One of Suleiman's selling points for taking the job at the medical school over fate college was the ability to earn extra cash in the evenings by working at the "institute" a private language school next door to the college, owned by the same people as the college, but somehow different from the college.
They called me at the end of my second week of work to officially recruit me for the evening classes. They initially wanted me to work from 4pm - 8pm everyday. After my last experience working non-stop at my old company and tutoring, I wasn't sure I wanted to jump into a 12 hour work day. Even though I didn't really do anything yet at work, I was sure I would start doing something eventually, and then an hour break between the college and the institute definitely wouldn't be enough. I told them I could do two hours, but not four. Then we spent some time negotiating pay. As bored as I was, I wasn't sure I really wanted to give up my evenings watching The Wonder Years and experimenting with cooking in my hallway kitchen for mere peanuts. Still, given the whole point of staying in Saudi was to make money, I figured I should take every opportunity I had to do just that, so I agreed to start.
I went to the institute the next day during normal work hours (since I was so busy doing nothing there) and met with all the men in charge. We did some paperwork to finalize everything and he showed me where the women's section was (a separate building entirely, closer to the college). We did not go with me inside however, since only women were allowed inside.
They wanted me to start that afternoon so I arranged for the driver to come back and pick me up a few minutes before 4pm and head over the institute. I arrived and went inside and looked around for someone in charge. There was a woman behind the large desk who seemed very confused when I approached her. Apparently, no one had bothered to tell her that I was coming, or that I would be teaching. I'd like to blame it on the gender divide, that because men aren't allowed in the women's section they weren't able to tell the women about me, but I have a sneaking suspicion that even if I was a man joining the men's campus, communication wouldn't be great either. So that first day was a very short 10 minutes. She told me she would call me back when there was a class ready to start.
Two days later, she called me and told me to come from 6pm to 8pm. I came and so did 5 students. There were officially 12 on the roster. Eventually, there would be 15 on the roster and only about 7 showing up regularly, which was crazy to me since they were paying to take the course. The girls were a mix of mostly older married women looking to advance their careers (or get one in the first place) and high school girls with parents who wanted them to have as much exposure to English as possible. It seemed to me that none of them really knew each other, but after a while I discovered that for most of them this was their second class together, they just didn't really interact much. I was really surprised by that, but I guess I shouldn't have been, since Saudis are generally quite formal and distant with me, why wouldn't they be with each other?
The class went well and they all seemed keen to learn, so I had the feeling it was going to be an easy and rewarding 2 hours 5 times a week. We will see.
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