Is this real life?

September 1, 2013 - backdated due to the "insha'Allah" attitude of the Arabs which has resulted in a waiting game to get the internet!

Leaving Abu Dhabi to drive to Madinat Zayed we made our treck at the Tilal Liwa hotel. This journey consisted of a 2 hour bus ride to MZ – in a semi air-conditioned “bus” , followed by a 10km drive (which consisted of 21 painful speed bumps – to slow drivers down due to camels of course) out of the city to a hotel in the middle of the desert. Nothing surrounded us besides sand and camels! It felt like we were in a castle. We stayed here a couple of nights while they finished getting our housing ready.

We arrived for our first day of school (there’s 17 of us newbies) and were greeted by a round of applause in front of the auditorium – wasn’t expecting that entrance! Very embarrassing for this girl. I was shocked to see the number of staff at the school – 150 of us in total! The staff have all been extremely welcoming, friendly and have tried to include us in their activities. We stayed to play volleyball after school with some staff members – some took the game a little more serious than others haha. It was a great way to make some friends. Getting settled in to the school I am constantly taken by surprise (in a good way-I think!) To start off, not only am I teaching a single grade class, there are EIGHT of us grade 1 teachers! Teachers work together to do the planning AND the craziest part – the planning is already done and put up online by the other teachers! I can’t wrap my head around this. Second surprise – I only teach 4 subjects, leaving me with 17 preps every week! One day I get a 3 hour chunk as a prep. Third surprise – we each have our own teaching assistant (mostly Pilipino women) to help us with anything we need. My TA already had my class decorated for me and asked for a checklist of jobs to do for this week. I will never have to hang anything up myself! Fourth surprise – all of the staff hired to help out! There are numerous discipline masters to take care of major behaviour problems in each area of the school, a photocopy person to do all of your copying, science lab assistants to set up and clean up all of your experiments, security guards posted at every bathroom to monitor bathroom behaviour and keep the kids safe, subject specialists to help with every subject area I will be teaching, maintenance staff to hang thing up in our classrooms, a “coffee” girl etc etc etc!

Moving into our new housing has also felt like a dream. We live in a newly built villa complex. Lindsay and I are in 1 and next door is Justin and Jason. We have our own rooftop overlooking the desert; we each have our own massive bedroom and our own bathroom. The kitchen and dining room are much too large for 2 people. I have a feeling this is the nicest house I will ever live in so I am soaking up every moment! Our villa complex has a watchman who lives in a little villa at the gate – he takes care of anything we need. He comes around to turn on our outside lights at night and turns them off in the morning for us. I kind of feel like I am a fraud living this extravagant life at any moment someone is going to point out that I’m just a poor teacher from small town Saskatchewan!