A Class, A Class, My Kingdom for a Class .... OK then, have TWENTY!

Tuesday 14th April 2009
Had to write a diary entry today. It is, of course, one month exactly since I arrived in The Kingdom (as most locals or long-standing expats refer to Saudi Arabia as). About this time I had well and truly ended Day 1 and was feeling pretty darn tired after my plane journey plus the infamous up-all-night Dammam Airport farce. What a poor way THAT was to start my time here!

And how have things progressed since then? Well, it's pretty hard to come back from THAT I tell you! But overall I can't say I've had the best month of my life. I have only succeeded in making the first one-third of this year, 2009, the most boring, frustrating and pointless way to have started a year in a very long time.

Positives are hard to find. I've had no classes, no students, I've been bugged by this left ear problem for three out of the four weeks, it's been hot (though not so hot as I'd feared), I've had no internet and my TV picture is fuzzy at the best of times.

Ah HAH!! Now, TWO of the above have shown improvement this week. No, make that three. What?? Do I mean there are positive signs appearing at last? Well ..... err ..... yes in a way there ARE. So come in closer and let me tell you all about it ....

Firstly let's talk shop. No, not the local store, but about the work I do, teaching. Yes, I really AM an English teacher and that really IS the reason I'm here primarily. Though how would you know so far? Well, I do now have news on that. So here we go ....

Two mornings ago the Head of Department came down from one of his (usually fruitless) visits to the College Dean's office with what he called Good News And Bad News. And it went like this. The Good News was that (trumpet sound of fanfare please!) the military class IS FINALLY GOING TO START. The Bad News was that this class would be starting on .... Saturday!

Or was it two sets of Bad News? Frankly I don't see much Good News in that announcement. Well, I suppose now, at LAST, we can get started on the course I've been prepared for since the middle of Week 2. But there was more Bad News with it. This class is NOW to be 20 hours a week instead of 15. In other words, four 50-minute periods a day, five days a week with a break between making it, effectively, two sets of double lessons a day.

I suppose I should be happy. After all, the waiting is over, isn't it? Well, in theory YES, but here's the thing. Firstly, there is no guarantee that the class actually WILL start on Saturday. And even if it does, not every one of the students may turn up on that first day/week. Secondly, this class really isn't one I've been looking forward to because of all the bad things the other teachers have been saying about the soldier boy students in general. On the other hand, perhaps I should just take it easy and not sweat too much to expect too much from them.

What I have learned about the class is this: the idea of it is that it is a kind of foundation course in English language basics to the students before they start at college properly on the medical courses they will go on to. This 'foundation course' will go on up to the start of Ramadan, which starts this year on 22nd August. And we have a syllabus (in the loosest sense of the word) which we are to cover with them. What we do in class will be based on the material in the three coursebooks we are to do. When I say “based on”, I mean that much supplementation will be needed because the books are very thin on the ground (and are actually books intended for very young learners!). Students will be at something like elementary level with some deviation either way. In fact, according to their placement test results, the great majority of them scored WAY BELOW the pass mark of 60 percent. Is this because they REALLY don't have the ability in English or because they can't be bothered to apply themselves? Mostly the latter I think. However, they WILL need to know some English both to START on the medical science courses AND, of course, to continue onwards in their medical science careers in the medical profession. SO there IS a reason for these students to be there. THIS could be crucial as we go along.

From what I have gathered so far, their attention span is going to be very low. At least, that goes as far as their motivation to learn English stands. They WILL talk to you, the teacher about various things but the discipline of applying themselves to learning something is lacking. They are not well-versed in How To Be A Student and will very often come to class totally unprepared without books, pens/pencils or writing paper. Oh, and of course NOT on time!

“Crowd control” is one phrase I've heard. “Baby sitting” is another. “Infants in soldier uniforms” is yet another description that has been around. Nobody has much good to say about teaching this lot.

So it could be a problem. But there is one more. The classrooms are not in the normal college building but in 'classrooms' in and around the area where the military reside. This will mean a hot and very exposed walk every morning and afternoon to and from this place.

Well, the mornings might be slightly more bearable. But once we get to July onwards then this will NOT be the case. Then we will have a problem. There IS a bus that goes to this area from outside the college every morning. Trouble is, that bus is also a five-minute walk away from the blocks where we actually live. So we can fry and burn in one of two ways!

Which would YOU choose? Oh, and having been burnt on the WAY THERE, you get then fried and burnt in the classroom too with this bunch of louts!

And just to rub it in all the more, THIS class four times a day and five days a week will be my ONLY class from Saturday coming to Ramadan time. Approximately 16 to 18 weeks in all. So I will need that holiday VERY badly!!

But let me tell you this – at the start of THIS week the situation was as we have always been. The class STILL had no start date with no indication of WHEN it WOULD start. So, the Head of Department took things into his own hands and gave me one class of female students which I was to have three times a week at 50 minutes a time. Not much, but a start.

Well I had this class on Sunday and I had them today. Yes, for those of you who were not paying attention, my first classes in Saudi Arabia have both been with female students. Yes, you DID read that correctly! WOMEN students in Saudi Arabia. Ah, but this is the Eastern Province and they do things a little different here! A bit more “progressive” you might say (in Saudi terms anyway!), but it is true to say that this IS a very rare thing in this country for women to have any access to education at all. And get this – a story that the Head of Department told me: he said that a few years ago he too had one of the first female student classes. Know how he did it? Well, HE was sitting in a kind of studio with a microphone and loudspeakers and THEY were in another room entirely. He couldn't see them and they couldn't see him! He had his “lesson” to do, and he was able (somehow) to know what was going on as he could hear their replies to his questions. Now, imagine THAT!! A lesson where you don't see the students FACES even!!

Anyway, I didn't do it this way, I was in class and they were veiled. Yes, I could see seventeen students and yes, I had a whiteboard and yes, I had the coursebook to follow with my lesson plan.

So what were they like? Well they were OK! I had what I felt was one quite good lesson and one not so good lesson. Lesson 1 was in a smaller room, but the lesson today was in a much bigger room and I often couldn't hear what was being said. My ear problem meant that I still had only one good ear and one part-ear. And a very small part at that. I often couldn't hear clearly enough what students (even in the FRONT ROW) were saying to me! Was it because of the room size, the veil, the background chatter or something else? Well, I felt I was too much hampered by simply not being able to hear what was being said. And I KNEW that, under normal two-ear hearing, I SHOULD have been able to hear them. I got to the end of that lesson feeling really bad about the ear and that I'd rather wasted their time being not fully 'functional' as a teacher. Not good at all.

So what about the ear problem? Well I'm glad to say that the swelling IS going down and that it is almost back to normal ear size today. But still not perfect. This morning, for example, when I woke up and got out of bed I could hear almost normally 100 percent. But soon after I got to the college and was beginning the day, it was all blocked up again. In fact, it REALLY was blocked up today – so much so that I REALLY had a LOT of difficulty hearing people sitting around me. Why should that be? Even the good ear didn't hear what it should have!

Speaking of the good ear, that too has been giving some cause for concern this week. On Friday and at the start of the week, I woke up with the good ear (right ear) blocked because I had some rather sticky ear wax (I assume) that was sticking the ear closed when I was lying on it during the night. TWO BAD EARS??!! WHAT is going on here?

Well, on Saturday I went to see the ENT doctor (Ear Nose Throat). Oh, I must say something about when I went to make the appointment too. On, I think, Tuesday or Wednesday I went to the hospital to make the appointment, and after much searching (as always) I found the right 'Reception Desk'. Explained my problem to the Saudi man there and said that it really WAS urgent given that I had to work next week. I stressed the word URGENT and thought he's listened. But nope – when I got over the other side to CONFIRM the appointment with the registrar (or whatever this person was), it turned out he'd put my appointment date as 13th JUNE 2009!! Now, it was only the NURSE who saw this, and when she pointed it out to me, I made a LOT of fuss since there was NO WAY I could wait THAT long! TWO MONTHS with only one ear? Wouldn't be worth going on there! Fortunately I DID get the date changed to a more reasonable 13th APRIL.

Anyway, as I said, I went to the ENT Doc. Explained the problem. He had an initial look down both ears. Then down the left ear, something very long and metal was put. And I mean DEEP inside. Not painful, just damn uncomfortable! I mean, there aint much space down there inside my ears! I think he was either trying to clean out some wax or take a wax or tissue sample or something. Well, he DID take nasty brown-yellow stuff out of both ears (wax I suppose) and it was put into a tissue and I suppose they will analyse it.

The result of all this digging? Well, I am due back there on Saturday and until then I have some ear drops to apply three times a day. And yes, the ear drops he prescribed were THE SAME ONES that I already had! So another wait at the out-patient pharmacy of the hospital.

So yes, the ear HAS been getting better. Less swollen for sure. Last weekend it was pretty bad and at one point I had to go out of the supermarket and sit down a while because the swelling and pressure inside my ear was making me feel really quite ill and rather dizzy. So from there to here is for SURE an improvement. I suppose the swelling will go down to normal ear size now. But what I'd like to know for the future is HOW to prevent this kind of thing happening again. And WHY is it always in my LEFT ear??

So I hope that will soon pass. OK, now onto to internet things. And YESSSSS I DO now have internet on my laptop!! How about THAT!! Ah, you are asking, what method did I choose for my connection? Well there is a story here as you have guessed.

I think I said in a previous blog entry that I'd been down and paid for and filled in the form for the DSL line to be installed in my room. Did that more than two weeks ago now. Paid a lot of money too. And WHAT did I get in return for parting for my hard-earned cash? Absolutely NOTHING, that's what! No internet, no indication as to WHEN I'd be connected and even MORE stories from other teachers who were STILL having problems with this DSL company simply because they were too damn incompetent to get their house in order and get their engineers out to fix the problems of not having a connection. Well, the more time went on and the longer I waited I was getting more and more stressed. Being in this country has been mighty stressful enough. Was this going to be a long-drawn out horror story of internet woes over the next four months? It sure looked that way.

Decided I HAD to do something. I decided that I was going to go down and cancel my DSL connection. Having not had any work done at all, I wasn't going to lose anything I thought, and even if I DID then maybe it wouldn't be much. Yes, there was a risk that I wouldn't, then, have ANY internet at ALL for all my time here. Then all I would have would be the short amount of time I can get on the internet PC at the college and just be able to check emails at best. Skype would be out of the question and certainly no video calls. This was NOT a good prospect in any way, but it was either THAT or lose the equivalent of 300pounds on a shoddy service which wasn't likely to get any better.

I had seen the possibility of the wireless USB dongle internet possibility. Surely that would work. After all, a wireless access point wasn't needed and it was only a case of the wireless USB dongle with a simcard inside it. In other words, the same principle as a normal mobile phone. So surely it HAD to work. The one possible sticking point was that I don't yet have the iqama and they might require that with this kind of connection. After all, back in Krakow I had been denied a regular internet connection because I don't have the residency card (karta pobytu, as it is in Polish). So I was a little nervous.

Anyway, first to the cancellation. EASY PEASY! I went down with the other new teacher who also had this same problem. Explained my predicament and that I wasn't happy and that I wanted to cancel. I didn't mention the word “refund” because I had no idea what they would do. After all, this was a business which was obviously in trouble and they would likely NOT surrender the cash with ease. But I was SO WRONG! My refund was given straight away. No deductions, no fuss, no problems!! It was a surreal experience! Can't imagine a refund being so readily offered in Britain or Poland for sure! But there it was!

So .... straight down to town then to the Mobily phone shop. Found the salesman we'd seen the other day, and worked out what we wanted. He didn't offer much guidance, but then these kinds of people rarely know what they're selling! Anyway, i decided to choose the 'Mobily Connect' with 5GB monthly limit – the one in the middle. And the cost of this? Well, let's just say that I will be saving the equivalent of 100pounds (UK) over the four months that I would have had the DSL connection for! And problems minimised! They didn't need an iqama – just the money. All I have to do is go in to any Mobily shop when the end of month comes round again – in this case some time near 11th May.

SO EASY!!

Had a bit of trouble with it when I got home to get it working, but in the end it just involved some simple change to a few settings. And I WAS ONLINE!! It's not such a fast connection but then it is wireless and the upload and download speeds you get depends on quite a few things such as signal strength. But what the HELL! It works really GREAT! And being wireless I can take it anywhere! And if I get it unlocked then I can use the wireless USB dongle ANYWHERE. For the tech-types out there, it is a ZTE USB dongle but I don't know any more.

Happiness ..... is an internet connection ....

And with those positive words I will sign off here and get this blog entry online. And then to bed since I have a lot to try to organise before the soldier boys classes next week.

Just in case I get too comfortable ....