Zachary Backes - CP 5

6/10/12

Today was the first day I got to meet with my new conversation partner معاذ الغامدي (Muad Algamdi). We met while I was working on the country presentation in the computer lab at CIES. He over heard me recording the narration about Saudi Arabia and came over to listen. Now, me being wholly engaged in my 15th freaking recording of a single paragraph worth of text, didn't even realize I had an audience until he started laughing at one of my sentences.

I turned around to see him almost doubled over in his rolling chair, apparently my intense Wiki-pedia research had yielded some very bad information on the history of Saudi Arabia that I was currently butchering. We spent the better part of an hour after that discussing the history of both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the place I later changed to due to Maud's suggestion. I cannot impart how freaking smart this kid is. The history for most Arabic lands is rooted in it's religion, and the family lineages that sprung from the prophet. Maud knew almost all the brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, and aunts that developed into separate tribes. Even with a pen and paper and furiously scratched out notes I had trouble keeping up.

When we met this morning at Lofty Pursuits I figured we would start with the pleasantries and background info, but Maud had other ideas. When we first talked he had mentioned to me a company that I should look into trying to get a job with teaching English, Aramco. They are the largest oil company on the Arabian Peninsula. He had mentioned the overwhelming amount of resources that they had, including fully enclosed compounds for employees to live at which included schools, shopping centers, movie theaters, and Western style suburbs. When he showed up he had a brochure on the company and a print out of some of their information.

He has an uncle who works for the company and has wanted to work there himself for as long as he can remember. He told me that these compounds are like little military bases with security and guards, even though most of them are located in the Emirates, probably the most Western friendly of the countries on the peninsula. While the research I was doing was saying that an average starting salary was between 3-5,000 dollars a months in the Emirates (holy crap right!) that Aramco started it's teachers at 5,500 a month with opportunities to reach between 7,500-8,000 a month. My jaw was solidly on the floor when he showed me this.

Now it does come with a downside. Employees have very little freedom outside of these compounds and there are stricter requirements to get a job, apparently a lot of people like the idea of working for Aramco (I wonder why?). We talked about our future plans over Root-Beer floats and both made a pact to try and get as close to our dream jobs as possible.

I realized only to late that most of our conversation was in English, Maud is very articulate and is definitely the most experienced speaker I've dealt with so far. I told him how I wanted to practice Arabic with him the next time we meet and he said he would work on something for (in other words i think i just become his TP, lol). All in all, I am very happy he overheard me that day. I got a new friend and solid contact in a prominent company. Thank you CIES for the opportunity to meet awesome people this.