First week of school

I'm actually sitting in my office with all kinds of teaching materials surrounding me.  The college is quite nice and, although I've gotten lost a couple of times, I'm starting to feel comfortable.  It's been a bizzare week after being out of the classroom for a year and a half  but I'm slowly remembering all the little things that need doing and how to do them.

Al Ain Woman's College

I now have a regular taxi driver named Evelyn (from the Phillipines) who picks me and my neighbor (Patreshia) up every morning and brings us to work.  It's costing me about $2.50 every morning because we've been tipping her.  So nice to have a woman driver who speaks fluent English and drives calmly.  Some of my taxi rides have been crazy, hang-on-for-dear-life trips with an uncertain destination due to communication difficulties.  I like the idea of supporting a woman in this male dominated place also.

My work schedule isn't great as I have four 8:00am class starts and I'm not always at my best so early in the day.  In addition, my office and my classrooms are on opposite sides of the campus.  On the plus side, the students are very sweet.  They all call me 'Miss'.  "Please help me, Miss?", "No homework, please Miss."  Adorable!   Once in the class they take off their head scarves and relax so it feels more like a normal classroom to me.  

Our first week is kind of a write-off as we don't have text books and they're going to move students into different classes at the end of the week so we can't teach anything important because our new students will be left in the dark.  It wouldn't be so bad except that it's 15 hours to fill with nothing important...that's a lot of time to waste.  This confusion is apparently normal and everyone is very accepting of the disorganized start so I'm trying my best to chill out and make do. I've got four more hours to go and apparently things will be better next week. 

Sooo, I went into Etisalat (internet, telephone and TV) to find out why I still don't have services more than two weeks after registering and I was told that my building doesn't have a 'wire'.  I'm still not sure exactly what this means but they were very appologetic and said that they would install a 'wire' within two days and then someone would contact me for a connection appointment.  I'm expecting that it will be a nice Christmas present for myself.   In the meantime, I'm expecting my living room furniture tomorrow afternoon so I'll be able to enjoy my TVless existance with a nice soft sofa.