The Cake Incident

This morning is an exemplary illustration of the kind of unnecessary office drama that goes on at the university. The only way to keep your sanity in this job is to avoid office politics as much as possible. Since we are cooped up here all day, unable to leave, with nothing to do now that the students are gone, it's gotten much worse.

All morning I've been hearing whispered arguments out in the hallway, which are not out of the ordinary and which I have decided to ignore due to the fact that I don't give a crap anymore.

After being at work for about two hours, my co-teacher, Carol, came over to me with a soft "can I talk to you about something?" This is the kind of thing she said when one of our student was reporting us to the higher-ups, which is a serious, job-ending thing, and I suspect the same voice she'd use in case of alien invasion or global apocalypse, so I was immediately on my guard. What could have possibly gone wrong now that we don't even have class anymore? Was this the end times?

Turns out the whispered arguments that have been escalating in the hallway all morning were all about – wait for it – me.

Specifically the fact that I didn't get any cake on Saturday.

Seriously.

On Saturday, the first day of the week, we had a party for our coordinator, complete with cake and a gift. I, like everyone else, contributed monetarily to the celebration before hand, but was sick the day of.

Now, two days later, someone has taken it upon themselves to be outraged on my behalf that no one saved me a piece of cake.

I am not making this up.

This argument has been brewing ALL MORNING.  Someone was almost in tears.

Because I didn't get a piece of cake.

I didn't even remember there was supposed to be cake at the party, and no part of me ever had the expectation that someone would save a piece for me. I had no idea where this came from, but it certainly hadn't been from me.

People are so bored they are starting shit just for the hell of it.

Someone please give us something to do.

Air Travel

 I hear people complaining about air travel recently – and probably with good reason – but I often find it hard to relate. Traveling in the United States and traveling outside of it are two entirely different animals. Standards for safety I have encountered abroad range from that time I was felt up so thoroughly by a security guard at Ferenc Liszt airport in Budapest I felt like she owed me dinner, to that time in Egypt, where, despite the prevalence of x-rays and metal detectors, they legitimately don't give a crap.

I can't count how many TSA violations I have gotten away with in my short life. Pretty much anywhere besides America will let you bring a bottle of water on the plane (this has happened to me in Egypt, the Kingdom, even Hungary) and a couple times I have forgotten something like a razor in my backpack and not gotten it confiscated.

Compare this to the one time my mother and I were traveling to Peru and they looked through her entire carry on for about twenty minutes until they found a nail file. Which they confiscated. Or the time, in Japan, everything was removed from my bag and x-rayed separately  I spent a long time standing awkwardly while they went through my things, feeling like I should be explaining why I'm bringing a bag of cheetos into the country (they were for a friend!)

In the Kingdom, there is separate security for women and for men. The men go through the metal detector like normal, and the women are diverted into this little hut off to the side. Inside, you have to pull aside not one, but two sets of heavy, light-blocking curtains to reach the inner sanctum.There, bored female guards will half-heartedly wand you over in case you are keeping a switchblade in your knickers. Incidentally, if I was keeping a switchblade in my knickers, they probably wouldn't have found it.

I have walked in several times to find the guards either cheerfully chatting with each other, sitting back and relaxing, having lunch, or, most recently, listening to their ipods (HARAM!)

No one can come and check on them because their bosses are all male. These ladies have figured out a pretty sweet racket.

These airports also have x-ray machines as you come in the door (not that they ever stop anybody from bringing in anything) and “family sections” which is where it's okay for women to be. There are also “single” sections which are for single men. To be fair, men are only allowed in the 'family' section if they are actually with their families.

As a lone female traveler, or really as a female in the Kingdom in general, I have to be careful where I sit, even in the 'family' section. Sitting by myself is always an option, though not as good as sitting relatively near other women. It should go without saying that sitting next to a man is not even an option.

On the plane, before take off, they recite a prayer that the Prophet Muhammad used to say before he traveled. There is, of course, no alcohol on any Kingdom Airline flights.

This in-depth description is in honor of my vacation I am taking for the rest of the month of October. I worked a grueling five days this month and I deserve a vacation!

I'm starting to feel like I take vacations professionally. Paid vacations.

All sarcasm aside, the last week has been hell on earth. Sometime since I left everyone has decided to start hating each other. When I arrived back, I was immediately treated to a dozen side conversations about one person or another. I felt bad even listening to people tear into each other but I hadn't been there so I had no idea if it was justified or not.

Tempers flared the other day on the bus and there was snarling all the way home. It was so vicious that my mp3 player couldn't drown it out and I had to distract myself by trying to learn the Arabic numbers using licence plates.

I know them perfectly now, in case you were wondering.

I got my own dose of annoyance when the job of editing and producing the bi-weekly newsletter fell entirely to me. Typically, we have a team to work on it, but they were all too busy this week.

I didn't mind at first and I was kind of looking forward to it. It may have even been out on time if anyone had sent me anything they were supposed to. On Wednesday COB (the newsletter should have been out already) I was still missing the main article that my supervisor said she would send me at 9 am. Plus, I designed all the banners and titles myself in illustrator and my supervisor takes one look at them and crinkles her nose, asks me if we can do something about the ugly colors.

After a week of this crap I was done and so glad someone had talked me into leaving for the vacation instead of staying in town and... I don't know, screaming at the ceiling?  

Dealing with Grief in the Kingdom

For those of you who don't know, my grandmother recently passed away. I was very close to my grandmother and it was a really hard time for me, especially because I was constantly doing battle with the administration to get leave to go see her.

When I first heard she was sick, I wasn't too worried, because she's been in the hospital before and, to me, my grandmother has an iron-clad will. In my mind, nothing short of a volcano could alter the fact of her existence on this earth.

When I first understood her condition to be serious, I had a seriously terrible time dealing with it. The first night, after getting the news I went out on the roof of my hotel and sat under the desert moon. I guess I figured if it was my grandmother's last night on earth I would like to see something she could see too.

I wrote a list of everything I was going to miss about her – which was a long list, to be honest – and I ended up sleeping out there because there was a beautiful desert breeze going.

Here is a little excerpt from my ruminations of my Yiayia:

Things I will miss about Yiayia:

- The way she always says 'dearheart', like she had to mash together two different endearments in order to adequately express her true affection

- The way she would forget I don't speak Greek and would tell me things in asides that I'm sure were hilarious.

- The way she had such a tender heart and the suffering of even the most removed person affected her so deeply.

- The way I had to cross out the 'effected' I wrote first instead of 'affected' in the last one because she was an English teacher and she would be appalled at the bad grammar.

- How she used to carry a box of Dunkin' Donuts on her lap, on the plane, all the way to Africa, just because my brother and I were missing them.

- How she kept everything in tiny jars and tins in her pantry and never wasted a scrap of anything useful.

- The way she acted every time I showed her how to use Facebook, like I was the best teacher in the WORLD and she finally understood everything.

- How her love was unconditional and usually came with food.

- The way she loved to read

- The way she loved to paint

- The way she loved everyone.

At about 5am, the sun rose and the call to prayer made it more or less impossible to sleep.

The next couple of days were not easy. I kept on getting updates on my grandmother, nothing good, and I kept on slamming my head against the brick wall of administration to try to get the leave in time to see her. I made regular trips to the prayer room in order to cry in the corner.

Finally, I got the email. The one that said she had taken her leave less than two hours ago.

My first instinct was to go someplace quiet – typically I head for the bathroom. But in general the bathrooms here are too busy to really be a place of solace. So, I headed for the prayer room.

After having a muffled cry in there, I deemed myself fit for the public so I went to the bathroom to wash my face. The second I step out, I run into my friend Mary who asks me, casually, "Are you all right?"

People have taken to asking me that, because everyone on campus seems to know about my grandmother from one avenue or another.

My response, of course, was to burst into tears.

Mary insisted I come to her office for some tea (she's British, it's genetic) and for a talk. But her office, like mine, is also the office of about a dozen other people. So, I found myself in the middle of a room of people, crying my eyes out.

When I first came here, the gender separation thing bothered me. But since then, I've been working in a building with all women and it does something to a person. It's honestly a pleasant atmosphere… most of the time.

So, me, crying in the middle of a group of co-workers not only broke my streak of only crying at work when I work at camp, but also didn't feel so weird. I got a back massage and a lot of candy. I got prayers for my family in three different languages and a lot of dire threats aimed at the administration for keeping me here when I clearly needed to go.

Nancy, a woman from Somalia, told me that in Islam they had a saying – Truly we belong to Allah and to Him we shall always return.

That night, people were constantly coming and going from my room. Everyone wanted to know if I was okay and when my flight home was.

This job is worth doing, I decided, for several reasons. But the most important of which is the people I work with. Or really, the ones I live with. Let's not get too crazy with including the Savanna girls in there.

The Magda girls made me feel like I was with my family and I can't thank them enough for that.