Had a meeting today. Things were getting a little heated at first. It was just the teachers talking about things not getting done and then about 45 minutes into the meeting, Ramia, showed up. She is the lady who is in charge. Things started getting settled then. We are going to get internet in the next couple of days. They will be paying the installation fees and we will be paying the monthly bills. That is fine with me. I would like to have reliable internet. But I will believe that once I actually get it.
I also found out about mailing addresses. It took a little while to get that all sorted out. Well for her to understand me. I am going to run to the post office tomorrow and get the forms for P.O. Boxes. Apparently we can have up to 11 people per box. So the forms need to be filled out, with the peoples names and home addresses before we can actually get the boxes. So hopefully soon, I will have an address.
I also found out that I got hired. Yay me!! I don't know when I start. Ramia, told me to go to the Uni tomorrow and ask when I start. I told her to give me the number and I would call to find out, but I am not going to show up at the guy's office, who I may or may not have met and demand to know when I start. That is not my responsibility. They hired me, they can tell me when to start. Or I can call him to find out that info. It seems rude for me to show up, uninvited and ask those questions. So out of the 20 or so of us here, 5 have jobs, and 3 more got hired. Mark, some girl and myself are the ones that just got hired. The others, didn't. Most have interview and didn't get the job, so from what I understand, they will next be shipped off to Medina to interview and if they don't get hired there, of to Ryshia. Sucks to be them. They should have told us, before we came, that we didn't have jobs and that we would have to interview for them.
So things are looking up for me at least. Feel sorry for the people, who now have to pack up and move again. But hey, at least they get to see another city. Medina is not a place I would want to live. Jeddah is the most liberal city in Saudi, Medina is the second holiest city in Saudi and very conservative. It's the burial place of Mohammad. Which would be cool to see, but I think you need to be Muslim to go and see it. Plus I get to be next to the Red Sea and do some diving and beach type stuff.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Work
So I have been here for a little over 3 weeks. I still have yet to work a day here. Hell I don't even know if I have a job yet. I was told that I had a job when I came over here, but once I arrived in country, I found out that I had to interview for the job.
I had the interview about 2 or 3 days ago. It was one of the strangest interviews I have had. It took about 5 minutes. The questions had almost nothing to do with teaching, or classroom management. The sort of questions one would expect for a teaching job. The questions were, what is the difference between TEFL and TESL. Not a real whole lot of difference in the two term. They followed that up, by asking which was taught in Saudi. Then they asked me what linguistics was. I answered that. The last question was, did I think my month long course in CELTA in March qualified me to teach in Saudi. I said yes, with the four years of ESL teaching that I do have. So yes I do believe that I am qualified to teach here. Hell, I am more qualified than the majority of teachers that interviewed on the same day as I did. I have the most experience teaching.
So I am still waiting to hear the outcome of the interview. On a positive note. I am getting paid today!!! I am getting paid for the time I have been here. Not too bad considering I have not done jack since arriving in country.
I had the interview about 2 or 3 days ago. It was one of the strangest interviews I have had. It took about 5 minutes. The questions had almost nothing to do with teaching, or classroom management. The sort of questions one would expect for a teaching job. The questions were, what is the difference between TEFL and TESL. Not a real whole lot of difference in the two term. They followed that up, by asking which was taught in Saudi. Then they asked me what linguistics was. I answered that. The last question was, did I think my month long course in CELTA in March qualified me to teach in Saudi. I said yes, with the four years of ESL teaching that I do have. So yes I do believe that I am qualified to teach here. Hell, I am more qualified than the majority of teachers that interviewed on the same day as I did. I have the most experience teaching.
So I am still waiting to hear the outcome of the interview. On a positive note. I am getting paid today!!! I am getting paid for the time I have been here. Not too bad considering I have not done jack since arriving in country.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Off to Saudi
This post is just a recap of my first week in Saudi and the trip to here.
It started off with a two month process. When I first took the job here, I was debating between Kazakhstan and here. I did some research on the Kazakh company and decided to come to Saudi. I was originally supposed to leave on September 25th. Well that didn't happen. It keep getting delayed. I waited and waited for a departure date. I was tired of not working and not having an income. 2 months later, I am told that I would leave on the weekend.
They booked me a ticket out of Chicago and I tell them that it is a no go. Chicago is too far of a drive for me to take, when I could leave out of Minneapolis. So they told me that they were going to try and change my ticket. This is on a Wednesday. Thursday, I hear nothing, Friday, I hear nothing, Saturday morning about 9:30 in the morning I receive a call saying my flight is Sunday at 10:20 in the morning. Nothing like 25 hours notice, before flying halfway across the world.
Laurel and I headed down to Josh's house that night so it would be easier to catch my flight and to see my bro before I took off for a year.
We get to the airport and I am having a hell of a time, just checking in. I was flying on Delta to D.C. and Saudi Arabian Airlines to Jeddah. First of all, I had 2 tickets booked in my name, which was causing part of the problems, and Delta couldn't bring up my Saudi ticket, thus making it difficult to transfer my bags over to the Saudi airplane. So the lady made some calls and i waited and waited and waited. About 45 min. later, I get called back up to the counter and it is done. I check my bags and head off to security and say my goodbyes to Laurel . This was probably my most difficult leave. I have left the States, or other places I have lived many times over the past couple of years. It is always emotional, but not too bad. This one hit harder.
Anyway I get through security and stop by a store and buy a new Packer hat. I forgot my other cap at Josh's house and I wasn't about to head to a sunny sunny country without a cap. I put the cap on my head and head off to my gate, to arrive just in time for boarding and fly to D.C.
Flowing a 4 hour layover in which I watched football, I jumped on my plane to Saudi and fell asleep. Waking periodically and falling right back asleep. I was awoken an hour before landing and told to eat my food as we were landing soon. I look around in my sleepy haze and realize that I missed breakfast. Most everyone had already eaten and been cleaned up. I ate my food and read my book till landing.
Upon landing I was to call Wassel, the dude that was picking me up. I give him a call and proceed to look for him. He was supposed to be at the gate with a sign with my name on it. He wasn't. So I told him what I was wearing so he could also look for me. I wonder around looking for him and not finding him, after about 10 minutes of wondering around, he comes up to me with a sign that has my name on it, that he pulled out of his pocket.
I am delivered to my apartment and left alone. I am thirsty and hungry. I don't know if I should go out and find something to eat and drink, because I was told that someone would be coming to my door later. So 4 1/2 hours later, I get a knock on my door. There's a meeting. Finally something is happening. I wish I would have known it was going to take so long. Anyway the meeting goes on and I find out that I won't be teaching for a little while, till at least the 5th of December. And that is about all that is accomplished at the meeting.
Since I have gotten here, I still don't know when I will start teaching, or much of anything. I have gotten to know some of the other teachers who will be working for I.G.I.T. I've wondered around, been out to eat a couple of places and done a whole lot of nothing. That is about all that has happened in my first week in Saudi. Oh and on my second night here, we had a rain storm. From what I hear, the first in almost 2 years. The rain caused floods in part of the city and the road to Mecca flooded destroying many cars and killing over 1oo people.
My first impressions of Saudi Arabia so far aren't bad. It is dirtier than I expected. There is more plant life; a surprising amount of trees. Most are palm trees, but also trees with a thick waxy leaves. Everything is the same color. Most of the buildings are a light sandy color, so everything blends in. Signs with bad English abound, but then again, I haven't been to a none English speaking country where it hasn't. Everything get done it it's own time. Food is hella cheap and the people are friendly.
It started off with a two month process. When I first took the job here, I was debating between Kazakhstan and here. I did some research on the Kazakh company and decided to come to Saudi. I was originally supposed to leave on September 25th. Well that didn't happen. It keep getting delayed. I waited and waited for a departure date. I was tired of not working and not having an income. 2 months later, I am told that I would leave on the weekend.
They booked me a ticket out of Chicago and I tell them that it is a no go. Chicago is too far of a drive for me to take, when I could leave out of Minneapolis. So they told me that they were going to try and change my ticket. This is on a Wednesday. Thursday, I hear nothing, Friday, I hear nothing, Saturday morning about 9:30 in the morning I receive a call saying my flight is Sunday at 10:20 in the morning. Nothing like 25 hours notice, before flying halfway across the world.
Laurel and I headed down to Josh's house that night so it would be easier to catch my flight and to see my bro before I took off for a year.
We get to the airport and I am having a hell of a time, just checking in. I was flying on Delta to D.C. and Saudi Arabian Airlines to Jeddah. First of all, I had 2 tickets booked in my name, which was causing part of the problems, and Delta couldn't bring up my Saudi ticket, thus making it difficult to transfer my bags over to the Saudi airplane. So the lady made some calls and i waited and waited and waited. About 45 min. later, I get called back up to the counter and it is done. I check my bags and head off to security and say my goodbyes to Laurel . This was probably my most difficult leave. I have left the States, or other places I have lived many times over the past couple of years. It is always emotional, but not too bad. This one hit harder.
Anyway I get through security and stop by a store and buy a new Packer hat. I forgot my other cap at Josh's house and I wasn't about to head to a sunny sunny country without a cap. I put the cap on my head and head off to my gate, to arrive just in time for boarding and fly to D.C.
Flowing a 4 hour layover in which I watched football, I jumped on my plane to Saudi and fell asleep. Waking periodically and falling right back asleep. I was awoken an hour before landing and told to eat my food as we were landing soon. I look around in my sleepy haze and realize that I missed breakfast. Most everyone had already eaten and been cleaned up. I ate my food and read my book till landing.
Upon landing I was to call Wassel, the dude that was picking me up. I give him a call and proceed to look for him. He was supposed to be at the gate with a sign with my name on it. He wasn't. So I told him what I was wearing so he could also look for me. I wonder around looking for him and not finding him, after about 10 minutes of wondering around, he comes up to me with a sign that has my name on it, that he pulled out of his pocket.
I am delivered to my apartment and left alone. I am thirsty and hungry. I don't know if I should go out and find something to eat and drink, because I was told that someone would be coming to my door later. So 4 1/2 hours later, I get a knock on my door. There's a meeting. Finally something is happening. I wish I would have known it was going to take so long. Anyway the meeting goes on and I find out that I won't be teaching for a little while, till at least the 5th of December. And that is about all that is accomplished at the meeting.
Since I have gotten here, I still don't know when I will start teaching, or much of anything. I have gotten to know some of the other teachers who will be working for I.G.I.T. I've wondered around, been out to eat a couple of places and done a whole lot of nothing. That is about all that has happened in my first week in Saudi. Oh and on my second night here, we had a rain storm. From what I hear, the first in almost 2 years. The rain caused floods in part of the city and the road to Mecca flooded destroying many cars and killing over 1oo people.
My first impressions of Saudi Arabia so far aren't bad. It is dirtier than I expected. There is more plant life; a surprising amount of trees. Most are palm trees, but also trees with a thick waxy leaves. Everything is the same color. Most of the buildings are a light sandy color, so everything blends in. Signs with bad English abound, but then again, I haven't been to a none English speaking country where it hasn't. Everything get done it it's own time. Food is hella cheap and the people are friendly.
A walk to the shore
I'm a sweaty mess. I went for a walk this evening. I think I started around 3:30 and just got back. It is 7 now. So not to bad of a walk. I need to learn how to control my stride. I walk to fast for the heat. It isn't even that hot out. ok so maybe I was wrong. I just checked the weather and it is 82 but it feels like 87. If that is the temp at 7 at night, I wonder what it was like during the day. That could explain the sweat.
So anyway I found the American Embassy. It is just down the street from me. Maybe a mile or two. It sort of snuck up on me and it's a huge complex. Not that that is of any importance to this, but good to know where it is.
So I put on my lungi, that purplish sarong thing I got in India, grabbed my camera bag, and put on my head phones and walked out the door. I then took a left and walked straight and kept walking straight until I could walk no more. I was at the shore. I passed a lot of western chain restaurants, B.K., Krispy Kream, McD's, Chilli's to name but a few. Once I hit the shore, I turned and headed toward the beach. It was a bit of a hike from when I first hit the water front. The beach is more like a car park of compacted dirt, with a little bit of soft sand right before the water.
There were a few Saudi families enjoying the weather and relaxing waterside. Some were flying kites, a lot of men were fishing from the beach. Nobody was swimming. I don't know if Saudis don't swim or the shear amount of fishing poles and lines discourages people from swimming. Several people were going into the water about knee deep. Two old men were playing soccer on a run down pitch. And there were hoards of people on 4 wheelers, just tooling around. One kid about 9 years of age flipped his. I laughed to myself. He was alright, if you were wondering. I went to a Mosque at the end of the beach and sat behind it and read my book and people watched whilst waiting for the sunset. The sunset was disappointing. The cloud cover on the horizon was too thick and blocked it out. I'll have to try another day.
While people watching, there were several people fishing in front of me. Several men moved to the shore to take a picture and BAM, one of them gets hit in the head with a fish that one of the fishermen caught. It was some funny shit. Shortly after that I decided to head back home and stop off at the pier before I take my turn back home. At the pier, there is a huge jet of water that shoots up into the air, I don't know how high, but it is high. Took a few pictures of that and headed back home.
That was pretty much my day.
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