Going Back to Work

Ten weeks of maternity leave seemed to have passed in the blink of an eye. Granted, I was already two weeks in by the time little H was finally born, but still. I had such grand plans for how I would spend my mat leave: I’ll go to the gym and workout every day! I’ll just bring him along in his carrier and workout while he naps. It will be so easy!! I’ll clean and re-organize the entire house! I’ll take up macrame crafts! I’ll take the shopping bus and have coffee at a cafe twice a week! 

Ha ha ha ha! It was surprising to my naive self to learn how many hours of each day were actually taken up by, you know, like taking care of the actual baby! When you figure that each feeding, start to finish takes up about an hour, and that he eats about every two to three hours, well then there goes a good half of your day. Then take into account the diapers, the dressing, the singing and playing, the tummy time and cuddle time, and yeah, that’s a whole day. So while I didn’t get to accomplish all of the perhaps unrealistic projects I had planned, I was extremely grateful for the time I got to spend bonding with little man. So it was a bit of a shock to realize that my gift of time had come to an end and it was time to return to work.

As it would happen, I was due to return to work just 3 days before winter holiday. This actually turned out to be a nice little practice run before the real return to work in January. Harris and I took a tour of the nursery the week before and met all of his caregivers. We also met all the other babies or nursery mates that would be keeping H company during the day. He was given his own personal crib for napping and cubby for storing his personal effects.

The night before, we assembled the items that Harris would need for nursery, including a blanket and bottles, diapers and wipes, a change of clothes and a little rattle and picked out his first school outfit. Justin insisted on brushing his “hair” so that he would make a strong first impression. Though H is still sporting a very distinctive hairline - dark and lush around the nape, and barely visible on the top. I wore maternity clothes that sadly still fit and we set off for our first day back.

Even though the nursery ladies are sweet and kind and loving, and even though the other moms rave about how pleased they are with the level of care their children receive, and even though the nursery is filled with soft music and happy, smiling babies, it was still very hard to pass him off. We parked our stroller in the designated storage area and walked him in. Immediately we were greeted by the smiling team of caregivers, and several babies who were already placed in their highchairs and happily awaiting breakfast. Justin and I placed his items in the cubby and covered H in kisses before tearfully handing him over. Another mom saw me and gave me a big hug and told me she always cries when she sees moms handing over their babies because she knows how hard and sad it is. 

But we knew H was in good hands and would be fine. Outside we were given many encouraging smiles and hugs and pats of reassurance. It felt good to be surrounded by such a supportive group of moms and dads.

Because school was nearly out for the semester, classes for high school were already over and we were on an exam schedule. Therefore, I didn’t actually have to teach on these days back to work and instead just used the time to chip away and the mountain of grading that was awaiting me. Several students were still around on campus and a few of them came to give me hugs of congratulations and welcome me back.

During the first day back Justin and I ran over to the nursery five times between the two of us to check on Little Sir. Each time we found him to be either sleeping soundly, or being fed or cradled and rocked. This put us both at ease and allowed us to relax a little and focus on our school work. At the end of the day when we picked him up, he seemed happy and relaxed and he slept wonderfully that night. I on the other hand was absolutely exhausted, and for not having even been a real “teaching day” this was hard. But at the same time it did feel good to be back in my classroom, focusing on my craft and a part of the English team again.

All all in, I would say that both H and I had a great first few days and that we will be able to get into the routine soon. I’m definitely looking forward to being back at work full time because I love what I do and I enjoy the cognitive challenges of teaching and planning and working with students. Knowing that I have a wonderful nursery on campus only allows me to feel more relaxed about my transition back to work. Adjusting to the new hours and diminished sleep of course will be challenging, and I’m still not fitting back into my pre-pregnancy work clothes just yet, but I can only take it one day at a time. I think being a mom is only going to make me a better teacher and give me a new perspective on how I approach not only my teaching and work life, but my life altogether. So bring it on!

Winter Break in the Kingdom

We discussed a bit in our last post how we were planning on making our villa our Christmas base for this year for a variety of reasons. In addition to the benefit of saving lots of money on travel expenses, we were also able to arrange for Shannon’s sisters to come to visit us during the break for some much needed baby time, sister time, and exploration of Saudi.

As we planned their visit with them months ahead of time, they began their visa process. Saudi is not an easy place to get to or to visit due to many of the travel restrictions in place. But once we got our letter from the school, submitted their information, and sent it all to them, they took care of working it out with an expeditor in Washington D.C. and their visas came relatively soon after that. Permission to enter the country; check!

During the last week before our winter break began, our schedules were quite full with Shannon going back to work after her maternity leave, getting Harris ready for daycare, and grading the seemingly endless pile of exams. By the time all was said and done, and break had finally arrived, we got takeout and crashed early. We woke up the next morning to a desolate and empty compound. Most people during these breaks drop everything and travel to other countries for family visits, adventures through Europe, or relaxation in Southeast Asia; and most of them leave immediately. During the two days before her sisters came, we found the compound to be pretty close to empty with a few exceptions of people staying in town for a variety of different reasons. We spent that time finalizing some plans for their visit.

When they finally arrived, Shannon met them at the airport while I stayed home with the baby. They happened to come in at 2:45am, which coincidentally was one of the times the baby decided he wanted to be awake. So luckily, to reward them for their traveling around the world, the baby was awake to greet them. The next morning was Christmas Eve and we all slept in to help the sisters adjust to jet lag. In addition, it was Christmas Eve. We ran a few errands around town, which included them doing their makeup and fashioning their headscarves in unnecessarily complicated setups, but they looked great and wanted to play the part. How often do they get to travel to Saudi? After our errands, we went home and the three ladies made some Christmas cookies. While I am usually a fan of cooking, and take great pride in providing meals for my family, for Christmas dinner, we found out about a catering deal from the local Marriot. They were offering a fully cooked turkey, with all the sides and an apple pie and delivery for a very reasonable cost (less than it would have cost me to make it) so I jumped on the opportunity to take a night off of cooking. As we awaited the arrival of our delicious meal, I took the baby to the local common area of the compound where many of our fellow “staycationers” were getting together to do crafts with the kids, have dinner, and watch Christmas movies. After our meal, we all watched Christmas movies together at home and when the baby was put to sleep, I played the role of Santa for the first time.

The next morning, I got up early for morning baby duty and made everyone breakfast. We enjoyed opening presents and stockings, and spending time together. Afterwards, naps were had, movies were watched, and in the evening, we had a bonfire and I grilled outside, as the weather here right now is delightful.

The following day, after lounging around the house a bit, we all went off to the mall to kill some time and so Cait could get her makeup done. For Christmas, I got tickets for the three ladies to go see Cirque de Soleil as it was in town. We had dinner at a local food truck lot and I dropped them off for their show and took home the baby for some book time, bath time, and bed. They said the show was fantastic.

The next day, we woke up early and met up with some other friends who were staying in town with their visiting family members and drove out to the Edge of the World. Neither party had been there, but the site was one of the things my students most often cite as something cool to do in Saudi, so I figured we had to go check it out. The site is about two and a half hours from Riyadh, and we each drove separate cars. After about an hour or so into driving, the GPS guides you to basically turn off the road into an open dusty field; which we did. It was good to have two cars in case either car got stuck in the sand or popped a tire in the rocky terrain as we were out of cell phone service range. Anyway, after driving along the “path” that the GPS guided us along we arrived at a ledge that overlooked this huge gorge. Wind started to pickup to about 40-
50mph and due to the terrain, and our location, that kicked up a lot of sand and also dropped the temperature quite a bit. The sisters were adventurous enough to continue the last 15 minutes on foot, while Shannon, the baby, and I enjoyed the vistas from our car. The site itself is called the Edge of the World and looked beautiful. It was apparently an ocean bed some 50 million years ago, which is why we have heard that you can sometimes find fossils of sea creatures or shark teeth hidden in the sand. While the girls were on their trek, a herd of camels decided to investigate us and see what we were about. There was no shepard, but they appeared to be domesticated due to the blankets some of them wore. I wonder, how does the owner choose which camels “look cold” and warrant blankets? Only about 1 in 10 had them. On our way back, we stopped at a little oasis area along the trail and had a nice picnic outside. The wind and sand wasn’t as much of a problem there so we had hummus and vegetables, olive oil with fresh bread, fruit, and Arabic sweets coated in honey. Harris had milk. 

The following day, we went out to the annual Janadriyah Festival just outside of town. The festival takes place every year around this time, and seeing as we were in Saudi for the whole break, and will be traveling for all future winter breaks, we decided to check it out. The festival is a two week event that celebrates Saudi heritage and culture, as well as cultures of other local Arab nations, and even a yearly guest nation. This year’s guest nation was Indonesia. So to set off, the girls all did their makeup and head scarves, and we set off. We drove out to the site and found a huge fairground area. After walking through security (separate for men and women of course)

we entered the festival. The inside was really cool. They had sections separated for vendors selling goods and crafts from Saudi, the UAE, and other nations. There were traditional dancers doing sword dances, exhibits highlighting the Vision 2030 project, and vendors selling local foods, mint lemonade, and mint teas. We wandered around a bit and saw some of what the festival had to offer from dances to music to food and we had a great time. I have no doubt that the rest of the two week festival offered a lot of really cool cultural experiences that we didn’t even get to see.

I feel very fortunate for having so much time, and specific circumstances that allowed me to explore the Edge of the World, and the Janadriyah festival. I have mentioned that due to the convenience of the compound, the demands of our job, and now the added time constraints involved with raising a baby, it’s hard to engage in seeing all that Saudi has to offer outside of the compound. Those events were a great way to experience Saudi culture and landscape; and we got to experience it all for the first time with visiting family!

On their last day, we took the whole family to a restaurant called “The Globe.” The restaurant serves
as the second tallest skyscraper (I think) in the city. It provides fine dining, beautiful views of the city, and a great place to see the sun set over the city. We had coffee and tea, sandwiches, sushi, and desert as we enjoyed our last meal together before they left. It was another highly recommended place for us to go, that we were just getting around to. On our way to the airport, we talked about how showing off a city to others is a great way to see it and experience it yourself. We were very fortunate to be able to experience that with Shannon’s sisters and we were very grateful for them traveling around the world to meet their nephew and see us.

The day after they left, Shannon and I packed the car and went to Bahrain. We decided that since we did get Harris’ passport in time, it would be nice to take a short road trip for New Year’s Eve. Before the break, we were able to secure approval for our car to enter Bahrain, visas, and all other necessary paperwork with the help of our school’s HR department. The morning of the drive, we packed the car with snacks, an audiobook for the road, and all necessary baby accessories including extra bottles, diapers, bibs, etc.

About two hours into the drive, we stopped for gas, bathroom, and food at a local rest stop. We didn’t even have time to break into the snack pack before we were approached by a man in the parking lot. This sounds like a scary statement, but it was actually a really cool experience. The guy saw us holding Harris, as we were letting him stretch out a bit before getting back in the car. He introduced himself and his two daughters who were shy pre-teens. He told them to talk to us since he “Sends them to an English school, and this was a good opportunity to practice.” He asked us about our lives, where we were from, and told us about his. He and his family were Egyptian, and he wanted to formally welcome us to this part of the world. So he gestured to his wife, who stayed in the car and moments later, he produced some Egyptian food which can only be described as a sort of spiced meat baked ziti sort of concoction. We thanked him profusely for his generosity and ate it up. Then after a diaper change, we realized that we had no way to heat the baby’s bottle. I thought back to a time when I drove to a Phillies game with my stepdad and we ran into a similar challenge with cheesesteaks. I followed his lesson, and put the bottle on the engine of the car and let it sit for a few minutes. A few minutes later, warm milk! Thanks for that one Jeff.

After our rest stop, we continued driving for a few hours. The drive is really quite easy. Once we got on the road leading out of Riyadh, we followed it straight for like 4 hours until we got to Bahrain. Along the way, we passed rolling red sand dunes and herd upon herd of camels. I’m not exaggerating when I say I think we saw over 500 camels on the way to Bahrain. Along the drive, the baby slept, Shannon slept, and I drove. When we finally got to the border, we waited at four checkpoints or so checking our passports, visas, car registration, etc. At one stop, after waiting for two hours, one guy asked me why I don’t speak Arabic, pretended not to know English, revealed his hilarious joke, told me I need more children, asked why I only have one wife, and told me to get another one without telling Shannon. Shannon was not amused. Neither was I after the long wait. All in all we spent three hours at the border before getting into Bahrain. During our wait at the border, Shannon performed some seriously acrobatic diaper change maneuvers, feeding challenges, and a few other baby obstacles. She was a superhero as far as I’m concerned. Once we got to the hotel, our 4 hour drive had become an 8 hour drive. We settled in, ordered room service, improvised a baby bath in the bathroom sink, and went to bed.

The next day, we went to the mall to do some shopping. Shannon didn’t have to wear an abaya, which she was especially excited about. After that we went back to the hotel for a nice dinner at one of the many restaurants at our hotel, and enjoyed a quiet night in our hotel room awaiting the start to the new year. The night was quiet, but was nice. It was good to be out of the compound for a while. We got to explore Bahrain a bit, and test out what traveling with the baby would be like.

Our trip home was a lot more uneventful, with the border crossing only taking 40 minutes, and the drive going smoothly. We wrapped up our break by packing away our Christmas things, cleaning up the house, and getting set up for the week ahead. While we probably wouldn’t have chosen a two week stay in Saudi for our break had we been given the choice ahead of time, we both feel very grateful for the opportunity. This break was everything we needed. We had some time to rest and relax. We spent time with family. We celebrated our holidays. We celebrated the culture and landscape of our host country, and enjoyed every second of it. We are going back to work now refreshed and ready for the next push ahead during the second semester.