Sunday, October 26, 2008

Indecent Expatriates

We have a lovely new Canadian babysitter named Chanel, which means later-evening outings have once again become a possiblity for Billy and me.

Less eager to explore nightlife than we were to have a social life, I organized a reservation at a Mexican restaurant in Dubai for the other new hires and their partners. Per the usual, since this is a restaurant serving alcohol, we found it on the premises of a hotel, precisely on the 8th floor. Not all of the bars are tucked away in high-rises, but many of them are, and so the evening started with the ilicit feeling of going to a secret place. Since the drinking & driving laws are harsh in this country, i.e. one drop lands you in jail, I was drinking Perrier while Billy and most of the others had margaritas and Corona Extra. Though we were tired and it was late, the single and childless folks coerced us into following them to a night spot called 'the lodge'.

Given the name The Lodge, we had fireplaces and deer heads in mind, and visions of ski lodges with warm after dinner drinks. But as we got closer to the venue and watched the folks piling out of taxis on the curb, it became clear this was to be a night of short skirts, high heels and yes > plaid school-girl outfits. At first we were thinking gosh, we must be really out of touch to NOT know that plaid jumpers had gained popularity. But as the night progressed, and we got past the underaged local boys hanging out at the velvet rope just to look and whistle, and moved through the bouncers to find our names on the VIP list and into the circular open air dance pit, we learned that this was the night's theme - '80's school girl night'.

I must admit that dancing in the middle of a taxi-filled city of highrises, in the open air and to the music of my youth proved to be so much more exhilirating than Hot Toddies by a fire would have been. But I also must admit that I wondered over the impression we were giving to the teen hangers-on at the velvet rope, guys whose sisters aren't allowed out after dark, and whose families don't wear western clothes or even dance for that matter.

But we carried on, sweaty indecent dancing expatriates, many of us dressed indecently even by western standards, and made our plans to find the off-license liquor seller the following weekend.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Unveiling

It's week seven on campus, and until now I've had two students continue to wear their veils in class. The choice to be veiled is a complicated one, and as I understand, it has more to do with family tradition than anything else, though sometimes a strong male figure is imposing the choice.

While I was handing back papers to my group of twenty, wandering between the desks and having a good 8am chat with my students, mostly about which mall everyone enjoyed over the weekend, I came to M's paper. M has been one of my veiled ones, and I've come to know her eye expressions and the clear voice she projects from beneath her veil. I'm guessing you become an articulate speaker out of necessity when you choose to be veiled. As I looked up from my stack of papers to her usual spot I became disoriented to find her unveiled face. I audibly but quietly gasped in surprise and she looked pleased, grinned and took her paper. Because I spent almost three weeks getting to know my students names, and this was complicated by the two veils in class, it's been a bit of a fixation for me, and therefore, I was completely distracted and a bit consumed by the situation and had to actually focus my thoughts to carry on. Inside (and maybe outside too) I was smiling with the satisfaction of knowing that maybe I'd created a zone comfortable enough for her to feel at ease. Or perhaps her father or brother had decided to relax a family tradition. Either way, a positive threshold had been crossed and I was there to see it.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Spilled Juice and Desert Roads

(For photos, see www.wattskidsinaction.shutterfly.com)

I should have known if we tell people we're driving to another middle-eastern country with our children in the back seat, that we'd have people worried and waiting for us to make it home safe. Sorry for this. We are home. We are safe. We had an excellent time. And if this travel sounds exotic and adventurous, just remember that kids will spill juice boxes and spouses will bicker about the map and that gas station toilets basically stink no matter where on the planet you are. So the actual drive was pretty much like driving from Chicago to St. Louis, only without the corn fields.

A Safe Trip?
Oman has been a peaceful place for a very long time, as has the UAE, and the whole pointed peninsula is safe for travelling around by car. The only questionable aspect is the 4 hour stretch of desert between Dubai and the mountains of Muscat, but there are gas stations every 80-100 kilometers and the Omanis do in fact speak some English.

Desert and Rocky Peaks
Dubai and Sharjah are mostly a developed coastal desert, and as you drive out of town towards Oman, the landscape is gentle rolling dunes with scrub. As you get further inland the dunes flatten to a more gravelly looking dismal gray. But as you near the Omani coast, you pass through the striking jutting rocky mountains of Oman, which are grey, pointy and jagged. These mountains press the city of Muscat into the Gulf of Oman, and the actual cityscape has been built atop and between the jutty peaks of rock. The gulf water is stunning, blue and warm.

Chamois Guy, Dolphins and Forts
We chose a resort called Shangri-la, a few miles down the coast from the capital, for their multiple pools, beach access, and a raved-about breakfast buffet. It was more D-luxe than we imagined, especially the chamois-guy, whose only apparent job was to wander about the pool and beach and offer to clean your shades, all done with a brilliant southeast Asian smile. With the variety of restaurants and pools, (and other doting melon-pushing staff) we could have spent the entire six days on resort.

But the tourist attractions were beckoning, and after just a day and a half of R&R, we embarked on a tour of the sites. These included dolphin watching, tiny mountaintop forts, old enlarged European sketches of the city, and an excellent souk where you could buy anything from traditional costumes to incense burners to henna powder for tatoos and giant shiny swords. My favorite thing though, is the public art of Muscat. The traffic circles and many of the overpasses offer sculptures (traditional coffee pots and boats) and tiled art (scenes of fishing and sword battles). Just imagine Billy driving around the traffic circles, window down, and me invading his driver-seat lap trying to get a good shot with my camera, with locals lined up in their cars behind us, beeping and annoyed. (photos at linkbelow).

Mutton and Fruit
The food in Oman is influenced by the Indians and Lebanese who for a long time were the primary immigrants, so we ate lots of lamb, eggplant and grape leaves. The kids enjoyed watermelon and mango juices every day for breakfast and we ate numerous shwarma (something akin to a gyro sandwich) and mutton-kebob.

The Road Home
After six days of chamois-guys, dolphins and Omani heritage, we were ready to get back to life. The road home was just the same as the road there, with its juiceboxes, gameboys and desert toilets, but we had a whole new geographical vocab to work with. Just ask Liam and you're bound to hear 'Omani, Muscat, Wadi, Henna and Shwarma'. Mission accomplished.

For photos and slideshow go to:
http://wattskidsinaction.shutterfly.com/

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Maths Invigilation

I know some of you are waiting for our news from Oman (amazing trip and lots of photos being organized now), and others of you are waiting for my response to your personal emails. But our Internet service at home has been down for several days now (Billy's about to strangle the technician scheduler), and I've not got lots of extra time at work. However, I've just been through an interesting cultural experience that I think I've got just enough time to share with you.

Bear in mind please that in the UAE and much of the Gulf region they speak an English that we linguists like to call 'Global English'. What that means is they've taken on a British vernacular in business, an American vernacular in daily life, and then put their own Arabic-influenced accent on top of it. My workplace is dominated by British materials and people, and therefore we operate under British norms. So you think, What does this mean? British norms. It means 'MathS' for example, MathS with an 'S'. And it means 'faffing around' instead of 'messing around', and it means that when you say the word 'meeting', you must say it in an awfully formal and English-ey way - super-pronouncing the T, ie. meeeTing, if you want anyone to take you seriously.

Two days ago, I got an email with this subject line: MATHS Invigilation. And I'm thinking this must be a typo or some wierd joke from the guys who teach mathS and statistics or some new word invented by a student assistant, you know, in the place of maybe invigoration, imagination, invitation and so on. But the Scottish, English and Turkish faculty in my little quad of cubes are all shocked when I ask 'what on earth is INVIGILATION?'! And so they tell me that it's the same as what on American campuses is called test proctoring. Now I love the English folks most of the time, and I find their accent lovely in fact, but here's where I say, come on guys, Are You Serious?

The email informed me that it was my turn to proctor (or INVIGILATE) a test for the mathS department. On the appointed day I showed up at the Multi-purpose Hall and in filed almost 200 first year business students with their pencils, erasers and calculators. My job was to make sure they all signed in and took their seats. Once the test began, I had to pace the aisles with 6 other faculty, looking over the shoulders of the test takers. During this 90 minute test here were some cultural observations I was able to make. First off, the vast majority of these women have large, bling-bling style, expensive brand-name handbags, all gently placed at the foot of their desks. Second, at least 6 in ten have elaborate henna tatoos on their hands. Though these wear off after several weeks, I've noticed that some of my gals go weekly for new ones to the salon. Also, though I have only two gals who cover their faces during my class, five more of them chose to wear veils in the test situation, due to the presence of male INVIGILATORS. This is still striking to me, since in some ways this country can seem so Western and only very mildly Islamic. But it's striking again when I think about how absolutely shocking the 'real world' (Mall of the Emirates) must be for these people whose parents hardly ever heard English in the streets or saw uncovered women around town. At any rate, the lovely thing about INVIGILATION is that since it is a completely silent environment, I was allowed the luxury of taking my cultural observations and mulling them over bit by bit, as I wandered between the Louis Vuitton and the Prada, the Henna and the Veils.