School: Found. Sanity: MIA.

I have finally found my school! Maybe...sort of...

A friend drove me around last night for about 2 hours looking for it and we finally located it, ensuring it existed and was built. I caught a taxi to the area this morning called Al Towaya, but I could not backtrack to find it easily again, as it tucked way inside a neighbourhood, far from the main road. After about an hour of circling around asking people and a very expensive taxi ride, I found my way there again.

When I walked in there were about 50 Arab teachers in the lobby chatting up a storm, clearly catching up from the summer. I found some other bewildered looking Western teachers and went over to introduce myself. It turns out they had gotten the same run-around on which school they were at as me, so we talked about that a bit. After a few minutes an Arab lady (maybe a teacher? maybe the Principal?- didn't know at this point...) came over and took us up to a classroom that said "Arabic teachers" on the door. She told us this might be our new staffroom, though it was just a classroom with small desks.

We waited there for about an hour and then went to a meeting in the library. About 100 teachers filed in and sat down, and I started wondering how we could possibly have this many students. The Principal came in after a while. We found out that basically, there are too many teachers at our school (106 to be exact) which has merged two schools together. As such, our employer will be reassigning some of us, but they don't know when, or who. Also, we will teach in the school we were at, and then move to a new school across the street in January, Insha'Allah (if Allah wills it). The new school will be a 'super school' meaning it will house K-12. They are moving toward that here it seems.

Today certainly did not make anything clearer for me or quell any nervousness I had, but I guess it will all come with time. Tomorrow we go to an education conference in Abu Dhabi. I am not sure what it will be about, but again, we shall see.

I recently found out I cannot get a credit card until my first pay has gone in, which will be the end of September. As such, I cannot rent a car and I will have to take taxis to and from work each day which will cost me about $21 a day. Kinda sucks, but there is nothing I can do about it for now.

For fun, I will leave you with this mall flyer I picked up yesterday:

Also..another weird thing I never would have expected. It is almost impossible to have a cold or even cool shower here. The water tanks are outside and there is no cooling system, so your water is as hot as the sun makes it. This makes a mid afternoon shower sometimes so hot is is unbearable. The more you know!