TGIW

Thank God it's Wednesday! (Yes, the work week here ends on Wednesday.)

Today was the first teacher-y thing we've done so far. All the instructors had to report 8-8:30 this morning for duty for the all-important Placement Exam, which decides what level the incoming pre-freshmen will be placed in. Test monitors, following the British usage, are called "invigilators" (I think that's illegal in several Southern states). There was Invigilator A and B. I was neither. I guess we newbies were too inexperienced to be entrusted with a task so grave. We were sort of "hall monitor/gopher".

A gaggle (a "flock"? an "exultation"?) of teenaged Omani girls swathed in black but for their nervous faces poured into building F. I guess a "herd" would be a more appropriate group name, since they were basically herded into various empty classrooms for the test. They went up the "Female Lift" (elevator), while I went up the "Gents Lift". (Very British influence in Oman - for decades now - with Muslim segregation of the sexes thrown in for good measure.)

One poor British instructor ended up by himself with a room full of confused young women and spoke no Arabic, so I thought I'd make myself useful translating and helping them fill out the forms. They got the names and numbers right, but the "field of study" was a bit problematic. "Please, teacher. How spelling agriculture?" (These were low-level learners, obviously.) And we politely confisccated all cellphones, since text messaging and pre-messaging have been known cheating tactics.

After all the girls were into their test taking (only girls in my building this time), I sneaked off to the "refreshment room" to mingle with other teachers and the central testing coordinators. One of the testing unit men, Farah Bahrouni from Tunisia, had ignobly torn a nice triangle out of the back of his pants so that his red shirt showed through. He took it in humorous good grace. We ribbed him that his wife would now be wondering what kind of "exam" he had been giving. One Omani woman, a scholar of the Qur'an, apparently, joked that in the Surah about Joseph, his proof of innocence when set upon by Potiphar's wife was that his clothing was torn "from behind" and not "from before." A witty (and pious) reply!

One of the test committee members, an Omani woman, had baked a Martha Stewart chocolate brownie recipe she had gotten off the net for all the hard laboring test givers. So you see, we are up to date out here!

Afterwards, skipping lunch, I got to Famco - the faculty-staff clinic - early enough to get my required medical exam. (I had arrived the day before after 2:00 when the admitting office was already closed.) Standard stuff: weight, blood sugar, blood test, blood pressure. They want me to get another chest X-ray, but since I had just had one done in June for my contract finalization, I insisted that they use the already finished one. They are very fast and free with radiating people here in the Peninsula. (Kind of like the fascination with radium when Madame Curie first discovered it - people were putting it on their food!) But the old X-ray wasn't sent to the university hospital - too logical - so now I have to track it down in a file somewhere in the Personnel Affairs Dept.

Speaking of radiation, this evening, I joined my American neighbors Virgil and Myra and some friends at a Turkish restaurant for a small celebration of Myra's safe return from radiation therapy in India for her breast cancer. A US-trained Indian doctor has opened a chain of world-class, US-standard private hospitals in India offering treatments for cancer, heart surgery, neonatal surgery, etc. at 1/10 the cost in the US. Virgil and Myra warned me against the SQU medical center in dire stories of malpractice over the years. "For simple procedures, yes, but don't go there for anything serious!"

Anyway, tomorrow begins the weekend, and I hope to catch up on some of my hundreds of emails you have all filled my mailbox with!

Hayyaakum Allah! (God give you life!)