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Aug. 19th, 2005
Moyen-Orient-ation
Aug. 19th, 2005 09:50 pmI feel like I've been a bad blogger lately. I haven't felt like I had much time or energy to post many reflections on culture or religion or any of the other things I wanted to blog about while here. I still have some ideas percolating at the back of my head, but I haven't made any progress on them.
This is partially a result of a Very Good Thing: I'm actually really busy at work, doing things that seem important. Yay!
The excitement at the moment, of course, is that the school year is about to start. Almost all the new faculty and staff have arrived -- and, wow, there are a lot of them! I'm excited by how much more diverse we are this year, and we were a pretty diverse group last year. The new staff and faculty include folks from Mexico, China, Taiwan, India, Sri Lanka and Somalia, and I'm sure I'm forgetting somebody. Qatar is an amazingly diverse place already, but I haven't seen anywhere besides CMU that has such diversity among professional-level staff.
Yesterday was staff orientation, so I got to meet a lot of the newbies. It's so weird to think that a year has passed since I was the newbie looking around dazedly at staff orientation. And it's odd to think of myself as an "old hand" at living in Qatar. Nevertheless I've been paired up with a "buddy" from the incoming group, who I met at the airport and took grocery shopping for the first time and so on. I think the new buddy system is a fabulous idea, and I hope my buddy is finding me useful.
Orientation was really cool. Instead of a two-day introduction to all things CMU-Q, it consisted of two presentations in one morning -- one on Qatari culture, from a Jamaican-born Canadian Muslim named Bilal Philips, and one on culture shock, from our EAP counselor. The newbies also got tours of Education City and of Doha. And then in the evening, we had a pool party and dinner at the Diplomatic Club. We sat at a table with the other TAs -- there are now six TAs plus three significant others. Sadly, they're mostly in a different compound from us this year. Nevertheless I'm anxious to start our TA parties up again -- although we'll have to borrow plates and chairs to fit them all in our apartment!
And on Sunday, of course, our second class of students will be arriving! Our office is still under construction, I don't have my orientation talk prepared yet, we haven't made our brochures yet, and our promised e-mail address and website have not yet materialized... but I'm excited nonetheless.
And tomorrow I have a follow-up meeting with my rheumatologist. I'm so absurdly excited about this, I actually woke up from a nap this afternoon excited that it was Saturday morning and was a little sad to realize that it was in fact still Friday afternoon!
This is partially a result of a Very Good Thing: I'm actually really busy at work, doing things that seem important. Yay!
The excitement at the moment, of course, is that the school year is about to start. Almost all the new faculty and staff have arrived -- and, wow, there are a lot of them! I'm excited by how much more diverse we are this year, and we were a pretty diverse group last year. The new staff and faculty include folks from Mexico, China, Taiwan, India, Sri Lanka and Somalia, and I'm sure I'm forgetting somebody. Qatar is an amazingly diverse place already, but I haven't seen anywhere besides CMU that has such diversity among professional-level staff.
Yesterday was staff orientation, so I got to meet a lot of the newbies. It's so weird to think that a year has passed since I was the newbie looking around dazedly at staff orientation. And it's odd to think of myself as an "old hand" at living in Qatar. Nevertheless I've been paired up with a "buddy" from the incoming group, who I met at the airport and took grocery shopping for the first time and so on. I think the new buddy system is a fabulous idea, and I hope my buddy is finding me useful.
Orientation was really cool. Instead of a two-day introduction to all things CMU-Q, it consisted of two presentations in one morning -- one on Qatari culture, from a Jamaican-born Canadian Muslim named Bilal Philips, and one on culture shock, from our EAP counselor. The newbies also got tours of Education City and of Doha. And then in the evening, we had a pool party and dinner at the Diplomatic Club. We sat at a table with the other TAs -- there are now six TAs plus three significant others. Sadly, they're mostly in a different compound from us this year. Nevertheless I'm anxious to start our TA parties up again -- although we'll have to borrow plates and chairs to fit them all in our apartment!
And on Sunday, of course, our second class of students will be arriving! Our office is still under construction, I don't have my orientation talk prepared yet, we haven't made our brochures yet, and our promised e-mail address and website have not yet materialized... but I'm excited nonetheless.
And tomorrow I have a follow-up meeting with my rheumatologist. I'm so absurdly excited about this, I actually woke up from a nap this afternoon excited that it was Saturday morning and was a little sad to realize that it was in fact still Friday afternoon!
