Rain

The rain outside my building.

It's raining today in Riyadh.  I mean really pouring.  There is even thunder and lightning.  I have never enjoyed the sound of thunder and rain as much as I do right now.

Funny thing really, you don't know you are missing something so much until you are suddenly reminded of its absence.  Sure, there have been a few times that it has sprinkled here and there, but this is the first major rainstorm I've experienced in the 11 months I've been in Saudi. Until now, I hadn't realized how much I could miss something as simple as weather.

Riyadh boasts 331 days of sunshine a year, which is impressive, and some would even say enviable, but not to me.  There is a kind of monotony that sets in when the weather doesn't seem to change much day to day, or even month to month.  I never thought much about it before, but changes in the weather often came with changes in my mood.  I miss the way an autumn breeze that carries the smell of burning leaves can make you feel nostalgic, or the sense of anticipation you get when that crisp sharpness in the air that tells you snow is coming, or the way a gloomy day makes you feel that delicious kind of sadness that isn't really sad at all.  I even miss the way bad weather can ruin your plans and make you angry.

I guess what I miss most is feeling like the weather is a personality - not your friend or your enemy exactly - but another character, another variable to shake things up every now and then.   Here the weather is so constant, it feels like an unbreakable law of nature, like gravity or the laws of physics.

The gloomy clouds over Riyadh

So when I left for work this morning and found the sky covered in dark gray clouds, it felt a little like magic, and later, when I heard thunder rumbling for the first time in almost a year, it felt like something epic was happening, something almost apocalyptic.

Playing in the Rain

I'm supposed to be working now, but I ran outside like a crazy person to feel the rain on my face and dance around in puddles like a child.  I could see people gathered at the windows in all the buildings around me, watching the downpour with the kind of interest and curiosity reserved for anomalies like hailstorms in the United States.

I stayed outside until I could feel the rain seeping through my abaya to my clothes underneath, and then I stayed for a while longer, keeping dry under the eaves of the building, just watching car tires slice through the water, and windshieldwipers getting some much needed exercise.

When I finally went back inside, it felt like saying goodbye to an old friend after a chance meeting. You both know you can't stay forever, but you do wish you could somehow stretch the moment just a little longer, just enough for the memory to stick with you until the next chance encounter. Hopefully, the next time, it won't be so long in coming.

Al Farabi, Once Again

Now that the GCF was over, there was no need for me to be at the SAGIA offices.   But my boss was still worried about my return to our offices, just in case immigration wanted to pass by.  So instead of going into work Thursday morning, I went to the SAGIA offices.

Amazingly, Dr. Salem was in.  I went to see him.  I asked him why they were asking me for money for the transfer when I had already paid.  He told me Suleiman needed the 30,000 riyals because that is what he had paid to bring me from America.  I explained to him that Suleiman paid nothing to bring me from America, and that in fact, Suleiman had nothing to do with anything since I had never worked for Suleiman at all, but only for Education Experts and Al Farabi.  He shrugged and told me I would have to work it out with Suleiman.  I asked him if Suleiman would make him pay the money if I simply left on final exit.  He told me, no, they wouldn't pay him anything either way.  I asked him how that seemed fair, since either way, they wouldn't have a teacher.  He just shrugged again.  He told me they would be happy to give me the final exit and my ticket home.  I told him I also wanted my 5,650 SAR back that I had paid to be able to transfer.  He said he would see what he could do but didn't think I would get that back.  I asked him why he didn't just transfer me and be done with it, but not tell Suleiman about it.  Suleiman would never know.  He told me he couldn't do that because he was a man of his word.  I told him that obviously he wasn't because he told me I could transfer and now he was saying that I couldn't.  Not the most tactful approach, I'll admit, but I had really just about had it with Suleiman.   He told me again that I would have to take it up with Suleiman.  I thanked him for his time, and left.

We went back upstairs to HR to arrange the final exit and the checks.  They agreed that they would give me back 2,000 of the 5,650, and of course, to pay me for the additional hours I had since worked in the evening teaching.  I waited about 30 minutes for them to process my checks, and while I was waiting, my bald friend told me I should make a case at the ministry of labor to try to get all of the 5,650 SAR back instead of just 2,000.  He also told me that once they issued the final exit, I would be in danger of not having time to make the case at the labor office, because technically, if they wanted to be really mean, they could send my case to deportation immediately and they would find me and send me off on the next plane.  This seemed fantastical, but I did take his advice on making a case with the labor office.  After all, even if I didn't win, it would at least buy me time.  When it became clear that they wouldn't be able to process my checks that day, I told him I would be back on Sunday to collect my money, and left to make a case at the Ministry of Labor.

Luckily, a friend who had driven me to Al Farabi, was kind enough to drive me to the Ministry of Labor and give me translation help so I could fill out the necessary forms in Arabic.  Since this was my second trip to the Ministry of Labor, I was pretty used to the system and it was relatively painless. I knew where the women's section was now and only had to go back out once to the men's side to have my friend help me translate an additional piece of paperwork.  The whole thing only took about an hour.  The ladies inside were friendly and sympathetic.  Unfortunately, it didn't buy me as much time as I had hoped it would. Usually, they don't schedule an appointment with a Ministry of Labor mediator for several weeks, but this time they made an appointment for a week from today.  Maybe there aren't as many cases for women, or maybe they aren't that busy this time of year.  Either way, it was sooner than I hoped, but it still bought me a week.

We will see what happens next.

Back to Al Farabi

The next morning I went in to try to see what the hold up was on the transfer.  Of course, I knew it was the 30,000 SAR, but I thought it was worth it to play dumb.

I went in and found my bald friend, who this time didn't reprimand me on my poor Arabic, but instead chided me for my long absence.  I told him I was waiting for my transfer.  He told me they were waiting for the money.  I asked him what the money was for, since I had already paid him the 5,650 SAR, supposedly to transfer me in the first place.  He shrugged and said I would need to talk to Dr. Salah.  I spoke to Dr. Salah, who said I would need to talk to Dr. Salem since it was out of his hands.

Dr. Salem was not in, so I asked the bald guy to make an appointment for me with Dr. Salem for the next day.  He told me to come around 10am and I would find him there.  I came at around 10am and waited 3 hours.  He never showed up.  I told the bald guy to call me when Dr. Salem arrived the next day, and I would come in 30 minutes by taxi to talk to him, but I didn't want to waste another day of waiting around for someone who wouldn't show up.

The bald guy never called me the next day.  I called him around 1pm and he told me that Dr. Salem hadn't arrived.  I told him to please schedule an appointment for me and I would come, but he had to be sure Dr. Salem would be there.   He said he would.

In the meantime, I sent Dr. Salem and email and a text message, asking him to clarify why they wanted me to pay this money, pointing out what I had already paid.  He never responded.

I called again the next day, no Dr. Salem.  I called again the following day, and he was in, but couldn't wait the 30 minutes it would take me to get there by taxi.

I gave up.  For me, there was really no incentive to push the matter since I was happily working away at SAGIA.  If they didn't mind leaving things hanging, then I certainly didn't mind, either.

Girls Night

If there is one thing I've done here that I can be proud of, it would be this:  I indirectly brought some weekly joy into the lives of some Saudi Women.

When I first started teaching at the institute in the evenings, my students had been studying together as a group for 6 weeks already with another teacher, but as I was struggling to learn and remember all their names, it became clear to me that they didn't know each other's names either.  You might ask how its possible to be with the same group of people every night for six weeks and not know their names, but the sad truth is that classes are called lectures here for a reason.  Many of them were doing group and pair work for the first time with me.

Once they started to get to know each by mixing in groups, the dynamic of the class changed.  On the one hand, there was a lot more side chatting during class.  On the other hand, they rushed to help each other understand, and challenged each other more in games in class with light-hearted teasing.  They all felt more confident speaking up and personalities began to emerge.  They were the same girls who on the first day had been quit  and reserved, but now they were loud and carefree and couldn't wait to talk in class.  The transformation was amazing to watch.

Unbeknownst to me, this transformation wasn't solely the result of my amazing class activities as I first thought.  Mid-way through course, one of the women had invited all of them to her house after class on Thursday (our Friday) and ever since then it has become a weekly event.  Each week, a different woman would hosts the class at her house.  After they had been doing this for a month or so, they invited me to come along.  For some reason it always seemed to happen that I was either leaving for Dammam on the weekend, or because it was the holidays, having parties at the embassy, or having friends visit.  Anyway, this Thursday I finally made it to the girl's night.

The class itself had dwindled from the original 10 or so members down to only 4,  many of the girls had decided not to continue for the second six weeks because of exams at the high school, or a change in work schedule, or because their maid quit.  But they all still managed to make it to the weekly party on Thursday.  So it was kind of like a mini-reunion for me.  I got to see a lot of the students that had stopped coming.

I was driven to the house after class by Wesam, a 26 year old who is married with two kids.  Her son who is two and a half, came with her father to pick us up and drive us to Mona's house.  He sat in the front seat with no car seat, and spent the whole ride hanging out the window.  Several times, I was worried he might fall out, but Wesam just grabbed for his hoodie a few times without even pausing in conversation.  It is very normal to see kids with no car seats, often standing up or sitting awkwardly in their mother's laps while driving.   The kingdom has the highest rates of traffic accidents in the world, and so it is somewhat shocking that the use of seat belts and proper child seats is so uncommon. Thankfully, it was a short trip.

Mona's Grandma's Pancake Recipe:
Wheat flour, water, salt, and
 black sesame seeds

Wesam and I were the first from class to arrive.  Mona, who used to attend with her daughter, was busy making food in the kitchen.  She wanted to show me her grandmother's recipe for savory pancakes, and the Indian food she was cooking.  She explained that her Somalian maid had left to make more money with some other family, so she had taken over the housework, which was extra hard since her son was home on a visit from California where he is in school.   "He misses my cooking so I have to cook for him three times a day."  Next she introduced me to her mother, a tiny woman who was clearly old, but also very energetic.  She had been to America nearly 20 years ago, and would surprise me occasionally throughout the night by saying a random phrase in English.

The chicken coop, and busy rooster

Next I got the grand tour.  The house was huge.  There were three stories, and the first floor was just the kitchen and three different living rooms, the second floor had bedrooms, and the third floor was also bedrooms, but for pets. They had about 20 cats and maybe 100 birds.  There were bird cages everywhere.  There were parrots and canaries and finches and outside in the backyard, a chicken coop.  The grandmother took me outside to have a look at them.  They were all hanging out on a well.  She pointed out the only rooster among so many hens and said,  "man very busy." and then laughed while giving me a knowing look.

On the other side of the house was a separate entrance just for men.  It was much fancier than the door I had come through and in this garden there was a permanent outdoor tent.  She explained that this was the "man cave" for her husband and two boys.  It was fully carpeted and had the traditional pillows for leaning inside the tent.  It also had a large flat screen TV and good speakers.  There was also a fire place - not sure if it worked- but there were a lot of tea pots for Arabic coffee on the mantle ready to go.  She told me that the girls had wanted to have our night out here, but because of a sudden cold snap, we would stay inside.

Inside again she showed me another living room, this one just for men, but it was in the process of being re-decorated, so it was kind of a mess.  They had just finished redecorating the bathroom, which she told me her husband had designed.  I could tell by the ways she said it that she didn't really approve.  It had vertical rows of black tiles.  Each row had a different pattern and after ever third row or so, there were several rows of white tiles.  The effect was something like a prison since the vertical black tiles, even though they were very wide tiles, kind of seemed like bars.

Mona's 3 in 1 living room

There was a third living room that she didn't take me to see, which was just behind the kitchen and very small.  This one was just for family.   Finally, we were back at the living room with the rest of the girls.  It was so big, it was actually like three living rooms in one.  Or maybe it just felt that way because there were three very different sets of furniture, one on each wall.  There was one very modern looking box - like set of couches and love-seats in black, white and pink stripes.  On the opposite wall were antique looking chairs and sofas in pea green and gold.  Next to them was a giant purple sofa and foot stool.

Mini-sweet sambosa's

During the course of the night, we would rotate between all these areas depending on the activity.  For the initial round of Arabic coffee and sweets, we sat in the pea-green couch area.  By now, two more of my students, sisters, had arrived with their mother and younger sister.  They were originally from Syria, but only the oldest daughter had been born there, the rest had been raised in Saudi, and up until last year, they had gone back to Syria every summer to visit friends and family.  One of Mona's two daughters brought the younger sister (I think she was about 7 years old) a present - red earrings and a puzzle.  She was delighted and ran to put the earrings in right away.  When she came back, she started to play with the puzzle.  she opened the box, then took one piece out, looked at it, put it back, and took out another.  She was holding the piece up, and looked at it sideways and then looked at the picture on the box.  She put the puzzle piece on top of the spot in the picture it should go, smiled, and triumphantly returned the piece to the box.  It was clear she had never done a puzzle before.

Since I couldn't really understand the conversation happening around me anyway, I took the puzzle and the girl over to a coffee table, and showed her how to start by looking for the edges.  Once we got the boarder in place, and I felt she had a handle on finding pieces to fill it in, I got back up to rejoin the adults.  She got up to and followed me back to the couch.  She didn't say anything, just waited patiently while I greeted two other students (also sisters) who had arrived.  Even though their father was Saudi, their mother, who also came, was Egyptian.  We talked briefly, but since their mother didn't speak English, it was a pretty short conversation.  The little girls stuck to my side and looked at me patiently.  So I asked if she wanted me to help her finish the puzzle and she nodded, so I went back to the kiddie table and very happily helped her finish the puzzle.

Turkish Coffee

By then, more guests had arrived, so we switched to the black and white and pink area, so we had more places to sit.  We had more sweets, and Turkish coffee was brought around.  Inevitably, the conversation turned to men.  They gave Fatimah, who is 30 and not yet married a hard time, and she stood her ground saying she would not marry a Saudi.  She was clearly a woman determined to follow her own course, and had several tattoos.  One began behind her ear and traced her hairline down her neck.  In class, I had only ever been able to read the first part: "I am not an option."  Now, for the first time I could read the rest: "Choose me or f*#&ing loose me."  More than once I had wondered how and where a Saudi woman would go to get a tattoo, but then she must have gotten it on one of her trips to Egypt to visit her mother's family.

Then it was my turn to be grilled, and suddenly everyone had a son or a cousin who they wanted to introduce me to.  I declined politely, insisting that I was very happy to be single, and joking that I would end up killing any man I married since I am such a bad cook.  The grandmother offered through translation to let me live with her.  She would teach me everything she knew in the kitchen.  She said she was lonely since her husband died and she had a huge big house and no one to share it with.  I laughed, but was secretely wondering if it was a geniuine offer.  Depending on how much housing was going to cost, it wouldn't be such a bad deal.  She wouldn't be lonely, I'd have low rent, and cooking lessons to boot!

Preparing the Shisha

Someone hooked up their phone to the speakers, which were remarkably loud, and a few girls started dancing.  Another set of girls worked on preparing the shisha.  We migrated again back to the pea colored couches where there was more room for dancing.  My shyest student, Maria, was suddenly up and dancing, shaking her hips in ways even Shakira hasn't mastered.  I was flabbergasted.  Song after song, these girls got up and danced, sometimes the dances were crazy, made up from different moves they had seen in western music videos.  Sometimes they were traditional dances done in a circle while holding hands (I was pretty good at these).  And sometimes they were strangely erotic, with lots of shaking of hips and breasts.  I was decidedly terrible at these, despite the lessons the girls tried to give me.  Even the grandmother got into it, shouting "shake that ass" at one point.  I was so surprised by that I nearly fell over. Thankfully, someone came around with tea, so I grabbed a cup, grateful for the excuse to leave the dance floor.

Dinner is served

When I emptied my plate, someone
would fill it again, even if I insisted
I was full.

Around 11pm, we were called in to have dinner.  Dinner!?  There was something called Mashkhul, which is a rice and meat dish similar to Khobsa.  There was Tabula salad, there was seafood soup, there was the Indian food Mona had made, there was a salad of yogurt and cucumbers and dill, and there were even pickles.  It was a huge feast.  The younger women offered drinks while the older women dished out huge helpings no matter how much you protested that you didn't need that much. One of the most brilliant customs I've come across in Saudi is the use of disposable plastic sheets as table cloths.  When we were all finished eating, the ladies simply began scrapping all the leftovers off of the plates onto the table.  This saves the use of a garbage disposal and makes washing the dishes easy.  When all the plates and dishes are cleared from the table, then you just fold up the table cloth with all of the scraps of food inside and throw it away, or in this case, toss it out to the chickens.

Tea served in fancy cups

Cleaning up was sort of a group effort, we all pitched in since Mona's maid was gone.  Mona herself left early to go and stay the night with her husband in the hospital.  He had some blood clots in his brain, and they were monitoring him.  He had been in the hospital for nearly a week now, and they were trying to decide on weather or not to do surgery.  Her two daughters stayed behind to continue playing host.  We had one more round of hot drinks, This time ginger and hot water.    Since I normally just take taxi's and you weren't going to find a taxi on the side residential streets especially at this time of night, one of the girls offered me her driver.  So he came and picked me up, and off we went.  I don't know how much longer the other women stayed after I left, but it was clear that no one was in a hurry to leave.

I could understand why.  I was lucky enough to have an active social life among expats, so I hadn't felt the same isolation these women must feel.  Salma, one of my students once tried to explain to me why their Thursday nights were so important.  "During the week," she said, "I feel like this (she curled her hands up into fists and and brought them to her chest), "Then its Thursday, and we laugh an dance and talk, and everything goes away.  I feel like this." (and she threw her arms open wide).

Even though most of the time I hadn't been able to follow the conversation, the dancing and laughing and eating had made me feel like I was part of the group.  It was the first time I had truly felt welcome in Saudi Arabia, and I agreed with Salma.  My arms were now open wide, ready to experience and embrace whatever came my way next.

Working from Home

My new company had assured me that since they had given me the three letters, the had to transfer me, and that the best thing to do now was just lay low.  They would get tired of having me hang around on their visa, and eventually would want to transfer me on their own, especially to avoid paying the cost of the plane ticket back to America for me.

So I didn't contact anyone at Al Farabi, and it seemed for all intents and purposes that they had forgotten about me too.  Two weeks went by and I had not heard anything from them.

Then I was called in to see the boss of my new company.  I knew something was up when both the admin guy and May (who doubles as human resources) were there.  I thought I had done something wrong already, even though I hadn't worked there for long and started wracking my brain for things I might have done.  So even though it was still bad news, I was relieved when the told me that actually, the problem was with immigration, not my job performance.

We have a few people who work at the National Water Company full time, and turns out, the NWC recieved a visit from the authorities.  Normally this would be fine, except that it just so happens that the two guys who work for us over there happen to have issues with their iqama's.  One man's iqama needed to be renewed, which wasn't a big deal since the company had the paperwork in for him already and it was just pending, but the other man was here on his son's iqama, and it is technically illegal to work for the company full time unless you are under their iqama, so my new company would have to pay a huge fine, and transfer him to their iqama, which is something he may not be willing to do, since it means that he could only stay in Saudi so long as he was working with the company.  If he stays on his son's family visa, he can come and go as he pleases and he can stay as long as his son stays.

The company was understandably concerned that they were now under a microscope, and that even though we had the transfer letters, and the application for transfer was in and pending, meaning that we were 100% correct and legal, they didn't really want to take any chances of incurring any more fines.  Since I couldn't come into the office, in case immigration came and demanded to see everyone's iqama, they were sending me to work from home for today.  Tomorrow, I was supposed to go in to Al Farabi, and try to meet with them once again to see what could be done about the transfer, but for now, I should just go home.

So I packed up my laptop and headed for home.  I suppose I should have known from the get go that simply not doing anything couldn't have worked as a solution for long.  Still, I was worried.  On the taxi ride home I felt a little like I was on the uphill part at the beginning of a roller coaster.  I was excited to be working from home; you can always get more done at home. But there was that feeling of dread about what will happen when you reach the top.  There have been so many swings in fortune for me during this whole process, I can't help but feel that this one might be a downward turn somehow.  I guess I will find out tomorrow, when I go back to Al Farabi and see what more can be done.

Happy New Year!

Like Christmas, Saudies also don't celebrate the New Year, or birthdays.  This is particularly tragic for one of my students who's birthday happens to be New Year's Eve.  She told me excitedly on Wed. that it was her birthday and when I asked her if she had any plans, she told me no, that it was haram or forbidden to celebrate birthdays.  She looked so sad that I decided then and there that I would make her a cake.  I know what you are all thinking, me baking?  I must have burned the house down.  Don't worry, it was from a box, and there was no tragic cooking accident.  Ok, so there might have been a minor  cooking accident, but it wasn't tragic.  I was very carefully following the recipe on the back of the box, which told me to heat the oven to 180.  I remember thinking at the time that 180 seemed kind of low, but I figured I shouldn't try to deviate from the instructions since I only had one chance to make this a good cake.  I set my watch for 25 minutes later and waited.   When I went back to check it, it was still a liquidy mess.   That's when what you've all been thinking this whole time finally dawned on me.  The temperature they gave on the box was in Celsius, and the oven temperature was in Fahrenheit.  I turned up the heat, let it bake for another 20 minutes or so, and all was well. Except that when I got ready to leave for work, I left it on the table.

Luckily, I realized in time to buy some Twinkies at the corner store before I got to class.  When I arrived, she and I were the only two in class so far.  I told her about how I had baked a cake for her, and how I had forgotten it, so I bought a bunch of mini-cakes for everyone instead.  She looked confused.  Why teacher?  For you!  I said.  For your birthday.  She started laughing.  Oh, I forgot is was my birthday.  I told everyone, including you it was my birthday and tried to get them to have a party for me or something, but my husband, my friends, everyone, told me haram so I forgot all about it.  She laughed again and thanked me.  We ate the cakes at the end of class, and even though they were kind of stale, I think we all appreciated having a little something to celebrate.

I went straight from class to the New Zealand Embassy for a New Year's Eve party.  Since I didn't have time to go home and change, I had been wearing my fancy party dress all day, and no one knew any better.  It's times like these when abayas really come in handy.  The party was a masquerade ball, and so I decided to wear my crazy leopard print dress since it matched the gold and black mask I had bought at the shop a few doors down from my work.  I happened to see the party shop on my way to lunch one day and remembered I would need a mask for the party, so I stopped in.  It was a good thing I did too.  They were closing up the shop or moving it to another location or something, and since they were packing everything in boxes, they let me have the mask for super cheap just to save the effort of packing it.

So mask in hand, and pre-dressed, I made my way to the embassy in a taxi.  He was a very confident guy, and when I told him to take the south gate because that was the one I used the last time that was closer to the New Zealand Embassy, he told me the south gate had been closed since 3pm in anticipation of New Year's Parties at the embassies, and because there was increased security now because of ISIS.  He certainly knew his stuff.  Since he knew all that, I assumed he knew where the New Zealand embassy was.  He assumed that I knew where the New Zealand embassy was since I had a ticket to a party there.  Neither of us bothered to check in with the other about this, until after about the 10th roundabout inside the diplomatic quarter, he turned to me to ask where it was.   Luckily, there was an information panel that listed all the embassies, so we found that, and then were able to find the embassy.

Me & the ice-sculpture

It was crowded, maybe 300 people, and at least 3/4 of them had masks on.  It was sort of fun, but also sort of hard to see through the peepholes in the mask, and even harder to dance without it falling off and bouncing everywhere.  Most people gave up on their masks fairly early in the evening.  There was lots of food, and an ice-sculpture that said 2014 that was appropriately melting, though not really fast enough to be gone by midnight.  Someone had gone through the trouble of putting up Christmas lights that spelled out something Happy New Year.  After much debating, about what it might say; what, new, wally, whisper, we're here, a very smooshed 2014... we finaly consulted an embassy staff member who told us they had worked very hard on trying to get it to say "wish u a" Happy New Year, but that it all sort of ran together and the only part you could really read was Happy New Year.

People Watching

 There was lots of dancing, but the DJ was really hit or miss, so most of the time I sat out and enjoyed some quality people watching.   Since it's allowed to sell beverages at the embassies, there was some very entertaining people watching going on. I realized when I kept looking at the clock to see how long before midnight, not because I was excited for it to be midnight, but because I was excited to be going home, that I must be getting very old.  I used to work 12 hour days a lot and it never seemed to phase me.  Now, I just feel tired all the time.  Not even the promise of the next cliff-hanger episode of Breaking Bad appeals to me more than sleep lately.  And the music is really too loud for me.  I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but Saudi has turned me into an old woman.

The ice-sculpture meets an untimely death in the pool.

Which isn't to say I can't still have fun.  The guy who got me the ticket to the party is best friends with the deputy ambassador to New Zealand, so we were invited to the after party.  As tired as I was, the prospect of watching a bunch of diplomats jump into the pool was too promising to pass on.  I had been cold all night, temperatures dipping into the frigid 60s, and since the pool was not heated, this was pretty much equivalent to the polar dip for those of us acclimated to Saudi weather.  About a dozen guys (and me the only girl) stuck around for the after party.  They had all initially agreed to do it, but in the end, only 4 guys jumped in.  They might have changed their minds after the catering staff dumped the ice sculpture into the pool as the quickest and easiest method of getting rid of it.  The guys in the pool invented a new pool game.  Ice-burg tag.  The basic premise being to push the pieces of floating ice away from you and towards anyone else who is in the pool.  As fun as it was, I still had to work the next day, so when the Italian finance officer declared that it was now 2015 in Italy, I decided it was time to be heading home.

So, 2015.  It definitely doesn't feel like I've been here 8 months.  Sometimes it feels like 8 years, other times 8 weeks.   Who knows what's in store for me this year.  I could be heading home in a month or two.  I could make it all the way to the year mark.  I could stay till August.  But I'm making this resolution right now.  I will not be spending New Year's Eve in the Kingdom next year.  Inshalla.

Christmas in the Kingdom

I almost forgot about Christmas this year.  In any other country in the world, this wouldn't have been possible.  Christmas music and lights and decorations are starting earlier and earlier so that by Christmas, you are hard pressed to find anything that doesn't remind you of the holidays.  But here in Saudi, Christmas is more or less forbidden.  In 2012, twelve people were arrested for "plotting to celebrate Christmas".  And while I don't know for sure if there are any actual written laws against Christmas, the religious pressure keeps it pretty much under wraps.  There are no decorations, no holiday jingles on the radio or in the stores (for that matter, there is never any music in stores since listening to music in public is haram) and no lights or candy canes, not to mention the weather hovering in the mid to upper 70s.  I have not seen, heard, tasted, or smelled anything in the entire month of December that gave me any indication of the Holiday Season aside from the calender itself.

So maybe you can understand my surprise when I looked up one night while riding in a taxi and saw the kingdom tower lit up in green and red.  Normally, the lights on the tower change slowly in a rainbow pattern from red to yellow, to green, to turquoise, to blue, to purple and back to red.  But that night, the lights on the sky bridge were green, while the u shape in the middle was red.  I couldn't believe my eyes.   Of course, it could have been a coincidence.  Red and green are complimentary colors, so it could have just been an aesthetic thing, but there is something so fundamentally Christmas-y about red and green together that I couldn't help but think that someone somewhere was using this iconic Riyadh building to secretly wish the whole country Merry Christmas.  If so, it was a very short lived greeting card.  By the next night, the tower lights had been switched back to the regular rotating colors.

Christmas Contraband

Christmas Dinner

That wasn't my only Christmas surprise.  One of the things I've been most grateful for this year, and especially in the last three months since I moved to Riyadh, is the collection of friends I have been able to make.  Collectively, my friends gave me the best gift possible (short of going home), a wonderful Christmas Eve party.  One of them went around to different stores and found a tiny plastic Christmas tree and some ornaments on the black market.  Another friend who works at an embassy procured some candy canes.  Someone else had brought a Santa hat from the UK.  Another friend made tiny delicious quails for dinner, and I attempted to make my brother's famous twice baked potatoes and an apple pie. Together we gathered around that tiny fake tree, ate, talked, played cards and listened to Christmas songs from the internet.

At work the next day, I gathered with my new co-workers around a big traditional Saudi breakfast with humus and beans and bread and falafal.  No one mentioned any reason for the sudden generosity and impromptu get together, but I think we all noticed the calendar said December 25th. When we were finished and everyone was cleaning up and heading back to work, one of the Arabic editors leaned over and whispered a clearly carefully memorized phrase: Merry Christmas.  I gave him a huge smile and he smiled back, proud that he had shared this secret with me.  Later that night after class, one of my students hung around after the others had left and said, teacher, Merry Christmas.  I gave her a hug.  Those two greetings meant more to me than a lifetime of automatic holiday greetings from salesmen and clerks in the US.

It wasn't most the traditional of Christmas's, especially having to work, but I can't complain.  Maybe I missed all the build up to Christmas, the cold weather, the carols, the cards, the annoying advertisements.... but maybe I got something better.  Maybe when you have to look for it, when it isn't on every street corner, when you have to dare to celebrate, and weigh the consequences if you do, you think more about what it really means and what really matters.  Like winning at cards.