Shamsa's Wedding: A Traditional Emirate Experience

Last weekend I decided to stay in Madinat Zayed (the town that I am actually living/teaching in) and try to relax, get some work done, and most importantly save money. But, after a long week of work me and some of the girls decided to go get pedicures at a small salon in town. It was there that we met a lovely woman named Shamsa who invited us to her wedding the next day. At first we thought “this is crazy who would go to a wedding where they barely know the girl” as well as “we have nothing to wear!” Yet, one of the ladies who had been to Emirate wedding before convinced us to go. She brought us all to her house where we had what seemed like a fashion show with all of her dresses. And after assuring us that we could wear cocktail dresses and show our shoulders and knees we were ready to go for the next day.

When we showed up to the wedding we were in for a shock. The bride’s family is known to be the more relaxed laid back family in the UAE. But, she was marrying into a very conservative family. But, I am getting ahead of myself. Let me give you a little background on what an Emirate usually looks like:

1: The men and women have two separate parties not even near each other.

2: The women eat, drink tea/coffee, dance, and don’t wear their traditional abayas.

3: The dress for women is ball gown/prom dress status. Since there are no men if you got it flaunt it.

4: The bride sits on her “throne” and doesn’t speak, eat, or dance.

Now when we walked in we saw half of the women in their Abaya’saa and the full covering Sheila’s that cover everything but their eyes. The other half were wearing the sexy, revealing, ball gowns. It was very easy to separate the grooms female family members to the brides. After what seemed like an eternity of very loud Arabic music and lots of food! The bride finally entered with a few of her brothers. All the women covered up again. And they escorted her to her “throne.” After they left the dancing, music, and pictures picked up again.

There was an older lady at our table who had about 8 plastic grocery bags that she was filling with the food platters that they served our table! It was so gross because she was getting food everywhere. It just shows though the generational gap. When this woman was growing up they all lived in tents and lived of very little food. So, she still hoards food.

After watching all the dancing and the food hoarding at our table we all covered up again and the groom and “groomsmen” came in. They took pictures with the bride. Threw money to the crowd. Then the groom took Shamsa home. The poor guy looked so nervous and uncertain it was cute. Everyone else stayed to dance (women only) but we left after Shamsa did.

I am really glad that I took advantage of that wonderful opportunity that was dropped into my lap. It is good to say no sometimes, but when in a new place with new people what reason could you ever have for saying no to a new cultural experience?

Miss! Miss! Miss!

Halfway through week one already. The first day of teaching flew by and the second made me question why I ever wanted to be a teacher. Then today I got over what the teachers here call the "first week hump" where you absolutely hate teaching the entire first week, and the students are so wild that they make you question why you ever wanted to be an educator in the first place.

Let me tell you a little about my students. First of all they always say "Miss! Miss! Miss!" very loudly all the time. They are starved for attention and praise and so they all fight for my attention and love positive reinforcement. There are some students who are at a grade 7 level and then there are some who don't know how to write complete sentences in English. It will be a challenge to differentiate the lessons for that big of a gap but, it will be exciting at the same time! The boys and girls are so different though for example:

The boys are very loud, energetic, and honestly just drain the energy out of you! Some people misinterpret their behavior as misbehavior and being "bad" students. But, I've found that while I don't get the same respect that the male teachers receive (they are much quieter and calmer for men) they honestly want to please me. And they do their work, they just do it with more noise than most US students would. Yesterday, I had to have a very serious talk with all the boys classes about their behavior and how they refused to quiet down for me. At the end of my rant they were all apologizing to me and today they apologized again and behaved splendidly. They are very sweet and always asking me if I need help carrying stuff and showing off their work for me almost in competition for praise.

The girls are the opposite of the boys. I walk into class and they quiet down immediately. They want to learn so badly and are always smiling and wanting to share everything with you. I simple noted that I needed to get markers for their resource boxes and the next day the girls brought in enough markers to fill several classes resource boxes! They are very generous girls.

I am excited for things to slow down into a routine soon so I can begin to breathe and enjoy this new country I am living in. I haven't even had time to take proper pictures of my compound, or the school. But below are a few of my classroom, my apartment, and some of the things I've seen so far sights I've seen so far.

My Classroom before....

The balcony/viewfrom my apratment

These guys ride in the backs of trucks everywhere!

Camel crossing

Headed to the race track

All of these are little shops inside the Co-Op which is similar to a saturday market.

Perfume stores are EVERYWHERE here. And they make their own very strong almost overbearing perfumes.

The hallway of my apartment building :)

math wall

Since other teachers are in my room when I am not teaching this is my little office next to my class.

The girls hallway of the school

The school courtryard. (every school has one of these and there are three schools on the campus)

So the building on the right is the "male campus" (school I'm at) gym and then the ones in the front are the elementary campus and the pool for the male campus.

All the building that you see in the background are part of the Glenelg school. Every campus (Elementary, Male, Female) have their own gyms, pools, and school buildings.

The tennis courts and then in the background is the sports hall where us teachers play games after school.

Other parts of the huge campus.

My apartment

My day in a nutshell

I am finally done living the life of luxury at hotels! I moved into my apartment last Saturday and it is really nice to have a place to call my own. There isn't much to update or tell you about since my first day because since then I have been so busy with working. My days look like this until school starts:

6:00 wake up and get ready
7:00 wait for the bus or my roommate (she has a car!)
7:30-7:00: Professional Development meetings and trying to get my classroom decorated from scratch
7:00-11:00: Cutting out copied, laminated decorations and teaching tools or attempting to create my curriculum.

So basically, I work all day till I fall asleep. But once school starts it will hopefully slow down. I am going in to the school this weekend to finish up everything. Nothing has slowed down enough for me to realize that I am actually doing this. And I have a feeling it will be like this for quite a while ;).