The Reasons Why

In case you haven't heard the news, I've officially resigned my position here. 

There are a lot of reasons and all of them are personal. It took me a long time to accept the fact that personal/emotional reasons were enough to leave a good job behind.

Reason One, "The Most Important One": 

My mood is so unstable here that it's not good for my emotional health. When I first decided to leave, I was wracked with indecision because one day I was ready to hop on a plane, and the next day, I thought it wouldn't be so bad to stay here a year. The changes were so severe and so unpredictable that I felt like I couldn't plan anything in advance because who knows how I would feel when the actual date rolled around?

Reason Two, "The Official Reason":

 

My Visa. Or lack thereof. When I came here, I was told that I wouldn't be getting a resident's visa or Iqama as it's known in the Arab world. I was fine with that. Iqamas took four weeks to get, you had to go back to your home country to get them, and your employer has the right to keep your passport. I've learned too much about human trafficking to be comfortable with someone taking my passport for safe keeping. 

The visa I came on was a three month, multiple-entry visa that would expire into a single entry visa after three months. Meaning that I could come and go as I pleased the first three months, but after that, if I left, I couldn't get back in. I was told that in January, I could go home and renew this visa in order to travel for another three months in the area. 

The laws of the country have been changing – in the last couple of months, actually – and these visas are no longer available.

I had just bought my plane ticket to go home (after informing my employers this was my intention and receiving positive acknowledgement in return) when I received an email that stated there were no visas, that no one would be able to leave during the school break. I was understandably pissed off. But I didn't cancel my plane flight.

For several days, I sat and stewed. Finally, the CEO came to face us and tell us that, he has Iqamas available, but he wasn't going to give them to us. He said he needed them to bring new teachers in that would replace the teachers who already left. We asked him why he didn't try harder to keep the teachers he already has (i.e.: give us the visas) and he simply shrugged his shoulders. At which point I told him, very calmly, my position: I have paid for a plane flight in January. I will be on that plane, out of the country. If you want me back, then you can get me an Iqama.

I don't think they are going to offer me one, but they may. In which case I would seriously consider coming back.

Reason Three, "The Obvious":

 

Not being able to leave the house by myself is taking a serious toll on my sanity. Left to my own devices, I like to take long walks by myself to just think. In the Kingdom, I have to walk in circles on my roof inside the high walls like a prisoner. All I see every day is the four walls of my apartment, the four walls at the university, and the things I can glance out the tinted windows as we drive to work.

Reason Four, "The Company":

The way the company treats us has been intolerable from the start. Things like telling us to be ready to go shopping at 6:00am, and then phoning us up three hours later to tell us the trip has been canceled. No other explanation. Like it doesn't matter that we've gotten up ridiculously early and been waiting for three hours. This is only one example of many that include safety issues both in transit (they stranded my friend in the middle of the night on the side of the road without explanation), and at home (our accommodation has only one doorman, who is a string bean of a man, and glass doors). Also a problem is their habit of not paying us so that we can access our money in a timely manner, and not allowing the proper amount of sick days (we have been told, several times, that if we are sick, we should just suck it up and go to work).

Reason Five, "My Goals":

 

I had certain goals when I came here. They were, in order of priority – be creative, write, learn Arabic, travel to the nearby countries, explore Kingdom Culture, get university experience, and make money.  Being creative and writing is almost impossible when I never see anything new in my life. I was promised free Arabic lessons which have never materialized. I've honestly learned more Urdu than I have Arabic working here. I would do better with Rosetta Stone. Obviously, the visa situation makes travel impossible and I've been out and about in Kingdom Culture for about four months now.  The experience is great, but now I have a semester, so that goal is more or less accomplished. That leaves making money, and doing this only for money is something I suspect I will regret in the future. 

Therefore, I have nothing left to gain by being here.

            UPDATE: They have offered me an Iqama when it seemed that I was serious about going home. I had a couple hours of indecision about why I was really leaving and would my problems really be fixed with an Iqama. I finally decided that getting the visa didn't really make a difference. I am leaving anyway.

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.  

Day One At the Campus

            This day has been an education in more ways than one. It was my first day on campus and it seemed that no one knows I was there. I went to the HR department who demanded I fill out a ton of forms that I have already filled out a bunch of times. I get to work on that, and then I can't connect to the internet.

            One of the HR ladies has the code and won't tell anyone and has disappeared.

            I happened to run into a different HR person because she wanted me to go around to all the classrooms and take attendance. She noticed that she didn't know who I was and as an HR person, she should know. When she found out I was new, she looked aghast and said no one had told her I was here and that she was supposed to debrief every new teacher.

            She proceeds to give me this spiel, a lot of it I have already heard, but this one includes the caveat that my CV and diplomas have to go to the head office for approval before I am officially hired. This is not something I was told before – I figured if they were flying me out here, they had already hired me.

            But this seems to be par-for-course with overseas language gigs – in fact, this was the situation in Korea, though no one ever told me that to my face. You generally have a probationary period during which they can fire you if they want to.

            This is going to give me some sleepless nights, I can tell, but if nothing else I have had an interesting experience.

            Since it was mentioned that part of the assessment of whether I get to stay or not is taking initiative with professional development, I tracked down two of the three PD sessions going on and attend them. One is about professional development. Very meta.

            But the other is specifically about how to teach students from the Kingdom. I found out that there are a lot of things I am not allowed to discuss with the girls. This, I'm sure surprises no one.

Something I am not allowed to discuss:

-        Music (music is more or less illegal here. Very footloose.)

-        Displeasure concerning the abaya (outer, choir robe-like covering) and the hijab (head scarf)

-        Politics/religion (obvi.)

-        Superstitions (this includes everything from Greek gods to wearing your pyjamas inside out in hopes for a rain day. Everyone knows it is Allah who makes the rain fall.)

            Other things that are severely frowned upon is putting the spotlight on a student – here, saving face is also a big deal; making a definite statement without adding 'Inshallah' (if God wills it/God willing) on the end (for example: “You are definitely going to make a great doctor”); and finally, saying you achieved something all by yourself because you are so awesome. The general feeling on this is that you always owe your success to Allah and pretending otherwise is borderline blasphemy.

            It seems that there are a lot of teachers here who have no classes, and more are arriving every day. All I am required to do for the next couple of days is show up to work and pretend to be busy. The last part is optional.