Ron’s company, the School Improvement Partnership (SIP), has invited about 80 new teachers to join their project teams in Al Ain. This is both a huge amount of growth for the company, which is cementing its reputation for school reform, and a very welcome influx of new people to meet and get to know.
The last few weeks Ron has been involved in induction for the new guys and we both did a bit of meeting and greeting and helping people to settle into the community here and find their way around. Of course when you have people with similar backgrounds and aspirations it is easy to assume you are probably going to get along with them and form some new friendships and that is exactly what is happening.
The Contract Director who is a Kiwi has satisfactorily stripped the NZ Education system of many of its promising teachers; Nerissa has been working on the Victorian Education system; Ron has some chums from NSW and Vanuatu and the word is out that still more people are needed. So if you are a well qualified and experienced teacher looking for a great team to work with in the Middle East we reckon you couldn’t do better than working for SIP.
Now that the company advertisement is finished – tongue in cheek – I should get on with talking about what we have been up to. It is a month since we arrived back and we are well and truly into the swing of things with work and social life. No pics for this article as we haven’t done anything specific where you would want to rush off with the camera and snap it. However we have been for a couple of shopping trips to Dubai and Moraig and I took a business trip to Abu Dhabi.
The first trip to Dubai was with the new faculty for the university to take them to IKEA so they could purchase bits and pieces for their apartments. Well that was a very nice working day which included a lovely lunch in the Anise restaurant at the new Intercontinental overlooking the Dubai Marina. The second was with one of the SIP team, Geoff, and we visited the Madinat for a lovely Persian dinner.
Moraig has commenced working at the university in the HR Department as a consultant. It is a short term project, which suits Moraig very well as she has some other plans up her sleeve that will become obvious in time (they involve her moving on which is not good news to me!) However for now I have a buddy working close by and we get together now and then to chew the fat!
Ron is down today with the ubiquitous ‘Al Ain Bug’ which seems to have been doing the circuit for about 3 months now – diarrohea, headaches, disorientation and dehydration! It is a debilitating little virus but fortunately doesn’t hang about for too long. I had 3 days down with it last week.
The most interesting thing that is happening right now is Ramadan and my next blog entry will provide some information concerning Ramadan.
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