The Dental and Nursing College

Sure enough, Suleiman arrived promptly at 7:30am to bring me coffee and some breakfast.  It was very nice of him.  We sat down to eat together at my very small table in the hotel.  He told me more about the dental and nursing school that he would take me to later for an interview.  He was part owner of this college as well, and his cousin held some sort of leadership position with the college though it wasn't exactly clear what that position was.  As I'm a very slow eater, he finished long before I did and said goodbye.  He told me he would send a driver to take me to the college around 10am since no one important gets to work before that time.  I thanked him again and said goodbye, thinking to myself that I would have probably enjoyed sleeping in a bit more than breakfast, but se la vi.

The In Hummer Cafe: Surprisingly tasty coffee

Around 10:15 Suleiman called to let me know that the driver was downstairs.  I went down and he drove me to the college which was about 20 minutes away.  There was a lot of construction on the road in front of the college, so it sort of surprised me when we arrived.  He pulled up in front of the concrete barriers and I hopped out to avoid having to go around all the construction and pull into the parking area properly.  Walking up to the college I noticed one, extra special feature.  Just outside the main entrance was an "In Hummer Cafe", which is exactly what it sounds like.  Someone had gotten the idea that people would love to have their coffee served out of the side of a Hummer, which has been permanently fixed to the site and outfitted with all the necessary kitchen stuff to make coffee and sandwiches. I laughed at first, but it's surprisingly lucrative.

Even though Suleiman had assured me that they were expecting me, I felt nervous and suspicious walking up to the college.  The lobby was nice, but I could see only men.  I asked the first person I came to to direct me to Dr. Sulam's office, and sure enough, I was ushered into a back office where a secretary checked in on another office, and advised me to wait.  After about 30 minutes, the secretary indicated that I could go in, so I went and spoke with Dr. Sulam.  He was nice and his English was tolerable.  He asked me a few questions and offered me dates and arabic coffee.  He looked at my CV and my qualifications and then told me I should meet with Dr. Mohammed who was the head of the English Language Department.

So his secretary took me across the lobby to the another office.  This happened to be the office of the Head of curriculum or something.  His English was not as good as Dr. Sulams, but he dutifully asked me some typical interview questions, and as I answered I realized he was probably only understanding about 30% of my answers.  He kept looking nervously at the door, until finally, Dr. Mohammed arrived and I could see relief wash over him.  The rest of the interview was conducted by Dr. Mohammed which the other man busied himself with stapling various bits of paper together to seem busy.  Dr. Mohammed asked some good questions and seemed to be really interested in my ideas about teaching methods, not only for the sake of the interview, but also because it seemed he was genuinely hearing many of these ideas for the first time.  He seemed excited, but sceptical.  After about 45 minutes, he told me he would take me in to see another Dr. (and by this time I was loosing track of their names), who was the English program coordinator or something like that.

We waited a little while for him to be free, and in the meantime, a very jolly robust man offered us more Arabic Coffee.  I wasn't formally introduced to him, but his desk was a prominent one between a group of three offices and he seemed very friendly, and was probably a good person to know, so I smiled and drank more coffee, telling him it was very nice.  The next Dr. I met with had the best English of all.  He actually used to work for my old company as a program coordinator for one of the largest universities in Riyadh on the men's side.  We commiserated on the decline of the company for a few minutes before he launched into his vision for this college.  Currently, English was a small part of the student curriculum that took place mainly in the first and second year.  They had a variety of full and part-time English teachers from around the middle east, mostly Syria and Egypt, but they had no native English speakers or westerners.  The students were not making much progress in English, so they hoped to change all that by hiring more Native speaking western teachers and creating a full year of preparatory English before they began any nursing or dentistry courses.  I was to be the first step in this project.  They had plans for hiring more teachers from England in the near future, but for now, it was only me.  He told me he would like for me to take on a sort of leadership roll and help with teacher training and selecting course books etc....  That sounded great and interesting, but I wondered how much they were actually willing to change, and also how the other teachers would react to some foreigner coming in and shaking things up.  My experiences in Dammam had made me nervous about trying anything truly revolutionary, a) because just doing the bare minimum seemed like such a challenge administratively, and b) most talk of reform seemed to be about lip service.  No one really wanted change anyway.  Still... there is always a chance.

He thanked me and told me they would have an offer to me by the end of the week.  I asked if it would be possible to see the classrooms, maybe meet some of the current teachers, and see the accommodations.  Dr. Mohammed tried to find a woman who could take me up and show me the women's section since he is not allowed to go up there, but we weren't having much luck.  Suleiman's driver was still waiting for me and since it had been over two  hours now, Dr. Mohammed suggested that maybe it would be better if I came back another day to see all of those things.  I could see the driver pacing the lobby waiting for me so I agreed and we headed back to the apartment.

I called Suleiman to tell him how it went, and he let me know that they would send me an offer soon, and not to worry about anything.  He told me that if Gemma called, just to tell her that Suleiman was working on it, and not to mention that he had helped me get the interview.  He told me just to relax and not worry about anything.  The more he told me not to worry, the more I wondered if there was in fact something to be worried about.  At least now I had an option if I wanted to stay in Saudi.