SouthAfrica_to_Saudi

Main: AnargisteAfrikaner | South African English teacher living in Saudi Arabia | This blog will be about my work and my travels there

[the-toybox-sys]

reading the symptoms of autism as a now grown adult after being bullied for no explainable reason all your life

[sobriety-circle]

I hope everyone who is recovering from addiction, making steps to recover, wants to recover, not yet ready to recover, and those who are supporting these people have a good day.

[stalinslastsoldier]

Welcome to your first month of 2024

[satoksa]

It's almost like EF Al Ula is turning into a South African taught school because the ratio of saffers to every other nationality is growing. We are about 14 teachers in total and 6 of us are South African. The rest are spilt between the UK, US, France, Malta, Algeria and Tunisia. I've also heard the hiring manager talking about how she keeps interviewing people from South Africa.

Kyk ek kla nie (I'm not complaining), I like having South Africans around. It's just so apparent that everyone is pointing it out from management all the way to the students themselves.

[satoksa]

Jabal Alfil (Elephant Rock).

Super cool place! The mountain itself is HUGE and there are places to sit and enjoy the view. They play some music at night and there's a restaurant, shisha vendor and coffee shop as well. Pretty good experience, especially since we were there as the sun went down.

Not that far from town either, took us about 20mins to drive there in the work bus.

[satoksa]

Last night at the school we had a games night! Mostly women students attended which is why I have no pictures of the event, but we had a lot of fun! Today the staff is being taken to Jabal Alfil (Elephant Rock) on an outing.

[satoksa]

It has come to my attention that many people do not know about the Superman Rule in English and I need to rectify that.

When using pronouns in sentences you sometimes add an s to the verb and you sometimes don't. That s is Superman and the reasoning is fairly simple.

She/He/It are too scared to do anything alone. They need Superman to help them out. She eats food with Superman. He goes running with Superman. It exists only when Superman is around.

We/They are always doing things in groups and don't need Superman to protect us/them.

I am not scared of anything, and You are strong enough to protect yourself, so neither of us need Superman.

There you go. Now you know the Superman rule. Share it with the world.

[phrasalcards]

"Take up" = begin doing something as a hobby or habit. ⠀ Example: He took up tennis as he felt he had to lose some weight. ⠀ Example: He has taken up the violin. ⠀ Learn phrasal verbs in our app - https://onelink.to/7y3btw

[jinxpologist]

genuinely curious: if tumblr were to vanish right now, where would you set up your primary internet presence?

twitter/x

mastodon/bluesky/etc

reddit

neocities/other website hosting

traditional blogging (wordpress, wix, squarespace, etc)

spacehey

dreamwidth

tiktok

instagram

pinterest

nowhere, i'm going offline

other (put in tags)

Voting ended onNov 16, 2023

purposefully picked tumblr-like social media along with some really bit ones although nothing is really like this tbh

[jingle-byler-deactivated2023111]

which of these hated foods do you love the most?

cottage cheese

coleslaw

brussels sprouts

sushi

egg salad

mushrooms

eggplant

pineapple pizza

spam

Voting ended onNov 14, 2023

[satoksa]

My boss organised a game of soccer (or football, the non-American version) between some teachers and some students tonight after work.

I used to play field hockey in High School and I consider myself to be quite fit at the age of 27 so I decided I'd go and play. This was a bad idea.

First off, I know very little about the rules of soccer because I never played it before. I also don't have an interest in watching sport.

Secondly, I'm not as fit as I used to be. And the students play every second they have the time to.

Lastly, while I was good at hockey and playing the ball with a stick in my hands, my feet were trained to stay away from the ball and I have 0 skill playing a ball with my feet.

I can taste metal, I want to vomit, we lost 4-0 and I have no interest in doing this again. I'll take pictures next time.

[satoksa]

RAIN

[satoksa]

Rare sight today with all these clouds. It's rained since I've been here but the clouds were smaller. Today is also very windy and I might see a sandstorm as well. Hopefully not, apparently it makes life very difficult. But maybe

[satoksa]

Video calls with my family don't make the homesickness go away but it does make it less bad. I'm here for them and it's nice to see that my hard work outs a smile on their faces.

[satoksa]

I think starting next week I'm going to write a quote on the board at the start of every lesson. Not because it necessarily has any educational value in terms of teaching English, but because I am still a philosopher at heart and like teaching those kinds of things

[satoksa]

This week was a pretty shitty week as a whole, but it ended on a good note. I've been teaching lessons unsupervised this week and I got stuck with a new class. The class I have is mostly young women, and not chatty ones. Breaking the cultural barrier is hard enough with men, but with women it's even worse. Getting them to respond to questions, interact with me in the typical Teacher-Student way isn't easy.

But today I broke through. Today I made them laugh. I made some shitty joke about not wearing a belt because my pants I have today aren't falling down and they laughed at me. From that point forward they answered my questions, responded to my instructions and all round just worked with me instead of giving me absolutely nothing to work with.

Shitty week and I'm glad it's over, but today ended on a positive note. Next week should go much more smoothly.

[satoksa]

Before I came to Al Ula to start my adventure everyone told me the same thing. The first month is going to be exciting because everything is new and wonderful and there's a lot to learn. The second month the homesickness will hit you. And from there it gets easier because the place becomes your new home.

My homesick phase started a little earlier at 3 weeks. Things at home in South Africa keep moving forward and I feel so left out. I talk to family and friends, I keep myself busy, I go through photos of home. I'm doing all the things to help with the feeling, but it seems I can't totally get rid of it.

I hope my transition into normalcy here also comes faster.