Character: Mina

  • Miss or Not, Part 2

    Miss or Not, Part 2

    Ref: Weather Underground

    And that, my friends, is a wrap on Not on a Camel! This is the last comic of the series. It’s been a good run, but my contract is up and I’m back in America now so it’s time to end it. Thank you to everyone who read my silly little comic.

    Josh gets a cameo here for the sole reason of I needed someone taller than me because of the panel design. And panel two is true in two senses: sometimes, especially with foreign languages, what is meant as a good-natured joke doesn’t always land and I was being cautious, and there was so much stuff at that school that was completely ridiculous/sometimes edging on the illegal side that it would not present well…

    I did get the worst food poisoning of the entire two years the weekend before I was due to come home, hence the lateness of this comic. Not fun when needing to pack.

    The final panel obviously does not include everyone I met, but I just didn’t have room/skill to draw everyone. I tried to stick to people who had appeared previously, but Rhonda did get to appear for the first time. She is a teacher at Schutz that I got to be good friends with and would have likely appeared in the comic had my update schedule been better this year.

    And yes, that is a picture of my visa with ‘WORK IS NOT PERMITTYED’ circled (I did not add the circling). That was a thing that caused much frustration, including (as I later discovered) some of the issues with getting into Turkey. One of the requirements for me to stay at this job was to go to the visa office every few months and lie to a government official, claiming I’m a tourist. That is an experience I will never do again and I absolutely hated it, to the point that I almost left multiple times and probably should have (note: this was not revealed to me until I was already in the country, one of many omissions I encountered). The only thing that kept me from doing so was my life outside of work; I didn’t want to jump ship without completing what I set out to do.

    That being said, overall the last two years was a very positive experience and I’m glad I did it. To my friends in Egypt, I miss you already! To everyone else, Egypt is a wonderful and safe place and I hope you get the chance to go sometime!

  • Looking for Schools

    Looking for Schools

    Ref: Teach Away | International Schools Review

    Shortly after making this comic, Mina (in the first panel) contacted me about an Alexandrian Pokémon GO group just starting up. Been hanging around with this lot every week since; great group of blokes who put up with my American quirks (I’m the only foreigner) and translate for me. Monsef is the cameo in panel 2 is a doctor and one of our little merry band of trainers. GO is not always very considerate of the Middle East, what with events landing during iftar and some ‘weekend events’ being on Sundays.

    AIA, like probably every other school, has had its high and low points. One of those involved the government shutting down all church-based villa schools. AIA was eventually able to get an exemption, but needless to say in the time where everything was in limbo, there was a lot of discontentment. Not gonna lie, if I had seen those reviews before arriving I probably wouldn’t have come, so take them with a grain of salt. That being said, not all reviews are negative and they can give a good view of the school.

    Also, I have a rubber mallet. This makes me happy.