Home Sweet Dubai

We live here now.  We are very official with our Emirates ID Cards, Visas, telephone numbers, internet connections, meal delivery services, bank accounts and classrooms.  We are residents of Dubai.  It feels sureal.  For at least the first two weeks, I half expected someone to come along and tell me there had been a big confusion; that in fact I had been mistaken with another version of Regan Moore, middle school teacher and that they would be returning me for the correct model.  So far, this has not happened and with all these bits of official evidence that I am truly a resident of the UAE, I suppose I can begin to believe this is in fact, my new home.

Along with a new country and city of residence comes a new living space.  We are living in a two bedroom apartment just across the street from our school and a short cab ride away from the Persian Gulf beach.  Pretty swanky.  When we look out the windows, which we rarely do as it might let some of the sweltering sunlight in, we are surrounded by desert, high rise buildings and the general hubbub of the city below.

The school provided some of the basic furnishing (beds, couches, dishes, linens and a few food items) to get us started.  These were fantastic and a great start; however, I had a deep need to make this new space our own.  We spent the first few nights shopping for furnishings to make our place feel a little softer.  The furniture provided was great, but a little stiff.  We bought bed-pads, pillows, and a higher quality duvet.  While I can't say we're entirely done, I think we have a pretty good handle on things and it feels like "our" place now.

We have two bedrooms and two bathrooms on the fifth floor.  Having all this space and no family within a 7,000 mile radius, means that Landon and I have our own bathrooms and our own dressing rooms.  While it is just a two bedroom, I've never felt like I have this much space to spread out and it's pretty great.  Getting ready for our 30 second commute is a breeze.

Our school is right across the street.  It is a high caliber K-12 school with three smaller divisions, elementary, middle and high school.  It is a beautiful school with loads of support for teachers.  Each day I am amazed at how productive I can be given so much support.  I have shared lab techs across the science department who not only set up the lab for us and manage the equipment (inventory, cleaning and organizing) but also can be scheduled to assist with the actual labs!  There is an EA (education assistant) who is similar to a student teacher, but is paid for her work.  She is shared between the science teachers at the middle school level and can come in to assist with students, decorating bulletin boards and grading.  I have eight planning periods per week and a full hour lunch every day except my lunch duty day, in which I still have a 30 minute lunch.  Students have a twenty minute break between their first two blocks in which they can socialize and have a snack.  I have access to a school store that provides teachers with unlimited pencils, pens, markers, crayons, paper and pretty much any other office supply you could imagine.  While I did spend a few dirhams on decorating my classroom, the majority of my needs were met by the school.  It should be noted that is is NOT a public school and cannot be compared to my previous schools, but as a result of the support, I was able to teach lab safety and graphing lesson by setting up Bunsen burners, tripods, ring-stands, clamps, thermometers and lab coats within the first week of school with little to no worry.   Applied, hands on education is much more manageable in my current scenario.  The students were blown away.

I share planning periods with everyone on my grade level and spend a good amount of time collaborating with my peers.  We have an advisory period, similar to what I have experienced in the states, that focuses on building character, organizational skills, and mentoring my students.  This is perhaps one of my favorite times in the day and I love building individual relationships with my kids and being an adult they can count on at school.  Our teaching blocks are around 85 minutes, which is on the longer side of the spectrum, but as a science teacher, this plays to my advantage.  Preparing, conducting and debriefing a full science lab in under an hour is really difficult.  I hope this extra class time will make hands on science more tangible for my students.

I definitely am very happy with my working situation so far and home is coming together, but it's not all work and no play.  We've had a great time so far getting to know our new home town.  We've been to a mall almost every weekend since we've been here, a habit we are hoping to break soon.

Part of the problem is the heat.  It's really too hot outside right now to spend much time outdoors.  For my South Carolina friends, you should know, when I was warned about the heat of Dubai I really didn't believe it.  We know that South Carolina can be brutally hot.  It was hard to believe that there could be a hotter place.  Also, as we've all imagined, Dubai is desert and therefore may be hot but doesn't have the humidity of South Carolina, so it probably is similar to Arizona.  Wrong on both counts.  Dubai is both incredibly humid and hotter than South Carolina.  There were days last week (early September) in which the temperature high was 106°F and the humidity was near 80%.  The lows at night maintained 85°F.  It is definitely hotter.  But, I have been promised that by next month, the weather will be beautiful and will remain so throughout the winter.  Maybe we'll be able to see a few more places around the city without the requirement of an AC. 

We've had some great food and I am particularly enjoying learning about the different varieties of fresh cheese available at most grocery stores.  One of my favorites so far is a Saudi version of feta cheese.  It's smooth, creamy and little lemony.  But we've also had Lebanese, Emirati, and Japanese.  Of course, sometimes we crave a taste of home.  KFC is a local favorite, but we have found it's actually better here than at home!  I don't really know what about it is so much better, but it just is.  Maybe it is the oil?

Now that we're set up in our apartment though, we have been eating at home more regularly.  One of the main grocery stores, of course located in a mall, is Carrefour.  The big one is at the Mall of the Emirates.  The amount of people there is insane.  If you have ever been frustrated with long lines and wandering people around Walmart, take that feeling and multiply it by three.  This might get you close to understanding what it is like at the Carrefour on a Friday afternoon.  I have found another grocery store, Union Co-op, which is much less crowded, but still pretty busy.  I have also found that if you visit the store on Friday morning, its nearly a ghost town.  Friday is the holy day in the Islamic faith and it is like our Saturday morning in comparison to the weekend.  It's prime grocery shopping time for me.  So we're finally getting the hang of grocery shopping here and it has been worth the wait!



There are so many food options available and range of produce is unbelievable!  You would think that being a desert city, Dubai wouldn't have much to offer in the way of produce.  However, this is simply not true!  There are fruits and vegetables from all over the region found at these mega-stores.  We even found the dreaded durian, but have no plans of purchasing any of this unless we have visitors who want to give it a go.  You can even choose the country of origin for your meats and poultry.

Which brings me to one of the many myths of Dubai.  Before coming here, I read as many articles about Dubai as possible, trying to prepare myself for this adventure.  There were so many cautionary Do's and Don'ts.  But from my experience so far, which is admittedly pretty short, most of these are no longer necessary.  For example, I have read countless articles about what to wear and not to wear in public, but have found that the reality is that people here wear whatever they want.  Of course, there are many who dress conservatively and proper dress is required before entering a mosque, but it is a far cry from some of the hyped up articles warning women to keep everything covered around the clock.  I think in recent years, Dubai has become even more international and hence a loosening of these type of restrictions.

Local Emirati wear Gutra (male head covering) and Kandoras (male clothing) or Abayas (female clothing) and Hijabs (female head covering).  They celebrate this clothing style as a symbol of pride and of culture.  We learned about the dress of "the desert people" at the Sheikh Mohammed Center of Cultural Understanding where we also enjoyed an authentic Emirati meal.  The slogan of the Sheikh Mohammed Center of Cultural Understanding is "Open Doors, Open Minds."  It is a really cool place in which all questions are welcomed and understanding is the goal.  Definitely a stop on your trip if you come to visit.




So as of week four: I am comfortable in my home.  I am comfortable in my school.  I am comfortable with the food and I am comfortable in the way I dress.  I live here now.  I think it is official.  I am calling Dubai home. 

** Side Note - I have very little control over how the pictures show up on this blog.  They show up where they want.  Maybe I will learn some more HTML in the future.  Until then they will be all over the page.  So for all my Type A friends, I apologize.