Eid al Adha Holiday

The Imam needs to see this moon before you can book your holidays.

For the Eid al Adha holiday, we are never sure exactly what days off we will have until it is a little too late to actually book a holiday. Because of the dates that Eid was presumed to fall on, we knew that we would get Sunday (usually a work day), Monday, and Tuesday off (November 6th - 8th). The question remained whether we would also get Wednesday and Thursday off to make it a full week. In the past in similar situations the teachers and students have gotten the time off so a lot of people took the gamble and booked week long vacations.

Last Tuesday we got notification that we were only getting the three days (plus weekend) off to make this a mere 5-day holiday. This was no big deal for me because I had only planned on going camping for a few days. Others were not so happy. To add to the insult, many of the other colleges around the UAE were off for the whole week. A lot of teachers and students had already booked holidays. Since students were unlikely to cancel holidays, that meant mass absences and not much chance of any teaching going on.

The good news came at 3:45 today in an email: we were going to have the full week off. Unfortunately, the damage was done. Some teachers who had previously planned on traveling canceled their trips, losing deposits.While none of this really surprises me, I do think it could have been handled better. Giving everyone the week off to start with would have made everyone happy and helped to avoid the resentment. Alternately, had the powers that make the decision announced the dates earlier, students and teachers would have been prepared to be at school this coming Wednesday and Thursday. At any rate, I'm not about to complain about a week off.