was the only way he would actually be able to learn how to play, through practice at home and such. I'm also planning to bring my pitch pipe with me, as I meant to today, in case he isn't able to buy a keyboard by next week.
After the class, I walked outside and happened upon Abas, who decided to buy me dinner; I couldn't hear him well enough to realize what was happening in time to object. It was cheap street food that I was going to buy anyway, but I felt bad having him pay for it. We then went to an Ahua (Egyptian Arabic for "coffee shop", which is actually a small cafe mostly for men that serves drinks and shisha, aka hookah in the US... I could write another whole post on this) to eat our food and drink tea. It was a really nice gesture on his part to buy me dinner, and I enjoyed spending the extra hour with him, talking about music and a little about his life.
All this just goes to show the cliche: you never know what opportunities will present themselves if you keep an open mind. I found this one by wandering up to the STAR booth on campus one day and stumbling upon the music classes; most of the classes are for teaching English. I never knew my music training would amount to anything. I thought that it was all for my enjoyment, following my passion, and I never expected to find myself teaching music to refugees.
And the kicker? The director of STAR, who I've worked somewhat closely with on all this, is a GW grad.