I've been teaching for almost a week now, and i'll let you know about that soon, but first I'll give you an example of the daily madness that seems to happen here.
King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz flew back from the USA today, after a successful medical operation. He's been away from the Kingdom for 3 months, so to celebrate his return they're having a national holiday on Saturday! Which means a 3 day weekend for me. Long live the King. As part of these celebrations (I think), Dr Yousef made all 20 of the male Western teachers walk into the street and give out flowers to passing cars. It was bizarre. Walking through a disused car park all wearing suits and sunglasses it was like a scene from Reservoir Dogs (Reservoir Infidels, perhaps), except instead of guns we were armed with flowers. Giving out roses to random Arabs driving past is a pretty camp act for such a homophobic country. I certainly didn't mind though, it's a lot easier than teaching. One of the teachers, Carlton, refused to do it:
"I'm getting paid to teach, giving out flowers in the street is not in my contract"
Fortunately not all of the teachers are as contractual as Carlton, and diplomatic links between the West and the Royal Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were strengthened with a single gesture, all document by photographers from the local paper. I'll post some pictures when they're published.
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