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 

The house hunting continues

This morning we waited for Mr Said to pick us up and show us a house. It was a nice house and would've been our second choice. It had 3 bathrooms (2 had the squat toilets again), 2 bedrooms, a lounge and a kitchen.  It's unfurnished and also relatively close to the college, park and Poke-stop. It wasn't clean, though. Maybe it's just me but if you are going to be showing people your place at least sweep a bit!

So we are happy to say we have chosen where to live and it will be the flat that we saw yesterday. We will be moving in on the 1st of Feb. In the meantime, we are going to order a bed and so on so that it's "ready" when we move in. We are pretty excited and looking forward to moving in. The guy we are renting from Mr Hafal is super friendly and said that we can give delivery people his number and he will make sure they deliver the goods to the correct flat.

After we secured our new home, we did a few celebratory spins of the Poke-stop and then walked to the park. We decided to explore it a bit more and found that it had exercise equipment a little further in. OH MY GOSH! I can't tell you how happy this makes me. I seriously like to exercise, especially in the morning. I think it helps you stay healthy and can seriously relieve stress. We both decided we are going to exercise every day. Our routine...wake up at 5:00, read the Bible, drink coffee, go for a jog to the park, use the circuit equipment, jog back (spinning the Poke-stop there and back), stretch and then get ready for work.

We have also started to notice how dry our skin is here. According to Jurie, it has taken a week but we are slowly starting to fall apart. We were told to drink loads of water here, even when we don't feel like it...no problem there since I am always thirsty!!!!

Well, let me sign off for now. A new week is going to start...we are both excited to see what it has in store. 

I really like this mango flavoured milk

The circuit equipment at the park. 

Found my favourite snack in the supermarket, again really glad we found the gym equipment, something tells me I'm going to need it :)

House/flat hunting

We went for a walk in our area this morning, found several Laundromats, some furniture shops and a few little coffee shops. When I say coffee shop don't think Starbucks, think cafeteria with white plastic chairs outside.

  

We are probably going to take our clothes to a Laundromat because we were told that if you wash clothes in your house or flat that you might not have water afterwards. Apparently, a water tanker comes around to your house once a week, or something like that, and fills a tank of the roof of your house/ building. Well...we are in the desert.

We decided to take a taxi to the park because it's 7.5km away from us, in the heat and would take us an hour and a half to get there. We made a mistake today...

We took the taxi without asking how much it would cost to get there. 2 Rials...R70. GAG! What a D-bag!!! How dare he take advantage of us. But you live you learn.

We walked to the park only to find that the Poke-stop wasn't inside there. HA HA HA!

It was just outside it. The park is nice! Like an Oasis in the middle of all this dust.

We walked in the Ghettos (sings "in the Ghettos") to get to our Poke-stop. But finally we spun the Poke-stop. We saw on one of the buildings nearby that a guy was renting a flat (thanks Poke-stop you brought us good luck)

We phoned him and could take a look right away. It has 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living room and kitchen. Every room has an air conditioner, it's newly built and clean. It's close to the Poke-stop, the park and the college(priorities).It's way cheaper than the furnished place we went to see but the only problem is it's unfurnished.  But we have decided that we will probably get an unfurnished place and get the bare essentials and live like squatters until the end of July.

Later in the afternoon, we saw a different place. A house.  2 Bedrooms, living room, 3 bathrooms and a kitchen. It was missing some windows and 2 of the 3 toilets were squat toilets...ugh! I tried so hard not to laugh when Jurie pointed out the missing windows in all 3 of the rooms. So we will definitely not be taking that house.

Side note: We went to the house with Jamil's cousin (both of whom we have never met) because he was in Muscat for the weekend. Jamil's cousin picked us up at the Motel and drove us to the house. He stopped outside another house and left us in the car to get the keys. While he was away:

Jurie: In what country would you get into a car with a stranger to "look at a house"?

I sat there is silence processing his words for a moment and then laughed nervously.

Jurie: "Looking at a house" could be code for "I'm going to murder you"

Me: And bury you in the desert.

Jurie: At least we would be cool and out of the sun.

Some hysterical laughter. 

Just before the sun went down we went for another walk in the opposite direction. Saw the same things, Laundromats (why are there so many of them?) another supermarket and a burger place, Hot burger. We had that for supper and it was really nice. 

All in all quite a productive day.

 

Getting our licenses

It's weekend...YAY! Well it's our weekend.

So today we got to work and met up with Lizzie, who took us to the licensing department to exchange our South African licenses to the Omani one. All we needed was a photocopy of the front and back of our South African licenses, a photocopy of our residency card,  2 passport photos, 20 Rials and to know what our blood group is.

We were given forms, which the policeman filled in anyway, seeing that it was in Arabic. We had an eye test and then the card was printed for us, easy as pie! Although I think it was easy because we had Lizzie with us. We were there for less than 45 minutes, which is some kind of record in South Africa if you go to the licensing department. We can now rent a car if we want to and we are looking into that.

Side note: They didn't even take our South African license, just the copies of it.

At work, we sat at our desks. We were told that we would be getting our schedules today "in shallah" (I think that's how it's spelt ) It literally means God willing but actually means it will happen in time, they don't know when but we must have patience.

We didn't get our schedules today. They are trying to work out our schedules so that we come into work together for this semester. In any case, it gives us some time this weekend to relax and explore. We might get our schedules sometime next week then.

After work we started walking towards the park, hoping to get the only Poke-stop in the area. We decided to walk to the house we were going to be viewing ( a 44 minute walk, according to the GPS). On our way, Hendrick (another South African) offered to give us a lift. He was on his way to Aliya (where we stay at the moment) to do some grocery shopping. We told him that we were going to view a house and he said. "No problem I'll take you there first and then to the motel."

Side note: As you can see, yet again, people are so friendly and nice here. We were told it's because they want people to stay here because they have a large teacher turnover. Many people don't make it because Ibra is so remote.

We looked at the house. It's a 4 bedroom house, with 4 bathrooms, 2 kitchens and 2 living rooms. HUGE! But the man said he is separating it, one side of the house will have 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a living room, and kitchen. That's going to be the big side of the house. The other side of the house (small side) will have 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, living room and kitchen. It's furnished but the furniture is gaudy. The house is also untidy and dusty. We are going to see some more houses this weekend, or try at least.

We are going to make some more phone calls to people about cars too, walk around, go to the park (THE POKE-STOP, finally) and walk around our town and see what's happening. I'll post again on Saturday to report on our weekend. 

This is a picture of the Omani driver's license 

Jurie took a sneaky pic of the fingerprint machine.

Observing teachers

Today we were picked up by a colleague. But I get ahead of myself here. Let's start with the call to prayer at 5 am, which was seriously loud and pulled me right out of my sleep, disorientated and not knowing where I was I began to panic. Everything hit me at once...I was in Oman, in remote Ibra in a Motel.

"Jurie!"

Jurie turned around and held me until I calmed down. I took some deep breaths and prayed.

Alright fast forward a bit and we are waiting outside the Motel for our colleague, Joes. Very kindly his wife offered his services to us and we waited hoping she remembered to tell him to pick us up. She said he'd be here at 7:30 am. He was a little late because he had to drop his kids off for camping.

We walked up to the biometric machine when we arrived at worked. I felt like I was in some kind of spy movie.  I placed my left index finger on the pad, the machine beeped and turned red.  Verification failed :( Ok let's try the right, same thing. Jurie tried, red again. So it didn't work which was disappointing. It turns out we weren't pushing our fingers down hard enough and we need to hold it there longer too.

We sat at our desks and waited for someone to tell us what to do. Yet again people were very friendly. We observed one class each, Jurie observing level 4 students and I observed level 2.  Not too sure what the levels mean, we asked but the answer was very vague but always the same, where they list the levels.

We then had coffee with Maria, a South African who has lived in Ibra for 7 years. We had a long chat and she gave us some useful information. We also set up our desks and the tech guys set up our computers.

We don't know when we will start teaching but we hope they give us a bit of forewarning before they do so we can prepare.

After work, we started walking towards the park (yay a park) to play Pokemon. We only have one Poke-stop in Ibra (Jurie's worst nightmare). While walking another colleague Haroun  (Aaron) stopped and asked us if we wanted a lift. We didn't want to be rude and say no, so we got into the fancy Mercedes.  Along the way we saw a Laundromat, now Jurie won't be smelly anymore :)

We walked to the Hypermarket down the road and found a Penguins right next to it. Penguins is a fast food place that looks like a fake KFC. The Hypermarket is the best shop I have been in since we arrived. It's like a Spar (according to Jurie he did see a Spar in Muscat) and there are some familiar brands too. So we can make some good, healthy food while we are here.

Things are starting to come together and I am feeling a lot less anxious about things. Tomorrow Lizzie, another colleague is going to take us to exchange our licenses. We are thinking about renting a car. We are also going to be looking at a house tomorrow, hopefully, we really want a furnished one because it's too much of a hassle getting an unfurnished one and then having to buy everything. We are also going to see if she will take us to the bank.

This is what the Penguins mascot looks like. 

 PS. We will take more photos this weekend and post it on the blog. 

Day 4 - To Ibra

The day started off early, 7 am to be precise. "Not Nadar" was late picking us up. It kind of makes me feel a little less guilty for still calling him "Not Nadar" even though we know his name now. Jurie was given his medical card but I will only get mine later because on the card I'm "Meliisa", the newest variation of my name.

The drive was scenic and slightly nerve wrecking. "Not Nadar's" car beeps annoyingly when he drives over the speed of 120km/h (which he did a lot!) and I'm almost certain I'll be hearing that sound in my dreams. Not only that but whenever he got bored (also something that happened a lot) he would look at his IMs on his phone (That's instant messages for the older people reading the blog...hee hee)

We arrived in Ibra...it's remote...like nothing we have ever experienced.  It may be remote but the people in the college are super friendly. I mean...WOW...we were completely blown away by how nice people were. We did all the administrative stuff, like give them our biometrics (we are going to be using our finger prints to register our attendance everyday) We met the coordinators, other teachers and HODs etc. There are three other South Africans so there's a taste of home. 

Today was very draining and overwhelming. I know that may sound negative and I'm not trying to be. I feel like this part of our introduction is only normal and necessary. I have been trying to be logical in my thought processing, like,  they don't expect us to remember everything at once so it's totally ok if I forget some names and things right now, it will come to me later.

We later came back to our motel room via taxi. The college is a 10 minute drive from our motel room and not a 10 minute walk like we were initially told. But the area we are staying in now has all the shops and I think is the actual town.

We had a nice supper together at a Turkish Restaurant. We are going to look into housing, banking and hiring a car in the near future. But now I'm going to get some hard earned rest. 

Interesting fact 1: Some men don't shake women's hands here as a part of their customs/religion/culture (not sure)

Interesting fact 2 : It rained here today and it's a big thing here. We were told by one of the teachers that some students will go home because of it. 

This is a picture of the Ibra College of Technology where we are working. 

Day 3: All the places

So today was quite eventful. We were picked up by another driver, not Nadar. I suppose we could have asked him what his name was but he gave off a different vibe than Nadar did, maybe that's just me.

We were picked up a little after 9 am, "Not Nadar" noticed Jurie's shorts(even though his knees were covered) when we just started off down the road. He spoke to someone on WhatsApp and then turned to Jurie, pointed at his own pants and said."Like this."
He quickly drove us back to the guest house so Jurie could change into his long pants. Me, feeling self-conscious now of my three-quarter pants decided to change into long pants too.

"Not Nadar" then drove us to the first place got out and told us to wait. He took in Jurie's forms and not mine. We both sat in the car for about 15 minutes speculating. It's weird how we do that, we don't know where we are, we don't know why we are there but we start coming up with theories.

Theory 1: The wrong theory
Jurie: "Maybe they are putting you on my resident's card."
Me: "Why would they do that?"
Jurie: "Maybe that's how it's done here because you're my wife?"
Me: "Oh"
A moment's silence of contemplative thought.

Theory 2: The right theory
Jurie: He did ask for my photos and not yours, maybe something was wrong with the other ones.

Jurie shows me the previous photo Tati had of him. It was a passport photo he had used as his resume photo. They probably printed it and it looked blurry.

Me: I think you're right.

So it turned out that was the right theory, my photo was fine and Jurie had to give him the photos we had brought with us from South Africa.

Place 2
Again we could have asked him where we were going but we just followed "Not Nadar"

He'd say, "Come!"  and Jurie and I would follow him like his shadow.

In place number two, we were separated. I had my picture and fingerprints taken by a lady with seriously warm hands.

Place 3
Just down the road (we could have walked there) but we drove, not that I'm complaining because it was really hot. We were separated yet again, more photos and finger prints and then given our awesome residency cards. We are official now, we can live/work in Oman until 2019. So only after receiving our residency cards we realised place number 3 was the immigration/residency office.  I won't post it but we had wonderful pictures taken, where I look like a man and Jurie says he looks like a soccer ball with eyes.
We had a good laugh at the photos and I know Natasha would be annoyed at me when she looks at the photo because she would say I could have made myself look prettier. (There's a back story here where Natasha got mad at me for my new passport photo in Korea because I didn't have them airbrush me)

Place 4
A beautiful building, clean and modern inside. When we went in we didn't know where we were. We were given loads of forms to fill in. So much that we both massaged our cramping hands when we were done. Forms where we had to write down our parents names and siblings names and occupations. (Why?) We were given some sweet tea, yum! I looked at the sign when we left the building, we were at the Ministry of Manpower, so in essence, the labour office.

Place 5
TATI, oh I know this place. I was here yesterday. Ok cool, a place I recognise. We were given an advance on our salary. We will only be paid on the 28th of February, not the 30th of February which I thought would happen since we only get paid every 30th. I'm not always this dumb :)
 We were given instructions about tomorrow's journey to Ibra, our new home for the next six months. Taken to the shopping centre again and then back to the guest house.

Later we will go for a walk again. Enjoy our last day in Muscat. It's an early start tomorrow of 7 am. "Not Nadar" is picking us up and taking us to Ibra which is about 2 to 3 hours away depending on traffic. Perhaps we'll learn his name :)

*Side note:* I won't write this blog every day, I think I will for now but once we get settled and work starts I will write perhaps weekly or bi-weekly. I'm not sure if I will be able to write tomorrow because we don't know the internet situation there yet.

A sunset photo of the park we enjoy walking in. 

For some reason this piece of art in our room made me smile.

Arriving in Oman

DAY 1
We arrived in Oman/Muscat yesterday the 21st of January 2017. I must say the flight was great, flying from Durban to Dubai is way better than having to transfer in Johannesburg. We have never had a problem with Emirates and even the second flight (which was only 45 minutes) they managed to feed us and give us drinks.

When we arrived in Oman we  tentatively walked through the doors of the airport and looked around to find the visa desk (The pre-arranged visas) we were told to go straight to immigration with our printed visas and were issued our visas, which is nothing fancy only a stamp with dates written in. It was quick going getting our luggage and then Jurie exchanged money while I waited in the area to meet our driver, Nadar. We both thought he might have our name written on something but he didn't and so I just waited. Finally, I was approached by a guy with my picture.

"Tati?" He asked hopefully.

No. My name isn't Tati, but the company that hired us is called Tati.

"Yes, Tati," I replied.
He pointed to the picture of Jurie.

I pointed Jurie out to him. I got into the queue for us to get a sim card and then Jurie joined me. After getting our sims Nadar drove us to the guest house.

We both admired the scenery, the houses are very different, there's a large mountain range and a beautiful beach.

The guest room is quite large, it has a lounge area and a bedroom and a bathroom with a bath. I must say there is a lot of space in Oman. We unpacked and then decided to go for a walk to find some food. We found a stunning park and walked around and even played Pokemon. It was very quiet because Saturday is Sunday here.
We bought some food and sat in the room and watched TV shows.

DAY 2
Nadar picked us up promptly at 9 am and took us to the hospital for our medical exam. Our photos and fingerprints were taken at the hospital and then blood work, urine samples, chest x-rays, height, weight and blood pressure were all checked.
It was a quick process it took about an hour. Nadar then took us to the TATI offices. We met Gladys and then signed the original contracts and other paperwork, like emergency contacts, a will and bank account details (something we'll only give them later).
She asked us if there was any place we would like Nadar to take us and we asked to be taken to a supermarket. So on our way back to the guest house, Nadar took us to a supermarket and we bought more supplies.

We went for a walk along the beach which was lovely and then because it was 12 pm and really hot we decided to come to the room for me to write this and wait for 4 pm so we could go for another walk.
So tomorrow we will be picked up again at 9 am by Nadar and taken to the TATI offices, but more on that the next time I write.