AND HE’S OFF!

Just a quick update before I catch my Swiss International Airways flight from Muscat to Zurich and Copenhagen late tomorrow, June 15.

This has been about the most complicated vacation I’ve ever planned – recreating Grandma Sundberg’s 1908 emigration from Sweden to the US by all-surface transport. But the day before I leave, I am pleased to say I have my air tickets booked, my Denmark-UK ferry ticket, my trans-Atlantic freighter ship booked (the most complicated means of travel I’ve ever dealt with), and my 15-day America pass with Amtrak.

My dad’s Swedish cousin Anna’s daughter Lisbet and hubby Cveto Serjun will be picking me up at Copenhagen airport (their main international airport for Southern Sweden, too) and putting me up for a couple of nights. Lisbet and her sisters have very generously assigned a relative's household for me to stay in every day of my week there June 16-22, including Midsommar evening, one of Scandinavia’s biggest family holidays – the longest night of the year in a country where the nights in summer are already very long! I am apparently also to be given a tour of the old farm homestead near Glimåkra, which was bequeathed to old Uncle Carl’s out-of-wedlock daughter (really, no big deal in Sweden). And I hope to attend Sunday service at the old Lutheran parish church in Glimåkra before leaving to catch my ferry from Denmark to Harwich, England June 23.

Work here the last two months has been extremely stressful, even more so when I found out May 24 that the coveted slot on the textbook writers group I had competed for back in December would be taken away from me without either of my two finished units being used in the final book.

(Long story, but the complaint from my boss 5 months into things was that my units were too “inaccessible” for Level 4 students, although having taught that level, I don’t agree. If he had bothered to deal with the issue earlier in March, when my first unit was completed and reviewed, rather than timing out the clock the end of this May, I could have amended the unit in plenty of time. Indeed, even in late May I said I would be very happy to push myself revising my work in June before I left, but they refused to give me more time to fix things to their liking. A totally unnecessary pity, since that means about $15,000 of the university’s money is down the drain, and my two Level 4 colleagues will now have to work even harder to create two new units to replace the ones I leave behind.)

Anyway, going from a very prestigious project and career momentum to nothing for fall has made me look around for other job options for this fall at the earliest, and January at the latest. I have a few applications in the works (all outside Oman), and if nothing comes through on the work front, I will take some professional development courses starting in January, perhaps back at AUC in Cairo. Our contract requires six-months (!) notice, so the end of June is my last “legal” time to give notice - and I am definitely planning to do that. That would mean staying on teaching here until December but is perhaps the most sensible decision professionally. However, if a good alternative teaching job is offered me for September, I will have no hesitation picking up stakes in August and breaking contract, whether or not the university pays my way home or I have to.

Very sorry it has come to that, but sitting in a career backwater for another year in Oman seems like the least wise professional move to make at this late age in my life. If I’m not moving forward in my career, I should at least be moving sideways. And so far, my boss here has given me no attractive options to replace the writing project they took away. In any, case I have earned the 60 days paid leave they are giving me this summer, and I intend to use it to the fullest!

Wish me safety and a “bon voyage”!