Ask Ali

In the afternoon, we had a presentation by Ali Alsaloom of Ask Ali. He is an Emirati and a cultural expert, who has books, a TV show, a news column, etc. He is very entertaining and gave a great review of basic things about the gulf, some of which we knew, mixed in with funny personal stories.

We are now nearing the end of Ramadan. Eid ul Fitr is the celebration that marks the end and starts many days of feasting and craziness. Since Ramadan is a lunar month, and not August 1-30, for example, one must wait for Eid to be “called” by a moon-sighting committee. Eid was called in the financial realm, at least, for Wednesday, with mass closures and a general shut-down starting tomorrow as everyone stops to celebrate with their families. Friday and Saturday mark the weekend, anyway, so we shall see if ADEC has anything planned for us on Sunday (beginning of the week). On Monday we have a convocation, of sorts, with about 6,000 other teachers at the ADNEC, or Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Center, which should be fun and racous and all of those things.

We also found out our school placements today! Daniel and I were placed in Abu Dhabi, and not in Al Ain. This is what we were hoping for. Al Ain is great, apparently, and has plenty of malls, etc, with the added benefit of being a but less busy and less humid due to its proximity to the mountains. Less humid? Right, I’m sure it’s nice and cool in Al Ain. These things aside, we do prefer to be in the larger of the two cities. Daniel will be in a provider school, which means that his school is under a cluster management team. Ultimately this means makes little difference in his day-to-day, it is just a means of classifying schools. Under ADEC there are private schools, model schools, provider schools, and government schools, with one group not necessarily being more desirable than the other. Some model schools receive more funding than others, but this is not always the case.

I am in a girl’s primary school called Al Taqqadum Primary. Taqqadum means “progress” in Arabic. I’m not able to tell you much more about our schools at this point, as the ADEC website seems to be down-probably due to 900+ teachers trying to do the same thing!

As a final note for today, here is a shout-out to all of the teachers who have developed various degrees of “gastrointestinal distress.” Daniel and I have been lucky to not struggle with this, but there are some expats who are, so hopefully they get better soon. No one is dangerously ill, just uncomfortable. I did giggle to myself when this came to mind:



Again, just a joke. Everyone will be fine. This is, however, the perfect time to begin my Arabic Word-of-the-Day.

Ishal (ees-HAAL) = diarrhea
Iysal (ees-AHL) = receipt

One must be very careful to choose the right one to ask for when leaving a store. ;)

I will update when we know more about our schools!

Bye for now!