The New Story

For all of you who don’t already know, I have made quite a change and it’s more than just the title of this blog. I have moved from Alaska to Abu Dhabi. Why? Well, here it is. Teaching in an Alaskan village is hard. Don’t ever let anyone tell you differently. It was more challenging, but also more rewarding, than most teaching assignments in the Lower 48. However, there are times when the challenges outweigh the rewards. I had one of those days in October. I came home frustrated and convinced that Starbucks was a viable career move. My roommate thought I was being a bit hasty and suggested a change of scenery for the next year. She suggested I apply with TeachAway, a hiring firm placing Western teachers all over the globe. In November, I completed a prescreening interview for multiple areas. Apparently, they found me sufficient and passed on my information to several representatives. I heard nothing and assumed nobody wanted to hire me. I had several other irons in the fire: Anchorage, Ohio, the Virgin Islands (my mom’s top pick!), and the Gulf Coast. However, in February, I got a call asking me to come to Seattle for a job fair that weekend. I declined as I had other obligations, and instead arranged a Skype interview with a school in Abu Dhabi. Now, in all honesty, I had no idea where Abu Dhabi was outside of it being somewhere in the Middle East. The most information I had about it came from the movie Sex and the City 2 which wasn’t even filmed in Abu Dhabi! When I was offered a position, I researched the area, called friends and family for input, and thought A LOT about it. In the end, I accepted the position of Lead English Teacher at a selective private academy. You might wonder what in the world would lead a smart, young American woman to give up all the glamour of Eek, Alaska, to move to one of the hottest places on Earth! For me there were several reasons. First, it was a step up on the career ladder. It would have taken me a lot longer to become lead teacher of a department back in the states (I guess technically I was the lead teacher in Eek, but I was the ONLY English teacher so it wasn’t quite the same). Secondly, I’ve never lived in a huge city. The biggest town I’ve lived in was Tiffin, Ohio. I wanted to give city life a try and see how it suited me. Finally, this is an area the is becoming a major player on the world stage and it’s exciting to be a part of it! So, on August 22 I took my two suitcases packed with clothes, shoes, and supplies to the Canton-Akron airport and flew from there to Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany, and into Abu Dhabi.