A Week of Firsts

Well, we made it through our first week of school, our first week of Ramadan, and Tara’s first birthday overseas!

The first week of school went great. The first couple of days were not much like school. Students were still coming in from all over the place, there was first day of school business and the students had yet to finalize electives. Finally, by Monday (sometimes called virtual Wednesday) we had a normal day of classes. We were very happy to find out our biggest class size is about 16. I (Jamie) have one that is nine students. Overall, it is a very relaxed school setting. There are no bells between classes and the clocks are all broken so each class is kind of like a rolling start. Teachers are sometimes a little early or late letting kids out, but they know to go to their next class right away. These students are not unlike students back home in their personalities, but as a whole they are much more respectful and attentive. I imagine the amount of money the parents pay for tuition is a good indicator that they value education and that is reflected at home. Other teachers have told us we are spoiling ourselves for teaching jobs in the U.S. by teaching these overseas students for our first job.

Ramadan Mubarak! Or, “Happy Ramadan” or something similar. Ramadan is the holy month for Islam. Muslims fast (no food or water) from sunrise to sunset during this month, including our Muslim students, which is more than half of them. After sunset is a feast in Muslim homes, and they commonly stay up to the early morning hours. This month also brings weird working and store hours for Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia. Most stores are closed during the day and open from 8pm until one or two in the morning. Grocery stores are open during fairly normal hours because a lot people are buying food for the night. This makes the grocery stores are crazy busy!

Lastly, Tara turned 25 on August 23rd. We went out to dinner at our compound restaurant with about 10 other people from school. It was a fun time and she got a few little gifts from a couple of the other teachers.

That’s all for now, here are some pictures for you to enjoy!

Jamie McGuire

Jamie and the birthday girl

This is a random picture, but notice how it says "Welcome for coming." It is a bag from a store. I think whoever designed it missed a few English lessons.

Tara sporting her "I Heart Canada" pin she got from a couple from Vancouver Island.

Here is everyone that came out to dinner, except for me becuase I am taking the picture

Getting Ready for School

The first day of school is approaching fast! Last week we were busy during teacher in-service getting ready for school, which starts tomorrow! We received our teaching assignments this week and found out we are going to be working hard! I (Jamie) am teaching 7th grade geography, 8th grade U.S. history, 9th and 10th grade world history, and an elective. Tara is teaching 7th-10th grade health, 7th-9th grade science, and an elective. We were surprised to find out that Tara was not teaching any math, but apparently the principle was never told she was hired for math. It was just one of those communication things that fell through, but she is excited nevertheless. The electives are the interesting part of the teaching assignments. We were told to plan an elective of whatever we want pretty much. Talk about stress! It seems to have worked out well though. Tara is doing a food and nutrition class (she is working on stealing a curriculum online at the moment) and I am doing a global problems class.

In other news this week, we are finding how important it is to keep an eye on the clock when out shopping. There are 5 calls to prayer everyday that sound out from the mosques. You can hear them pretty much wherever you are (including my classroom). The three that usually effect us are around lunchtime, another around 3pm, and another around 6pm. If you are in a store around these times they either close and you have to leave or lock you in and shut down the registers for around 30 minutes. I have downloaded an up to date prayer schedule on my ipod touch to keep us on track. So far, the only store that has given us a warning that prayer time is coming has been IKEA (where we picked up some good household items)

Before I go, I want to mention the weather. For all of you in the Midwest or any other place in the country, you do not understand heat or humidity. We are consistently around the 110F mark. I haven’t seen a heat index, but I imagine it is considerably higher when it is humid enough to fog your glasses the moment you leave your home or fog our house windows or sweat through not just your shirt, but your pants also. I believe in Wisconsin we would call that a sauna. We will be and are already becoming acclimatized to heat and have learned to drink plenty of water.

That is all for now. Enjoy the pictures and we will give another update about the first week of school soon.

Enjoying an all staff breakfast at the end of the week.

Tara's science classroom

Jamie's classroom being used for a meeting.

TIDE!

This is what we have to wear when we go into town. Who feels bad for Jamie? Isn't Tara stylish?

A typical picture out of the bus window. Not very exciting.

McDonald's in Saudi Arabia!

1st week here

Settling in has been going well, but we have been faced with some challenges. The biggest one has been buying appliances (beyond basic ones which are provided). Our housing is wired for mostly 110V, but we do have one outlet that is 220V. Most appliances in Saudi Arabia are 220V. It's been fun going to stores and then trying to find things that are 110V so we don't have transformers all over the house. We were able to find a microwave, toaster, blow dryer, and curling iron that were 110V, but water coolers don't come that way (and are very necessary). Plus, our outlets are "American" so we are always looking for the right plugs on items as well. Luckily, plug converters are pretty cheap.

These past few days we've been doing a lot of shopping and organizing. Tomorrow is our first teacher workday. "What?" you say "but it's Saturday!" True, it is Saturday tomorrow, but our school week goes from Saturday to Wednesday because Friday is the unofficial holy day for Muslims. It will be weird going to school on Sunday for a while, but we'll get used to it soon.

This morning Jamie and I decided to go for a swim in one of the compound pools. We quickly realized why no one else was out there. Even though it was only 9:30 in the morning, it was way too hot to be swimming. The pool water was probably at about 90F, which is not refreshing, and the sun was blindingly bright. Most people go around 6am or in the evening. In fact, right now it is early afternoon and no one is even outside. Probably because it’s 41C which converts to 106F.

We have been asked what the time difference is between the US and Saudi Arabia. Right now we are ahead of Chicago time by 8 hours. However, that will change because Saudi Arabia does not practice daylight savings time (plus it would mess us prayer times).

Jamie sweeping our back porch, eventually we will have

some furniture there, probably from Ikea :)

Our living room

The dining room

Kitchen (notice the sweet water cooler, it was our favorite purchase)

The road we live on affectionately named Shady Lane.

Most of the younger couples/families live here.

We have arrived!

Hello to everyone! We have made it safely to Saudi Arabia and are in our new housing. We came in around 8pm (Saudi Time) last night and made it to our housing compound around 10:30. We arrived with a handful of other teaching couples and were greeted at the Airport by our superintendent, assistant superintendent, human resources director, principal, and vice principal. They took our luggage, gave us a big wad of cash and made us feel very welcome.

Our housing is pretty nice, we are in a two bedroom, two and half bath duplex. It leaves a little to be desired, but we will have plenty of opportunity to make it our own.

That is about all we know for now, we have a meeting in about an hour with the other new people and principal. A couple across the street would also like to take us out to the store later this afternoon so we can get a few things we need right away.

We hope to post some pictures fairly soon and we'll keep you posted as new events unfold for us.

Jamie McGuire

Moving!

As many of you know, we were scheduled to move to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, August 11th. However, we were getting kind of nervous because we didn't have visas yet. Good news: We received our visas and passports in the mail this past Wednesday. After emailing our contact in Saudi Arabia, we were informed that everything looked good and we were scheduled to leave Sunday, August 9th. My heart skipped a beat as I read that. I know it doesn't seem like a big difference, but we went from leaving in 6 days to leaving in 4, and we hadn't started packing yet! We are leaving from Madison at 3pm and then fly to Minneapolis to Amsterdam to Dammam (Saudi Arabia). We should arrive in Saudi Arabia by noon on Monday (Chicago time). We'll let everyone know that we arrived as soon as we can. Until then, we are packing, cleaning, and taking items to our storage unit.

We're finally on our way!

Tara