The Journey Begins...

Well, sort of.

Here's the story so far: I'm a nurse at Shriners Burns Hospital in Boston. It's a terrific place to work, and the people there are great. I'm also proud to say that it's almost universally recognized as the premier pediatric burn facility in the world. I've been there for two years, and I can honestly say that I love my job. That's no small thing – in fact, it's a claim that very few people I know can truly make. Nevertheless, Shriners is the only hospital I've worked at since graduating nursing school. So my experience has been kind of limited.

With that in mind, I began to think a while back about broadening my horizons a little bit. And not just professionally, but personally too. A good friend of mine, a classmate from elementary through high school, has lived not just all over the country, but all over the world. That's always made me a little jealous – not least of which because I've always had an interest in other countries and cultures (at least partly out of a hope that other countries aren't as enamored of country music, oversized SUV's, and reality TV as ours seems to be). So the idea began to gel in my mind of putting my nursing skills to work overseas.

It turns out that the nursing shortage so publicized in recent years is not confined to the United States. Just about every country in the world is desperate for nurses. That was good news for me. The bad news was that, since my foreign language skills are limited to schoolboy French and German, and as such are wholly unsuited for the kind of complex interactions required in medicine, my options were somewhat limited. That, I figured, essentially left the English-speaking countries: Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and possibly South Africa.

"Hold on," you might say at this point, "Canada isn't a country." But it turns out that it is. They have their own laws and government and everything. Nevertheless, I ruled it out pretty much right off the bat. First, while it's a beautiful and progressive place with many admirable qualities, Canada (at least the English-speaking part) is not so different from the US that it would offer much in the way of an "international" experience. If you were drugged, thrown in the back of a car, and transported to, oh, Edmonton, it's safe to say that it would probably take you a while after coming around to realize that you were in a foreign country at all. Second, Canada is cold. I'm talking testicles-retreating-into-your-body-cavity cold. I get enough of that in Massachusetts – I am sure as hell not looking for more. So Canada was out, eh?

The UK was actually my first choice. Anyone who knows me is well aware that I am an avid anglophile. How much of an anglophile? Let me put it this way: I have a very close friend, a man for whom I would willingly take, say, a crossbow bolt to the thigh. This friend has (jokingly, I hope) suggested that he might get a tattoo of an American eagle spitting fire on a Union Jack (which is correctly referred to as a "Union Flag" unless it is flown at sea – but I digress) because he believes that the English occasionally need to be reminded of the fact that "they got beaten." Despite my love for this man, I have made it very clear that if he actually gets such a tattoo, I would probably be forced to sever all association with him. Now, possibly I've misunderstood our relationship, and that this is not so much a threat as an incentive. But regardless, I think this story accurately illustrates my feelings toward all things British.

Unfortunately, the British don't pay their nurses very well. Even with my experience at a prestigious hospital, I couldn't expect to make more than about $30,000 per year in the UK. Given that the cost of living there is about the same as here, that's just not a possibility. It turns out that the situation is pretty much the same in Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. It's even worse in South Africa, which has the added minus of having a high crime rate.

So I was starting to lose hope. But, somewhere in the back of my mind was a hazy recollection of hearing that a lot of Americans work in the Middle East, and that the salaries there were typically pretty good. So I fired up The Google. It turns out that my memory was correct. There were many, many sources on the Web advertising nursing jobs in the Gulf states. So, after some research, I contacted a reputable recruiting agency and submitted an application. Within a few weeks I had a telephone interview with the nurse manager of a pediatric surgical unit at a large, prestigious hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Not long afterward I was offered a job.

It's a pretty good deal. The hospital itself is supposed to be a very advanced, highly regarded facility. In fact it prides itself in being the match of any top American hospital for quality of care. It's also gigantic – literally hundreds of beds, quite a jump from Shriners, which has a maximum capacity of only 30 kids! The base salary is respectable by American standards, and that's before overtime (of which, I've been told, there is an ample supply). But that base salary is greatly enhanced by two factors: 1) it's tax-free (I have verified this with the IRS – US citizens resident in foreign countries pay no income tax on earned income up to $82,400), and 2) the hospital provides living accommodations. No taxes, no rent, virtually no financial responsibilities. It's like being Paris Hilton, only without the venereal disease. It's essentially the same as earning 50% more than you would in the States. And since, according to my research, the cost of living in Saudi Arabia is relatively low, it's possible that I could come back from a year in Riyadh having banked some serious scratch. How serious? Well, maybe enough to be in new BMW territory. Pretty tempting.

And Saudi Arabia would certainly provide the exotic foreign experience I'm looking for. In fact, for a Westerner, Saudi Arabia is probably about as exotic as you can get and still be on the planet Earth. Language wouldn't even be an issue, because although Saudis speak Arabic, the hospital conducts all its business in English. They even provide interpreters for the nurses to speak to the patients.

Still, I was ambivalent for a little while. It's a year's commitment, which is a long time. I could miss a lot. For example, one of my friends (the Britain-basher mentioned above, in fact) and his wife will be starting a family soon, so I could miss the birth of their first child. But, as the potential father pointed out, even if they had a baby while I was away, he or she would only be a few months old when I got back – it's not like the little nugget would even know who I was in that time, anyway. There'd still be an entire lifetime of messing with the kid's head for my own amusement. Then I thought about my life one year ago. It really wasn't very different from today. Sure, some minor details have changed. But the fundamentals haven't. I still live in the same place, work at the same job, hang out with he same people. Okay, I drive a different car. But that's about it. So what's a year? It feels long when you're in the middle of it, but when it's over it seems like hardly any time at all.

So in the end I decided to do it. I'm going to Saudi Arabia. There's a lot to do before my departure date, which right now is scheduled for October 31. Turns out moving to a foreign country for a year is sort of a big deal. Who knew? Medical tests, immigration papers, etc., etc. And, of course, setting up a blog with a name that would probably make Peter O'Toole cringe. I'll keep you posted.