12. Chapter 8: A Pizza Shop in Giza

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Transcript

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Chapter 8. A pizza shop in Giza. This is the wildest thing, my mentor educator David said as he stood at the front of the classroom of grade four and five students. This placement was the last of my many student teacher placements before I completed my Bachelor of Education degree. And I was placed as a student teacher in David's room for two months. There is a pizza shop across the street from the pyramids of Giza. Can you believe that? Whoa, all the grade four and five students said. David was reading a picture book aloud about ancient Egypt to his class. David, as a teacher, inspired me. He was calm, cool, happy, and loved his job. He respected the students and they respected him. David had taught abroad for two years in Egypt at the start of his career, and he spoke highly of it as the best two years of his life. He made lifelong friends and he traveled around the world while he was there. When eating lunch or having coffee with him on our breaks, I complained about the state of employment for teachers in Ontario, the struggles of working full-time as a yoga teacher, and the stress about how I'd make a living post-university. He told me, Alex, you should just go abroad and teach. Even if you hate it and decide to come home after a month or two, go abroad. It'll be a great adventure. It'll change the way you see the world completely. His stories about living in Egypt intrigued me. As a five-year-old, my parents sent me to Saturday morning club at a museum in Toronto, and they had an exhibit on the mummies of ancient Egypt. One morning I got lost in my own imagination, staring up at all the jewels and ornaments of one exhibit. When I looked up, I'd realized I'd gotten separated from my group. The pyramids of Giza always felt so far away. Like something larger than life on another planet that I'd never see in this lifetime. As a child and teenager, my family took holidays to all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean. But to Egypt? The Middle East felt way too foreign and far. I couldn't imagine ever being able to afford to travel there in this lifetime. There had been an educators abroad recruitment fair at university a few months earlier for my cohort to get jobs overseas, but I hadn't paid much attention. I was interested in doing my yoga thing and didn't bother putting in the effort. But I watched my classmates excitedly planning their futures in Mexico, Dubai, or England. I was learning from them that there was a large network of international teachers working in schools everywhere. There were also many benefits of teaching abroad. International educators got free accommodation in most places and the opportunity to travel the world. After meeting David and hearing about his experiences in Egypt, I started to wonder, maybe this is what I should do. Get a job, move abroad, travel the world, have fun for a few years, and then figure things out. But while I like the idea of visiting Egypt, living in the Middle East did not feel right to me because of stereotypes I had in my head about the region. When my friend Claire signed for a job in Dubai, I said to her in a very uninformed, biased, and judgmental way, I can't believe you want to work in Dubai. Women get so mistreated there. The irony being that a few weeks later, I ended up signing a contract in an even more conservative location than the UAE, United Arab Emirates. When thinking about where I wanted to go in the world, it was pretty simple. I've never liked being cold. Winter was never easy for me. Winter Wonderland never evoked a sense of comfort and coziness the way it did for so many. I wanted to be on the beaches. But the Middle East didn't come to mind. What came to mind was the Caribbean and Central and South America, probably because that is largely where I'd had my childhood traveling experiences. I put together my resume, references, and job applications, and I sent them out into the world. When I think of this time, the Skype jingle automatically comes to mind. I interviewed for jobs in Mexico, Venezuela, and Suriname. While some of the principals that I met were incredible, none of the places or people exactly resonated. In many situations, I had to compromise on benefits. They were offering shared accommodation and I didn't want a roommate, or they weren't offering a return flight home each summer, something I knew to expect as a benefit. Many schools in South and Central America were offering me low salaries on the premise that the cost of living was cheap there. I realized I was going to have to broaden my options, as South America didn't seem promising to me at that point. So I decided to open up my locations to anywhere. I paid for the upgrade to the service, which I often describe as the Facebook poke upgrade. Do you remember when people used to Facebook poke? For$25, I could essentially poke schools all over the world indicating my interest. So I scrolled down the list, hitting send notification of interest to every single one of them. And I started getting emails and scheduling Skype interviews with principals everywhere. Bangladesh, Nepal, Morocco. I'd seen a world map thousands of times before, but I'd never really examined one in detail prior to this point. I started learning which countries were landlocked, which countries were on which continents, and which countries had warm and cool climates. I would watch YouTube videos about what life was like living in places like Casablanca and Suriname. I was learning more about the world than I had ever learned in school. Every morning when I came in to speak with my mentor David, I'd tell him where I'd had an interview. And each day we'd put a bullet point on the map hanging on the chalkboard in his classroom. We'd discuss the pros and cons of each place. I got a job interview for a teaching position in the Marshall Islands, which seemed incredibly exciting and exotic. I remember David saying, pros, you live on a tropical island. He was right. When we looked at the map, it was literally in the middle of nowhere in the ocean. I'd be marooned on a tropical island, like on the TV show Survivor. Not the place for me. It hit a point where I didn't even have the time and energy to do a bit of research before the call. That's how many interviews I was doing each day. One morning I got an email from a school director in Kuwait. I didn't even know where in the world Kuwait was, let alone that it was between Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Kuwait had an eight-hour time difference from Toronto, so I scheduled an interview with him for six in the morning. At 5:55 a.m., I rolled out of bed and had a few minutes to scroll around on the school website. Okay, at least it had a nice website. That was a good sign. Some international schools that I interviewed with at the time didn't even have a website. That to me was always a red flag. I scanned the website quickly to try and find something to mention that indicated that I had done some research on the school. The one thing I saw that stood out to me was that the school had a staff book club. I got on Skype with the school director, William. He asked me, why do you want to come to our school? I said, it seems you really care about the staff's well-being. I noticed you have a few different programs for the staff, like a book club. A book club, he asked. He had no idea what I was talking about. The irony, as I later found out when I moved to Kuwait, is that the school never had a staff book club and staff well-being wasn't the top priority of the administration. But there was something about this school director that resonated with me. I felt drawn to him, the school, and the country for reasons I couldn't explain. This was the right job for me. I went into school the next morning with a big grin in my face and announced to my mentor David that while I hadn't had a job offer yet, I thought I was going to move to Kuwait. Kuwait? All my friends from Egypt are in Kuwait. Really? Yeah, they all moved there after Egypt. They've been living there for nine years. Let me put you in touch with them. It's probably not the same school, but at least they can give you an idea of what life is like over there. David gave me the email address of one friend in particular, Rebecca, and I sent her an email. We quickly clicked and were sending email after email. Then we switched to WhatsApp after WhatsApp. The one clear question I remember asking her was I know alcohol is illegal, but can you get it? She reassured me yes, you can get alcohol here. It's illegal, but not impossible to find for expats. You can also learn how to make it. And that was all I needed to hear. I was moving to Kuwait.