The Verows @ UAE!: One Year....

Hard to believe that a year has passed since we interviewed to come teach in the UAE! A whole year! Not sure we really thought we'd actually move 8200 miles away from what was comfortable and start all over in a foreign county! Seems like just a few months. And when another year passes we hope to have secured a job for the 2013-2014 school year at our same schools and begin planning the move back to Texas! It’ll be like picking up where we left off! Inshallah…

Things are beginning to wind down for the school year. Well – for me at least! At my school our schedule changed this past week. We no longer have period 9 and they shortened all the other periods to 40 minutes. And took out the prayer break. So now our school dismissed cycle 2 at 12:30 and cycle 3 at 1:10. Two days a week I was teaching period 9 which ended at 2:50. So one would think that shortening the school day would help. But it really doesn’t. In fact, I think it just made the kids even more eager for summer vacation to show up. They’re even more lazy and anxious for 1:10.

I attempted to explain to some of my 11^th graders that they should be grateful that their day is now less and they have more time to enjoy life outside of school. And they still want to leave a few minutes before the bell rings as if those few minutes will make life that much better. And how they should work harder since the principal changed the day and made it better for them! But of course not. Give them an inch….

It’s also been interesting watching our kids really changing and growing here too! Well sometimes it’s interesting. Sometimes there is nothing fun about it. Like birthday parties. There have been instances where one kid gets invited to a part and the other doesn’t. One party Cole Caralyn was invited to and once we got there one parent asked another why she didn’t invite the “boy”. The mother then said he could stay. Well this weekend Caralyn was invited to a birthday party and Cole wasn’t. When Jennifer was talking about leaving soon, Cole ran upstairs to get his shoes on and such. Well we told him he wasn’t invited and staying home with me. Then the whining started and even tears! Poor guy. And then Caralyn has to say, “You were invited to Ahmed’s party and I wasn’t!” But that just upset Cole even more because that was the party at this huge park at the mountain at 8:30 at night and we never could find the party. We drove around for 30 minutes but never saw a birthday party. Cole probably can’t wait to get invited to the next party and rub it in Caralyn’s face! On the positive side, Caralyn is really getting good at reading. She’s finally building up confidence and even wants to read with her brother. And her teacher said she’s beginning to read out loud in class too! While it isn’t the education we’d get back at home, its working and they’re learning. And just because it’s different doesn’t mean its worse.

There was a shooting in Al Ain back on Friday May 4^th. It was not really near our house but near Al Jimi Mall. This mall seemed fine to me, but several folks say it’s the ghetto area of town! So apparently there was some vehicle accident or road rage situation between two vehicles. One vehicle had 4-5 folks in the car and after this altercation someone shot the two men in the other car. Killed them. Right there in the car I guess. And this all occurred at 5 p.m. in the afternoon. The two men killed were from Oman. And the shooting vehicle fled the scene and supposedly was caught on the road to Dubai. I’ve read conflicting reports from different newspapers. They’ve arrested three suspects so far. I’ll be curious who the suspects were and what their punishments are!

Speaking of May 4^th – we had some Texas friends over for dinner. We invited all the Texas teachers over but we only had about 12 that came. But we had a good time chatting, catching up, and sharing crazy and hilarious stories. And we kept it like home and enjoyed tacos for dinner! It was our Cinco de Mayo meal! It’s great hearing about other teacher’s experiences here in the UAE! It will be sad to leave one day and have these friends still here!

There are some things that I will not be sad to leave. These are things I will never get used to here.

The first and most irritating is the way some of our coworkers are treated. I would use the word coworker but I bet if you ask any of the Arabs at my school, they’d never attempt to put this group of folks into the “coworker” category. These are what they have labeled as Tea Boys. In the states, they would be known as custodians or janitors. But here they have more responsibility than just to keep our school tidy. Their “additional duties as assigned” paper must be rather long! They clean all the cups/mugs that teachers drink their tea and coffee out of. They make coffee and not only do they make it, they go and serve some of the teachers and administrators as if they can’t walk to the room and pour their own coffee. It’s a hot mess. And then today I was appalled. A teacher put in a large amount of copies last week. So this morning he asked the “tea boy” to go and bring them up to our office. And my first thought was, “He can’t go get them?” “REALLY?” Of course not. He had to drink his water and recline back in his chair while someone else gets his papers. It amazes me. And I’m not talking about an Emirati here either – this is a man from another Arab country who is here in the UAE to make a better living for himself. Clearly he thinks he has arrived!

Another is the whole situation of the maid’s quarters. There is this room that most villas have that is designated for the maid/housekeeper. There is a room, air conditioning, and a full bathroom. Well by full I mean sink, toilet, and shower. It’s not like full as in some two sink counter with some nice lighting and a nice large walk-in shower or a tub with jets. Besides they don’t believe in counter space in the bathroom! Anywho…so there are people (from various parts of the world – America included I’m sure!) who move here and enjoy the luxury of having a maid. And you know what – we do too – but ours does not live with us and it’s just to clean our villa once a week. But some have a live-in maid that cleans, cooks, does laundry, and cares for kids. I suppose it’s like a maid/housekeeper/nanny all in one! And they expect them to sleep in this tiny room. I heard a friend who was visiting us in Al Ain say it is basically an indentured servant. Straight Up! And the pay they receive is crazy. And most will say something like, “it’s the going rate”, or “that’s what the agency said to pay them!” Really? So we know of nanny’s (who do everything in the home!) that make anywhere from 750 AED to 1200 AED a month. And I think they are provided with food that their employer buys. I think. So 750 AED to 1200 AED in U.S. Dollars is about $203 to $326. Can you imagine? I can’t. We pay our cleaner more than they charge, but as I type this I feel like I should pay more every week. It’s baffling still – even after living in this country for 9 months!!!

Trashing your county. Literally. We see so many people, including the kids, who just drop trash where ever they want. It might be in the mall, the cafeteria at school, or the street. And why do they do it? Do they really not care about their city and county? They have so much pride for the UAE and yet they trash the place. Well that’s because there are workers who are the trash-picker-uppers. They work for the trash company. They walk around in a full jumpsuit type uniform with a pitch fork and trash can and collect all the trash people have thrown out the windows and such. It’s another one of those things that you just never can quite understand. And if they don’t have laws regarding littering, they should. But then again you’d need police that are vigilant to see this. And we never really see police just patrolling the streets. I rarely see one in my day-to-day driving.

We want to tell our Mothers HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY TOO! We know it’s not the ideal Mother’s Day since they have children who are not there to spend the day with. No matter where in the world we are, we appreciate and love our mother’s! I was reading inspirations quotes the other day and saw this one: “We never know the love of the parent until we become parents ourselves” written by Henry Ward Beecher. Totally true too! Wallah as we say here in the UAE! Wallah is like saying “swear to God” in Arabic.

I have been attempting to learn phrases in Arabic these last few weeks. And there are several that I throw out there and the kids just crack up! Here they are:

Isma = listen

When there is a kid who I know never listens the first time I tell them to sit down, I go up to them and say, “Isma….ELISS”which means listen…sit down! They smile and 99% of the time go sit down. Well for 5 minutes at least!

Hilawa = candy/sweet

I have been handing out hard candy to those kids who do what I ask and complete their work. It’s really helped some of them actually sit down and cooperate. Inshallah it’ll keep working. At least until they quit coming to school!

Mafi Maloom = I don’t know

Sufra = zero

I’ve started reading several various blogs that teachers here in the UAE have been writing as well as some from the new crop of teachers who are getting ready to start this journey we started a year ago! Well then I wondered how many people have read my blog. I remembered that Blogger keeps stats on your blog. So here are our stats:

The blog has been viewed: 6,981 times and by folks in the USA, Ireland, Canada, UAE, United Kingdom, Mexico, Turkey, India, Iraq, and Kyrgyzstan. That's pretty cool, I think!

Here are some pics:

This is a cool lamp from Turkey we bougth at Global Village back in March when our fam was here visiting. It's awesome - especially at night with all the lights out.

Movie Time!

Poor Cole - looks constipated! Either way - theyr'e cute!

So the weather here has become almost unbearable! We've had temps up to 115. Some say it's reached 120+. And last week we had some crazy winds/sand storm for a few hours. It was like hurricane winds - or at least it felt like that in a vehicle - and there was all sorts of brush fliying around. But our cactus plants are thriving! All sorts of new growth.

These plates are awesome! We bougth them at our church. The Lord's Prayer - one in Arabic and one in English. Not that we'd know if the Arabic one was not the Lord's prayer!