What Am I Doing Here?

One of the many responsibilities I have as a teacher here in Al Ain is the homeroom teacher for the grade 7 boys.  I specify boys because after grade 3 the boys and girls are segregated for religious culture reasons. 

Now being the homeroom teacher for this class is about the same as being a zookeeper.  Not that I have any experience as a zookeeper, but I can imagine it shares many similarities.  For insistence you have to know how to tame the wild creatures, keep the weak ones from getting pounded on, worry about the mess left behind, the destruction to their habitat and keep water fights from breaking out at the waterhole.  These are all things I have to worry about on a daily bases, with new and exciting things popping up every week.  Like last week’s non-stop phrase of the week: cala boca, which is Portuguese for ‘shut your mouth’.  I can thank my Brazilian student for teaching the whole class that phrase after finding out that I can speak Portuguese.  Let’s just say if I got paid 1 Dirham for every time it was said, I would have made more money with that then I actually got paid.

This week’s fad was elastic band slingshots.  It was a week of me watching folded up pieces of paper flying across the room every time they thought I wasn’t looking; they even got creative one day and began using kernels of popcorn to launch at each other.  I began to feel like an elastic band dictator, not allowing the students into the class until they surrendered their elastic bands; keeping my eye open for their new creative ways of hiding them; like in the soles of their shoes and up their arms where their sleeve would cover it.  Now if they only would put that much effort into learning science.

Now you can imagine how appalled I was upon entering the class at the end of the day, only to see pieces of folded up paper all over the floor.  I was getting ready to give the entire class detention when I noticed the teacher teaching my homeroom class with something in his hand.  I couldn’t make it out at first, so I looked a little closer… it was AN ELASTIC BAND SLINGSHOT!!! The teacher was flinging pieces of paper across the room laughing it up with the rest of the class.

I was too stunned to react and just walked out.  And then, just like so many other times before, I asked myself… ‘What am I doing here?’

Bryan The Camel says…

            What’s a waterhole?

Are You Using That?

Maybe it’s the stress of the job, or the frustration of trying to get the last of the science equipment delivered for the lab or simply the loneliness of living so far away from home.  But I have noticed that the very patient person who arrived in the UAE last September has gone away.  Perhaps that patient person is hiding in the vacant desert sands or has drowned in the sadness within; wherever he maybe, he isn’t here and in his place is a slightly quick tempered man with a few new irritating pet peeves that make him want to jump on a desk and scream.

It boggles my mind when I get to the photocopier only to find the person who used it last created a paper jam in 4 different places and flew the scene like a thief in the night.  They think a paper jam is brain surgery and much to complicated.  You know finding that door handle in front of the machine and turning the knobs till the paper comes out is so hard, I think it uses as much brainpower as figuring out the derivative of a quadratic equation.  Once I get the paper jam out and load up the paper tray because of course the fleeing-paper-jammer used up all the paper too; I can begin my photocopying.  Once I close the cover, punch in the number of copies and press start I hear that question that makes me want to jump on a desk and scream… ‘Are you using that?’

I don’t even know what to say to that?  Like no, I like to stand by a working photocopier in hopes the radiation makes me sterile!  And the same goes for the computers at school, it’s as if they wait for you to sit down at the computer so they can ask you if you are done with the computer.  Do you see the startup-loading bar, its only halfway, do you think I’m done with the computer!?

But that is nothing compared to when in the middle of a meeting at school discussing school related matters when the other teachers decide to switch from English to Arabic and I’m left there in the dark.  I know you see me as the outsider, but lets keep with the language we all understand please!

Bryan The Camel says…

            Are you using the computer?

What’s that Smell!?

Living in Al Ain, a city that forms an equilateral triangle with Dubai and Abu Dhabi, makes for traveling to either city a popular weekend getaway.  I have been to Abu Dhabi city only once, for the BETT Middle East conference, but traveling to Dubai is something I have done often.  Spending time in Dubai with my second family, the Jomaa family, have made for some of the best weekends I’ve had here in the UAE and I am so thankful to them for that.

All the traveling to and from Dubai and Al Ain have made for some very interesting and unforgettable moments.  What these experiences all share is the plaguing question that makes me want to scream out… ‘What is that SMELL!?!?!?!”

In truth, it is probably best not to know what is causing the smells and I could spend the next few hundred words here describing to you the things that have caused my sense of smell to attempt suicide, like the rotten smell of fish from the fish market which is so conveniently located behind the bus station.  But instead I’ll just summarize some of these experiences for you.  Like the time I decided to share a taxi instead of taking the bus from Al Ain to Dubai, only be sandwiched in the back of the taxi between 2 large and in charge men who believed taking a shower was an insult to humanity and deodorant was a myth.  The smell was so toxic that I truly believed it was going to cause me to pass right out.  And in reality I was hoping for that, as I held my breath until I became light headed, eagerly awaiting for the lack of oxygen to take me out of the agony.

The bus is another experience that is something I will never forget, but what can one expect for a 20 Dirham bus ride?  Well I’ll tell you what to expect, a bus ride that can’t go faster then 80 km/h on the highway, full of people that are all too close for comfort.  Those bus rides were why the term ‘packed like sardines’ came into existence.  As the bus continued to fill up, I was getting prepared for them to use my lap as an extra seat.  Every row on the bus seats 4 people with absolutely no aisle! One of the seats in each row can be pushed down to reach to the back of the bus; there is no wasted space.  Key for survival, take a window seat, it gives you 2 mm of extra space, and trust me it helps!

Bryan the Camel says…

            No camel rides to Dubai… I’m offended!