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.