Heat rage and Ramadan

As I write this the temperature is 38 degrees. From tomorrow onwards it will reach a maximum of 42 degrees. That’s what the 15-day forecast says. I don’t want to know what it’s going to be like after that. I would also like to make a confession…Hi, I’m Melissa van Deventer and I suffer from heat rage.

You scoff, but heat rage is a thing. Jurie can attest to that. No, he is not a sufferer of heat rage, he suffers from secondary heat rage.

The symptoms, intense anger, lack of appetite and intense anger…wait I’ve said that already. To be fair this heat rage is self-inflicted. So I’ll forgive you if you don’t feel sorry for me. Often we go walking in the park in Muscat, or should I rather say poke-walking. We go quite early, 9 am because that’s when the park opens. At that time the temperature is already 33 degrees. We walk from 9 am to 11 am. 

So here are the variables:

          1.     Intense heat

          2.  Slow internet

         3.   Intense heat

         4.   Old, slow phones  

         5.    2 hours

I think it must be quite comical for the people that work at the park. Watching us keep to the shadows and also the fact that we are the only 2 people walking around in the park. Other people are usually sitting in the shade, enjoying an ice cold beverage. After we walk around, I am so sweaty that my clothes stick to my body and my face is bright red. Jurie’s face is a slight shade of pink. Why am I so red? It must be another symptom of heat rage.

Anyway, enough about the heat let’s talk about the next thing…Ramadan.

According to the internet: “Ramadan is the 9^th month of the Islamic calendar, and is observed through a month of fasting.”  To be completely honest, I am not entirely sure what Ramadan is all about but I am sure we are going to find out.

How is this going to affect us as teachers though? From what I have heard...
 1.       Students are tired and grumpy because they are hungry.

       2.    Classes are shortened to cater to our students' attention spans.

       3.    We must get through the same amount of content even though these classes are shortened. 

       4.    We are not allowed to drink water and eat in public.  
       5.   We are not allowed to play loud music

It also gets hotter, this doesn’t have anything to do with Ramadan but think about the heat, plus students not eating or drinking water. Teachers have told us about students fainting in class.

I’m just worried about the not drinking water part. I am sure you can imagine while teaching, teacher’s need to drink water. We use our voices a lot, paired with the blasting ACs that means our throats will get seriously dry!

So stay tuned for after the 27^th of May…because then I’m going to tell you all about Ramadan. 

The art of being an adult.

Adulting is hard! I mean I have to constantly think about what I do and say and deal with the resulting consequences.  Just lately, I have been scrutinizing every decision made or we are in the process of making.

First of all, who do I want to teach?

We have been teaching adults in college for a while now and I like it but when I look at college students and their behavior I think to myself…NO! You shouldn’t be behaving this way. You are an adult, I might be an adultier, adult than you are but you should not be behaving like you are in grade7.

“Teacher, he hit me.”

Seriously??? How old are you? 

We wanted to teach High school students but after teaching at a high school I doubt that is something I am cut out for.

Perhaps senior primary. I know the kids will be kids and I am ok with that. At least that is something I expect from the beginning. 

Decision number 2, where do I want to live?

Curse my complicated personality! I like to travel, yet I hate change. How is that even possible?!

I want my own house when I say that I don’t mean that I want to buy a house. Yes, we have rented flats and they were ours for a period of time but I want to decorate my flat with things I have accumulated over the years.

When Jurie and I got married, I didn’t have a Hope Chest because we lived in Korea and I knew it wasn’t permanent. So why invest time in decorating your place if you are only going to leave it in the future? 

I want to settle down but I also want to travel. UGH!

And lastly, do I want to have children?

YES	NO
I don’t want my time to run out	I don’t like babies
I don’t want the van Deventer name to end	I like my own time
It seems like the natural progression	I don’t like noise
	I’m terrified of the responsibility

When I look at those reasons I feel like an idiot. Those reasons seem dumb. Not once did I say I love children or I think they’re great. I just don’t want time to run out and for me to think, at the age of, 45. “I want children.”  I don’t want to regret my decision when I am older, that’s my biggest fear.

So, those are the decisions that we are trying to make at the moment. Any advice from adultier, adults would be greatly appreciated. 

Driving to the UAE

If you ever consider driving to the UAE you need the following:

Your passport

A visa (if you are South African)

Travel insurance

Car insurance

Up-to-date car registration

The latter we didn't have, we found out from the car people that we were driving around with an expired registration (something they are supposed to let us know about before it happens!) In any case the car people said that they would give us a different car for our UAE trip and that on our way there we needed to stop by and pick up the car (something Jurie wasn't happy about because he just wanted to drive straight home from the UAE and not have to stop in Seeb)

That's beside the point. We are going to tell you the story of how we left the Oman border two times without getting our passports stamped.

We received a location pin from Chris and Tash and input it into the GPS. We followed said GPS 

co-ordinates, because it would take us to the border right?

Well, it did take us to the border but this border was no longer in use. No one was there, we drove right through the open boom gates, into no man's land and right to the backside of what must have been the UAE border.

In retrospect perhaps we should have known something was up with the open boom gates and also the fact that we were traveling on a gravel road.

Melissa: I think I saw a police station nearby why don't we ask them.

Jurie asked them and it turns out that border was closed (well then they should have a sign or a closed gate but there's no use in complaining about these types of things)

Ok, plan B. Type Hatta border into the GPS and go to the other border crossing.

Yet again when we arrived there were no signs and we drove right through the border into No man's land (at least this time it was tarred road) and right up to the UAE border crossing.

Jurie: We have to get an exit stamp before we can go into the UAE.

Melissa: You'd think someone would stop us somewhere along the line!

So we drive back to the Oman border crossing and are stopped by the customs officers.

Jurie: We want to go to the UAE but we didn't get our stamp.

Officer: Go back 7km to building.

He didn't check our car, he just took our word for it that we wanted to go to the UAE. We think this must have happened before.

Anyway, we go back to the window and get our exit stamp and drive all the way back to the UAE border crossing.

Seriously Oman, where are your signs???? 

We stayed with Tash and Chris in RAK (Ras Al Khaimah)

They stay in a lovely flat, close to the beach and have an awesome swimming pool.

On the first night, we spent time with Chris, Tash, Beth, Judith (the people we knew from Woosong) it was great fun.

Thursday we drove to Dubai.

The traffic in Dubai is insane. We witnessed an accident, it was only a fender bender but still. People drive right on your butt at crazy speeds. Dubai is a really impressive city! There is a lot of construction going on but it was great seeing all the buildings you see in movies like the Burj Khalifa

Thursday evening we were treated to a night out at the Hilton. Had loads of drinks (Tash really enjoyed herself- Hee hee)

Then Friday we just chilled and had a braai on the beach for supper.

We really had a great time. A long drive but totally worth it to see our lovely friends.

Burj Khalifa 

View from Chris & Tash's place 

A weekend of life lessons

Matrah Souq

This past weekend we decided to see something cultural and visit Matrah Souq (pronounced sook), which is an open air market. We decided to go in the afternoon, a silly thing to do.

The thing is everything shuts down around midday for prayer. We arrived and everything was closed. UGH! Ok, we’ll go watch Beauty and the Beast now and then we’ll go to the Souq tomorrow (Saturday).

Side note, we were Poke-walking before this and the little shops in the park closed. We finished our water and were both really thirsty. We thought we’d buy some water by the souq but alas, everything was closed.

Jurie: Don’t worry we’ll get something by the movies.

It’s a 10-minute drive to the movies and my mouth felt like the desert I could see outside!

At the movies, we quickly bought our tickets and didn’t buy popcorn (priorities!!) but we bought slushies.

Here comes problem number 2, it's ice and not liquid. Here I was sitting in the cinema sucking through a straw that would not give me anything. Finally, in frustration, I opened the top of the cup and shovelled the ice into my mouth using the straw.

So two lessons were learnt that day…

      1)      Always carry an extra bottle of water with you.

      2)      While slushies are awesome movie beverages, don’t buy it if you are dying of thirst.

Beauty and the Beast.

Oh wow! What a fantastic movie. Team van D give this movie five stars *****.  I don’t like to advertise this to just anyone but under this ice cold exterior beats the heart of a softy. I’m not a sentimental person but this movie just brought back so many childhood memories and I found my eyes leaking once or twice. So do yourself a favour and watch this movie.

The Souq again

So we looked up the times that the souq opens (which we should have done the day before) and found it opened at 7am – 11am then from 5pm -11pm. So we went at 8:30am to be on the safe side. Yet again everything was closed. What the hell google?! Some of the shops were opening but then we found a sign that said the Souq opens not at 7am but at 8am! Seriously?! But I guess that would basically explain this place, information is subjective. But still the sign said 8am and it was past that time and only 5 shops were opening. We did find a souvenir place and bought a few things. We also have some nice pictures of the promenade near the market.

Lessons learnt that day

1     1 )      Have patience because you won’t get all the information you need at once but it bits.

2     2)      Don't take everything too seriously and just go with the flow.

Changing plans

We had a great weekend! We went diving on Friday and then swimming on Saturday. But that wasn’t our original plan. I like having a plan before I do things. I like things to be just so…

These were the weekend plans.

Friday

Arrive in Muscat

Play Pokemon in the park

Eat lunch 

Check into the hotel

Relax and swim

Eat supper 

Anyone who knows me knows that I plan my life around my meals.

Saturday

Have breakfast

Go to the dive centre

2 Dives

Go back to Ibra

That was the plan but then the unexpected happened. The park was rented out for a private function. We weren’t allowed in.

Jurie: Why don’t we go watch a movie?

I check my phone for movie times.

Me: Movies only start at 2 pm

So we can’t go into the main part of the park where most of the Pokemon/Pokestops are. We can’t go to movies and we can’t check into the hotel. We stare at each other.

Me: Why don’t we cancel the 2 dives for tomorrow? Then do an afternoon dive today, we can come to the park tomorrow and do our Pokewalk.

Jurie phones the people and Plan B is a go.

New schedule aka Plan B

Friday

Short Pokewalk

Eat lunch

Check into the hotel

Dive

Swim

Eat supper

Saturday

Eat Breakfast

Go buy alcohol (Because it’s the start of a new month and we can)

Pokewalk

Swim

Go back to Ibra

I know the new plan was excellent, we thoroughly enjoyed our weekend but having to suddenly change plans causes me all sorts of anxiety.

On the plus side, we saw some camels while driving back to Ibra and we saw a father turn around and shout at his children in the car in front of us. It was quite comical. We tried to imagine what he was saying to his children.

Me: That’s enough! I’m going to stop this car and you’re going to walk home!

Jurie: We’re in a desert, I don’t think they can do stuff like that here. I think they would get sun stroke just standing outside for a minute.

Another thing I’m sure you are all going to get annoyed with is us telling you how hot it is here. But try and imagine it from our perspective. I just had a shower and had the water on cold but it came out scalding hot because the tank on our roof is in the sun all day! I seldom get hot. I never complain about the heat, I thrive in it. But this heat is beyond anything I have ever felt and it’s only going to get hotter. So Jurie usually knows, if I complain about the heat then it’s the depths of Mordor HOT! Just like I know when Jurie complains about the cold then it’s beyond the wall, COLD!

(If you don’t get the weather pop-culture references then you can’t be my friends anymore)

·         PS. Jurie tells me I can’t go disowning friends since I don’t have many of them to start off with. Mordor is a Lord of the Rings reference and beyond the wall is a Game of Thrones reference. 

Down the rabbit hole

A lot of the time I am very quiet. I have a lot on my mind, but I don’t vocalise it.

 I battle to make friends because of it. I know shocking…I’m so personable and approachable. I don’t think my RBF or RMF, resting Mel face (as Chris likes to call it) helps me much either.  

I have noticed that we haven’t made a lot of friends here yet. Sure people are nice and friendly, but there’s not much of a “hanging out” culture…or other people are hanging out and we don’t know about it.

Well…I have been thinking…dangerous business I know.

Perhaps if I share some of my thoughts in a comfortable setting with friends and family I will get used to it and start sharing with other people…UGH, other people…see what I mean?!

So I have compiled a bunch of thoughts I have had while in Oman. I have even got some photos to go with my thoughts.

1.    Who would buy a car this colour? Gross (Seems like loads of people have cars this colour) Hmmm…Do they buy this car to be camouflaged in the dunes? Oh, I’ve got it! They don’t want to wash their cars so much, the colour disguises the dirt…smart.

2.    My students often do this to me. “Teacher one minute, one minute.” They hold their hand out like that…so if this is one-minute…then what is two minutes?

3.    I often see this bus outside our flat. For some reason it makes me think of Resident Evil. I wonder if the people that take the bus to work pretend that they are living in a post-apocalyptic zombie-infested wasteland. Which is quite appropriate if you can’t stand your job! And if you are a teacher because sometimes it feels like the students are "eating" your brain. 

4.    These are our curtains! I’ve become the box lady in the story my grandmother used to tell me as a child.

I don’t suppose I should share these thoughts with my colleagues. They might think I’m “cray” (as Jurie likes to say)

But I’m glad I got to share with all of you because even though you might think I’m “cray” you are stuck with me. And if you think of leaving me…I’ll find you.

Out and about

Wadi Bani Khalid

On Friday we drove about 2 hours to get to Wadi Bani Khalid. A wadi is a river. Not all Wadis flow and some dry up but apparently the water flows underground???? And then when the rains come (around May) they fill up again.

Well, to swimWadi Bani Khalid flows year round and people go there to swim. We arrived and it truly looked like an Oasis. We had a delicious lunch with our colleagues and then swimming. Jurie and I looked for the deeper area to swim but our colleague took us first to a shallow area. We saw fishies swimming around and we splish splashed. When we said we wanted to go to the deeper area we were asked if we could swim because the area we wanted to go to was 10ft deep. We assured our colleagues that we could swim and off Jurie and I trekked on our own. We didn't swim at the deep area because while we splish, splashed in the shallow area some other brave souls went swimming there.

I didn't feel comfortable swimming there because I noticed that everyone swimming were males. I know I'm not usually the type to shy away from stuff like that but here I get a weird vibe and so we walked back to our picnic site. We sat around until sunset and then went off home. We stopped for some tea with cinnamon in it, yum yum!

Movies in Muscat

On Saturday, we went to the movies. We both really wanted to see Logan. We set off to Muscat early in the morning, made it in record time and decided to take a quick walk around the park for Pokemon hunting. The cinema is about 6 minutes away from the park. We got to the shopping centre, got our tickets and looked around at the many choices of snacks. You can get Pepsi, Fanta and Mountain Dew as slushies!!!! Also, we could choose our flavour of popcorn, salt, caramel or chilli cheese and you can even order nachos. Going to the movies in Muscat is an expensive affair but still, the seats were super comfortable and I enjoyed the movie, Jurie not so much.  We then went shopping afterwards and finally stopped off at the park on the way home.

All in all, the weekend was quite a good one!

The Ibra Festival.

The Ibra Festival (I'm not quite sure if that is what it's actually called) started on the 2nd of March and runs until the 22nd. 20 days of pure fun. It is in the park that Jurie and I walk to work through, we saw them setting up before the festival even started.  The festival runs from late afternoon, 4 pm, until late in the evening, 11 pm.

We were both curious about the festival and waited awhile before we went, trying to avoid the crowds. I asked my students if they were going.

"Are you going to the Ibra festival this weekend?"

They all pulled their faces.

"Teacher, no!"

I was surprised. "Why?"

"Muscat festival is better than Ibra festival."

"I know but this is Ibra, not Muscat."

They still looked disgusted at the prospect of going. I just shrugged and said.

"Well, I'm going."

I was a little taken aback by their reaction,  proud of my student for using a comparative correctly (which they had just learnt) but still shocked. There is nothing else to do in Ibra, this is the most exciting thing that has happened here since it rained when we first came here.  Yet my students were not impressed.

Needless to say, Jurie and I set out for the festival on Friday night. It was really busy, the most people I have seen in Ibra. The entrance fee was 200 baisal each (R 7) and there were rides, a tent for people selling stuff, awesome lanterns, yummy food and carnie games.  It was almost like The Lion's Show in Sheppy except it didn't have a beer tent and let's be honest that's the only thing the Lion Show has going for them these days. But can you imagine going to the Lion's Show and the entrance fee being R7?

The festival wasn't big but it is something nice for families to do. The kids love the slides and this weird train thing called Nessie. I have a feeling all my students are going to go to this festival because like I said before what else are they going to do in Ibra besides study and drink tea?

Getting away to Muscat

It takes about 2 hours to drive to Muscat from Ibra. I'm sure I have said this before when we first came here. They are still busy building the highway to Muscat, since 2010, and there are sections of the highway that has been completed. This is the nice area to drive on. There is a section of road, about 24km to be exact, that winds through the mountains. It's a beautiful drive and we really enjoy it, what we don't enjoy is the speeding from the other cars and the overtaking around blind corners.

We went to Muscat twice in one week. We went once to go get our liquor license. That sounds like we are trying to sell alcohol here when in fact, it means that we are allowed to buy alcohol here. It's a little blue book, that you take with you when you buy alcohol from the select shops that sell it. You first have to get permission from your employers before you get the license, you give them a form to sign.

We might as well stick a sign on our foreheads saying "HEY WE WANT TO GET OUR PARTY ON IN OMAN!"

Then you have to take that form and other documents to the police station, you pay the amount you would like to spend on alcohol per month(the more you send the more you look like an alcoholic) and then TA-DA you have the license (and also a few judgmental looks from the police officers)

You then have to find the select stores that sell the alcohol. We decided to do that rather on the weekend. The weekend came and we drove halfway to Muscat and realised that we had forgotten the alcohol license!!! We had to drive all the way back to fetch it. Desperate times!

We had a good time in Muscat. Not because we were buying alcohol, but because we ate good food, we relaxed and we could play Pokemon in a park that had more than one Poke-stop.

I bought some cupcakes, we had some pizza. Then on our way home, we went to the alcohol shop. We got lost trying to find the place because it's tiny and doesn't even look like a shop.  Think the size of our kitchen in Port Shepstone.  That's how big the whole shop is. We bought our 60 Rials worth of alcohol for the month, (which isn't much) Then we went to the mall. Which also for some reason doesn't look like the malls at home from the outside it looks like a warehouse. They have an H&M, Pandora, a huge hypermarket, a Tim Horton's and so much more.

We don't think we will go to Muscat every weekend but it's a nice place to get away to. We had fun but Jurie says he likes the remote place, things are cheaper here and I suppose we will save more money because I won't spend it all on R160 cupcakes.

My very expensive cupcake but it was so worth it!

These horsies live at the park 

The famous liquor permit 

Silver linings

Change is hard...uh oh this sounds serious. Don't worry this post isn't going to be serious. Maybe a paragraph or so. It's just lately we both don't feel like going to work. It's ok when one doesn't want to go to work. The other picks up the slack and says a few encouraging things like,

"Everything is going to be ok!"

"No your students don't hate you!"

"We've made it through a month, only five more to go!"

But it's really hard when both of you feel like this.

So change is hard. It must become more difficult as you get older but then when I think about it I have never really been good with change. After a month I feel like I have been beaten into submission.

So, here comes the fun part...during change there will be moments of laughter and fun that will make it all worthwhile.

The first 3 things aren't really laughter but people being nice and making us feel special.

1. I got to work and found a present on my desk.  A lady that we work with, gave us glasses as a welcome to Ibra/Oman present. 

2. Yet again on our desk last week we got a rose and a card saying "Happy Teacher's Day". It was from the college. The roses are so beautiful.

3. This one is awesome. We got this as a gift from friends!!!! HOW AWESOME?!  Now I can stop drinking the mouthwash and cough syrup (Just joking...or am I?)

Here are a few things that have made us laugh just recently.

1. The first picture is a sign that we see quite often. The sign is self-explanatory but I mean...come on...sale of food stuff, hmm I wonder what I am going to find in that shop?

2. The next one was found while we were out poke-walking. We walked past a pre-school and saw this picture.

Jurie: Woah!

Melissa: I would definitely send our children here.

Jurie: Totes

We are both serious, if you don't want to send your children to this school there is something wrong with you.

3.  Finally, our students in our reading classes need to submit vocabulary words to us. They choose 10 words, write the synonyms and then make their own sentence using the word. These are two different students and we would like you to read their sentences.

I don't want to mess with this student's sister!

I wonder if the man he is referring to works at the pre-school with the awesome sign? 

As you can see this post wasn't too serious. It is hard here but we aren't giving up, we are trying to find the silver lining in every situation, it can be difficult. We are thankful to everyone who has been sending us messages, it encourages us and makes us feel like we are still a part of your lives even though we as so far away. 

Desert Excursion

Yesterday, we went into the desert. I know right?! We thought we were already in the desert. The actual desert is deserted, (ha ha ha-DUH) not many people live there, there's barely any water and there's no electricity. Bedouins' live there in shacks and look after their livestock, goats and camels.

We saw more camels than we saw people.  The counsellor at our university has family that live in the desert and it was decided by the induction committee to have some sort of event for the "new people". There are 5 of us, plus a couple who are part of the induction committee and then loads of our bosses and other people( I still don't know who they are).

We left for the desert after work. It was hot, but we were told because it's winter it will get cold when the sun sets. We arrived at the guys "house", took our shoes off and played in the sand. I saw a lizard cover itself with sand, it was so cool. We watched the people unpack the car, we wanted to help but were told we must relax, we watched as the let the air out of the tires of the 4X4s.  We took a group photo and then went off dune bashing.

It was something else, the sand is so fine and the dunes are huge. These guys know what they are doing and they love doing it too. We watched the sunset on the dunes, eating some sticky sweet and drinking coffee. Then drove back to the "house."

The wind picked up...and soon we were in the middle of a sand storm. If you have ever been on the beach when it's windy, you'll know it's awful. Try being surrounded by sand, the "house" had no roof and the floor was made of sand so it was like being in a swirling vortex of sand. It got into our mouths, our eyes, our ears. We all took out our sunglasses and put them on. Luckily I thought to bring my scarf (The one the boys and Lau got me for my birthday) I used it to cover my hair, my mouth and nose.

Soon the wind died down and we watched our guides dig a hole fill it with hot coals, put meat (covered in foil) on top of it, put a metal pot over it and then cover it with sand. That meat sat in there for 4 hours. There's not much to do in the desert besides sit around the fire and tell stories. UGH to have to actually speak to people. You also drink tea and eat, fruit and lamp kebabs.

Everyone in the desert walks barefoot. One of the guys was walking in the dark and such jumped. He took his phone out and started searching. I wondered what he was looking for. The other Omani men saw us watching him. They spoke to him.

"He thinks he stood on a scorpion, he's looking for it." One of our colleagues explained nonchalantly.

SCORPIONS!!!!!  I felt myself searching the sand.  And no I wasn't expecting The Rock to burst forth(although I wouldn't mind). I did see a beetle in the sand though and it made me think of "The Mummy"(I would definitely mind if Imhotep burst out of the sand) it also made my skin crawl.  

We only ate our proper dinner at midnight! UGH! I was an awesome evening! An interesting experience.

Ps The stars in the desert are amazing. Now I know why they observe the stars in the Karoo in South Africa. 

Welcome, to another edition of Thunderdome!

I'm going to make a few pop culture references in this post. Hopefully, Chris and Steve get them. Not like my painful horror story (The Ring) reference that Jurie doesn't let me live down.

Water is scarce in Ibra, well not scarce more like not as readily available as turning on the tap. We are in the desert or post-apocalyptic wasteland.  When we drive on the only road we have in town I kind of feel like we are in a scene from Mad Max (The Mel Gibson version).  Like Mad Max water is scarce here. We have trucks that bring it to our house. In our case, a truck comes every Saturday to fill the drum that is on our roof.

You have to be very stingy with how you use your water. Which means no showers. Ha ha ha, I'm just joking. When we wait for our shower to warm up we fill up a bucket and use that water for other stuff. It means we don't have a washing machine because they use too much water. Rather we take our clothes every second week to the Laundromat. The bucket of water I spoke about previously is used to hand wash our own socks and underwear, taking socks and underwear to the Laundromat would be too expensive and would have to be washed weekly.  I know there are some shocked faces reading this.

Luckily we have an awesome landlord, we just organised with him to have the water truck fill our tank every Saturday(The water guy is his uncle). Usually, every time you see your water is getting low you call the truck driver and he comes to fill the tank. The truck drivers have specific areas, if you call the another guy and he fills your tank you could have a straight up water truck war on your hands...see what I mean about Mad Max.

The other thing about the water is the pressure is really low because it comes out of a tank on your roof. As you can imagine it takes so long to wash my luscious mane (Cue Tina Turner singing). I have to plan my washes to coincide with days we get off from work early (3 pm). 

It's 4:35 pm now and I just realised I have to wash my hair...(Cue Tina Turner singing again)

PS. For those of you who don't get the Tina Turner reference, I'll be kind to you and explain (although it's taking time out of my hair washing schedule) Tina Turner was in Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome. Coincidently she has awesome hair, just like me.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq4aOaDXIfY      (WATCH THIS)

When you have a bad day.

I walked out of my reading class today and I just couldn't believe it.

I felt numb...I walked back to my office (read cubicle) and I stared at Jurie for a moment. He looked at my and gave me one of the fakest smiles I have ever seen and said, "You too?" 

Yup, today was one of those days. It was like the students had forgotten every rule that college had set for them. What happened over the weekend? 

Apparently, a few teacher complained when they got into the office, at least it wasn't just us. There is some comfort in that.

I had a student not bring his writing book. The whole class had to bring their portfolios (yes because it's important for university students to have portfolios) they handed the portfolios to me and I gave them a writing task to do while I checked that their portfolios were up to date. 

"Where's your book?" 

"Teacher I didn't bring." 

"Why?"

"I thought bring portfolio and no work." 

"All the other students brought their books." 

We stare at each other for a while. 

"I guess you thought wrong." 

We stare at each other again. 

"Get some paper and write on that." 

Still stares at me. 

Me to another student.

"Can you give him some paper." 

Other students gives him paper. 

"Write on that." 

Me: internal scream 

Ok, enough of that...look at the pretty pictures of the college.

PS I wrote this yesterday and then the internet didn't work for me to upload it. Today was also a tough day but we have discovered why. Next week the students have midterms...they are suffering from midterm madness. 

Our week in a nutshell (What's it doing in a nutshell?)

This week has been quite interesting...

We thought this might be our first full week of teaching but we were told on Monday that Tuesday would be a sports day and that classes would be cancelled from 12:00. Yay because we only start teaching at 13:00. We arrived at school thinking it would be a full on sports day, students participating and cheering for their departments. Nope, we arrived at school to find it was a ghost town, one or two students but all the teachers were there.

It seemed that the sports day was more for the teachers. We were both roped into the tug-of-war (roped...hee hee see what I did there) Jurie for the men's team, me for the ladies. The other staff were wearing casual clothes...Jurie and I didn't get the memo. But we competed in our work clothes in any case.

The ladies won the tug of war, 2-1. We competed against another department. The men won too but they had to compete against more departments.

Needless to say, the next day we were both very stiff and had weird bruises on our arms.

The teaching is getting better. The only thing we find annoying is having to repeat ourselves to the students.

"Teacher class finished!"

"No, class is 50 minutes, what time did we start?"

"11:00"  

"Plus 50 minutes?

"

"11:50"

"Is it 11:50 now?"

"No."

We have a stare off.

"Teacher class finished."

 Another annoyance is having students talk while we are teaching. 

Today we had to proctor an entrance exam. At least we weren't thrown into the deep end and they paired us up with experienced teachers. We will also be marking these exams on Saturday (the weekend) Usually, if teachers do this then they can get a day off at the end of the semester. There were only 47 spots and we managed to secure ourselves one. YESSSSSSSSS! 

So at the end of April, we get to have an extra day off. So in the short term, 6-day week next week. In the long term, extra day off...hmmmm. 

Something unpleasant

Not all experiences are pleasant...it's life.
This experience happened yesterday. I didn't write about it or talk about it with anyone except Jurie (he was there when it happened) because I needed some time to think about it, and "cool down".

You can have some of the best experiences in another country. Getting used to things takes time. The people are nice and friendly, the students are, well, students. But then you get a few individuals who do something silly that can taint that positive view that you had before...if you let it.

Yesterday we were walking home from work. It was about 15:30, hot, we were walking past the park and we were chatting about Pokemon. I was laughing at something Jurie said. We both noticed the white car in the distance and I moved closer to Jurie (he says I like to walk in the middle of the road but I can't help that I crab walk) and we continued talking.

The car picked up speed, and swerved towards us. It was coming directly at us!!!! We both stopped frozen but then the car hooted loudly at swerved away. Students sticking their heads out the window laughing.
It all happened very quickly. In that moment Jurie was furious, I know because usually he is quite calm and things like this don't bother him but he turned around and gestured at them (he didn't flip them the bird or anything...see picture) I just stood there like an idiot, my legs felt like jelly and my heart pounding in my chest, now I understand the expression, like a deer caught in headlights.

We slowly walked back home, me trying to process what happened. Jurie carrying on with his story. I think he was trying to take my mind off what just happened. But the negativity had already set in.

The snowball effect: Why would someone do something like that? Did they think is would be funny? What was their goal? To scare us? Why? Why would directing a car at us be funny? That means they think wishing harm/death on us is funny. What kind of person would do that? This never happened in Korea! Students would never dream of doing this. How disrespectful. Would they have done this to one of their own people?

When we got home I told Jurie how much this upset me. I told him about the thoughts and then Mr Logical told me something.
Mr Logical: "How old do you think they are?
Me: They are uni students, probably between 18/19 to 23.
Mr Logical: Have their brains fully developed?
Me: No.

I took a deep breath and started to calm down. That's right all the things I was thinking was because my brain has developed. I can easily think of consequences before I make a decision. It comes with adulting.

I know some of you reading this are going to be outraged on our behalf. I totally get it! But just know that we aren't, they were kids, nothing bad happened and we are not going to let those silly youngsters (I sound like an old lady) taint our experiences here.

Getting settled

I haven't written for a while because I've needed to take a breather. This week has been quite hectic! Both of us started teaching, Jurie a day before me, and both had to lay down the law with the students. It's difficult taking over from another teacher. More so if you are new to the school and are a little hazy with the rules yourself.  Another stressor is that this is a completely different culture where the boys sit on the one side of the classroom and the girls another, never to interact. It's all very overwhelming!

But we made it through the week and tomorrow going on to our next one.

A rubbish bin on the campus. I think the engineer students created it. 

We have finally moved into our new flat! Yay... On Thursday we met the landlord (a really nice guy) he lives across from us. We waited at our flat for the furniture and appliance guys to deliver. They said they would be there at 17:00 but only arrived at 19:00.  So that is another lesson we are having to learn here...patience. Not only that but the appliance guys expected Jurie to give them a tip for bringing the fridge and everything up one flight of stairs.

Friday we decided to go and clean the flat before we moved all our clothes there. The weather was not on our side. The wind picked up and what does wind in the desert mean??? DUST! Everywhere. So we just kind of moved the dust around (well we did get rid of most of the dust)

Today we got the car. I have dubbed her "Priscilla, queen of the desert." It's so nice not having to take a taxi. We will still walk to work in the morning until they have allocated us our own parking bay and an entry disk (which takes a week)

Priscilla

Having the car also means we have now officially moved out of the motel into the flat. We've made it feel like home and are so happy to be here now. Jurie is making us some pasta. I can't wait!

The new schedge

Yesterday I didn’t get a chance to write because Jurie received his class schedule. He is a level 3 teacher and will be teaching grammar, reading and writing. He has a full schedule. We spent the time prepping together, had supper and then relaxed.

This morning when I got to my desk I found my schedule. EEEEKKKK! Not a jumping for joy eeeekkkk but oh dear, I hope they don’t expect me to teach today, eeeekkkk. I found the coordinator and apparently she just received my schedule too. She told me not to worry, I could spend the day preparing for tomorrow’s classes…PHEW!

I’m also a level 3 teacher, I will be teaching the same things as Jurie. YAY! Helping Jurie prep yesterday has paid off. Another plus is that we are in the same boat, we both haven’t a clue when it comes to the administrative duties, not quite sure if that is a plus. We also can help each other prep! YAY Team van D.

The only slightly annoying thing is that I am not really sure where the students are in the book but I know where they are supposed to be, if that makes sense. Information is slowly trickling in. For example,  we were told at 13:45 that we had a meeting at 14:00. Cool...so we are just going to plead ignorance is something ever goes wrong :)  

When we got back to the motel, we decided to go shopping for furniture. We bought a double bed, cupboard, dressing table, fridge, hot plate, oven, 2 pillows and kettle for R10 000. I gagged but Jurie said that we bought it all new and asked me how much would all these cost new in South Africa...shrugs. 

Everything is going to be delivered to our new place on Thursday. I think tomorrow we are going to look into getting wifi for our place (which I think we should have done first) and we are also going to open a bank account on our own. Stay tuned to the next episode of "The van D's in Ibra." 

This is the new schedge that has me overthinking everything...Yay to how my brain works!

See Maslow knows his stuff