After a glorious month spent being a massive infidel in England and Sevilla, seeing exotic things like grass, trees and women driving, and tasting forbidden fruit like beer and bacon, I am back in the yellow wasteland they call Saudi Arabia. The two big beneficiaries of this will be my bank account and my blog; the hiatus is over and considering I finish work at 11:00am every day I'll have enough time on my hands to update it a lot more. I promise.
Believe it or not the Royal Kingdom of Saudi Arabia hasn't changed much since I've been away, but it has got noticeably hotter. It's 8:00am at the moment and bloody boiling! The average temperature is about 43 degrees (110 degrees, for my American readers), and it gets up towards 50 sometimes. Too hot even for a black man like me. Thank God (Allah, for my Muslim readers) for swimming pools and air conditioning.
Summer school in Al Jouf isn't as fun as term time; over half the teachers are on holiday and all of the good students have already passed. However, getting to finish before midday and get the bus home soon afterwards means we can try and do something productive for the rest of the day. What could be more productive than drinking joy juice and playing darts? A valid question, I’m sure you’ll agree. In my case, improving my Portuguese. An exciting opportunity has arisen in Brazil for when I return next February, and with Andre gone (the Brazilian/American guy who used to teach here) I’ll have less opportunities to practice, so I’ll try and study as hard as I can instead of getting sunburnt whilst drinking yeast.
I won’t start working for a few days because the mid-term exams start tomorrow, so I’ll be invigilating and generally looking busy, but I have had the chance to see some of the students again.
“Teacher Ben, you are back! Mashallah. England good? What are quiz answers?”
The students here may be lazy, but you can’t deny their friendliness or generosity. They gave me a round of applause when I came into Eck’s class earlier, which was nice of them, if a little embarrassing.
I’ll be posting photos and videos, as well as the occasional update on life in the Kingdom, and the football season doesn’t start for a month so you’ll be saved from my overblown football rants for the mean time.
It was great seeing friends, family and the girlfriend the past month, and to those of you I didn’t see I’m sure I will when I return, and I’ll leave you with this quote, once said by a wise young Brazilian woman, which couldn’t be more relevant when you need to be patient in your wait for greater things:
“The passing of time is like the clouds. When you stand there and watching them they seem to barely move, but look again and in the blink of an eye they are gone”
Until next time, fica com Deus. البلسمينة
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