The Beginning of Ramadan

Last night we went to the beach house again to celebrate the start of Ramadan.  Ramadan is a month long holiday during which Muslims fast during the daylight hours, which means giving up all temptations, not just food or water, but also tobacco and intimate relations.  It seemed to me at first like a bleak sort of holiday.  I mean, what sort of holiday can it be when there is no food and everyone is grumpy because of empty stomachs? 

In fact, most Muslims look forward to it the way we anticipate the holiday season at home.  I have figured out that this is largely because of the evening hours between the fasting.  Breaking the fast is a festive activity where they eat special carb heavy foods to get them through the day.  It is a time to be around family and friends, eat together, pray together, and celebrate the start of a new year. 

So Ramadan would be starting at approximately 3:30am, as soon as the first call to prayer was announced.  the dates of Ramadan change every year and are determined by the spotting of the moon.  Even the time of day prayers (salat) happen change daily by one or two minutes and are determined by the sun's pattern in the sky.  So if you ask, as I did repeatedly for weeks before hand... "When does Ramadan start and end?" you will never get a straight answer.  "We think, between the 28th and 29th...."  or "Probably Monday, but maybe Tuesday."  This might have driven me crazy a few months ago, but now, frankly I would be shocked to receive concrete information about anything.  

In preparation for Ramadan, the boys invited us to eat with them before they would begin fasting.  I was excited to eat anything I hadn't cooked for myself... since what I cook for myself is usually terrible.  So I didn't eat anything after coming home from work, thinking we would eat around 8pm.  But the boys were detained and didn't show up to pick us up until 10pm.  Then they bought a bunch of pre-made shish kebabs from a shop near where we live, and brought them and us to the beach house.  By the time we arrived, it was nearly 11:30pm.  I hadn't realized that I would be fasting before Ramadan even began.  I was already starving and it hadn't even been 12 hours since I had last eaten.  How would I survive Ramadan?

Every Saudi house has a grill, which is actually a small low to the ground rectangular tray which they fill with charcoals.  I wanted to help, but there didn't seem to be much to do.  Once the charcoal was poured into the tray, they lit it on fire and then we just had to wait for the coals to be hot enough.  Unfortunately, the fire kept going out.  So they lit it again.  They tried blowing on it and fanning it, which worked for a while, but would then promptly go out.  I began to suspect that this is what they make trick birthday candles out of.  Finally, one of the guys brought over an industrial strength fan - you know the kind they use to blow up kids bouncy houses - and started using that to fan the flames.  That did the trick.  Soon we had flames higher than I am coming from a  2 foot tray of charcoal a few inches deep.  Everyone cheered, but I wondered a) where did the fan come from and why did they have it, and b) were we going to be cooking the shish kebobs like hot dogs over a campfire?  I only got the answer to one of those questions.  After about ten minutes of bonfire flames, the coals were finally red hot and deemed "ready" and the fire was blown out, so that only the glowing coals remained.  It was nearly 2am and time was becoming crucial.   We laid the shish kebabs across the tray and carefully rotated them every few minutes or so. After one of the guys burnt his hand turning one of the metal sticks, I took over.   I used my headscarf as an oven mitt and carefully rotated each kebab.  The trouble was it was dark and there was a lot of smoke.  I was having a hard time figuring out if the meet was raw, just right, or completely burnt.  I kept turning them anyway, and occasionally I lifted one up and tried to see how it was doing.  There was a lot of guess work involved.  In the end, we had a few kebabs that were thrown to the kittens because they were over or under cooked.  I think they may have eaten as well as we did when it was all said and done.

At a quarter to three, we all sat down to eat.  There was plenty of bread and meat and vegetables.  We stuffed ourselves and the guys all ate as much as they could.  Their eyes were darting back and forth between the food and the clock in a race to finish before the first prayer.  Luckily everyone was more or less completely stuffed by ten after, and we settled onto the couches to enjoy that post thanksgiving feel.  The guys were passing a huge bottle of water between them drinking as much as they could.  At about ten minutes to the first prayer, the guys started chain smoking cigarettes, trying to get every last puff in before the sound of the call to prayer would make sure nothing passed their lips between now and tomorrow (today) at about 7pm.

While we all sat watching the clock and straining for the sounds of the call to prayer, the guys tried to explain to me what all this meant.  They told me about a good angel and a bad angel on each of their shoulders, and they explained that everything, every single act, good or bad, was always written down in the books the angels kept.  They explained that on judgement day, these acts would be weighed against each other and determine your fate.  They explained that during Ramadan, good deeds counted double.  Bad deeds were still just bad deeds, and each bad deed was worth the same as any other bad deed.  I asked if that meant that murdering someone was worth the same amount of negative points as cheating on a test at school.  Well, yes, technically, they said.  I asked if bad deeds counted double too during Ramadan, and they said, not exactly, but it would be really really bad to do anything unholy during Ramadan.  It seemed like a pretty good system to me.  I could rob a bank, but so long as I helped an old lady cross the street while making my get away, I was even steven.  Unless it was during Ramadan, in which case, I would come out ahead since helping the old lady would count twice.  It seemed hard to imagine how anyone could come out bad deed heavy with such a system.  I didn't mention these thoughts to the guys though, because they had already moved on to talking about the other requirements of Ramadan, which involved praying more than the normal five times a day, and reading the Quran a lot.

The closer we got to prayer time, the more giddy the guys got.  It was almost like they were waiting to open presents on Christmas morning.  They seemed very happy and excited, even as they frantically swigged water and puffed away at cigarettes.  Finally we heard it, faint at first because the nearest mosque was far away, but then the cell phones, which come pre-equiped here with an islamic app that announces prayer times automatically (among other useful features, like GPS to the nearest mosque and a searchable Quran both audio and text) started to go off and Ramadan had officially begun.  Cigarettes were extinguished and water bottles closed.  While the guys did their prayers under the earliest signs of a lightening sky, the girls and I cleaned up the mess from dinner and started preparing to leave.

I was extra sad to leave the beach house this time, knowing I was unlikely to see it again for a month or ever (you never really know with these guys).  Starting tonight, people would be breaking fasts together with their families, and then rotating homes each night to celebrate the end of a days fasting with friends and neighbors in turn.  It's a month of basically non-stop visiting, that never starts until after seven and doesn't finish until 3 in the morning.  But for me, it would be a month like any other. And today would just be another day like any other, except, I realized as the sky faded to a soft blue in front of me, that today would be a day with no sleep.  I would have to get on the bus to go to work pretty much as soon as I got home.  I guess I've done my part in giving up something tempting for the start of Ramadan.  So long cozy sheets....

Three Arabian Nights

My next door neighbor in our apartment complex and fellow teacher is the force behind all my interactions with Saudi culture outside the classroom so far.  She has been in Saudi for over three years (mostly in Riyadh) and so she knows the ins and outs of the secret life of co-ed activities.  She is the reason we have been able to go to the beach houses and date farms, and in general, mix with Saudi men.  Until now, we have always been in the company of more or less the same group of guys, give or take a few friends and cousins who randomly show up.  This weekend, because it is right before Ramadan, and because she is leaving soon on her annual vacation, we spent the last three nights with a different group of her friends each night.  It was a crash course in the many very different kinds of underground life possible in Saudi.

Lobby of the Meridian

The first night, we met up with two guys who work at Aramco.  They had planned to rent a small villa, but unfortunately, there was no vacancy.  Apparently, it is crowded and busy because everyone is trying to get out for one last hurrah before Ramadan.  Instead they took us to a 5 star hotel called the Meridian, which has a coffee shop with family seating.  Even though there are many coffee shops all around, and a few who even have family seating, it is generally frowned upon for men and women to sit together at these coffee shops unless they are related.  At fancy hotels, it's a little more acceptable because for one thing, they cater to foreigners, and for another, it isn't crowded, so you are a lot less likely to be seen by someone who may know you and tell your family that they saw you with a woman.  So we went to the coffee shop inside this fancy hotel.  When you walk into the lobby, the first thing you see is a large pillar with water cascading down the sides into a small pool.  On the wall above it are three giant portraits. The top portrait is of the first King of Saudi Arabia.  The bottom right is the current King, and the bottom left is the man in line to be the King when the current King dies.  In Saudi, the line of succession passes through the brothers before it moves to the son or other relatives.  Unfortunately, the last two people named to succeed the King have both happened to die before the King himself, so that third picture must need to be changed a lot. It's very important that a successor is named in advance, since there are over 2,000 direct descendants, and something like 15,000 other relatives.  The first King, being very politically astute, understood that to unite all of the many tribes into one united country, he had better marry into as many of them as he could.  As you can imagine, with so many wives, he had quite a few kids, who all also had a number of wives and kids of their own.  Imagine trying to sort out that family tree...

Desserts of Art

But back to our night out... so we sat down and the guys ordered us all water and tea.  They asked if we would like any sweets, and we all declined.  Fozia is still on her diet, and Gemma and I had just eaten.  One of the guys disappeared for a while to go outside and have a cigarette, but secretly ordered some desserts for us anyway on the way out.  So we had three desserts that looked more like works of art than food, along with a tray of fruit.  I felt awkward, as I always do in extremely expensive settings.  I'm always afraid I will break something, or use the wrong fork, or otherwise reveal myself to be an imposter.    I suppose in this case, I needn't have been so worried.  We were seated next to a bookshelf with a sculpture of a Roman horse head on top, and to distract myself from eating more dessert, I grabbed one of the books off the shelf titled Furniture thinking it might be a picture book of fancy furniture through the ages.  Imagine my surprise when the book weighed almost nothing.  Turns out, it was a label and not a title.  This was actually a piece of furniture;  a styrofoam replica of a book, used as decor to make us feel sophisticated.  There were other fake titles on the shelf, including: Special Living, The book, Literature, More Stories, and simply, The book.  If I had read the titles more closely to begin with, I probably could have seen that coming.  When we finished our tea and most of the desserts, we took a quick tour of the hotel to look at some of the artwork before leaving.  On one side of the hallway of conference rooms were oil paintings of typical Arabic style rooms.  On the opposite side of the hallway were abstract painting.  If you faced one wall, you could have been in New York's MoMA.  If you turned around, you were back in Saudi. If you looked straight down the hallway and saw both sides at once, you felt a little bipolar, not exactly sure where you were...  It's a feeling I would have often in the next couple of nights.

The next night, we were out with a different set of guys.  Fozia met these guys when she was out walking one day and suddenly got a bad headache.  She needed to sit down, so she made her way to the nearest coffee shop, but it was very busy and there were no tables free so she asked to borrow a free chair from a table of guys by the door, and pulled the chair off to the side.  They could see she was not well, and offered her water and headache medicine, and eventually, their phone number.  These guys had their own apartment, and had invited us to a house party at their place.  When we arrived, we were ushered into an empty living room decorated in black, gray, red and white.  Everything was angular and modern, except for a very victorian looking chandelier.  There were hooks on the walls for our abayas and head scarves, and once we had de-robbed, we were invited into an inner room.  The door to this room was covered in the egg-carton shaped foam you see in recording studios as a sound absorption barrier.  As soon as they opened the door, I understood why. A wall of sound hit us and we were suddenly in a living room / night club.  Everything in this room was black and white.  There was a black and white picture of Charlie Chaplin on one wall, a black and white of the London Underground at Piccadilly on the other, and a series of overlapping silver squares of various sizes on the third wall.  White leather couches lined three of the walls leaving the large area in the middle open for dancing.  The forth wall was actually a winding staircase to the upstairs, and a small corner for the DJ.  A projector was mounted underneath the stairs and cast multicolored shapes and lights on the whole room in flashing patterns that matched the music.

When we first arrived, there was only one other girl present.  She was sitting on the couch smoking shisha.  She had short hair and an even shorter skirt, and we wondered if she could possibly be Saudi.  She didn't seem friendly enough to approach, so instead we sat down on the opposite couch and helped ourselves to some of the snacks and sodas laid out on the table.  There were guys coming and going between the kitchen and the outer living room, and soon there were also more girls arriving, each one wearing something more scandalous than the last.  One girl even had a large tattoo of a peacock on her thigh. Earlier, when I was getting dressed for our adventure,  I had felt pretty daring for decided to wear jeans (pants!) and a t-shirt (showing my arms!).  Now I felt severely underdressed, or to be technical, overdressed.  I probably would have blended in better had I decide to strip down my underwear and bra. I asked the guys who had brought us to introduce us to some of the people, so that it wouldn't be so awkward just sitting around, but turns out, they only knew one of the guys themselves, and that guy had gone out to get more snacks.  So we did the only thing we could do in a room with music so loud you couldn't hear yourself think.  We got up and danced.

I'm not sure exactly how much time went by, but I would say about 3 remix compilations of this years greatest hits later, the dance floor was full.  The girl with the peacock tattoo (which turned out to be airbrushed) was showing me how to dance to Arabic music, and I was failing miserably, which was highly entertaining for them.  Then Fozia requested the Wobble Baby song, which is some new version of the Electric Slide or the Macarena, and we taught the Saudis how to dance it, which was highly entertaining for us.  At some point during all of this dancing, someone brought out balloons filled with helium, and someone else brought in "libations".    I had been too busy dancing to notice until one of the guys asked if I wanted something to drink, and I said yes please, some water, since I had been dancing all night and was very thirsty.  He said, that's it?  and I explained that I really didn't like soda or energy drinks, which is all I had seen on the table earlier.  He told me there was juice he could mix it with in the kitchen, and that's when I started to get the hint that perhaps he wasn't asking me if I wanted a drink, so much as he was asking me if I wanted a "drink".  I was shocked and politely declined.  I figured It was enough that I was already breaking Saudi law just by being in this room in mixed company with music playing.

At about two in the morning, I had had about as much as I could handle of dancing in the smoke-filled "club", so I went out to the outer living room with Gemma and Fozia, and we took a timeout on the couches.  I was half asleep when we were joined by some of the guys who tried with various degrees of success to talk to us in English.  Shortly after them, a very drunk Saudi girl stumbled into the room.  There was a series of attempts to get her into her Abaya, and presumably home, but each time she started to leave, she would turn back to give everyone, (including us) a big hug before leaving.  When she was hugging me goodbye for the second time, she told me that she loved me and that I was her best friend.  I recalled dancing next to her at one point in the night, but don't think we had ever spoken before this moment.  Eventually, they successfully escorted her outside and into a waiting car.  I have no idea who she was, or if she was Saudi, and if she was, how it was possible for her to be out so late, and what would happen to her if or when she arrived home drunk or hungover.  Not long after she left, three new girls arrived. I would have put money on the fact that it wasn't possible for anyone to dress more scandalously than what I had seen earlier, but these girls guaranteed that I would have lost that bet.  Gemma made the suggestion that perhaps these women were not Saudi's after all, but "professionals" from neighboring middle eastern countries.  We didn't stick around to find out.  The guys we came with drove us home, and when I woke up the next morning / early afternoon, I was halfway convinced the whole thing had been a dream until I got a whiff of my smoke filled hair.  I am seeing both sides of the country now, and finding it hard not to feel conflicted.

Before I had fully recovered from last night (I'm getting too old for staying up so late) we were on our third night of adventure.  This time we were meeting up with a couple of medical students.  At least we thought we were.  The second guy who was going to meet us was on call, and got called into the emergency room at the last minute, so he couldn't come.  Instead, Geema and Fozia and I drove around the city.  Fozia wanted to smoke a cigarette, but had lost her lighter at some point last night and didn't have one.  Thankfully, the doctor who was driving didn't smoke and so didn't have a lighter.  But he didn't want to let Fozia down, so while we were driving along slowly in a traffic jam at 10pm, he called out to the man in the car next to him and asked for a lighter.  The man was police officer, and I was nervous.  We were three women, clearly foreigners in a car with a man.  Luckily, the policeman didn't seem to notice (thank you tinted windows!).  He didn't have a lighter, but offered his car cigarette lighter instead.  So our driver got out of his car, borrowed the car lighter so Fozia could light her cigarette, drove a little ways down the road to catch up to the slow moving traffic, then stopped again and ran back to the policeman he had borrowed it from and returned the lighter.  Impressive.

Eventually, we drove to the cornish.  He baught us tea to go from a coffee shop, and we drove to the waters edge, and parked so we could drink it while walking up and down the Cornish which was like a boardwalk area.  We had to be fully covered here to avoid suspicion.  While we were looking out over the water, we saw some men with flashlights and buckets crawling along the edge of the rocks.  We called out to him to see what he was doing and he came up to show us all the little crabs he was catching.  He said that they use them as bait for bigger fish when they take their boat out into the sea.  He must have collected about 3 dozen already, but he headed back down on the beach for more.

We stood around for a little while, sipping out tea and watching the Saudi families with their children.  Some kicking the soccer balls in the small strip of grass separating the boardwalk from the highway, others pushing strollers or bikes.  We had a deck of cards, and so Fozia suggested that we play some card games.  He got a blanket rug out of the trunk of his car and spread it in the grass.  We sat facing away from the road with our heads covered so it would be hard to tell we weren't Saudi women, and hoped no one would question why one guy would have three girls with him.  We started out trying to play "Bull Sh#T", the game where you try to see if someone is lying about the cards they are putting down.  His English wasn't the greatest, and he had a hard time understanding the rules, and was confused about why we were all calling each other liars.  So then we switched to Spoons, which seemed like an easier game to understand.  Only, after I started to explain the game, I realized we didn't have any spoons.  I was looking around for rocks or twigs we could use instead when I noticed that he had three cell phones.  Most Saudi's have more than one phone, but three seemed a bit excessive until this moment.  When it turned out to be perfect.  So we played spoons using cell phones, and it was a lot of fun. But we all had our eyes out for Mutaween the whole time.  Strangely, even though we weren't doing anything but playing card games, I was more nervous than I had been during the previous night's debauchery, simply because we were doing it out in the open rather than hiding behind private walls.

Three nights, three very different experiences, all of them pretty normal anywhere else in the world, but so strange here.  Sometimes I get the impression that the whole country is hiding underneath a giant abaya.  So long as on the surface everything seems proper and appropriate, it doesn't seem to matter what's happening underneath.

Neverending End of Year Parties

One thing Saudi's are good at is throwing parties.  Last week, the men were treated to a nice dinner by their Dean to celebrate the end of the year.  They got on the bus rubbing their full bellies and bragging about how nice it was.  On the women's side we had a regular work day.  We were so jealous.  I wouldn't have been if I had known how many end of year parties were in store for me in the next few weeks.

We decided that it wasn't right that the men had a party and we didn't.  So we arranged to throw our own party.  We decided we would have a potluck and invite all the women from the other campuses to join us.  We originally scheduled this potluck for Thursday.  Unfortunately, we didn't know that our Dean, not to be outdone by the men's Dean, was also planning to have an end of year party for us, also on Thursday.  So we changed our potluck to Wednesday.  No sooner had it been rescheduled for Wednesday that we had to change it to the following week because there was a chance we might have to proctor exams all day that day.

Luckily, there was no proctoring, but we did end up having a party afterall.  Two of the administration ladies were leaving (one was moving, the other taking maternity leave) so we had a going away party for them.  It was just the women in the English Department, so it wasn't a lot of people, but there was brownies and ice cream.  It was the most delicious thing I have ever tasted.  Of course, I have had brownies and ice cream before, many times.  But it has never been quiet so delicious as it was that day.  I don't know if it was especially good ice cream and brownies, or if it just tasted better because I hadn't had anything that sweet in three months.

The next day we had another party.  This party was from the Dean.  She wanted to treat us all for the hard work we had been doing and also to tell us that she was leaving and we would have a new dean for next year.  She got very emotional and cried a lot.  Her English isn't great, so she was speaking through an interpreter, who was also crying, and so I really didn't catch much of what she was saying.  I didn't get much of the food either since I waited to go at the end and by the time I had made my way through the buffet line, most of the meat and all the samosas were gone.  But there was plenty of rice left, and luckily, I like rice.

Potluck spread of my student's Recipies

I thought two parties in one week was pretty great, but the following week we had four parties!  We had rescheduled our staff party to Tuesday at noon, but then had to change it to Tuesday at 10am so the women at the other campuses could be back in time for their afternoon classes.  Then, at the last minute we had to move it back to noon because, well, i'm not really sure, I stopped trying to keep up with all the changes. I decided I would just show up whenever the food did.  This would have worked out well, if it wasn't a potluck.  I had forgotten to bring a dish with me, and so if I was waiting for the food to show up to start the party, I would be waiting a long time.  Luckily, it just so happened that my students' recipe projects were due that day, and some of the students had done the extra credit and brought in the recipe they wrote about for us to try.  Even more fortunately, there were a lot of leftovers that the student's insisted I take with me.  Wallah, instant potluck.  I was a hero that day.  I brought two salads, a tray full of cookies and two kinds of desserts.  Everyone was so impressed.  If only I could have gotten away with pretending I had made it all, but the students came back in the afternoon to collect their dishes, so I was busted.

Ramadan Spread... Delicious!

Wednesday was the last day of summer school classes, so the students in one of the classes got together for a project and threw a little party for us.  This party was a sort of pre-Ramadan party where we learned a lot about Ramadan.  There were a lot of sweets and dishes designed to fill you up like oatmeals and potato dishes, so that when you eat them you can go all day and not get hungry.  The girls dressed up in traditional costumes and wore chains of gold coins on their heads.  There was a lot of music and dancing, which was confusing since we have been told all along music is haram.  They even sang a couple of chants that the kids traditionally say about halfway through Ramadan, where they go from door to door at night asking for candy.  It's like trick or treating, but without costumes.  It was a nice party, but they kept insisting that I dance with them, which I was horrible at, and felt really strange doing, since technically it was illegal.

Arabic Coffee & Cookies

 I also had to drink like 8 cups of Arabic coffee because each student gave me one thinking that no one else had given me one yet.  Arabic coffee is actually not like coffee at all.  The best way to describe it would be to call it hot spice water.  They put cardamom and other spices in water with no sugar (probably because the arabic cookies they bring you to eat with it are too sweet otherwise).  It's not great the first time around, and by the fifth cup, I was practically gagging.  But the deliciousness of these fried cheese balls someone had made more than made up for it.    I also got a rose from one of my students, and a bracelet that says "KSA" from another student.  I have to admit, I felt a little like a rock star.  Everone, even students that were never in my class, wanted to take their picture with me.  Of course, when I wanted to take a picture with them, they said no because they were afraid I might put it on the internet somewhere or accidentally show it to a guy or something.  Funny, they didn't think it was an issue for me everytime they came over to get a "selfie, teacher, selfie!"  Some of them even had this telescoping device that allows them to hold the camera phone far away before it clicks.  It's like a tripod, but only one leg.  It's really strange.

Bag of Ramadan Trick-o-treat Candy

So party number three was on Thursday morning.  This was another pre-Ramadan party, only this time it was all the summer school students and teachers, instead of just one class.  They had moved all the rugs from all the little corner mosques on each floor of the building and spread them out in this one open area.  They moved all the airport benches into a u-shape and added a lot of leaning pillows.  They hung lanterns on all of the walls and suddenly we weren't in Jeoffrey's cafe anymore, it was like being inside an Arabian tent.  There was more music and more dancing, and more Arabic coffee.  Thankfully, this time, I only had to drink one cup because I had an excuse.  I was substituting for one of the other teachers, so I got to leave early to go to the other building and teach.  By the time I came back, the party was over, but another one was just beginning.

The University was having an official closing ceremony complete with certificates.  To get the teachers to come, they promised us a big buffet meal afterwards.  Since this was for the entire women's campus and not just the English Department, we met in a really large theater room.   I was a little late arriving because I had come straight from teaching, but I needn't have worried about missing anything, they hadn't started yet.  To buy some time, they sent the cleaning ladies around with trays of sweets and, of course, more arabian coffee.   I have to say, by now I had had so much of it, I was starting to like it.  Either that or the sweets were so sweet that I desperately needed anything to wash them down with.  The ceremony opened, as academic ceremonies are want to do, with a trivia game about islam in Arabic.  In fact, the whole ceremony was in Arabic.  We watched an incredibly long video with pictures of events and projects that had happened during the year, which was torture because there was no music and all of the pictures were of inanimate objects, and not even particularly good.  Imagine sitting through someone's vacation photos, if say, they had gone on vacation to a conference room with no one else, and you couldn't understand anything they told you that might have illuminated the importance of, say, the chair with a pepsi can on it.

I was really relieved when the video was over until, I figured out what the next part of the ceremony was.  The names.  So we sat while about 150 names were read, and waited while each woman got up, walked to the stage, collected her certificate, and sat back down.    It took a long, long, long, time.  The English department were the last to receive their certificates.  Listening for our names was a special challenge because the woman reading off the names had never met any of us and wasn't particularly adept at English.  My name was "G-Knee-Fire Kul-ee"  and when I got my certificate, I could understand why she had had such a hard time, since my name was spelled "Jeniiferr Keli"  My name wasn't the only one misspelled.  In fact, not a single name was spelled correctly.  Clearly someone had given them our names in Arabic, and someone had transliterated them back into English.  A lot was lost in translation.  The certificate thanked me for all my hard work throughout the 2013-2014 school "yeer" even though I had actually worked for maybe only 10 days of the official school year.  They also confused the words "academic" and "academy"  It's good to know that no one in the admin department thought to double check the English with say, anyone who worked in the English Department. Still, it is the thought that counts, and a good reminder of why they need us here doing this job in the first place.

Finally, everyone had gotten their certificates and it was time to eat!  But not before they made us all gather for a group picture of the English department.  It was chaos trying to organize it.  Some people walked off to talk on their phones, other people were refusing to stand next to other people, or trying to stand next to the new dean, or trying to stand behind someone so they wouldn't look fat.  Some were trying to hand over their phones to someone to take a picture with their cameras too.  Others were trying to cover their heads or sneak out of the picture altogether.  At no point during the nearly 5 minutes of camera and phone flashes were all of us ever looking in the same direction at the same time, let alone smiling. It was a mess.

By the time we made it to the buffet line, we were nearly last.  Five minutes after standing in line, we were definitely last.  Somehow, the Saudi teachers who were behind us in line, had made their way to the front of the line.  This is the thing about lines here... they do not exist.  I still haven't quite gotten my head around that, so it usually takes me twice as long as everyone else to check out at the grocery store, and in buffet lines, I just can't win.  After ten minutes of waiting in line, the word came that there were no more plates left.  I happened to spot a stack of plates on the opposite end of the buffet by the desserts.  I decided I would be a hero.  I pushed and shoved my way through the line to cross the room and get the plates.  I grabbed a huge stack full and made my way back into the thick of the line.  Here is the thing; I'm obviously struggling with a large stack of plates.  There are no plates left for you to grab.  Still, the Saudi women would not let me through.  I didn't know how much clearer I could make it that I was trying to help them.  They obviously couldn't progress through the buffet without the much needed plates, and yet, they were very very reluctant to let me through to set down the plates.  Were they that concerned with their place in the non-existent line?  I have no idea.  I made three trips with stacks of plates and it never got any easier.  When I had moved all the dishes, one of them asked me for napkins.  Thats when I gave up and rejoined my fellow English teachers at the back of the line.  Let them find their own napkins.  We watched plate after plate leave the buffet, stacked like volcanoes of rice with shrimp and chicken exploding out of them.  After the fifth or sixth such plate, I was literally drooling.  By the time we got to the front, we had to share plates, because there were only a few left.  Which turned out to be fine because there wasn't much food left anyway.  We had some rice and there was a bit of hummus left, and I took the bones of what might have been a small lamb to try to scrape off any meat that might have escaped the vultures, but that was about all.  Even the desserts had been picked clean.  I guess that is what I get for trying to be the nice guy.  I'm sure glad I sat through that whole thing for those few mouthfuls of rice.

In a way, it was a fitting end to a week of year-end parties.  A cosmic sign that I'd had more than my share of parties already, or no one should have this much fun or food at work, or something.

Student Projects

Summer school is the best time of year to teach.  The students are there because they want to be, or at least, their parents want them to be. There is no pressure of tests or quizes or grades or attendance or official marks.  Perhaps counterintuitively, that means that most of the real learning that happens at our university, takes place during summer school.  Teachers aren't forced to teach a curriculum that is beyond the level or interests of the students, and students forget to worry about what is generally considered evidence of learning and get down to the actual learning instead.

This isn't to say that the student's weren't still concerned with being the best.  The first week of summer school, the question I got most often was; "Teacher, what level is this?  Are we the highest level?" Which, was a really hard question to answer given that almost everyone in the class was at very different levels from each other, and then were switched.  So my frustrating, but very honest answer to them was always "I don't know."  Call it teacherly pride, but by the end of our short three weeks together, I was convinced that all of my students were the best.

Since we only had 3 weeks, I let the students choose the topics they wanted to focus on they chose food, fun, and milestones.    The first week, we talked about food and memories and favorite recipes and I had them all write out a recipe, and then a paragraph or story, depending on their level about why that food was important to them.  It's something I have done before with adult learners, and every time, I get surprising, and often moving results.  This time was no exception.  The girls wrote about everything from family members, to declaring independence, to possible futures in other countries, and attachments to their own traditions.  I was really pleased that so many of them turned in the assignment, knowing there would be no consequences for not doing it, but I was even more pleased with how many of them decided to do the extra credit and actually make their recipe.  It was wonderful.  You can check out the recipe book and stories for yourself by following this link.

The same week we did our recipes, the younger girls in another class did presentations on different countries.  Each group of 3-5 girls was responsible for a "booth" at the culture fair during the break between classes.  They had to tell us about the country they researched including food, population, government, tourist sites, traditional clothing a weather.  Even though most of the girls read word for word something they printed from Wikipedia when you asked them to tell you about their country, it was still a lot of fun.  Some of them even had music for each country and gave mini dancing lessons.  My favorite booth was the USA stand.  I was interested to hear their opinions of our country, but unfortunately got mostly facts retrieved from Google.  They told me about the president, and that I should visit the Grand Canyon and New York City, and Deer Park Michigan (because it has the largest population of Saudis living together in the US) and that we really liked apple pie and hot dogs.  The girls covering India were showing people how to wrap saris which was shocking because they would unwrap themselves to do it.  That is the most skin I have seen exposed on any Saudi woman since coming here, and even though it was just arms and a midriff, it felt scandalous.  The UK table was giving away "Keep Calm and Speak British English" bookmarks, and the Egyptian booth had little pyramids with information on them, very cute.  My favorite was the Lebanese booth because they had an array of delicious Lebanese food to try.

The following week our theme was "fun" which I was particularly excited about.  I was interested to know what my Saudi students did for fun, and how they spent their time given the limited options available to them. I decided that our project for the week would be developing a website full of fun activities to do in Saudi Arabia.  On the first day, we started by brainstorming.  All the girls shouted out "shopping" and "going to malls" and I wrote that on the board.  Then I turned around to wait for more suggestions and for one incredibly long minute, none came. I started to think that maybe the girls chose the topic of fun because they just never had any, and I was beginning to worry that we would have to scrap the whole project if going to malls was really the only form of entertainment, but then someone shouted out, "Go to Bahrain!" and slowly, the girls started to come up with more ideas.  They talked about going to Bahrain to watch movies, or eat in fancy restaurants.  I encouraged them to try to think about things they could do in Saudi, and the room was silent again.  Eventually, they mentioned trips to Mecca, visiting famous mosques, private parties for women in their homes, listening to music and watching TV, and a few museums and local tourist sites.  Finally, we had enough categories of fun to break off into small groups and start writing about what there was to do.

By the middle of the week, the girls were ready to type up the paragraphs and add them to the computers.  I tested the website first, and I made sure that multiple people could edit at once, and that you could access the website from the University (they block everything, even yahoo and gmail, but strangely, not facebook?!) before I booked the lab.  So I wasn't anticipating any problems until the girls sat down and started having problems immediately.  It hadn't occurred to me that as summer school students, they weren't given usernames or passwords, so none of them could log in.  I spent a frantic 5 minutes rushing around logging in as me to one computer after another.  But even this didn't work out.  While the students could now access the computer, no one could log on to the internet since IT had set it up to prevent multiple internet log ins with one ID.  I gave up and had everyone type them in word and then, because all email providers are blocked by the University, I saved them all to my flashdrive and promised to email the students their saved work once I got home, so they could edit the website on their own from home.

Technology was only the beginning of our problems.  Once the students were able to access the website from home and make changes... things went rather well.  I asked them to include at least one picture, one link, and one paragraph of information about their topic. Again, most of them completed the assignment even though it was voluntary, and by Thursday, the website was looking pretty good, minus a few mistakes with the English.    But before making the website live, I wanted to make sure I could get approval for the website from the University Administration.  They had given me the initial green light, but I think they only did that because they figured there was no way the students would actually manage to do the project.  When I presented them with the final version of the website, there was a good amount of surprise.  Most of the pages were approved without incident, but when they reached the movies and music tab, they wanted me to delete it.  After all, listening to music in public is illegal, and movie theaters don't exist in Saudi.  Therefor, they shouldn't exist in any official capacity as far as the University is concerned.  I argued that the girls had worked so hard to write about the music and the movies, and that it wouldn't be fair to let the other girls work stay on the webpage while theirs got deleted, and after a lot of negotiation, I got them to agree to letting me delete the links to the racier music and videos, but leave all of the information there.  Here is a hint, if you really want to see the videos / listen to the music they recommend, just do a google search for the artists they mention.  In the end, we managed to have a half-way decent website of things to do for fun in Saudi.  There isn't much to it, for obvious reasons (lack of content + lack of English), but I encourage you to take a look at what my students came up with by clicking here.

The final week, I was planning on having them record themselves reading a personal essay in the style of "This I believe".  This would have been a hard final project anyway, but when I learned we would only have class 4 days instead of 5 the final week, and when I realized the last day would be a party, so it really was only 3 days, I decided to give them a break and not give them a project in the final week.  Which was fortunate because on the second day they told us we would have only one more day of classes.  So the week ended on Tuesday instead of Thursday, and so Tuesday became our party day, and so in the end, it was really only a 2 day week.  So, I guess it turned out to be a really good thing that I didn't try to have them do a final project.  So the four week summer school ended up being a three week adventure in chaos.  But it was worth it.  It was nice to be working for once, and I really felt like I learned a lot about my students in a really short time.  I can only hope that they can say the same about learning English from me.

Riding in the Desert

So, sadly, one of my friends and co-workers here will be returning to Canada for good at the end of the week.  To celebrate her last week in Saudi, we decided to go to the desert (some dunes near the beach) and ride four wheelers.  She has been before, and wanted to return to do it again and to take some photos and video of it to remember it by.  So three of us piled into a car with her usual taxi driver after work and headed off to Half Moon Bay.  Only, there was a problem.  Her usual driver had to pick up someone else at 3:45 and so could not take us to half moon bay.  So at a point midway between the University and her apartment, our driver pulls off the road and starts making phone calls and approaching randomly parked cars.  We all assumed he was looking for another driver for us, but it also kind of looked like it could have been a drug deal, though that is highly unlikely here.  We drove off again after five minutes and then a few minutes later, pulled in behind another car on the side of the road.   He indicated that this was our new ride and we swapped vehicles.

On the road once again, we decided to stop for a quick bite to eat at a grocery store that had an Indian food cafe and we ate chuppa, which is crumbled bread / chips, topped with spices and beans and then covered in yogurt and then three layers of different kinds of chutney and then parsley, some chilli peppers and then sprinkled on top some yellow crunchy stuff.  It was both delicious and filling.

We told our driver we wanted to go to Half Moon Bay and ride quad bikes, but our new driver was from India, and his English was very poor, as was his Arabic, so the few words we knew in Arabic for giving directions were useless.  Luckily, the other teacher who was with us is from India and they were able to speak together in Hindi.  After So we thought he knew where he was going, and we thought he new where he was going, but it turns out that no one was really sure where we were going because Rasheeda (the Canadian) was the only one who had been there before, and she couldn't really remember the way.   So we rode on for another 15 minutes, watching out the window for any sign of something familiar and hoping we were not lost.  It turns out, we weren't lost.  But when we finally saw the rows of quad bikes laid out waiting to be rented, it was too late to turn, so we made a lap to the next u-turn, and because it was on the other side of the road, ended up passing it again on the way back before we could do yet another u-turn and finally end up where we needed to be.

Sudanese workers who rent out bikes

There weren't many people around yet, just rows of bikes waiting to be taken for a spin and the guys who rented them.  Rasheeda is making a video blog, so we spent some time trying to get good footage of her talking with bikes in the background, unfortunately, the wind was making it hard to hear anything she was saying, so we gave up and focused on footage of the guys doing tricks on the bikes instead.  They were doing 360s and driving on 2 wheels and all kinds of crazy things.   I was anxious to try it, but I didn't think I would be wanting to do any crazy stunts.  We spent a while negotiating a price, but then finally settled on something reasonable, and Rasheeda and I each took a bike out while our other friend watched and took pictures.

The thing about these four wheelers is, there are only two speeds.  Stopped, and really fast.  The handle you pull to accelerate is calibrated to respond to the lightest touch and interpret it as petal to the metal.  While somewhat scary, it really isn't so bad on the straight aways and in the flat part of the desert.  But when you climb into the dunes, the sand is softer and choppier and you hit bumps and are constantly flying off the seat and holding on for dear life.  As we flew past a few people stuck in the sand trying to dig their four by fours free, I realized why slow speeds weren't a good idea.

Rasheeda checks out the horses

We drove our quad bikes into the desert a ways until we got to the horse and camel pins.  The horse handlers were all too happy to let us have a look, and encouraged us to ride the horses.  We had rented the bikes for an hour, so we told them we would finish our ride and then we would be back to see the horses again.  I was nervous about having the loud noises and sudden movement of the quad bikes so close to the horses, but they were clearly used to it and were unfazed when we speed off in the distance only a few feet from the horses.

We drove up and down the dunes, turning circles and trying to write letters in the sand with our tire tracks (unsuccessfully).  Suddenly Rasheeda came to a stop.  Her abaya had gotten caught in the wheel or something and pulled her neck and shoulders down.  She got it free, but it was ripped, and she had a pretty bad rug burn on her neck.  We both re-adjusted ourselves and tucked our abayas and scarves in well and under us to keep it from happening again.

Rasheeda and I drive through the desert

Funny thing though, when you are speeding across the desert, things don't like to stay tucked in.  It wasn't long before my hijab had slipped off my head.  It was wrapped around me a few times like a scarf, so I knew it wouldn't fly off, and it was so nice to feel the wind through my hair, so I wasn't in any real hurry to put it back on.  That is until a couple of guys in a pick up truck pulled up beside us and tried to practice the few phrases of English that they knew on us.  I recovered my head and we took off for another dune where there were more people riding bikes.  They would stare at us, which is why we had left for a less crowded area in the first place, but at least they weren't trying to talk to us.

It was while we were running from the guys in the pick up that Rasheeda's abaya got caught up in the wheel again, and this time it was really caught up.  Isn't it always the way?  Not that there is ever a good time to have your abaya get caught in the wheel, but having it get stuck when you are trying to avoid Saudi men heckling you is the worst timing.  Rasheeda never does anything half way, and so in true Rashida style, this abaya was thoroughly trapped.  To unwind it from the wheel, she had to take it off completely and then pass it through the the bottom and under the bike and around the axis a few times.  I'm sure the Saudi men in the pick up were loving the show of a woman in jeans and a t-shirt sans abaya for the few seconds it took us to unhook her and re-clothe her.  The abaya was a lot worse for the wear, and was now beyond repair.  Good thing she only needs it for another 9 days. The men in the truck offered help (after we had already gotten everything under control) but we declined and decided it was probably time to return the bikes.

When we returned the bikes, the men with the horses were there waiting for us.  Rasheeda didn't really want to ride too much, she just wanted to get some photos of us on the horses.  So we negotiated a price, I thought was just for getting on the horses having a quick photo shoot and then being done with it.  Rasheeda chose a horse that was further away than the one I got on, so he walked me and my horse over to her.  She had asked ou taxi driver to take pictures of us on our horses, so he was following along behind us, I w
as all set to pose for our one photo, but now the guys were leading our horses out into the desert, so, I guess now we were getting a ride as well.

Rasheeda on horseback being trailed by a car full of Saudi Men

When I turned around to look at the taxi guy for a photo, I noticed that a car full of Saudi men was following us into the desert on our horses.  I thought it was a little strange, but tried to ignore them, when I noticed a second car following along next to Rasheeda.  Now there was a car on either side of us, both of them crawling along beside us at a snails pace.  Rasheeda and I decided it was time to go back, but the guys leading our horses obviously wanted us to stay on longer so they could try to ask for more money.  I turned my horse, and he would turn it back.  We did this a few times before he finally gave in and turned us around, possibly because now the two cars had turned into about five, circling us.  It's an odd sensation to feel like you are being circled by sharks while on horseback in the desert.

Now that we had turned back, the men in the cars following us were becoming more vocal.  Evidently, they realized their window of opportunity for harassing us was coming to an end.  At first it was fairly innocent, "Hey, where you from?"  "Hey, can I take your picture?"  I decided my strategy would be to ignore them.  Thinking perhaps that he was being helpful, the guy leading my horse was trying to help translate for them (even though he spoke less English than they did).  He would tap my leg to get my attention and then point to whatever Saudi guy hanging out the window had asked him to get my attention. Then he would "translate" by making wild hand gestures that mostly seemed to indicate taking pictures or getting phone numbers.  At least, that's what I hope all those gestures meant.  I tried not to look at any of them and just shook my head at the guy leading me and tried to encourage him to send the guys away.

Apparently, this was the wrong tactic.  They started to get more aggressive, "Hey, you know you are very sexy?" (a remark I found fascinating since I was covered in my abaya and headscarf and so the only possible thing they could possibly see were my ankles).  and "I am the only one who knows English here, will you let me ride with you?"  I think that is when I figured out why the guy leading the horse wasn't being more insistent that they leave... he was hoping for more money from them.  The closer we got to our starting point and taxi, the closer the cars came.  At one point a car came so close I thought they were going to run straight into the horse and while I was busy watching the front end of the bumper come within inches of hitting the horse, a guy sitting in the window of a jeep leaned over and reached out and ran his hand along my thigh before they drove off.  I was so surprised and shocked that I didn't even know how to react.  Rasheeda was a little bit ahead of me and I saw the jeep pulling up next to her, so I called out to her to watch out because he was going to try to touch her, but it was too late, he did the same to her.  We were shocked.  I wanted to get off the horse and be done with it, but I figured we would be worse off just walking along, even though we were now only about 200 feet from where the taxi was parked.  I was really upset at the guys leading the horses, and at the taxi driver who was still taking pictures.  I know we weren't their sisters or mothers or anything, but we were paying customers and they should have at least told the other guys to leave us alone, but they didn't seem to see anything wrong with what was happening.  The jeep came back around for round 2, and I shouted at him and turned the horse away in time, and Rasheeda threw her shoe at him.  It missed and hit the car, but they got the message and drove off.  I should have said, "Would you let someone treat your sister this way?" or "WWAD (what would Allah do)?"  I don't understand how they can reconcile such behavior with their religious beliefs.  It seems so contradictory.

We got off and got back in the taxi.  As we were pulling away, one of the cars that had been following us pulled up next to ours and shouted, that they were really sorry for all of that, and isn't Saudi a bad place?  Apparently, they didn't consider their own role in what had happened as bad, since now, afterward, their intentions were good.  "You should come in the morning" he said, "No one will be here to bother you then."  In fact, we had come on a weekday specifically because it was not as crowded as it was on the weekend, and at first, there hadn't been very many people, but as the sun went down and the night got cooler, more people came.  I think maybe we would have been better off on the weekend after all, since there would have been more families around and that might have kept the men in check.  Still, there were a few other women there tonight, but they had all come with men.  We were alone. Maybe that is where we went wrong.

The taxi took us home, and even though it had ended on a sour note, I'm really glad we went.  It was nice to drive in Saudi Arabia, even if it was just a dirt bike.  Check out the video below that Rasheeda made of our adventure.....

Musical cubicles

From what I understand, the way my company works is through contracts with different Universities and language institutes.  The way these contracts work under Saudi law is that the company has to provide a certain number of teachers for a certain amount of time.  If the company fails to provide this number throughout the agreed upon time, they get nothing.  They aren't paid a partial amount for the teachers they did provide or the time they did have enough teachers, they get squat.  So, understandably, they hedge their bets.  They send more teachers than they need to places, for the specific reason that they know a certain amount of teachers will not last the school year.  So, they need a lot of bodies, mainly as insurance against the loss of the current teachers.  I'm sure it has been pointed out to them that if they treated their teachers better to begin with, there might not be so many who quit, but they seem to have chosen the more bodies route instead.

So, when I arrived in Dammam, there were 24 cubicles and (including the new arrivals) 32 teachers.  Those without cubicles either bunked up with someone who had a cubicle, or hung out on the couches.  For the first two months or so, I really didn't mind not having a space to call my own.  After all, I wasn't really teaching, aside from the occasional substitute gig, and wondering around homeless was a good way to meet all the other teachers.  However, as the end of the year approached, and teachers began to leave, some for good, some just for the summer, spots began to open up.

I had been using a cubicle on the left side of the staff room near the back as my temporary home, along with Luisa, Rachel, and Sara.  Rachel had left about a week or two after I arrived, and the cubicle, by order of arrival date, was officially Luisa's, but she didn't mind if Sara and I used it because she preferred the couches, which were closer to her friends in the back right side of the staff room.  Sara and I took turns sharing the computer, and even squeezed two rolly-chairs into the tight space so we could both sit in there together.

It was a perfect spot really, because it was right next to Stephanie, a Brit who had made her home in Ethiopia and opened a charity school for children there  Sara and I both really enjoyed talking with her and the three of us became good friends.  Stephanie had agreed to come to Saudi and work for a six months because funding had been a little slow this year, and she could afford to pay six ethiopian teachers salaries for the year on what they were paying her here for just six months.  Use to making do with not a lot, Stephanie had gotten creative when she arrived and there were no cubicles available. She usurped a corner near the emergency exit  that had been used to store old textbooks and made it her own.  Though it wasn't a traditional cubicle, she managed alright by moving a small table that used to sit near the front into it, and rounding up an older model computer from the labs that was being replaced and convinced the IT ladies to let her have it.  Instant cubicle.

Stephanie's contract ended on June 6th and after much fighting with the company, she did actually manage to leave on the 7th (see the post "You can check in any time you like, but you can never leave...." for more on that story.  So I decided that rather than wait for a real cubicle to become available, I didn't mind moving into Stephanies old spot.   Sara had unofficially adopted the cubicle of a woman who was away on pregnancy leave, and so Luisa finally had her cubicle back.  It seemed like all was right with the world.

This lasted about three days until the lead teacher's last day. She had been working in Dammam longer than anyone (4 years) and therefor had the "best" cubicle, which because of a support beam in the middle of the room had a little extra space (we are talking inches here).  Luisa wanted to move into the cubicle, not for the extra space, but because it was right next to and across from her best buddies.  One of those buddies "called" the cubicle for Luisa, which offended another teacher who had been here the next longest after the lead teacher and felt that she deserved the prime real estate.  A third teacher, who was pregnant, felt she deserved the cubicle because the extra space allowed a small armchair to fit into the cubicle, which the pregnant teacher would need for her naps, and to help with back pain.  Luisa then argued that as the newest person here without a cubicle, tradition dictated that I should get the next available cubicle, since everyone else actually had a place and I had, well, a fire hazard blocking an emergency exit.   As you can imagine, chaos insued.  It was decided that the matter would be presented to Ms. Nada our main supervisor for a decision on who rightly deserved the cubicle.

I was actually perfectly happy to stay where I was.  It was much quieter in the corner which would make it easier to get work done, although, I would have liked to have been on the right side of the room instead of the left, since on the left there was a woman whose voice was loud and high pitched enough to be heard through my headphones even four cubicles down.  There was also a large shelf (for book storage, but mostly empty) that I thought would come in handy.  Although, even though these shelves were larger, they didnt lock, which, given the number of thefts that have happened around the office could have ended up being a problem.  So, aside from those few things, I thought my make shift spot was actually pretty perfect.

A few days later, it was announced that Ms. Nada was leaving and that we would have a new dean on the women's side.  She left without making a decision on the cubicles.  Chaos resumed.  So, finally after a lot of compromise, it was decided that the pregnant woman would have the big cubicle, and Luisa would move to the pregnant ladies' cubicle, and I would take Luisa's cubicle.  A few hours later, Luisa came to me to ask if I would switch cubicles with her and take the old pregnant ladies cubicle, so she could stay in her old cubicle. She explained that the lighting was better on this side of the room, and that she wasn't sure she would be back after the summer vacation anyway, so she felt bad taking a nice cubicle and she just wanted to stay put so she didn't have to move again.  I was fine with that.  I would be far from the nanny-voice impersonator, and would have a locked cabinet for my stuff (because everyone wants to steel a ten year old Nokia not smart phone).

Of course, when I started to move into my new new cubicle, the teacher who had been here the second longest informed me that actually, she was going to move into pregnant ladies old cubicle, and did I want to move into her old spot.  That was also fine with me, because it was still on the far side of the room and still came with a locked cabinet.  She told me she didn't want to move all her stuff until right before she left for the summer, so I was back to waiting in my corner.

A few days after that another teacher left for good.  I decided a bird in the hand is worth to in the bush, so before anyone could cause any more confusion, and to avoid the re-shuffling that would no doubt ensue, I took it upon myself to claim her cubicle for myself, rather than wait some more for the one promised me.  I was a little worried that there would be repercussions, arguments, and protests.  Evidently, her cubicle was either not desirable in the least, or no one minded, because nothing was said.  One of the more experienced teachers advised me that the best way to keep a cubicle once you had taken it was to decorate the heck out of it so no one could dispute it wasn't yours.  One of the teachers has gone so far as to line the entire inside of her cubicle with pink paper.  She even has a pink rug and a pink wastebasket.  It's certainly very effective.  I walk by it as quickly as possible, and I don't think I would last five minutes inside of it before the pink pepto-bismol color would make me throw-up.

I decided I didn't need to go that far, but I should probably do something.  The thing is, I don't really have much in the way of decorations.  I considered using some of my tiger stripped duct tape to line the edges of the cubicle, but then I thought it should probably be a little less permanent than that.  Also, duct tape is a precious commodity, I can't be using it just for decoration.  I took my name in Arabic calligraphy from the cultural night, and put it on the outside of my cubicle, along with my quotes from Motivational Monday, so at least there was something.  I was also lucky enough to have gotten a picture of my niece and I in the mail, so I took it off of my refrigerator at home and I stuck it on the inside wall, next to my computer so that I could see it whenever I wanted.  I also found an Arabic flag amongst a pile of old textbooks, so I put that up as well.  Sadly, the few decorations almost make it look more lonely and abandoned than nothing on the walls.  I'm sure I will slowly accumulate more stuff.  I just hope that the game of musical cubicles is finally over so that if I do gather a lot of stuff, I won't have to move it again.

The Date Farm

Adventures are like Lays potato chips, you can't have just one.  So when I was presented with the choice of staying in this weekend and finally finishing the last season of Lost or going to a date farm, I chose the date farm.  This date farm was owned by the family of one of the boys who had been at the Chalet.  It was in Al Ahsa, about two hours away, which was too far to drive in one evening, so we would have to stay the night in the guesthouse, which had a pool, and they promised we would be home around 10 in the morning the next day.  They had me at pool.  There is something about 110 degree days and miles of sand in every direction that makes the prospect of a cool blue swim irresistible.

We were told to be ready to go around 7pm, which meant that the guys finally turned up around 8.  We took two cars, and Gemma and Fozia were in one car, which left me and Blondie in the second car.  I haven't spent much time with Blondie since we work at different schools, and even after spending a whole weekend with her, I can't say I know her any better.  She spent the entire 2 hour drive to Al Ahsa on her phone.  Well, I guess I shouldn't say the entire time.  The first thing she did when she got in the car was ask if we could stop and get her some food.  The guy driving explained that they were planning to cook a traditional meal for us when we arrived.  She told him she couldn't have any of it.  She was on a diet and had to have a grilled chicken sandwich from a fast food place with nothing on it and an apple.  That was all she could have.  He said that the food they would cook is very healthy, they would make chicken, but she insisted.  She is on this diet where she takes pregnancy hormones that make you think you are pregnant, and somehow resets your metabolism so your body flushes out all the fat.  It doesn't really make any sense to me, since, my understanding is that your body wants to eat more when it is pregnant (or thinks you are pregnant) and it seems like most of the weight loss is coming from only eating one egg, two apples, and a grilled chicken breast every day, but what do I know.  I thought that it was really rude of her to make dietary demands when we were guests, and that if she was that worried about eating the right things, she should have brought food with her.  I tried to make it up to the driver by saying that I would eat anything, and that I was very excited to eat traditional Saudi food.  He seemed pleased that at least someone was interested in the food, and promised Blondie we would stop and buy her a chicken sandwich when we reached Al Ahsa.

Not long after we left Dammam, Blondie had another request.  She needed cigarettes.  So we pulled into a service station and one of the guys got out to buy her a pack.  She showed him the pack so he would know to get the right kind, but didn't offer to give him any money.  The guy went inside and came back a little later with a pack of cigarettes.  She barely even glanced up from her phone to say thank you.  When she did finally look at him, it was to tell him that he had gotten the wrong kind.  It was the right brand, but it wasn't menthol.  So, the guy went back to try to exchange it for her.  As soon as he got out of the car she started trash talking him, "What an idiot, that's why I showed him the pack."  I was shocked at how rude she was.  I tried to defend him, pointing out that it was pretty dark in the car and hard to see.  The other guy pointed out that he also didn't smoke, so wouldn't be familiar with the brands.  When he returned, he had a different brand, but mentholated, because they didn't have the menthol in her brand.  She rolled her eyes and took the pack.  I watched the guys reactions, but they seemed as unaware of her rudeness as she was.  I was happy to let her occupy her private phone world alone and was glad when they turned the music up so loud I couldn't even hear myself think.  I watched as we sped past truck after truck, each one lined with lights along the edges to help other drivers see their size and shape in the dark.  It reminded me of Christmas lights.

When we got to the town, they reminded us to cover up.  Al Ahsa was not as relaxed as Dammam. I had had my headscarf on the whole time, but Blondie dug around for hers and put it on haphazardly, annoyed.  We stopped in front of a Kudo (the Arabic equivalent of McDonalds) and she told the guy to make sure it was grilled with nothing on it.  Plain, she said,  grilled, not fried.  She turned to the driver, "Does he understand grilled? Make sure he knows it has to be plain."  Granted, the guy in the passenger seat had been quieter than the other one, but he clearly spoke English just as well, (and later, I discovered, somewhat better) than the driver.  I couldn't believe how insulting she was being to someone who was doing her a favor.  Again, she didn't offer him any money, and he went off to order her sandwich.  It took a long time.  Probably because of all of the special instructions, and she spent the time muttering under her breath that for God sake he better come back with the right thing.  I suggested we turn the music back up, I didn't want the driver to over hear her being so rude and unappreciative.  When he got back, she didn't even bother to check if he had gotten the right thing, and I was a little relieved, I didn't want to be around for the tongue lashing she would give him if it wasn't right.  I can only hope that she was this rude because anyone would be if they were eating only 500 calories a day, and not because this is actually how she is.

Date Palms at Night

Al Ahsa seemed greener than Dammam to me, with more palm trees, but it's hard to say at night.   We drove past the National Center for Date Research, and one of the guys told us that the government or one of the largest date producers, or someone, was offering a prize for people who could come up with new uses for dates. I can only suppose that these forward thinking researchers realize that if the oil ever runs out, dates are more or less the only thing Saudi has going for it in terms of exports.

The Indoor Tent

Before long, we were passing fields of dates on both sides of the highway.  Not long after that, we pulled into a gate and were suddenly inside a jungle of palm trees.  We drove a little longer, and arrived at a giant indoor tent next to a fish pond.  We had arrived!  When we first got out of the car, it smelled fishy, but it didn't take long for our noses to adjust and I didn't notice it too much after the first few minutes.  The tent was larger than three of my apartments put together and had about 12 couches and as many rugs.  It was huge.  The air conditioning was off though because it had been a last minute decision to come here, and the guy whose family owned it hadn't given the workers enough notice to prepare the place properly.  We walked around the pond, and looked for fish, but all we could see were minnows.  Then we walked along the streets through the groves of date palms to the guest house.

The Swimming Pool

The pool was on the roof, and below it were a lot of date palms, and another pond, this on with little foot bridges across it.  It all seemed idyllic and perfect under the full moon.

Sitting outside by the Fish Pond

By the time we returned from our walking tour of the farm, there were benches and cushions set up outside the tent with a set of surround sound speakers playing.  Soon there was dancing, and someone brought out badminton rackets, and someone else was heating coals for a Shisha.  In moments like these, you sort of forget that you are still in Saudi Arabia.  After about two hours, a few more guys showed up, thankfully with the groceries we would need to cook the traditional food.  Even though midnight seemed to me like an odd time to start dinner, no one else seemed to find it strange.  And since I had made such a big show in the car of being interested in the food, they invited me to help cook.

The kitchen was a separate building off to the side made of stucco on the outside, and completely stainless steel on the inside.  There were two huge refrigerators, a six range stove top, two ovens and all the counter space you could want.   I was given the job of cutting up tomatoes and peppers, but was soon relieved of my duties when I was deemed to be slicing them too thinly.  They were only interested in large chunks.  They basically cut the tomatoes and peppers in quarters and called it good.  Meanwhile, the other guys washed six chickens and rinsed out the largest pot I had ever seen.  It took two guys to hold it under the running water in the sink.  Into this pot they dumped a whole 2kg bag of rice.  I commented sarcastically that it didn't seem like it would be enough for the dozen or so of us that were hanging around that night, give or take a few girls on diets.  Apparently my sarcasm is just as lost on Saudis as it is on Britts because they began to look for

Ready to cook

another bag of rice to add, before I stopped them to explain I had only been joking, and that in fact it seemed like far too much rice.  But they insisted that we needed at least that much rice.  Into the pot with the rice and water went the tomatoes and peppers, dried lemons, and whole cloves of garlic.  They didn't even bother to peel it or separate it, just tossed it in whole.  Next they threw in four whole sticks of butter, which, thankfully, they did bother to unwrap, and then they added about a handful each of salt and pepper. This was going to be good.

Preparing the Pit for cooking

We piled into someone's mini, with the rice pot in the front seat, and the chickens in a pan on my lap in the backseat.  It wasn't far, but the pots were heavy, and no one wanted to carry them.  After a short fast trip, that I wouldn't have minded being slower and longer since there was no way the water didn't slosh out of the rice pan a little and I was sure the chickens would fly out of the pan as we were rounding a corner, we arrived. There was a pit built into a platform, and into the pit we threw piles of palm fronds until we had a great big bon fire going.  Someone brought over these giant hooks and we began skewering the chickens with them.  Finally, the flames died down and we were left with a stack of red hot coals in the bottom.  Then the guys used long metal poles to lower the pot into the hole.  Then across the top they laid a cross beam, where we hung the chickens.  Then they covered the hole with a metal cap.  Then they covered the metal cap with wet blankets.  Then on top of that they placed large cinder blocks.  Then we left and let it cook.

Adding the food to the pit and sealing it for cooking

Driving back we sat in the back hatch with our legs dangling inches from the ground.  Saudi's don't believe in going anywhere slowly, unless of course, they are walking, so I was holding on for dear life, but I was expecting forward motion and I wasn't ready when suddenly the driver slammed on the breaks.  Other than my heart skipping a few beats, I was fine.  We had pulled up short because they guys in the front decided to show me the deer.  We jumped down in front of a fenced in area with a tiny pond, and inside were a half dozen deer.  Unfortunately, I'm no stranger to deer given that a herd of them has decided to make my yard back in Virginia their permanent grazing area. Since I wasn't sufficiently impressed by the deer, the guys decided to dare each other to climb the fence. It was one of those times when you question the connection between age and maturity.  I got the distinct feeling that these guys must have missed out on the typical teenage years where everyone expected you to do stupid things because in true teenage boy style, they declared we would all go over the fence or none of us would.  I protested, pulling the girl card, but having already proven myself by beating all of them at badminton (not really that impressive when you find out none of them had played before), they insisted, and since I was there guest... when you can't beat them, join them. Besides, there was something about being abaya-less that made me feel carefree and young.  The two biggest guys were elected to help me and the smallest guy get over first and then follow us.  We should have known better.  As soon as I got over, and the other guy had his leg halfway over the fence, they took off running.  Figures.  I was just starting to climb back over on my own when the part of the fence the other guy was on started to collapse.  I started to get down to help him, but my pants got stuck on the fence and by the time I unhooked it, he was already down.  Luckily, the fence was easy enough to fix and there was no lasting damage, other than a small scrape on his hand.  We climbed back over near the corner where the fence was stronger.   Then tracked down the two chickens who had left us behind so we could inflict insults of cowardice on them for the rest of the evening.  They had discovered what looked to me like a large golf cart and were busy trying to start it without the key.  Luckily, they were never successful, and soon gave up when they realized we had effectively wasted an hour, and it was time to go back and check on the food.

It's finally done!

Carrying the Rice

We came back to the pit and uncovered the hole.  They pulled up a chicken and tested it.  It was perfect.  They insisted on handing me a wing and the meat literally fell of the bones.  It was moist and smoky and probably the most flavorful chicken I've ever had in my life, which is saying a lot for a chicken that had no spices on it whatsoever.  Next they used the long poles to pull up the pot of rice.  One guy reached in and threw a handful of rice into his mouth to check if it was done, and declared it satisfactorily cooked as well.  They carried the rice pot all the way back to the kitchen using the long poles because it was too hot to carry.  We spread the rice onto three huge trays and topped each one with two of the chickens.  There was so much food.  We carried it over to the indoor tent and set it on the rugs.  Everyone gathered and dug in traditional style, sans silverware. Having all my life prefered eating with my hands to wrestling with a knife and fork, I was surprised to learn that there is a real art to eating with your hands.

Eating Saudi Style

 They taught me to use the edge of the tray to scoop a small chunk into my hand and then work the rice into a ball and drop it into my mouth, all with one hand.  Sound hard? It is.  The guys to my left and right barely dropped a single grain of rice.  The spot where I sat was littered with it.  Even though we sat and ate for over an hour, we barely made a dent in the food at all.  It was so good, I never wanted to stop eating, but my belly was entering that post Thanksgiving meal state, so I gave up and went to lay down on one of the 14 couches in the tent.

I must have dozed off because I woke up later to find everyone playing a game of truth or dare.  Truth or Dare?  Really?  How old are we?  I suggested a game of Mafia (a game of guessing who the randomly selected "killers" are, that involves keeping your eyes closed during the selection of victims).  Everyone said they were willing to give it a try, but when it came to actually playing, no one would keep their eyes shut.   It was like herding cats.  Eventually we managed to play a whole game, though it was a struggle, and they seemed to really like it.  I decided to give up my role as narrator / cat wrangler, and let one of the guys who had been the worst offender at peeking have a go at it.  It was vindicating to see him struggle with uncooperative players and finally give up in frustration when no one would listen.  By this time, we were all ready to throw in the towel, so we made our way over to the guest house to call it a night, or rather, an early morning.

The guesthouse had about half a dozen bedrooms, but none of the beds had been made up, since no one knew in advance we were coming. There was a lot of confusion while blankets and pillows were sorted out.  I was planning on bunking with Gemma, but while we were brushing our teeth, one of the guys found our room, and thinking it was empty, he laid down on one of the twin beds.  We decided not to wake him up, and briefly contemplated sleeping out in the grass under the stars, but then realized there wouldn't be stars for long and we would soon be hot under the morning sun. Instead we chose a living room with six couches.  We each took one and started settling in.  As soon as we had turned out the light, the room was invaded by guys, who insisted that we were guests and needed beds, and we would be insulting their honor if we slept on these very comfortable couches, so we all went back to the room we had been in and they yelled loudly at the poor fool who had dared to fall asleep on our beds until he sheepishly left, and we settled down to sleep for the second time. This time we were left in peace. To be honest, I would have preferred the couch.  The beds had new mattresses that were very firm and still had the plastic on them so that they crinkled every time you moved.   You would think that I would have been so exhausted that I would have fallen asleep right away, but Gemma and I stayed up for a while tossing and turning and trying to drown out the laughter and chatting we could hear down the hall.  Apparently, none of the guys were sleepy yet.

Footpaths over the Pond

Eventually I must have slept because when I woke up there was sunlight coming in through the heavily curtained windows.  I got up and snuck out of the room with my camera.  I wanted to get some pictures before it was too hot to be walking around.  It was a beautiful day and if I had brought my tennis shoes I would have gone jogging up and down the rows of date palms.  Everything looked different by daylight, but still very impressive.

Fishpond and Indoor Tent

I wasn't out long before I was ready to come back in.  I was sure it was already 90 degrees outside and when I checked my clock it was only 8:30am.  I decided to go in and go back to bed.  I reached the guesthouse door at the same time a few of the guys were pulling up in the car with breakfast.  We had pastries stuffed with hot dog, cheese and zatar (a greenish spice).  After breakfast, we decided we couldn't wait for everyone else to wake up, and decided to go swimming without them.

The Pool on the Roof

I have never been so happy to jump into a pool in my life.  The water was cool but not cold, and even though it wasn't that big, I swam laps just to feel water that wasn't salty rushing past my face.  The guys stayed in with me for 45 minutes or so, then decided to go in.  I stayed another 15 minutes because I just couldn't bear getting out.  Finally, I was sufficiently pruned, and starting to feel the sun on my skin, so I went in and showered, and was just getting ready to sneak back into bed, when Gemma woke up.  So I went with her to help her find what was left of  breakfast.  Then she wanted to go to the pool, and since she didn't want to go alone, I went up with her.  I kept my long pants and shirt on and used my towel to cover my face and arms to keep from burning.  As good as relaxing next to the pool in a beach chair felt, the sound of splashing and the heat of the sun was too much for me.  I decided to get back in.  So I went back to put on my bathing suit and borrowed some sunscreen from Gemma.  By the time I got back, Fozia and two of the guys had woken up and joined us in the pool.  I don't know how long we were out there, but it was long enough for me to apply sunscreen 3 more times, and still get a little burnt on my nose and shoulders.

When I had finished showering for the second time it was 3pm.  So much for getting home at 10.  We were getting a little hungry and needed more water, so a few of the guys went out to the store.  Blondie woke up while they were gone and wanted another apple for her diet, so we called the guys, who, by now, were on their way back, and made them turn around and go back to the store for her.  I feel asleep again on one of the couches before lunch ever arrived and woke up just as the sun was starting its slow decline.  It was time to leave paradise.

Sunset on the Date Farm

We gathered all of our stuff and began making our way to the cars.  Of course, before we left, we had to take a few more photos, then we had to see the deer, and the ducks, and the chickens, and then we had to see the dates one more time, and finally, after driving around the farm at least twice, we drove out the gate and back into Al Ahsa.  We had to change cars and meet up with the guy who brought us, who had left earlier to visit his mother, but was planning on meeting us at his cousins house to pick us up and drive us back.  We parked in front of a gated apartment building and waited.  While we waited, the cousin went into his house.  We waited some more, and then his sister-in-law drove up with his nephew and so he came back out to talk with them, and then, gasp, his father came out to meet them too, and we all had to duck down in the seats so his dad wouldn't see that there was anyone in the car, and for about 15 minutes we were all trying to hold our breath and hoping we wouldn't get any of them in trouble.  Luckily, they all went inside none the wiser.  About a half hour later, we were finally on the road again, but not out of the woods yet.  On the way home we passed a road block.  We covered our heads with our scarfs, and drove on through with no problem, but it was scary none the less.  I'm not sure exactly what would happen if we were caught, but I'm sure it wouldn't be good.

By the time we said our goodbyes and made our way to our apartments on the fourth floor, it was 10pm. So, I guess they got us home on time after all, give or take 12 hours.  I don't mind.  It was way better than the last season of Lost.