Maria Andretti

Got the car on Monday and have survived a couple of scary situations already. The drive to and from work is pretty easy - only a couple of small roundabouts. I thought I had it all figured out that driving here is 99% attitude, and if you just drive like the street belongs to you, you will be ok. Yesterday on my lunch hour I drove over to pick up a theatre ticket; the route involved a very scary roundabout and traffic was very heavy. I very nearly got side-swiped getting off the roundabout, and later when I was merging into traffic off another street, I had to brake quickly to avoid hitting a car. The horns behind me were honking like mad! Today is Friday, expat driving practice day. CJ and I drove around some and I was able to find the place I have to go on Monday to get my hair cut (I'm getting desperate for that), we found a book store we have been wanting to go to (doesn't open until 4:00 on Friday), and we made it out the the compound where UCQ family housing is. We have to go to a barbeque there on Monday, so we thought we had better try to find out where we were going. After a couple of wrong turns we found it . . . it's way out in the boonies of Doha. I drove for the first little bit and than CJ took the wheel. She is feeling more confident now and ended up doing the driving for the rest of the day. There are lots of places that you can't figure out how to turn around if you make a wrong turn, so it's been an adventure!

We have decided to book the trip to Sri Lanka for Christmas time. The itinerary is wonderful - we will spend six days touring seeing an elephant orphanage, the Temple of the Tooth (Lord Buddha's upper left canine tooth), the Royal Botanical Gardens, a tea plantation, and a jeep safari in Yala National Park, among other things. The last 6 days are going to be spent at a beach resort resting from the rigors of our tour. I am very excited about this vacation!

I haven't talked much about my job - probably because all the issues around day-to-day living have consumed so much of my attention. I work in Student Services which deals with everything from recruiting students to come to our program, to admitting students to the program, registering students in their courses, advising on which courses to take, helping students with various problems and issues that arise, reviewing their academic progress, preparing students to graduate, and anything else that comes up that is student-related. My main responsibility is for the post-diploma students - those who already have a nursing diploma and are upgrading to a bachelor's degree. Most students do not meet our English language proficiency requirements so are taking English for Academic Purposes courses. Depending on their level of English proficiency, they are permitted to take one or two credit courses as well. My group of students is doing very well and we will likely be graduating about 20 of them in June. Because I arrived here after the beginning of the term, students are not in need of a lot of assistance now and I don't have a lot to do. I spend much of my time reading and familiarizing myself with the program, the processes we are using here at UCQ for tracking our students, reviewing student files, etc., etc. I work with 5 other women. Maha is our administrative assistant, who started just this week (I'm no longer the newest staff member in my office). She is Palestinian and is very nice. We also have a student counsellor, Mona Moussa, who has an interesting background. She is Lebanese, carries a German passport, did her graduate work in Australia and now lives in Doha! She looks western, and speaks Arabic. When students first came in and we introduced them to Mona, telling them she spoke Arabic, the students would look somewhat doubtful . . . until Mona started speaking very fluent Arabic . . . the looks on the students' faces were of sheer surprise. The other Student Services Officers (my title) are: Candace Jesson who handles most of the student life activities, Brier Albano who is responsible for the regular-track students (those are the students with no previous diploma who do the regular 4-year program - we call them the BNRTs - pronounced 'B-nerts'), and she is responsible for recruitment and student orientation; and Sondra Hutton who does so many things it's ridiculous. She's the previous admin assistant, so presently she is training and handing some things off to Maha. Once that is done, Sondra will be the advisor to the BNRTs and some other things I can't remember right now. Fred, my boss, must feel he's died and gone to Heaven to finally have a full staff. The past couple of years there have only been one or two staff dealing with everything. Since the program is still in start-up mode, there are many things that are being tried out so we are pioneering a lot of the things we do; and sometimes we feel like we are making it up as we go along. Am looking forward to learning more and getting to know the students better. The ones I have met are very nice. In a country where no one really has to work, I have to admire them for wanting to get an education in the first place, and to want to work in a helping profession. I hope I can help them to make a difference.