Oh man, I'm finally in Oman!

August 15, 2008

Hey everyone,

I'm here, finally, after a summer of preparing for and imagining what it would be like. So, where do I begin?


I arrived on the night of the 6th after travelling from Minneapolis to Chicago to London to Abu Dhabi to Muscat (my final destination). Upon arrival I was met by someone who helped me through immigration and to get my bags. The problem was, only 1 of 5 bags arrived, so I really didn't need his help, at least in carrying anything. Instead, I put in a notice about my missing bags and the officials at the airport said they'd notify me when the bags arrived. So off I went to meet Joel, the TAISM (The American International School of Muscat) teacher who has been organizing all of the new-teacher gatherings, who took me to my new home.


My apartment has 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a huge living and dining room, a kitchen and a little room with a washing machine for my clothes. It is furnished with some furniture for each room, but I've been doing plenty of shopping (ugh) to get all of the rest of the household necessities you can imagine. They have most everything here, so really I've just had to get over the fact that I'm buying it all new instead of at a second-hand store like I would in the States. I think I've shopped myself out the last few days, at least for a good couple of weeks, and I would like to think I can survive now off what I have, so I think I'll give it a break for a while. Unless I can find a cast iron pan anywhere...


The school where I'll be working seems phenomenal. It houses grades K-12, with over 600 students. The director's goal seems to be to keep the teachers happy by providing any resources they ask for, so that the teachers can concentrate on teaching and not have to worry about anything else. Nice, huh? All of the elementary classrooms have SmartBoards (interactive white boards), and when I told them I've worked with one and would love to have one in my classroom again, they said they'd try to have one up by the end of the week. Ha! In the states (for all of you non-teacher friends of mine) it could take months, or even years, to get through the process of writing grants, having grants approved, getting funds allocated and then actually having a SmartBoard installed. It's not that people don't try, it's just that it seems harder to get things done in the States. So yes, I've been impressed with my new place of employment. And not only have they provided plenty of resources in my classroom, but the school is also taking care of my housing and living needs.


During the first week of all of the new staff being here, we took care of getting our blood work done, getting our residence cards, purchasing alcohol licenses (yes, you need a license to purchase alcohol here), getting our Omani driver's licenses and, of course, we sat through inservice meetings to learn about our school and its future. We sat for hours in lines, in freezing-cold, air conditioned rooms, just to then go back outside into the sweltering heat and not be able to adjust to the changing climate. Most of us got over jetlag after 3-5 days. Personally, I slept fine the first two nights, then didn't sleep well for two more nights (then during the days those days felt like I could pass out walking), but then I guess I became exhausted enough that I slept through the night the 5th night and have been fine since. There is a 9 hour time difference between the Midwest and Oman (in case you want to get ahold of me at some point). :)


Besides having all of the paperwork done, we also went on a tour of
Muscat, so we could see where things were. I learned that the
previous sultan (the father of the current sultan) was completely uniterested in interacting with the rest of the world. He even closed gates every night at 10pm around the city so that no one could go out and no one could come in (there's a picture of the gates on facebook). Oman was extremely impoverished. That sultan sent his son (the current Sultan Qaboos) to England to be educated, where he learned about how poorly his country was doing despite their potential. So the son returned to Oman at a relatively young age (his young 30s-ish) and overtook his father's government - this was in the early 70s. He immediately started changing things. Oman was discovered to have oil, not as much as its neighboring countries, but enough to fund some infrastructural changes. The sultan told his people that he would provide education and jobs, and that if Oman was to take advantage of all of its resources, it would need to take advantage of all of its people, including the women, because the women are half of the able population. Therefore, women were expected to have equal education to men, and are offered the same jobs as men. The sultan also recently formed a cabinet of advisors to the government (aka him) and a few of the seats are held by women. That's a lot better situation than almost any other Muslim country around the world. So Oman is growing quickly. People come in from all over this area of the world (especially India) to partake in their share of the changes. The sultan, though, has been working toward Omanization; his goal is to see that every company in Oman have 95% of each level of its positions held by Omani citizens. I personally think that's going to be a difficult task given the globalization phenomenon happening right now, but I'm eager to see how this plays out here.


Anyway, I suppose that's enough of a culture lesson for this email.
My weekends are Thursdays and Fridays (though apparently that
could change soon - the government just has to announce a change and all work calendars must change) so yesterday I spent the day at a beach. I've been hanging out with a few of the other new teachers quite a bit. We swam for a while, hiked along the shore and threw a frisbee around in the water. It was excellent. I found that by spending the entire day outdoors (versus coming in and out of air conditioning) my body was able to adjust better to the hotter temperatures. We went to an Indian souk after the beach where the local store owners tried to pressure us into buying lots of intriguing things. Oman is known for its silver, frankincense and fish (as well as other things). I didn't spend a lot of money, but enjoyed pricing things that I may purchase in the future. :) I'm excited to be able to barter prices again.


Okay, this email ended up being extremely long. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I look forward to hearing news from you. I'll write again soon, and in the meantime try to write replies to some individual emails. My regular work-week starts tomorrow, then school starts the 23rd of August, so my summer is wrapping up quickly and I have so much to do, still, before I'll be ready for the kids. But I'm sure everything will work out somehow. :)


Talk to you soon,:)sara


PS Oh - I forgot to mention: all of my luggage did end up arriving. I picked it up the next night when other teachers were arriving.