Its the WEEKEND!!

Tomorrow is the start of our one day weekend. You might ask yourself; "Self, didn't they have Thursdays and Fridays off for the weekend?"

You can answer to self that yes in fact we normally do have Thursdays and Fridays off for the weekend. Today, however, we were required to come in as they held classes today. So today, Thursay, which is normally our Saturday, was used as a replica Sunday. Confused? Well I'll clear it up. The first day of our non-natural Snow Days was a Sunday. We had class that Saturday and then Sunday and Monday were curfew days. We had class on the Tuesday and then had the curfew re-imposed on Wednesday. So today was the make-up day for the Sunday. All teachers and students were required to be here. Support staff still had the day off. Sundays are easy for us - one non-credit lab to teach - so that meant that today, Thursday, was also easy. So easy in fact that Swell left me by myself.

As I write this she is off somewhere in Nablus getting her hair done. So much for my never letting her out of my sight. She is with the secretary of the optometry program so she will be fine. She may get hepatitis but she'll be fine. (I say she may get hepatitis because an un-named coworker of Swell's mum warned us against getting haircuts while in Egypt because we would end up with hepatitis if we did. Our thoughts were "1. Why would we get our hair cut in Egypt? 2. That would have to be a pretty close cut to infect was with Hepatitis and 3. Why would we get our hair cut during our 10 days in Egypt?")

I held the lab, I kept it short because it is a no-credit lab and the students wanted to study for their exams. Short but informative if I do say so myself.

So we got paid today so I can tell the story of what happened while G was here. As you may recall a few weeks ago we were informed by the vice-president of the University that our salary would be $X. We were shocked as it was substantially less than what we were told it would be before we came. While we thought we got that all straightened out but when G. was here we were called to the old campus to meet with the University accountant.

Upon arrival he basically said: "How little will you work for?"

I was dumbfounded and taken aback. I thought we had this all taken care of. I was speechless. Swell immediately went on the offensive and yelled and screamed that we would work for what we were promised.

The accountant: "You know that we are in a very bad situation. We have not been receiving money from the government because they have no money. We have 16,000 students who don't make much money to pay for their education so we extend them loans. These are bad loans."

Basically he was saying that because of the international siege (which had not changed from the time we were offered what we were offered) that they couldn't pay us what they promised. On top of that he was a master of guilt. Saying that the University has to front loans to the students of which many will never be repaid - mostly because the opportunity for economic advancement is very limited even for educated students.

He proceeded to outline that we would need to consider that our wage was not just money. We also received housing and transportation.

When I indicated that we were very grateful for all of these things but they were already promised on top of the money we were promised he didn't care. He said that we would sit in his office until we reached a compromise. He turned to our dean to try to get her to help him convince us of the University's need to pay us less to avoid bankruptcy. She would have no part in it. Eventually he let us go promising to speak to the president and then let us know. He was very unhappy that we wouldn't compromise. He made it a point to indicate that we were used to a lavish lifestyle and that that lifestyle wasn't something they were willing to pay us for.

It was funny. I have no bad feelings toward him. He is just doing his job. Little does he realize that we took a monster pay cut to come here. If we were to be paid this wage for an entire year combined we would make about half of what Swell was paid by herself last year. I'll admit that we do have a lavish lifestyle. We drive a used car that was a gift and has over 100,000 miles on it (we love the car by the way), we have a lot of bills - what with having to pay our student loans and all - our most extravagant purchase of our lives was our condo. We were paying a small fortune in rent and could buy a place for just a bit more. Seemed wise to me. Anyway, he obviously has no idea who we are.

We were paid the right amount today. We'll be mailing the cheques to our bank next week. He did indicate that we owe the school 500 sheckels though. Apparently they paid the driver who takes us to Israel too much and we owe him for some of the legs.

G. we're looking in your direction. They say that we owe him for the trip to and from the airport. You'll be getting a bill! (j/k)

On another note. I found a proposer for my fellowship (thanks anyway CWH). It is the chief of VT at Pacific. I was his student and then worked under him when I was a VT attending after graduation. Really nice guy. So I'm filling out the paper work and then will have 3 years to collect 50 points. I should get some points for my Master's degree and hopefully will get this paper published which will give me some more. If I had done a residency I'd be done now(it is amazing to me that people can be fellows 1 year after graduation. They do it so quickly by getting points for doing a residency. Part of the residency requirement is to do a poster presentation or publication so just by finishing a residency you are over half way there. Seems odd to me. It seems like something you should have to work a bit harder for.) Hopefully I'll have all my points in time for the 2008 exam. 2007 is too soon as all materials have to be in by June.

Well that's enough rambling. Our students are sufficiently worried about next weeks exams that they should be studying all day today and tomorrow and then on Saturday we'll see.

Later,