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!