I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going but early one sunny June morning in an English village I answered an teaching advertisement in the Times Educational Supplement asking for English speaking teachers to work in and International School in the UAE. I answered it quickly and flippantly by email (just in case I changed my mind) and pressed 'send.' I didn't want to think about it and I didn't think anything much would come of it and I carried on with my day.
Bored, lonely and living in a small English rural village in the Chiltern Hills I had convinced myself I needed and adventure once my daughter had left home for the bright lights of London and University. After reading one of those therapeutic (or depressing) articles in a trashy women's mag which had suggested that 'at this time of my life I needed to consider taking a risk.' At the time I had been a little cynical, giggled out loud in fact in the quiet of my living room and put the thought to bed.
But over the next few days the idea kept creeping back to the front of my mind and I toyed and toyed with the idea of life in the foreign place as wild and exciting as the Middle East. The words of that crass article kept coming back to haunt me. The most outrageous thing I had ever done in this the first half of my life was have five holes pierced in my ears, so I was definitely up for a challenge and a bit of risk in my life.
Anyway lonely and bored and having just finished that very girly book, Eat Pray Love, my Shirley Valentine moment kept popping up and before I knew it I had completed two interviews - one in Watirose as I did the weeks shopping and the other in my bathroom after a shower ( I'll leave you to your imagination here). I had to giggle - if only the head teacher knew. Even this experience felt outrageous and dangerous. Three days later the phone rang and I was offered the position. Personal papers and qualifications began winging there way across the internet, a flight was booked and my adventure began.
Within a month I landed at Dubai airport with a suitcase of belongings and was met by a driver on a rickety old school bus in 40 degree humid heat and was driven through scarlet expanses of sand dunes, passed camels grazing on the road sides and women clad from head to toe in black abayas and burkhas. The high levels of heat burnt the inside of my nostrils and throat as I embarked on this strange and foreign land and adventure. The thirty two seater rickety school bus bounced along the road for two hours with me frantically holding onto my suitcase delivering me to my new home, an apartment in rural UAE.
I began this adventure with just a bed, wardrobe, dresser, sofa, chair, coffee table and a fairly well organised kitchen. This was to be my home for the next two years and sadly I was still alone but in a different part of the world. But I would not be bored working in the school, tackling the challenge of living in Arabia as a white western woman teaching kindergarten Arabic children to speak English and then learn something. A new start, challenge and life.
The biggest challenges were yet to come but at least I had remembered to bring Yorkshire tea with me. My tea wouldn't last two years but would certainly get me going. Lets boil the kettle and make that cuppa.
#amwriting
15.03.16
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