Visas...a little more difficult to get than you'd think...

Well...I suppose the best place to start the tale of my final arrival in Saudi Arabia is the beginning. After I had a really lovely and informal Skype interview with Mark (the Head of School for TWA) I was sold. Mark did an excellent job of presenting the vision of the school as laid out by the Saudi city government as well as his own personal vision as the Head. In addition, I was very intrigued and excited about what he kept referring to as a "pioneering opportunity". The school is located in King Abdullah Economic City. A quick history of this city follows:

The King of Saudi Arabia was all like "Our oil's gonna eventually run out in like a bazillion years, we need to diversify the crap out of our economy to make it sustainable." To which his advisors were all like "We've got mad cash yo". So the King was all like "Let's build ridiculous mega-cities whose sole purpose will be to have foreign countries invest in different industries and which will rival Dubai's greatest cities". So the advisors were all like "k".

That's about it. The school is the first operational building in the city along with the one apartment building and the business development building (known as Emaar). Mark told me the school was going to be the heartbeat that would allow the city to grow and attract people to move there. I loved the idea of being a founding staff member for a new school and be the only Drama teacher there. I readily agreed to join the revolution.

Once that was settled the first priority was to get my visa sorted out to travel to Saudi Arabia. Thus began a journey of epic proportions. With a little bit of quick research I learned that Saudi Arabia is one pain in the ass visa to acquire. Mark hooked me up with an agency that deals directly with the embassy where I downloaded a copy of the requirements for employment visa list. It was about 20 different items from medical checks to notarized degrees and transcripts, letters of employment and things from Saudi, police checks, copies of passports, etc. It was a long list. I also would need to get my passport renewed as my old one was due to expire prior to the completion of my now newly signed two year teaching contact. It dawned on me the best and quickest way to get this all done would be to physically be in Canada as opposed to London. Luckily for me it took one request from Mark for the school to subsidize my flight back home and they ended up paying for round trip airfare! As of July 1st I was back in the Great White North.

To make a really long and stress filled story short I got my visa but not before literally travelling halfway across the province a couple of times to gather signatures and get tests, almost every conceivable fluid being taken out of my body and tested (I'm 2/2 passing out when giving blood) plus things being shot into my body (tetanus booster), and a lot of things needing to be ordered and paid for. I feel like my relationships with my mother reached whole new levels of stress and pressure but I couldn't have gotten all of these things together without the help of my parents and for that I am very grateful and thankful. My flight back to London had to be postponed twice because of the wait times for the visa processing until I finally had my passport in hand while my visa application was on hold (apparently the Canadian government pissed off the Saudi government so they have a holding period for visas...playground kind of stuff). To make matters even worse, I got my passport the DAY BEFORE I LEFT. Talk about holy stress balls. Eventually it all came together and I was even able to make it back to London to participate as a Games Maker volunteer for London 2012. I thought I was for sure going to miss out on that opportunity.

Out of it all though I spent an entire month unplanned back home in Canada. I got to golf, watch fireworks, listen to concerts, go for walks, eat amazing food, and visit amazing people. It was one heck of a fabulous fling before heading back to England to prep everything for my final trip.

New Land, New Adventures

It is been a while since I last posted on this blog. I'm sure many of you know if you've been on Facebook or see me on Twitter that I have made a big move from London and it has not been back to Canada. I have in fact moved the other direction  to Saudi Arabia which could not be any more different. A lots of factors have gone into making this move more than anything else my lack of finding a teaching job in Canada. Unfortunately the hiring climate in Canada is just not good for teachers and I just didn't think I had enough of teaching internationally. I was registered with a company called search associates in order to find international teaching jobs. I ended up going to a teaching fair but nothing came of it although I almost ended up at a school in India. As a result of being registered with this company I also received email alerts whenever jobs came up that matched my qualifications. Then one morning in June I checked my email and a Drama Teacher job at a brand-new school in Saudi Arabia called The World Academy (TWA) was available. I immediately sent the principal all of my information, teaching evaluations, my CV, and a photograph of myself to apply for the job. Before I knew it I was in ready contact with the principal and after an informal Skype interview I had a job offer on the table. I haven't told anybody at this point but soon decided that this was going to be my move so, after breaking the news to a lot of people, as difficult as it was, I knew that I was ready for a new adventure. Parts of me were skeptical with it being a vastly different country from the western cultures I grew up in as well as worked in but being a Muslim country and very different culturally I was excited about the prospects for a very real experience both personally as well as professionally.

In this new edition of my blog I will be updating everyone on how life and living is going here in the desert. I fell way behind and eventually gave up on my previous entries about London because they eventually became very repetitive. Also, many people I know have visited London and Europe before, so I ended up showing pictures and telling stories of places that most people have already seen or knew about. The attractive quality of blogging went away. However, Saudi Arabia and the Middle East in general are places that very few people I know have ever been to and thus it gives me many opportunities to tell stories and show pictures to many curious friends and family members.

It's true that I have been here for three weeks already and school has been on the go for two, but I honestly just have not found the time to sit and blog yet as it has been a serious adventure just to get settled in and figure out all of my amenities. As I have learned from previous blog entries and the sage advice of the epic Michael Farber: less is more, especially when it comes to writing on the Internet. Something to do with people's attention spans and the many other distracting things they could be doing while on their computers. Thus, I will attempt to keep the word count of my post short  and post more frequently about the day to day happenings around here.

I've also just recently purchased an iPad which makes sitting and blogging a lot easier and lighter than using my larger, easily overheated, very old, and spotty laptop computer. Hopefully this should end with more frequent posts.

With that news, welcome to Overseas Adventures and a lot of future "WWWHHHHAAAT????" information about this awesome and sometimes frustrating country.