National Day

 It's National Day in the Kingdom and everyone is decked out in green and white, the national colors. The cafes all have strobing green light-saber like devices in all the windows and on all the shelves. Everyone is in their festive finest and I am wearing a heart-shaped pin with the face of a very happy looking King on it.

This weekend we had four days off – Thursday through Sunday. Thursday and Friday being the regular weekend, Sunday being National Day and Saturday being the day we got off at the last minute because it was too much work to come into school on the day.

Spending four days off made me long for work. To tell you the truth, there is NOTHING to do here. I sat in my room and painted, and wrote, and watched TV and I was bored out of my mind. Really, having a holiday is not the best thing here because it means you have nothing to do.

Now, in the future, if I know I have these kinds of holidays, and I have been paid, and I have enough notice, then I would make the trip to a nearby county. There are some lovely ruins in the north I would like to see, and I've heard City 2 is a happenin' town. But I didn't have time to plan, I didn't have money, and all I did was sit around.

We did, however, have a barbeque on the roof. Complete with music, belly-dancing, and lounging area done Arabian Style. We all donated our rugs and couch pillows and invited some girls from work to hang. It was a little bit tense at first, because we ended up inviting the women from HR who are more of less in charge of our jobs and we were worried about doing something to get us all fired.

But the second the ladies of HR took off their abayas, we could see this wasn't going to be a problem. They were all dressed to the nines complete with mini dresses and high heels. Since it was on the roof with no men allowed, no one bothered that we were all being crazy western females.

After stressing for days about how we weren't going to have enough meat for everyone, we ended up with enough to feed a village. We had to have a barbeque part 2 the next day just so the food wouldn't go to waste.

I made my famous chili (which is really Hard Times Chili) and got many compliments on it – as I always do. I bought some Budweiser non-alcoholic beer to put in the chili, but after just one sip of it (required) I couldn't subject anyone to it. I am not a beer fanatic (obviously, since I bought Budweiser) but it tasted like... I don't know. Nastiness. Typically it's just like beer flavored water, but this was actively offensive to my taste buds.

Today, I will have my first class with actual people in it. Probably. Maybe. Inshallah.

I've been productive this morning and only gone for one half-an-hour coffee break and talked to various people about how I don't have: A) a book for class; B) pages in my passport; C) information on the DELTA which I, unfortunately, can't take.

The DELTA is like getting your masters in teaching ESOL and I was excited about being able to take it. I am going to try and take it anyway, but typically you have to have two years post-certification teaching to apply. Maybe they won't notice? If it was run by Kingdomites, I would say it's a possibility. But it's run by IH London and they aren't likely to overlook something so obvious.

Le sigh.