One of the reason I became a teacher was because I knew it would lead me to places around the world. I've been exploring the world since I was a child thanks to my parents' travels to their homeland of India. As a teenager, I lived in Malaysia for sometime and later lived in Italy. While I have been fortunate to travel to dozens of other countries, it has never been enough for me to be a a tourist in a foreign land. I am far too lazy to pack my bags for a 7 day, whirl wind tour of Europe simply to say, "Yeah, I've been there." I am a slow learner and need time to absorb the language, culture and people. I like functioning in a society new to me and becoming "one of them". Such experiences require me to question my own perceptions of the world and I firmly believe that it is through this questioning that we grow. As an educator, I think the biggest hazard in my profession is becoming intellectually stagnant. How can a creativity-stunted teacher inspire her students to take healthy risks? More importantly, as a mother how can I ask Taj and Milana to contribute to the world when they have seen nothing of it?
Being a teacher of English to speaker of other languages, there are opportunities for employment all over the world. So why has it taken me so many years to pack up and take root elsewhere? I suppose once you are settled with a family, it hard to break out of your comfort zone. During my single days, I wouldn't have thought twice about living in, say, a South American pueblo in the middle of nowhere, but things change when you have kids. Now I have to think about access to essential things like decent healthcare, adequate education and Pampers Pull-ups for Milana and Nestle Quik chocolate milk mix for Taj. You know, the important stuff. So after years of waiting for them to be just the right age and turning down teaching jobs unsuitable for families in other countries, the right opportunity finally came along last December in an email from my cousin Shikha in Washington DC. A recruiter was looking for hire teachers in Abu Dhabi. I researched a bit online and discovered that Abu Dhabi is in the midst of an education reform and looking for native English speakers to teach in their public schools. Admittedly, aside from what I recalled in Sex and the City 2, I didn't know much about Abu Dhabi. Luckily, Shikha had traveled to the United Arab Emirates and is very well informed about region and she assured me that this was the place to be an expat. From what I gathered from her description, Abu Dhabi was like Las Vegas- hot and flashy minus the topless bars and casinos. Perfect!
I shared all this with Alex, expecting him to be apprehensive, but was enthusiastic and supportive. I applied and after some interviews and mountain of paperwork, I was offered a two year contract teaching English to high school girls in 10th grade. So here we are, selling our home, furniture, cars and getting ready to set out for our new life this August. While I'm incredibly excited about this move, there are times when I doubt this decision. I'm asking a lot of Alex to give up his career to support my dream. It certainly won't be easy for the kids to say good bye to friends and family either, but I'm hoping it will teach us to be a stronger family and give us an understanding of the importance to thinking globally.
