work

not that i do much but it is in fact work. Today i sat around for 8 hours learning the alphabet and #s in arabic. There is little to do at my job because I have no class assigned to me so I am on cover and have to wait for any teachers to call in sick which of course does not ever happen. If it were in theory I would cover their classes and have something to do for at least 3 hours. The other 5 I am just to be in the school. Its fine really I get time to study. I am looking forward to working again with students of my own.

time

so i went for a long walk through the city and found a bookstore wher i bought a few books for the study of ababic. I will have lots of time on my hands as I need to spend 8 hours at school even though i will only teach 3 hours per day. I will try to study some basic arabic in order to make life a bit easier. The city is in no way impressive, just a flat low dry place. Money everywhere but little culture or beauty. But that is just my first impression. I will give it a chance and perhaps it will get better.

nurse...oh nurse

So even after having to get a full physical from the US. I arrived here in Saudi arabia and on my first full day in the country I found that I needed to go and get a sort of mini physical with their doctors. Now all day I had spent on the male campus and driving over to the doctors office I noticed that there were no women, and on the streets there are no women, so basically it is kind of a sausage fest here in the worst way. At any rate in the doctors office there are of course all men patients and I went in with another new teacher and we were sitting and waiting. The first thing was to get blood drawn, have i ever mentioned I hate needles, so I go into the room and lo and behold a woman doctor is waiting. Just bizarre. She was of course covered from head to toe but still what is going on how does she get to work (women cant drive in Saudi) how does she do her job (women are not supposed to speak to men other than their families) how does this happen? But the strangeness wasnt finished, I next had to get a chest x-ray, the guy who was driving me and translating tells me the next doctor is strange, you know not normal. I just said ok expecting god know what, turns out the x-ray tech was effeminate, very much so, strikingly so. And Again I wondered what the hell, here is an educated man who can leave go to any number of countries and not have to live a life of either lies or in fear of beheading(homosexuals are killed here) just one of the mysteries of life I guess. turns out I am still healthy after the flight. or at least the female doctor and effeminate x-ray tech claimed i was.

kingdom

I have landed in the land of cheap gasoline and veiled women. As I boarded the flight to Saudi Arabia I began to look around. It was my 28th hour of travel and I was getting on a smallish plane from Dubai to Riyadh and the gate agent was taking passport to look at the person and their ID. Ahead of me was a family, a father two young boys and a mother and I guess an aunt. the mother and aunt were completely covered. Head, hands, feet, shoulders, face everything except the eyes and I wondered what exactly is the screener looking at? Can he tell who s under there is that safe? Of course nothing happened on the flight nor am I saying it was going to, just if the point of handing him the ID is to authenticate the bearer shouldnt something be done to actually authenticate him or her. So after landing I made it to immigration control where they take an eye scan as well as finger print and photograph you. I waited my turn and approached the officer. He did his business on the computer and then told me to place my right hand on the finger print scanner, after a few seconds I said "OK?" and he said "No." I looked at him and he called over another guard. They argued in arabic for about 30 seconds and the the first guard looks at me shoves me my passport and says "GO." I am not sure what happened but I know that none of the usual process for entry were followed. Just nuts. The hotel that I am in is nice I have a big apartment style accommodation which though not my style is furnished and comfortable. The job seems like it will be a breeze with little to no reason to worry and already I have found a dinner joint down the street that serves a bowl of chickpea soup and flat bread with a really nice tea for very cheap. There are of course all the regular western restaurants here from KFC to McD, pizza joints to dunkin donuts. I plan to stay away from the western food for awhile but already I can here the Dunkin calling my name. I cant have a beer so I deserve a delicious cup of coffee right? Right. Looking forward to getting started working and trying to pick up some basic arabic. Should be fun

plan

I am starting to make longer term plans now. I think it is time to try a new approach to this thing called life. It isn't what everyone else would do but then again I am far from everyone. I am considering getting some money together and going back to school. from the beginning back to school. I think I want to study landscape design. So this is the new plan. I leave for Saudi in 19 hours. Last moments of freedom.