Saturday, December 10, 2011

Landing a job in Jeddah 2!

During my interview (with the Superintendant) for a Kindergarten teacher job, I was verbally offered the "Director of Curriculum" job! With this job, I would train teachers and also teach Kindergarten students as well. The company wants to fly me (all expense paid!) to Denver to train me in the curriculum. I will be with a worldwide franchise type school. It would be the first of its kind in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, though. There are some locations in  New York, India and Japan. It is a Kindergarten campus with an 8:1 student to teacher ratio. There would be one international and one Saudi teacher per classroom.The curriculum is brain-based and tailored for our little ones minds. What is really amazing is that there is an interactive whiteboard in the classrooms. Also, the curriculum includes Music, Art, Economics, Phonics, and Science experiments.  Ok, I am getting a little excited because I have seen the positive effects of learning when young children are in an environment that facilitates early learning. The really good news is that they provide Visa's for me and my kids! This is the hardest thing to get because most schools will provide a Visa just for the teacher and not the children.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Tea time all the time in Saudi!

Tea time all the time
You can call it hospitality or pure enjoyment. Over the past few weeks I have been busy meeting new vendors to make our services more attractive and up to par with international standards. Yesterday I met with a total of 7 vendors and I visited two other personal in our company. For each visitor it is customary to order tea or Arabian coffee. Even though there is no rule book on this but what I have noticed the other person will not leave till both parties are done.

So you can imagine with 9 visits and 9 cups of tea or coffee there is a coffee break every few minutes.