Final one....for now!

I haven’t written on here for so many reasons. I would love to say that it’s because I was too busy having a great time to write silly blog entires. I would love to say that it’s because my life is so boring that there is nothing to write about. That is simply, not true. I have avoided writing because I didn’t want to be honest with myself. I didn’t want to be honest about what this experience has been like and what I truly was sacrificing (other than my family) to be here. This experience has been the most, how do I even put this, the most degrading experience of my life professionally. Let me back up a bit.

As many of you know, I taught abroad for four years in Korea and LOVED it! I left Korea when my personal life was in shambles and I was desperately homesick. Professionally, while difficult, it was awesome! I loved teaching, going to work, loved the kids. It renewed my faith in teaching after a terrible student teaching experience. Korea was not easy but I’m pretty easy going so even when things got chaotic, I was able to pull myself through. When I took this job in Abu Dhabi, I knew there would be hardships. I knew there would be frustrations and delays. I was ok with that, I had already lived through it and survived and thrived! But I would find the delays to be the least of my worries there.

My employers seemed to think the answer to all of our problems, issues, and frustrations was that they had put us up in a five star hotel to await my life to begin in Abu Dhabi. At first, I bought it hook, line and sinker. They kept implying that I should just relax, sit by the pool, look at my awesome accommodations and wait until stuff started to happen. When I was trying to find housing with ZERO guidance from my employers and no information when I asked, I still maintained my dignity. When I was banned from the office for two days because the “man” in charge didn’t want to deal with the fact that I had no place to live and didn’t know how to find a place to live, I held my composure. As I washed my underwear in the sink for the 50th time, paid 30 dollars to wash two loads of laundry for the 10th time, when I had to order take out for the 150th time all because I was living in a hotel for weeks on end, I held my composure. When they denied my housing choice and gave no alternatives, I held my composure. When my promised “advance” didn’t come until two weeks after they said it would come, I held my composure. When they placed me in a school 45 minutes away, knowing I was brand new to the country, I held my composure. All of this basically because they told me to be grateful to be staying in a nice hotel and to be patient and flexible but please don’t forget to respect the culture and wear clothes that cover you from head to foot, don’t eat or drink in public during daylight hours during Ramadan, even when you are very sick. Oh yeah, don’t piss of an Emirate, they will turn on you.

So when did my composure fly out the window? When I started school. In my interview, I was asked all sorts of teacher questions like “how will you teach litarcy and science to ESL students?’ I talked about modeling, small group instruction, technology such as power points, and centers. Good stuff. Not once did the people interviewing me tell me that basically I would have no resources, not even a pack of pencils and paper for the children. That I would be required to have a print rich classroom but at the same time have zero resources to do it with and therefore would need to purchase all of my own stuff. I would have no books, no curriculum, and basically would be expected to “play” with the children the first week of school. No big deal, right? I’ve worked with no curriculum and had to buy all my own supplies before. The difference was that I was expected to be a western style teacher and have all those American classroom resources with no actual resources! I didn’t even have paper and pencil and neither did the children! The children were another matter all together. Nowhere in my interview did they prepare me for the fact that my children would have had almost zero background knowledge about classrooms and learning and all that stuff that is so important in the first few days of school. Nobody told me they would be running away, kicking and screaming. That they would eat paper clips and not be able to hold a pencil. That they would have no academic knowledge, no literacy skills, that in some cases they would hit us, kick us, punch us, and pinch us. Nowhere did they say that they would change school schedules on whims, that we were expected to NEVER call in sick. That we would always, always have to defer to the Arabic teachers and hopefully they would like us enough not make our lives a living hell. I found myself bitching the entire car ride home about my job. Everything about it was irritating. I was angry a lot, yelling at children a lot, losing my patience a lot. That is not the person I want to be nor the teacher I want to be. There is a huge world out there that is starving for good teachers, good ESL teachers. The pay won’t be as awesome but I’ve never done anything for money, ever!

So with that being said…..I have left the UAE. I sat down and was honest with myself and realized it wasn’t the right fit for me. I was happy with my friends and my social life but my professional life was in tatters and I didn’t want to get more entrenched only to leave 4 or 6 months down the line. It makes me sad, I wanted this to be the answer to my prayers, to be the job that finally gets me ahead after almost 1.5 years of underemployment but I’ve realized there is no quick fix and when something isn’t working, it isn’t working and you are doing nobody any favors by trying to ride it out. So I’m going home. I love it! I have no job, very little money and no car but I have a place to live, food to eat, people to love and laugh with so I will take it! My next adventure is there whether it keeps me in Superior, off to Asia or Europe (I’ve given up the middle east for right now). I’m grateful for this experience because it gave me a chance to “start over” again. To pick up the pieces and to really begin again, more grateful than ever to have choices in life.. I ‘m grateful for the experience of Abu Dhabi, the friends I met, the laughs I had. I won’t forget the endless days by the pool and the beach and the nicest hotel I’ve ever stayed in. I got to chose to experience all of that and I got to choose to walk away……that my friends is a pretty awesome life!