A Messy Post for a Messy Week

It feels like so long since I have written! Be warned: this has chapters, and it’s not chronological.

My classroom the first time I saw it. See the beautiful smart board!

SCHOOL TID BITS

Tomorrow is the last day of the first week of school with the children. Professionally, this has already been a huge challenge for me. The year level, country, curriculum, systems, timetables, resources…are all different.

The structure of classes is much more like high school. Each day we have 13 periods – 12 ½ hour ones and 1 45min lunch break. There are specialist classes with specialist teachers – PE, Art, Music, ICT, Arabic, Islamic, Islamic History, during which the children are not my responsibility, but are often in my classroom. We are required to be at school from 6.45 to 2.30 and the kids are there from 7 til 2. I seem to be getting to school about 6, and that in itself is a massive challenge for me. There was also very little time to get ready for the students – 4 scheduled days, and the new teachers lost two of those (more about that later).

The school is perfectly symmetrical and pretty much identical. The only way you can tell if you are on the boy’s side of the girls is the signs on the reception desks, which are pretty small. The sides are also flipped – so if the boys side has the cafeteria on the north side, the girls is south. So when I got lost, walked out the door I had been convinced I was in the right place until I got to the very end, and where I wanted to be was literally the point furthest from where I was standing at that moment.

I have a smart board in my room, which is extremely lucky – I’m one of 2 in my year. (for non teachers, a smart board/interactive whiteboard is a board that your computer is projected onto, but you have a special pen, and you can write on it, or move things around just like it is the mouse. They are fantastic!) Apart from that, the resources of the school are a bit hard to come by, but the new management team is fantastic and are working hard to improve the situation.

I am loving my class and the year level already – I am so at home with the older kids, and I have some lovely students.

MEDICAL BALDERDSH

Evil Pushy In Lady
(I photo bombed her picture tho so its cool!)

In Qatar it is a government requirement that all residents get a medical before being issued with their ID. There are two ways to go about this and I am officially an expert as I have done both. On the second day we were in school, preparing for the official start, the ladies were picked up at 5.30 and taken to a building. We lined up in the 33 degree morning sun for 2 hours until we were finally let into the building. We were tired, thirsty and all of us were unaware that this would take so long, having been assured we would be back at school for the 8.30am start. At 8am I finally made it to the front of the queue inside, handed over my visa, passport and photo and was told to “Go away, you have lived in Qatar before! Why are you here?” The HR rep told me to do as I was told and so I got a taxi back to the school, actually made it in time for the 8.30am start as was bitterly aware that I would have to do it all again when whatever issue had happened was sorted. I was also beginning to become nervous, as without a medical there is no residency permit, and without a residency permit, there is no exit visa, and without an exit visa there is no India at Christmas. However, we soldier on. Then The day after the next, we are picked up from school and taken, on a similarly frustrating and exhausting trip to get blood and finger prints taken, only for me to find out at 1pm, after sitting for the whole time on the bus with a struggling AC that as I didn’t get a medical, there was no cause for me to have gone. I headed back to school in high dudgeon, hungry and exhausted. Tonight, I have just come back from the ‘private’ medical, with the boys. The girls trips were such a disaster and caused such an uproar that the company decided to pay for the more organised and more humane clinic medical, and it was blissful in comparison. The men really have no idea how insanely lucky they are.

This really does nothing to capture the horror of the experience, but i made it a large picture, in the hope it helped. Just remember, this was after 2 hours of standing, with no water, I needed to pee and it was scary-hot. THE HORROR. HORRORRRR.....

BIRTHDAY PAR-TAY

There is a lovely gentleman here by the name of Doug and we are having a joint birthday on a Dhow boat. His is on the 19^th and I’m the 20^th. We have the boat for 6 hours and it goes out into the gulf, docks at an island and we can BBQ and drink and swim in togs etc. I have time the day PERFECTLY – its this Friday. At 8am the taxis will arrive to take us to the market (a weekly outing), we will have no more than 1 ½ hours at the market to make sure the stuff is in the fridge for the 11am kick off of NZ v Japan, which should be finished by 12.40, giving me 20 min to get ready for the taxis arriving at 1 to take us to the Corniche to the boat. I went and bought all the food today – NZ beef for the Qatari BBQ!

TA’ALLUM DINNER

We had our welcome dinner last night, all the new staff in the Marriott Hotel. It was super fancy and the food was yum. It was nicely low key. The CEO gave a nicely timed speech and then we were fed, I got up the courage to try some suspicious looking things on the desert table – and loved this weird triangle thing that was vibrantly orange.

Me, Tenneille and Amanda at the dinner.

HORRIFIC EXPERIENCE NUMBER ONE

We went to the Souq again, when it finally resumed normal hours after Eid. We had been walking around for a couple of hours and had had lunch outside in the sun, so by the time we called the cabs I had fully wilted. The taxis took a good 40 min to arrive, by which time I had slumped until I was lying on the seat just trying to breathe when WHACK – right next to my head, and something splashed a little on my neck. I had avoided the full on shat of a pigeon by millimetres and the sound was so loud it was like someone hit the wood by my head. See picture for full details.

HORRIFIC EXPERIENCE NUMBER TWO

Yesterday I opened my front door, which drags along the ground and sticks, and there was a glistening curved red line under my door.  I looked around the door and realised I had managed to accidently kill the cockroach that had been lying in calculated and evil wait for me. VICTORY WAS MINE, until I had to clean it up.

HORRIFIC EXPERIENCE NUMBER THREE

They have put the NZ flag on the Aussie beef and lamb at Carrefour Supermarket.

This is 100% vodka. It may have cost the
earth but at least it was the only
one I needed to buy all evening.
This is standard here.

HORRIFIC EXPERIENCE NUMBER FOUR

I paid 95 riyal for a vodka and coke (almost 40NZD), 30 riyal of which was attributed to the coke – which in most establishments here is 6-8 riyal.

After the purchase! 

AWESOME EXPERIENCE NUMBER ONE

I bought my first piece of clothing the other day – a Dorothy Perkins Dress.

AWESOME EXPERIENCE NUMBER TWO

If you refer to my previous post about the Wholesale Market you will notice I was not convinced we had discovered it all, and last weekend I FOUND the bit I just knew had to be there. Screes and screes of fresh fruit and veges as far as the eye can see. Its almost a week later and I still have a fridge full of mangoes and guava and mangosteens and grapes and lettuce (finally. It has been impossible to find) and beans and coriander (3 huge bunches for about a dollar) and spinach and oranges and noms. The only thing I need is fresh basil, which does not exist, I swear, and I will be happy.

Stunning, isn't it! And the smell - so delicious. All you can smell is the ripe fruit. And it is so cheap - esp if you go in a big group as the more you buy the better the deal.

SO AMAZING!

AWESOME EXPERIENCE NUMBER THREE

I cooked the most amazing prawns from the Wholesale Market and ate a whole half kilo in a day they were that good. Caught that morning, cooked by lunch, in garlic, chilli and coriander that was all picked that day. Fresh as could be!

FINAL CHAPTER

I know there is a lot I have missed out, and if you want to know anything, just leave a Q in the comments, I will answer it! I really need to get some sleep! x

A bank note for the curious.