Upon returning home from Beijing--"Being in Beijing: Buses, Bikes, and Beer"--Mike O'Neal accepts a teaching position in Sharjah, the most culturally traditional and conservative of the seven United Arab Emirates. He'd never heard of the place. And from that early morning mumbled phone interview that landed him the job, to his last day of teaching and living in the gulag housing, Mike faced the adversities of abject racism, witnessed ethnic abuse and blatant sexist attitudes, and dealt with students who possessed not only elitist mentalities, but were classic examples of extreme ADD and ADHD...