"Now I need to rewind real slow"...
Kenny Chesney helps us kick off tonight's post. This song references a crazy time in his life when in quick succession he had just made the short list of singers who can sell out a stadium, was married for a hot minute to a Hollywood actress and now tries to return to a life with some sense of normalcy under circumstances that simply aren't normal. This fall I began another unscripted new scene in the wild second act of my life that began a decade ago. What am I doing here in North Africa and not South Jersey? It's Thanksgiving week already? I should be planning on Thursday to drive to watch the Florence-Riverside game, not take a train to walk amongst Roman ruins. But I am getting ahead of myself; let's look back at the week that was...Speaking of holidays, it's the New Year in the Muslim world. Happy 1434! Muharram marks the first month of the Islamic calendar, which is a lunar calendar, so annually it moves about the Gregorian calendar used in the States. It gets a little more complicated than that, even. You see, the holiday does not actually begin until authorities officially declare the first sighting of the new crescent moon (hilal). Then, the word is broadcast via electronic media later that evening. The date can differ from from the estimated date on such preplanned things such as, oh, school calendars. Since this obviously happens at night, the timing can be tight. I was hardly the only person unhappy at having to stay up later than usual to wait for an email to see if the scheduled day off Thursday was moved to Friday. We had a similar situation earlier this year that wasn't as problematic; there is one more similar circumstance yet to come. Never dull here...
Parent/Student/Teacher conferences were Wednesday. There is no way to get around it; sometimes you have to deliver bad news to Mom and/or Dad, often with the child sitting there. Given the nature of my particular position, I am guessing I dole out more helpings of bad tidings than the average teacher. If you remember, this is a trilingual school. The students speak English, French and Arabic. Most teachers are fluent only in English, the parents all speak French and Arabic, but English is more a hit-n-miss thing. Local staff are there as always to help translate.
I had next-to-no problem conversing with some parents, and the child helped fill in the gaps at other times. See where this one is going? (To those of you who have already figured out the ending, yes, I am that stupid). One kid came with her mother and older sister. Mom spoke zero English, and the older sister could only help somewhat. The student translated what I said for her mother. Some of the news wasn't pretty. OK, all of it wasn't pretty. Now, I could teach a politician a thing or two about how to spin bad news; heck, parents thank me after I tell them their child is a poor, and poorly behaved, student. Anyway, it turned out to be a good thing a nice, and observant, native staff happened by and noticed my good comments were being delivered to Mom but not the bad ones. I wonder what happened to that kid later...
After conferences all day Wednesday a handful of colleagues and I got to race downtown to the police station before the office closed that is processing our applications for our residency card. Note: they do things the French way here in Maroc. The local motor vehicle agency in the U.S. runs rings around these people. HR staff had me fill out or supply a staggering array of documents earlier this year asking about all sorts of things. I should mention that at this same time HR is simultaneously moving heaven and earth to help facilitate this process.
Recently, on short notice, I was told I had an appointment downtown, to submit the pile of papers and hope the package was accepted. It was, and I was told to return in about a week to get my récépissé and go get it renewed monthly until I finally got my carte sejour. Anyway, a bunch of us race downtown after conferences. Some of us got our 'receipt' and some didn't. Yup. At least I got to drive back to campus. I'm beginning to r-e-a-l-l-y enjoy city driving with no rules. Anyway, I told an HR guy how we all fared. He said to expect to go back down a few more times to be told they don't have it before they finally decide to call me down at my inconvenience for an asinine interview. I brought documents the first week of August. Yet, in mid-November I'm nowhere near done...
No comments:
Post a Comment