Keep The Car Running!!!

So in an effort to keep the car running, I am making a new post! I congratulate myself because I am convinced that I may have adult onset ADHD. Is that even a thing?

Right, so my work here for the year is done. I have successfully completed one year of teaching abroad in the UAE. I’ve completed what many have not been able to complete. I’m better for it, too. I don’t think I’m the same person I was when my plane touched down here last year and I stepped into what felt like a convection oven.  You learn so many things when you live in a different country. You mostly learn things about yourself. When I was younger in university, I would meet people from all over the world who had come to America to study, live, and work. I would think about myself in that context, and I’d always have the same responses. “I could never do that. I could never pick everything up and relocate to another state, let alone another country. How will I manage on my own? I won’t know anyone… What if I hate it? What about my family? What about my friends?”

Best decision I ever made. Honestly. I can’t imagine my life now back home in America. My eyes are opened. I’ve met people from so many different walks of life, and each one of them has shown or taught me something different.

One year ago at this time, I was in Paris on summer vacation. I remember sitting outside alone at this coffee shop, and the thought that I was having was, “I’m in Paris now on vacation, and that’s lovely and amazing. But… in less than two months, I’m going to be in Abu Dhabi…for my life. I’m going to live there. In Abu Dhabi. Which is in the United Arab Emirates. Which is in the Middle East.” Those were my thoughts, along with some other choice phrases that questioned my mental soundness. It’s funny. Had I been wiser, I would have used the Europe money to come to UAE earlier that summer. But I was not wiser. Not one bit.

I have one more week of dutifully and pitifully showing up to my school to stare at piles of desks and chairs with no students in them. I am now currently being paid to write this blog post.

Ironically and sadly enough, I miss my students. (What is wrong with me?) They used to make me laugh, which is by far my favorite activity. These walls are so quiet… I’m not lamenting too heavily, because in about 10 short weeks, this room will be filled with a new crop of fourth grade boys with fiery attitudes that I will charged with extinguishing.

But now, we are at the height of summer. In my beloved Abu Dhabi, aka “the sandbox,” that means we are reaching towards the pinnacle of torridity. Every day, at 5:30 am in the morning now, I am torn mercilessly from slumber by the sun’s salutations. Without mercy they thrash the thick, pomegranate-colored curtains in my bedroom and fill my once dark and vampirical bedchambers with far too much luminosity. If I am annoyed at this point then I am simply antagonized the minute I step outside. The city is a greenhouse and I am assaulted yet again, but this time with blatant, outright blasts of sultriness.  And as it is without reprieve, I can stand perfectly still and nodule after nodule of sweat seeps from underneath my skin. Whatever misery you’re trying to conjur up in your mind, multiply it, for my metaphorical miming does failed justice to the reality of this desert sun. I may have just taken my figurative language a little too far, but it was warranted…

This was before noon!!!

At any rate, summer is here, and nothing is to be done about it. Alhamdullilah, Ramadan is coming, so the city will be beautiful again. The nights will soon be radiant and fluorescent, neon lights are strung everywhere to remind you that here in Abu Dhabi, Ramadan is in fact, the most wonderful time of the year.  The people will be just as warm as the weather and welcome you into their homes for iftar, (breaking of the fasts). It is almost time to celebrate the holy month again. I will be fasting this time around, diligently. I’ve already settled it with myself and come to terms psychologically with what I need to do. I have the proper support systems in place, and I am ready. Insha’Allah, this is going to happen. Don’t worry, I’ll definitely have time to post about it because I will be laid out in my apartment with my laptop trying to avoid the sun and ignore my parched throat.