Josh and Other Incidents of Carefully Planned Luck

As I sit here now, in my free period at end of the day, I realize that this moment is the fruition of so many carefully laid plans and just pure, accidental luck.  I'm talking right place, right time, right mindset kind of luck. 

At 18 I decided that for the rest of my life I wanted to be a teacher. This prompted me to apply to colleges with good teaching programs, and subsequently accept an offer from on of them.  The goal was that after four years, I would be standing in front of my own social studies classroom. Yeah. 

This educational course was planned (if you can really plan anything at 18); I planned to go to college to be a teacher.  However, let's just dash a bit of luck in there; I wound up hearing about and choosing to apply to live in an international dormitory. Here I met some pretty amazing people and learned some intriguing things about the rest of the world.  Wander-itch inspiring things. 

Then I decided to go to graduate school.  I can say I did this because I need a masters to continue teaching in New York, and that is certainly true.  But if I am being honest, it's because I was not ready to leave school yet.   In graduate school, I just so happened to be registered for a course with a professor from China.  A professor that invited her whole class to come teach in China. 

Circumstances led to a certain lack of desirable local social studies positions, which led me to think about the reality of teaching in China beyond, "Oh hey, that might be cool."  I put into motion finding and securing a job in China.  I went to China and loved it.  However, teaching English as a language was not really what I had been trained to do, nor where my educational passions lay. While on summer vacation and traveling about China, I happened upon a man named Josh in a hostel.  Josh told me all about an organization whose main goal is to pair teachers looking to teach outside of the United States with schools looking for native English speaking teachers.  He literally told me how I could continue teaching abroad while also earning a more competitive salary and teach the subject matter I preferred.  I just happened to run into a man in the mountains of China who was handing me a path leading exactly where I wanted to go. 

When I got home from China, I registered for this organization and began a process that would take over a year to complete, but would land me in Bahrain.  Teaching Social Studies.  In front of my very own social studies class for the first time. 

That vague and distant future plan that I had when I was 18, nearly ten years earlier, has finally come to fruition.  It has taken turns that, at 18, I could never in a billion years have thought it would take.  If you had told 18 year old Rachel that she would live in two different countries before she was 30, she would have laughed in your face.  18 year old Rachel did not want to go to college.  18 year old Rachel both feared and hated change.  18 year old Rachel wanted to buy her parents house from them and live in it for the rest of her life.  I am not sure there was any profound moment that changed my life plans, just a lot of opportunities that I didn't hesitate (much*) to explore. 

But here I am in Bahrain, wrapping up my sixth day of teaching in my first social studies classroom, finishing a blog post that was supposed to explain to you what my teaching experience has been like so far, when my day starts, the kind of classes I am teaching.  Spoiler Alert, provided I don't get hit by any more moments of "how did I get here?" my next post will elucidate my life as a teacher. 

I mean sometimes, how I got here is literally mind blowing.  You ever have that feeling? 

* Okay, there was definitely some huge and overwhelming hesitations for many of my big life decisions (I mean, choosing to live in the Middle East was not an easy decision) but I went ahead and did them anyway. 

"It’s hot, damn hot, real hot. Hottest things is my shorts, I could cook things in it."

Robin Williams aside, this is probably the hottest I’ve ever been.  It’s a heat that I simply have no context for; China did not get this hot.  Bermuda (I vacationed there recently) was not this hot.  New York has never even seen this kind of heat/humidity combo.   Just for an example, one of my colleagues left a candy bar in the trunk of the car.  When we came back this candy bar was pure liquid.  Not just mushy, but a completely different state of matter; you could mush it around the way you could manipulate those pouches of milk you used to get in elementary school.   Oh, and one more detail: This was a night.  This was the nighttime chocolate-melting temperature.

And yes, I also mentioned humidity.  I know you might be thinking, “wait, aren’t you in a desert?” Because that is what I was thinking too.  But this desert is surrounded by the sea.  And apparently where there is sea, there is also humidity.  Some of you might be thinking: “Good grief, this sounds aweful!”  However, I am still not complaining because January is going to be about 60 and sunny, and I have never in my life anxiously awaited the arrival of January.  So, despite the soul withering heat, I’ll take it.  I will not see snow, unless I deliberately expend the energy to seek it out, for a full two years.  Let that one sink in.

So, my flight to Bahrain was unavoidably awful, even though this was one of the best airlines I have ever flown on.   I am sure the good people who invented flying could not have imagined stuffing a few hundred people in a small metal box for 12 hours.  And the marvel of jet travel aside, that is a long and uncomfortable flight. 

Needless to say, when I landed on Friday at around midnight on Friday night--a.k.a really early Saturday morning (mind you, I’d been awake since about 7am on Thursday morning) I was the definition of a hot mess.  I was met at the airport by a host of current teachers, including my department head (this is only the beginning of how awesome this school is –I mean, it’s midnight and your department head is meeting you at the airport==amazing!), and the woman in charge of HR (who had been super awesome about answering my questions prior to moving and making sure all my documents were set).  This woman actually didn’t recognize me, which I think says something about how I must have looked that night.

We got into our apartments late, but there is this sort of giddiness that overcomes you when you finally get to where you are going, so I was pretty stoked that night.   I waited as the driver helped me lug my things into my new digs—there is an elevator in my building, which made this final stage in my travel much less difficult.  I waited for the driver to leave, after explaining the next days activities to me, and then as soon as the door shut, I began to giddily explore my apartment.  I think I might have been frolicking. Also, I think I am in love.  There is just a ridiculous amount of space in here. I mean, I have a spare bedroom AND bathroom.  And it's just me. 

I started my next day at 11am...or rather at about 9:30, as I was supposed to be downstairs and presentable by 11.  We were met by the principal of the elementary school, who took us to brunch and then around to one of the giant malls to outfit our apartments with whatever vital products we felt we needed.  To be honest, I was not in my right mind (jet lag is a real and powerful thing people). So I left the grocery store with eggs, potato chips, and a bag of oranges....and not much else.   The next day, Sunday, began our week long orientation, where we got to know each other, the school, the curriculum (sorta--we had some technological errors there), and how the school worked.  Between the jet lag, the information overload, and the crazy heat, I pretty much collapsed each evening in my apartment; I don't know if I have ever been so grateful for a shower and a bed.

Having now been here a full two weeks--holy crap!--I do have some things to say about Bahrain as it compares to my experience in China.  For one, Bahrain is so much more convenient.  I am not talking about the school (although I will get to that in later posts).  I am just talking about life.

I have not run into anything that I cannot buy here.  I can buy razors.  To shave my legs.  This was impossible to find in China, unless I wanted to use an electric one (you know, the one men use to shave their faces).  I can get medicine here...western medicine.  So if I have some kind of illness, I can get Mucinex, and not some form of herbal tea. I can find food and brands of food here that I can get back home.  Don't get me wrong, I love diving full force into a new cultures food, but sometimes you just need that taste of home, and this place has it in abundance.

I swear to god I am not a junk food fiend, but salty junk food is my comfort food and what I hunt/crave when I am away from home. 

This happened.  What can I say? Chocolate and peanut butter--why are you so hard to find in the rest of the world? None of the people I was shopping with had ever heard of them (CAN YOU IMAGINE?!)...I enlightened them. 

See, I try new things too!

Everyone speaks English.  Everyone.  I am not saying that this is vital to my happiness in a foreign land.  In fact, I do belive that you should learn the language of whatever country you are living in, to the best of your ability.  However, my life is made easier by the fact that I do not need to know Arabic to converse with anyone--shop keepers, bank tellers, food service workers, taxi drivers; you name it, they speak English.  And it makes arriving here and settling-in a much more fluid experience.  I called a customer service line for my phone and that guy spoke flawless English. I guess I came prepared for a struggle, for things to just be harder and more time consuming, and that is not really the case.   But it is nice feeling over prepared.

Of my initial impressions of Bahrain the one that I think is going to be the hardest for me adapt to is the landscape.  When I arrived, I thought all those brown patches of sand were construction sites or maybe beaches (the ones near water).  I have since realized that they are just open land.   There is not a lot that grows here, making it very brown.  Coming from a fairly verdant home and a pretty scenic experience in China, this is going to be hard after a while.  To make matters worse, everything is painted brown so that it doesn't really show the dirt when the sand blows around.  I am sure I will be fine and make due with investing in some house plants, but I think its going to be the thing I miss the most--nature. Or rather, a lush green sort of nature.

A lot of brown. 

But some really neat architecture!

It's coast is also quite lovely and two nights ago I happened to catch a pretty marvelous sunset. 

At the risk of trying to fit everything happening in the last two weeks into one chaotic blog post, I will stop here for now.

It was actually cooler today.  And by cooler, I mean no real appreciable difference in how hot I felt when outside...but I was not as thirsty today.