Back to Work (again)

I know, I know, I have been a bit remiss in posting a blog since before Christmas, but I am back :D albeit only a short entry and no pics to go into this post. I will go back to the first week in the New Year of 2010.

I was still in bed, resting my eyes soundly when my phone rings at the ungodly hour of 9.30am (rudely awakening me) and it was the husband, calling to say he was on his way home to collect me for a surprise interview scheduled in 1 hour time with the Rector of the university.

I flew out of bed and raced into action with the prayer that please please don't have water turned off, or electricty down (they had been doing random maintenance days in the compound around this time and sometimes you would get up at 8 am and have no water or power for hours) - Lucky me, all was good so I showered, make-upped, and hairdress'd, and threw the abayer on just as Jesse walked through the door. The good thing about wearing the abayer here is that it hides a multitude of things - including rumpled clothes, trakkies, or even pj's if you so desire :D but I did dress very nicely under it (just in case).

No time for pre-job interview jitters for me, no time even for brekkie :( and 50 minutes later we arrived in the middle of the desert (slight exaggeration - it is really on the coast but surrounded by sand) for my job interview. The Rector greeted me very pleasantly in his huge marble lined, massive office and introduced me to the Director of HR who was to sit in on the interview. Lucky for me I didn't know that these 2 men hold the most senior positions in the Eastern Region of Saudi so I wasn't really nervous at all.

The interview started out as all interviews do, but soon got to the nitty gritty :D - There was one sticky moment when asked what my university qualifications were but we sailed past that with flying colours and a job offer was in my inbox that afternoon. Oh the size of my head - it took days to come back to normal .....hahahaha

My job title is......IT Support Officer - Student Affairs :) and I work in the admissions department so have full contact with new students wishing to enter our fine institution. I am even having business cards printed for me - English one side and Arabic on the other side. I have been readily accepted by the ladies into the admin section and must admit that I was a bit worried on that front as I am the only western female working in this area.

Jesse is still most surprised at the speed with which the offer was made and how quickly I was introduced to university life thereafter :P and in the 4 weeks I have been here have done some very interesting things like web surfing to make a report on how other universities post their student application sites, and visiting a high school for recruitment purposes, student "Stress Free" days the week before finals which included aerobics, yoga, exercise, diet, sleep and study habits, and I did aromatherapy for relaxation. All the admin staff joined in the activities so you can imagine how sore I was from all this uplifting exercise after 2 days........oh the joys of having anti inflammatory’s available without a prescription :D but it was a very fun few days.

Well I will post more in days to come with pics as there is a very big chunk of time that has been missed out on.