I arrived in Dubai about three weeks ago. Besides the solemn, beautiful call to prayer sounding throughout mall, throughout the halls of the university, and waking me in the darkness of the early morning, I thought that things were remarkably unremarkable. Yes, grande skyscrapers rise straight from the sparse desert surrounding, but the place was reminding me in many ways of Phoenix. Although happy at the ease in managing daily life, I felt a little robbed of my great Middle Eastern Arabian adventure. However, after three weeks I am becoming distinctly dumbfounded, just not in the way I had imagined. What is truly dumbfounding is not the grandness of what money and vision can create in the desert, but the slow unveiling of the social contradictions and constraints that are happening around me, and that I am made a direct player in.
I came here to work at a men's university as an English teacher. I was given one day off the plane before I was expected to be in the classroom teaching. I should have been given more time, but my visa was delayed. Anyway, I was put into the classroom and was trying to learn about what I was teaching and teach it at the same time. I am now realizing that this was probably a preview of how my whole time here will be. I will be trying to figure out what is happening around me, and deal with what is happening at the same time.
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