End of Contract Blog

The End of the Contract Draws Near

There has been a long break in my blogging about life in Doha. This has happened because this end of the contract has been quite demanding with long, hot, tiring days (4.30am-2.30pm plus some evening catch up sessions with temperatures fluctuating between 49C and 38C each day) which reduces one’s inclination to blog.

Since my last entry we did experience the celebration of a Qatari wedding with its separate male and female parties which culminate in the introduction of the groom to his bride by his immediate family support group. The difference between the European and Arabic societies was clearly shown in the wedding celebrations.

The male wedding party would be best described as “anticipatory waiting” with the groom and his male celebrators spending the evening talking, eating and dancing until the call from the women’s party for the groom to be bought to his bride.

The women’s wedding party apparently was a chance for the women to admire the bride who was ushered into the function by her retinue whose purpose was to hold her dress out from her feet so that she could walk the length of the walkway to the pergola and the throne where she was to sit until the groom was ushered into her presence.

Our European wedding celebrations with the intermingling of guests, the raucous commentary and the visible public ceremony certainly high-lighted the different social mores we have been living amongst these last 18 months.

I received a pleasant surprise a couple of weeks ago when the CSO English coordinator sent me an email congratulating me on being named as one of the three top ATs in the cohort 6 schools and telling me that the work I have done at Ahmed bin Hanbal has been valued by more than the staff of the school.

Joy has been busy with her painting and has sold a good many of her works – both Qatari and New Zealand scenes. With luck she won’t have to pack too many canvases to return to New Zealand in July.

She has also been rehearsing a group of 10 of us for the end of contract dinner show entitled “This is Cognition... Mr. John” which will go on stage for its once only performance this weekend. She has progressively racked up the length of each dinner show since the first appearance of the “Doha Darlings” at the end of the 2008-09 contract from 3 minutes to 7 minutes with “The Return of ABBA” to what will be a 25 minute comic revue style show which will celebrate our activities in Qatar.

We expect the audience to be convulsively laughing before the show has even fully swung into its first item as the outfits Joy has designed for this item should cause a preliminary giggle leading to laughter as soon as the first words are sung.

At this point we are all facing uncertainty as the Rfps that precede the contract have not been circulated which has meant that we cannot be assured of a contract for the next school year so our finale could signal an end or, with terribly long odds, a continuation to take us through till June 2011. I’ve investigated a possible contract in Oman as well as one in Abu Dhabi with CfBT as well as the possibility of work in the UK through Time-Plan so that we can do another year overseas with the opportunities and challenges we have come to enjoy and revel in.

We are now packing up for our holiday in France (Paris. Rouen, Normandy area) followed by a brief stop-over in Doha to pick up our final bits of luggage and a long flight home to arrive on the 15^th. The luggage we’re freighting home is considerably more than we took home last contract as I have invested in a magnificent carved and inlaid rosewood desk and chair as a substantial souvenir of our time in the Middle East and Joy has splurged heavily on the family with a couple of suitcases of clothes, nic-nacs and other mementoes of Qatar.

When we come home, even if it is for a brief time, the girls have arranged a belated birthday party for Joy in Auckland. We have a trip to make to Wanganui to discuss what we should do with Dad’s house now the renovations have finished and we wait for a sale. We also plan to rededicate the Bates family headstones and view the memorial plaque to Dad... projects that have been completed while we have been away. This last activity will give us the opportunity to go down to Wellington to catch up with Rebecca who has secured a job there. So it will be a busy time for us.

Our next blog will be pictures and a clip of the End of Contract show and, perhaps, our trip to France. Then..... who knows??

Doha Departure - Homeward Bound

This past week has been one of packing, tidying up at work and farewells as the contract draws to its inevitable end.
We are constantly amazed at the way the small souvenirs and gifts have accumulated in the apartment over the past seven months. We started with two large suitcases and our travel cases and are now sending home three large cases and several boxes of paintings, books and souvenirs of our time here in Qatar.
The apartment looks ultilitarian bare now that Joy's remaining paintings have been boxed up ready for shipping and the other items that make a place look like home are packed away.
The MBAW team had a farewell lunch together on Tuesday at The Grand Joud Cafe on Salwa Road.

Dave on the Sheesha

The cafe is a popular sheesha smokers' meeting place as we could smell the sweet aromatic fumes of apple, grape, rose, mint, strawberry and Iranian tobacco as we walked along the street to meet up with our colleagues. The outside seating, always crowded during Winter and on late evenings, was too hot to use so we ate inside where the haze of sheesha was well dispersed by an efficient air conditioner.

Our translator, Mohammed Kasawneh, ordered for the five of us with the result that the table was liberally covered with dishes of hummus, rice, tabbulah, grilled meats, stuffed vine leaves, savoury sausages and kubbah as well as bread to create a lunch that we felt needed assistance to consume.
We discovered, however, that given time and conversation such a spread could easily disappear! However I was still recovering from the meal at 9.00 the next morning.

The Doha Darlings style

Wednesday evening is the end of contract dinner at the Hotel Intercontinental where Joy and the other Doha Darlings will be performing their own unique farewell routine to Doha and where we will, no doubt, commiserate over the lack of firm contract for the next academic year, swap stories about all we've seen and done in our schools and touring of Qatar and other parts of the Middle East and exchange contact addresses at home in New Zealand and for the summer break as we head off on our travels.
The attached video of the performance and activities at the dinner gives a taste of the celebrations on Wednesday night.

Joy with flowers for choreographing the Doha Darlings
Cognition Team Membes learning Arabic Dancing.

Thursday will see us completing packing so that we can deliver our bags and boxes to the transport company to arrange delivery in time for our arrival at Auckland Airport mid July over the weekend.
Then it becomes real count down time from Sunday for the final three days in our schools and the early morning trek to the airport for our next travel adventure - a week in the UK to catch up with Jacqui and her family in Swansea with, we hope, a drive to Tredegar and the Ebbw Vale where I was relief teaching for eight months over 1997 followed by a week in Jordan before being reunited with our baggage in the wet winter of home.

Contract Countdown

Contract Countdown

Last week we went to the Emir's Cup match, the second soccer match we've ever been to. It still left me wondering what there is in identifying with a team or club or what the fascination is with watching mass sport but, as the clip I posted showed, the entertainment of crowd watching as well as the show put on before the game made the experience worthwhile.

Enjoying the evening at The Emir's Cup Final

May has come to an end with the end of the contract now becoming a reality as June reveals itself with 50c day time temperatures and somewhat lower 30c evenings.

These last weeks of May have been spent developing new course structures for the English Department to meet the decisions that the Grade 10 classes will all be taught using the Advanced Curriculum Standards and the Grade 11 and 12 classes will be either Advanced or Foundation but with different time allocations... Foundation for 3 periods a week and Advanced for 5 periods a week..... which means that the teachers must plan for more extensive programmes at advanced while providing a language rich intensive programme at foundation.

The decisions have also meant that the new course structure needs new material to ensure delivery so a great deal of time has gone into creating a new resource base for the Department that will encourage the students to speak and write in English rather than rote learn words in isolation.

The planning and writing up of the Unit outlines and suggested content, identifying resources and work-shopping the lesson planning has dominated the month and will consume what remains of the contract.

When I look back on my own Head of Department days and how I had to squeeze time between teaching classes, HoD meetings, Staff meetings, book orders and resource maintenance to put time into writing and rewriting Department schemes, manuals and administration systems I cant help but wonder how I managed it.

At least, as an Teacher Advisor, I can devote full days to ensuring that the school and Department are left with a clear idea of what the Curriculum Standards demand and how to get there along with directions on where to find the necessary resources without the added stress of dealing with classes, chasing up lost texts and ensuring the other end of year administration details are completed.

The School Library

Mind you, coming to the end of the contract hasn't just meant that I've been neglecting the Arabic Department and the Library as both of these areas have required time and advice. I was rapt to find that the Library had taken delivery of the books we'd ordered in April and that the Librarian could nowsay that there was a reasonable section of the Resource Centre that were English language texts - fiction and non-fiction - that were the Library's and not class-sets for the English Department.

We're also concentrating our efforts on providing PD on the requirements of the Teachers' Professional Standards Board so that the staff are aware of the processes they have to go through leading up to their registration as qualified teachers by 2011.

So with these programmes to complete by the 30th June we will be kept busy right through until the end of the contract.

We are all waiting to hear about the Cohort VI contract round both here and in Abu Dabai will determine our decsions for 2009-10. We may know sometime in June how many of us will be required in the schools for the next academic year.

Joy's Water Colour Group

Outside of the end of contract preparation we are busy organising ourselves for the return home. Joy has finished her water colour painting group classes with, I think, a lot of happy artists taking home their own paintings of local scenes of camels, beaches and the other places they've enjoyed.

Anna Voisey & horse

She has also completed several commissioned pieces and has her work for the "Summer in Doha" exhibition ready to deliver to the Souq Waqif galleries as well as packing the suitcases ready to take home.

Lesley's Grandchildren on Camels

We've booked our personal flights for travel other than the immediate return home which will see us jetting off to the UK for six days in England and Wales to see Jacqui and her family in the wilds of Swansea and,maybe, a trip to Tredegar where we lived for eight months when we were last in the UK. With luck and time we may manage to catch up with some other relatives and friends as well.

Joy's work chosen for the Souq Waqif Exhibition

From the UK we fly to Jordan for a seven day tour that will take us from Amman to Jerash and the Dead Sea to Madaba, Mount Nebo and Kerak to Petra, Wadi Rumm and back to Amman before heading onto Dubai and the flight home.
If all goes to plan we should stumble off the plane into the wet and chill of a NZ winter on the 16th. ( An experience I can't say I'm looking forward to after being spoilt in the perpetual warmth of the Gulf and the UK summer.)

At least, before we stumble into Winter, there is the prospect of exploring those places we've read about both in history and in fiction as we rode with Lawerence of Arabia, explorers and those fictional others through the deserts to stumble on the ruins of past civilisations carved and hidden in the cliffs of Jordan.