On feeling defeated…..

This is going to be a bit of a vent session. Today was a hard day. Nothing went to plan. Sometimes days are just like that. I’ve been in Saudi for 10 weeks now, and there are many, many rules. One of them is that we’re not allowed to leave the country for 90 days, until we’ve completed the probationary period. Part of the 3 month period is that we apply for our Saudi Health Council (basically like a nursing board back home) except that we continue to practice off our home nursing license. Anything we do here that isn’t legal would in theory affect our nursing license in our home country. So we file a ton of paperwork to get “licensed” here but its mostly just for show, and quite possibly because Saudi loves them some paperwork. My application was delayed as we needed to have a current American Heart Association CPR certificate and it took about a month before there was an opening for me to get in to a class. So 5 weeks ago I submitted all my paperwork. And now I wait……..as literally all my friends have gotten theirs. And in theory you would think mine would be fast as its just a renewal as I’ve previously had this Saudi Health Council thingy. But no. So I wait. And I can’t apply for my permanent residence card (otherwise known as an Igama) until I get this temporary license. And I can’t leave the country without an exit/re-entry visa, which I can’t get until I get an Igama. And I have no bank account here because……you guessed it…..you need an Igama to open a bank account, and you need your Saudi Health Council to get an Igama. And so the loop of bureaucracy continues. And I have leave coming up in a month. And I came here to travel. So I wait. And swear under my breath at the inefficiency of this system.

So then to top it all off I’ve had a headache (I’m sure unrelated to a New Years party last night) and I’m out of Advil, so I headed to the pharmacy on the hospital property and I arrived at prayer time. And it was closed. So I walked home, and then I tripped on my abaya on the stairs. And then I cried, because some days are hard. And its harder when nothing is familiar and you’re in a foreign culture where everything is the way it is even though the way it is isn’t very logical to a foreign mind. But tomorrow is a new day, and today is a new year so as the age old Saudi saying goes…..inshallah I will get my Saudi Health council next week. Inshallah.