Today was a rather odd one at that. We began our first day of orientation for the Academy's entire staff, and to my surprise the Egyptian staff was much larger than I had anticipated. The expat's numbers are currently hanging around 45 including both teachers and administration, while the local staff is well over 200. However extreme these differences may be, I think this environment makes for an incredibly interesting and culturally rich work place, I am excited for the new challenges ahead.
We began the ceremony with new teacher introductions and led straight into news from the Ministry of Education. As of yesterday, every "madrassa" (school) in Egypt (public or private) must push back their start date until after Ramadan and the "Eid" break, on September 14th. What makes this so crazy is that students were to begin school only on week from now, on August 29th. Anyone who has gone to public school in the States or worked in such setting, understands how hard it would be for the government to pass such regulation on EVERY school with only a seven day notice (particularly without an emergency of sorts). But they tell me this is Egypt, anything can happen! For instance, last year, teachers arrived to school one morning to find out there was an unscheduled national holiday (Police Day) the following day and were not to come to work.
At first, I was bummed to find out we were delayed another three weeks as I could have stayed in KC or CR a few weeks longer, then I began to realize- I now have 9 days paid leave. What do you do in Egypt when you have nine days off in a row? We get the hell out and head to the beach! As of now, we plan to head to the Red Sea or hop a plane for someplace on the Med.
Ramadan Kareem!
Wow Lauren. That's pretty crazy that the government would do that. Like they didn't realize a year ago that Ramadan was going to fall at this time. too funny. But hell yeah girl...go travel. I'm quite jealous actually. does this mean you have to extend the year more on the backside though? We still need to talk about november break if we want to maybe meet up somewhere.
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