Al Ain (Roundabouts and SAND)

This past summer was slightly confusing for those who aren’t used to the fact that my life NEVER goes smoothly. Following the decision to leave ADEC in June, I accepted a position in July to teach Middle School Girls in Doha, Qatar beginning September 2nd. While checking in at Philadelphia International Airport for my flight back to Abu Dhabi on August 26th, I received an email requesting an interview for a position in Al Ain, a small city 150km from Abu Dhabi. Thusly, I interviewed less than 20 hours after landing in Abu Dhabi. After being offered and accepting the position and the ensuing maelstrom, I never did get around to canceling my flight to Doha. I blame it on jet lag and not the party that weekend.

I entered Al Ain English Speaking School the first day to discover that I would be teaching Reception, the British Curriculum name for a 4 and 5 year old class. While I love this age group, I had not taught little ones since May 2007. It did take a little time to readjust after 5 years of teaching Middle and Secondary English. The next day, I met my students for the first time. After teaching English in a government secondary school, the fact that my students speak English was a wee bit of a shock. Out of the 17 students I currently have on role, only 2 don’t speak English. Being a private school, other demographics are a little different as well: only 4 of my students are Emirati and 3 are not Muslim. I am teaching both the child of a Sheikh and of an ADEC Vice Principal. 

Ca you imagine this much on the walls of a US Pre-K classroom? There is no such thing as too much visual stimuli here.

I didn’t get housing until the second week of school and was not completely pleased to have been assigned housing on the school grounds. The lack of a 90 km round trip daily commute is a nice plus, but I still drive to work as the dirt moat between “The Accommodations” and the school makes walking not an option. Yes, I am a PRINCESS. I was very pleased with the flat itself; though it has only one bedroom, it is extremely large. I am completely convinced that the showers here were purchased from a submarine supply company. I have never seen such a small shower in my life. I keep hoping that the water that lands in different areas of the bathroom while I shower will make it grow. Hope springs eternal. The very wonderful husband of a very good friend installed pool-side-raised-rubber thingies so that I wouldn’t fall on my ass one morning navigating the puddles. 

A very common sight, goats in the back of a pick-up!

The thing that is most annoying about Al Ain is the preponderance of roundabouts (aka traffic circles to us Jerseyans). I cannot get a handle on directions since I am always getting turned around. UGH. I spent 4 years navigating the Airport Circle in Pennsauken during rush hour traffic while attending Rutgers so these roundabouts don’t intimidate me; in fact there is actually a system for driving through them. I am used to “the faster car/less expensive car has the right of way” system. There are actually lined lanes in the roundabouts here! People can slam the Emiratis for their driving all they 

want, drive in Jersey if you dare!

Something I see way too often on my drive between Al Ain and Abu Dhabi: a blown tire at 140 kmh is dangerous enough, this guy had passed me going about 160kmh.

The biggest downside is that I was used to living in a 20 story tower with 178 other teachers. There was ALWAYS something to do and SOMEONE to do it with. Not so here. Well, there is if I want to drive. I was spoiled by the ability to jump on an elevator and go to the pool, the gym, the Jacuzzi, and to find someone with food or drinks. So, Smurfette and I make the trip to Abu Dhabi every weekend.

Zofia, the cause my my missed weekend in the city! I think she's cute enough that I won't hold it against her.

Since I arrived back in the UAE on August 27^th, there has only been one weekend that I spent in Al Ain. That was only because the previously mentioned very good friend with the very wonderful husband was expecting and the Baby Shower was that weekend.  The baby did arrive on October 16, the day after one of my student’s tore my rotator cuff. But then that’s a WHOLE different blog post. So what I save in commuting mileage expenses I make up for in entertainment mileage expenses.  I still only spend 100 dirhams a week (that’s $35 US) on gas. BUT, my tan is seriously suffering. 

Orange sweet potatoes this year!! Woo-hoo! This was the first of the three different Thanksgiving dinners that I attended this year. Thanks Jackie, Mimi, and Nicole!

 On Teaching and Teacher Evaluations

Note: This blog entry was written in June (note the use of present tense while I am sitting here in the US), it is being posted late due to the fact that I am not returning as an ADEC teacher though I am returning. I have gone private.

On a good day, school is chaos. We start out the morning at Tabour. Any teacher who has a first period class must attend. Tabour consists of the pledge, Quran, Hadith, and the ever present nail inspection. The girl’s nails cannot be longer than her fingers and cannot be painted. If a girl is in violation, she has to go to the nurse to have her nails cut and the color removed. The girl will often argue that she is allowed to have her nails painted because she has her period. I don’t even want to explain what happens in this case….just ugh! First period is a waste if your class was chosen for inspection. Most of the girls end up at the nurse, and since no pass is given to return to class, they don’t ever come back to class. 

There is no security in the school, as that would mean men in the school. We have one security guard and his job is to open the gate to let in the teachers and the buses, close them, open them at dismissal, and close them again. For the most part, he sits in his little shack and stares at the walls. For all I know, he could be reading my blog update right now. He sometimes ends up performing random maintenance activities. This creates a major uproar as girls are running back to their classrooms to don their abayas and shaylas. Since there is no security, when a girl walks out of class…she is gone!

There are also no phones in the classroom. The aforementioned girl is wandering the halls, opening doors and disturbing other classes, and randomly being pests. There is no way to alert administration that you have “runners”. We have been told to send a “good girl” with a note. Said note gets hijacked by the “runners” and nothing ever gets done. UNLESS, however, the “runner” is caught by administration, in which case someone shows up in your classroom to yell at you for letting the girls out. 

The girls do not change classes, the teachers do. After being here for almost a year, I can see the logic in this. Even though many girls do wander off while the teacher is en route between classes, it would be much worse if ALL of the girls left their classrooms at the same time. There are two breaks during the day, one for 30 minutes and one for 20 minutes. Pretty much those breaks last until someone from administration walks out into the courtyard and starts screaming at the girls. Teaching 4^th or 6^th period is therefore, a joke. On a GOOD day, most of them show up 10-15 minutes late. 

The school year is divided into Trimesters and at the end of each Trimester there are 2 weeks of exams, followed by a break. This past year our winter break was 3 weeks and our spring break was 2 weeks. Many of the girls do not show up the first week of the term,  and since the last week of the term is set aside for Exam Revision (review for those of us who speak American English), they do not show up for that either. Exam Revision consists of handing out a packet with practice materials. The girls still have a problem with the fact that English Exams are skills based and not something they can memorize the night before, so most never even look at the packet. The week before spring break, the principal finally gave up and told the girls not to come to school the Wednesday and Thursday before exams. Leaving these weeks off, we have to cram a “Continuous Assessment” which is required to contain specific items including a project and 2 “Integrated Tasks” which are essentially extended writing and/or grammar assessments, into a 5 week period of time. Good Luck with that. 

The girls will be finished will final exams a month before the teachers are done for the summer. Some of the teachers that were here last year spent the month on Facebook answering OUR questions. Since it is blocked in schools here just as it is in the U.S., I will be taking my phone charger to work every day!! We have that time set aside to plan for the following year. This is not exactly possible since we will NOT know what school we are assigned to until September 2^nd when we go to THE ZONE (see my post from September 2011 for details on this CF). Even if we are assigned to the same school, we may not be teaching the same grade level. Basically we plan to spend the month copying crap from each other’s flash drives. This way we have resources for whatever next year brings.  I bought a monster sized Portable Hard Drive for just this purpose. We are also expecting meetings ad infinitum. 

BUT on those rare days that I can and do teach material…….the girls do learn!! I have girls whose English skills have improved so much that they are translating for the other girls instead of just staring at me like they did at the beginning of the year. I have one 10^th Grader who passed the IELTs, an exam that tests English speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills. Many of our College-Bound 12^th Graders did not pass and therefore cannot attend college until taking remediation courses. I wish I could take full credit for her score…..but all I did was polish what she already brought to my class. I regularly tell her mother that I wish I had 70 of her!!

My principal has been in my classroom twice to observe. Both times she felt my lessons were phenomenal and she loved my questioning techniques. Unfortunately this is not what we are evaluated on for our Performance Review. I have had to create a massive binder documenting everything that I have done to meet each of the 654 sections of the rubric. This means copying lesson plans, keeping copies of minutes, taking pictures of projects and displays, and pictures of me performing bus duty and setting up for exams. There is also a picture of me at the Camel Races in December. Since the track is in the area where I teach, this proves I was reaching out to understand the community. To me, this is a ginormous waste of my time and resources.  It is also a waste of administration’s time, since they have to sit with each teacher and individually review her binder. I can only compare it to the “Portfolio” that all student teachers in the U.S. are required by their colleges to create. I had ONLY one assistant principal look at mine when I was interviewing. Since I went to High School with her, I think she just did it because she felt sorry for my having wasted my time. It was really pretty and pink. Thinking it is not what got me the job though. 

This is only the third year of a massive educational reform, there are bound to be some bumps along the way. As my first year comes to a close, I would definitely do it again. There are many days when I feel like banging my head against a wall and I had one night when I had WAY TOO long of a conversation with Jack and Jim with some pretty nasty results, but I feel I have learned so much about the culture, the religion, and the people……teaching is, after all, about learning.

When Your Body Betrays You

OK, so I have a love-hate relationship with food and exercise. I am an emotional eater. I always have been, and probably always will be. It’s like that, and that’s the way it is. Sorry, just channeling my inner Run D.M.C. In the months leading up to both divorces, I gained weight. After the separations, I lost it. In the year leading up to my son’s 6 week vacation at Hampton (aka the Pink Bubble House), I hit maximum density.  He moved out, I bought a treadmill, and within 6 months I was back into a size 8. There I stayed for 3 years. 

Cut to March of 2009, when “the problem” started.  One day I realized my jeans were TIGHT.  I jacked up my routine and a month later my jeans were still too tight. While this was going on, there were other random symptoms going on that had taken me to several doctors only to get absolutely no answer. Cut to October of 2010 when I finally ended up at the office of a Reproductive Endocrinologist because nobody else could figure it out. After ultrasounds and several hours of blood work that ruined my Saturday, I finally got an answer: I have an adrenal enzyme imbalance.  Some meds fixed MOST of the symptoms. 

I have a hyperactive immune system. In a “normal” person, the body gets an infection and the immune system attacks the invader and then…khallas. Simply put, my immune system is like a kid with ADHD, it doesn’t know when to stop. If scientists could figure out how to transplant T-cells, I could cure AIDS. While that sounds like a good thing, it is NOT. Once the invader is gone, my immune system continues to attack. When I was in High School, Strep Throat caused my immune system to attack my lymphatic system. When I was pregnant with my son, a trip to Cancun and a case of Shigella caused my immune system to attack my digestive system.  Exposure to Fifth’s Disease when I was teaching elementary school caused it to attack my joints. There are several theories as to why it went after my adrenal gland but….simply put, I have no metabolism. 30 minutes every day on the treadmill got me nowhere this time.  

Not liking the way my jeans looked, giving up was simply not an option. I hired a personal trainer last month. Let’s call him “The Demon”. Tuesday he declared war on my hamstrings and I called him much worse.  I also voluntarily turn myself into a pretzel once a week at Yoga. The good news: several  people commented last week that my jeans were looking better. Maybe I won't smack The Demon upside the head with the 5 pound weights after all.

Maternity Leave

Like I said in a previous post, I seriously think there is something in the water here. The number of teachers getting pregnant is staggering. There are so many babies due in August that this building will be stroller central when I return from summer break. I have to say I would not have a baby in a country where I cannot get a Percocet for anything short of a severed limb.  No matter which way the baby comes out, and I’ve done both, having a baby requires Percocet.  LOTS.  

Don’t jump to the conclusion that birth control is not available here. It is. I just walk in and talk to my favorite pharmacist and walk out with Yasmin. No prescription. $10 US. Condoms are readily available and I know of one LT who had a little Oops and was able to get Plan B. Without a prescription.  

In New Jersey, teachers do not pay into State Disability so if they want to get paid while on maternity leave, they stock up their sick days or pay for private disability insurance. No district has paid maternity leave, though   they do allow up to 2 school years of unpaid leave for the birth of a child.  If you are in any profession other than teaching, you can collect state disability for up to 10 weeks for a regular delivery and 16 weeks for a Caesarean.  Of course it’s not enough to pay your insurance premiums while you’re out, but…..

Here, the teachers get 2 months of fully paid maternity leave.  Whoa. Hold up. Maybe I should consider having more kids. Oh yeah, that would involve getting married. Yet again. NOT. To those of us from the U.S., 2 months fully paid sounds fan-freaking-tastic.  They also get nursing hours after they return to work. So, if you have a Nanny, she can bring the baby to work OR you can drive home to nurse.  This sounds so much better than locking yourself in a back room in the library to pump. Some schools even have on-site child care. With the entire guidance department at my school very pregnant, I think that may happen at my school soon. 

As I learned when one of the British teachers decided to leave because of the UNACCEPTABLE maternity leave policy here in Abu Dhabi……they have awesome Maternity Leave in Britain. They get one year fully paid leave and a second year at half salary. Wallah. While those of us from the US find the maternity leave here to be more than expected, the teachers from Britain are understandably perturbed. 

Hmmmm….maybe I should take a teaching job in Britain and then have a baby?

Rent? Lease? Purchase?

When I first landed in Abu Dhabi in August of 2011 I had absolutely no intention of driving here. When I was placed at a school located at 4^th and 25^th, it seemed that was going to be reality. My apartment is located at 4^th and 31^st. Unfortunately, the 2^nd day of school I was informed, via email, that I was being transferred to a school more than 20 miles away. I needed a car within 24 hours. Thus began my adventure in the “Car Zone”.

Rentals: You can rent a new or used vehicle in Abu Dhabi easily and inexpensively. There are published deals for ADEC teachers. Prices and mileage limits vary. My first rental was a used American car that was costly but included unlimited mileage. Considering my 100km lost tour of Abu Dhabi my first day driving, this was a good thing. When it happened again my second day driving, I finally bought a GPS. I rented that car for a month and it was enough to convince me that I did not want to purchase a used American car here. It was only 2 years old and had a boatload of electrical issues. I started searching for a lease right away but ended up renting a Brand New (199km) Toyota Yaris for 1700 dirhams a month ($463). The experiences of several teachers who rented used and Japanese convinced me I did not want to purchase one of them either. 

Leasing: I looked into a 2 year lease on a 2012 Nissan Tiida before deciding to rent the Yaris. The Tiida was 1650 dirhams a month ($450) and included free service and insurance. BUT considering I could turn in a rental during the times I was out of the country and save money, the lease did not make sense. 

Purchasing:  After 6 months with the Yaris, I decided it was time to stop pissing away money and purchase a car. In Abu Dhabi, since so many expats do what I have referred to before as the “Midnight Run”, used car loans do not exist. You can get a new car loan with no problem.  In order to finance a used car, you must get a personal loan. The one bank I spoke to required that I transfer my accounts to them and have my pay direct deposited there. Not a problem until I found out their charge for international transfers was almost triple what I am paying at my current bank. Since I have college tuition, student loans, storage fees, and car insurance to pay in the states, transfers happen monthly and this was not an option. The next bank, Citibank, had all of my documents when suddenly they decided not to give loans to ADEC teachers anymore. So I moved onto Bank #3. The interest rate was ridiculous and there is a pre-payment penalty. NOT. There is also the “Eat Ramen for 2 Months” option. In this option, the car dealer holds a 2 month interest free loan, during which time the car is not titled to you. Essentially you pay cash, but half now and half next month. I will not be eating for 2 months beginning on or about March 15. BUT I will be driving a beautiful blue 2000 BMW 318Ci that we suspect has the only manual transmission in the entire Emirate. I will be rocking the roundabouts!! 

I get to shift!!!

On Babies and Arabish

When in Rome……everyone has heard this saying. Here, obviously, it is “When in Abu Dhabi…”  It happens to all of us.  After ripping one long skirt (can’t show the ankles at school you know) and having another one spend the day creeping up my waist, I bought some Abayas.  It costs $3 a piece to get them picked up, dry cleaned, and delivered by a really cure guy AND it saves me time in the morning. I throw on a pair of shorts or leggings and a tank top then pull on the abaya and roll. Coming home is the same: I pull off the abaya, drink a pot of coffee, and head to the gym.  NO, I do not wear a Shayla. I CANNOT stand having anything on my head. Except my sunglasses.  That’s only because it keeps me from losing them or sitting on them. 

Nowhere is the old adage about Rome truer than in the towers where we are experiencing a population explosion of sorts.  The western teachers are joining their Arabic counterparts and getting pregnant by the dozens!! The number of babies expected between May and August is staggering. Soon the building will be teeming with nannies! Now me, I would take a pass on having a baby in a country where you have to severe a limb to get a Percocet. Wallah! There were 2 different pregnant women in the pool at various times during my workout yesterday. There is no way I am ever getting in that pool. Maybe that’s where the babies are coming from!! 

As the months have gone by, we have also seen an outbreak of Arabish. This is when one speaks English with random Arabic words thrown in. Obviously, they have to be used correctly. You do it occasionally to get your students attention and then it becomes second nature.  Teaching High Schools girls as I do, they enjoy teaching me new words.  They, however, did not enjoy it so much when the principal showed up in my 11-4 class to yell at me for sending 4 girls out to get a “test I forgot”. As I was explaining that they walked out without permission and that their make-up test was in my bag……and she wasn’t listening….I looked at the girls in question……and screamed “Cathaba”. Even the principal took a step back and blinked. It was very effective!! 

Common Arabic words used in Arabish:

Wallah: (I swear to Allah/God)

cathaba: (liar)

khallas: (finished, done, over)  or as I use it: STFU

zanuba:(bathroom shoes, i.e. flip flops)

hamam: (bathroom)

habla: (teacher)

haram: (unclean)

shukran: (thank-you)

afwan: (you’re welcome)

la: (no)  I have a tendency to start singing lalalalalalalalalala

mafi mashcala:(no problem)

jazza saeeda: (happy weekend)