Notes from a broad (title suggestion by my ever hilarious former teaching partner. Thanks Cheryl!)

Here in the land of heat and sand,

work and more work is the task at hand.

Watching movie after movie is the thing I've found

to occupy my time while living in this compound.

It's true that only the mad dogs and the English men,

go outside when the desert sun beats down on them.

While none would classify me as English, male, or dog,

I wonder upon midday street: for what did I sign on?

To find the life in this hot place, (did I mention that it's hot?)

I've come to see that real life is not in the places that I thought.

Melanie and Nestor, who come from the Philippines

or Solomon from India, are here, like me, for means.

This unlikely global community in the House of Saud,

all have hope for something more, insha-Allah, if it's the will of God.

Tolerance for 'isms' is the template of our lives,

we'll put up with almost anything for the cash we'll put aside.

Now don't get me wrong, god forbid, it's not that I have a bad attitude.

It's just that travel adventures in Saudi Arabia seem to elude,

the quaint village-children-street food scenes one finds in the developing world.

Instead it has been like The Truman Show, a strange mall, a fishbowl world.

And yet, when at dusk I close my eyes to the wind filled with subtle rich call,

Come pray, sings the man, again and again. His lifetime to beckon us all.

And so, I contemplate imperfection, and how much I still have to learn,

and trust my truth to reveal itself. My home still needs to be earned.