A Walk in the Park

After much discussion about the elusive park that is supposedly somewhere close to our building, five of us girls decided that we would finally go find it.  We planned all week to have a picnic there on Wednesday - the day we have no shopping trips so that we would have something to do other than stare at the walls in our apartments.

The plan was to meet downstairs in the lobby of our apartment building at 4:30 and head out together.  I knew I had a Skype interview at 4pm, so I wasn't sure I would be able to go.  Luckily, the call ended at about 4:40, so I decided to grab my abaya and the watermelon that had been in my fridge all week and head down, just in case they hadn't left yet.  At the bottom of the stairs, only Gemma was there waiting.  She said one of the others had come down, but had to go back up for something, and we were still waiting for the others.  We chatted for a while, and then Sophia came down, and I was admiring her sunglasses when I remembered that I had forgotten to bring my own.  Since we were still waiting for two more, I figured we still had time, so I ran upstairs to grab my sunglasses, leaving my watermelon and phone on the couch.  I must have been about two floors up when my phone started ringing.  Gemma, was quick enough to answer it and then ran the phone up to me.  I was glad she did as it was the interviewer calling back to answer a few more questions.  I did my best to answer them while looking for my sunglasses and making my way back downstairs so the girls wouldn't have to wait on me.

I needn't have rushed.  We were still waiting on some of the girls, and it just so happened that one of the downstairs rooms closest to the reception area was open, so we decided to explore it.  It was nearly the same as every other apartment, except that in the back corner of the living room was a spiral staircase connecting it to the apartment above it on the second floor.  Gemma and I couldn't help it, we decided to explore it.  We went up the stairs, which shook a lot as we went and made me slightly nervous.  Not as nervous as I was when I finally reached the upper apartment and found absolutely no railing at the top of the stairs.  The floor simply ended with a square hole cut out in the corner.  One edge had a step down for the stairs, but the adjacent side was just a straight cliff drop down into the apartment below.  These "Double-Decker" apartments were reserved for teachers with families.  I was cringing while I imagined a baby crawling across the living room to the edge of doom....  Gemma and I decided to leave quickly before either of us had the chance to accidentally fall into the hole ourselves.

While we were exploring one of the girls realized she hadn't said her prayers yet, so she went to the bedroom to pray quickly before we left.  She went to the bathroom to wash first, but because the apartment hadn't been used in a while, the water ran brown for about 2 minutes before it cleared up.  The water reminded Gemma and I that we had forgotten to bring water bottles, and as it was probably around 104 degrees and we weren't sure how far away the park was, we figured we would definitely need some water.  So we ran up to our rooms to get water bottles while the other girl finished her prayers.  When we got back down, my headscarf had come undone and Sophia was busy fixing it for me.  I used to wear a thick black shall that was made of material that kind of stuck to itself so I never needed pins to hold up my hijab before.  But recently I had been gifted a scarf that was made of much thinner, but also slipperier material, so it kept falling down more easily.  Sophia was trying to show me how I could tie it and when she was finally done, the final girl arrived, and at last, we were all in the same place at the same time, and ready to leave.  At least, we were ready to leave until the girl commented on how nice my headscarf looked.  She said I should take a picture, and then I remembered that I didn't have my camera!  So I ran upstairs to get it.

And when I came back down, only an hour after we had originally agreed to meet, we made our way out the door to head to the park.  We didn't get far.  At the end of our block is a Herfy's, which is an arabic kind of McDonalds.  We all decided that what would really make the walk to the park enjoyable would be some ice cream cones.  So we went inside to the family section and ordered some ice cream.  We had the option of choosing ice cream with chocolate syrup or strawberry syrup, and apparently the guy taking our order loved chocolate so much that he just couldn't conceive of anyone wanting strawberry.  We ordered 2 chocolate and 3 strawberry, and each time he said our order back to us, for confirmation, he got it wrong.  "So 5 chocolate ice cream?  Oh, so, 4 chocolate?  hmm... so, you want only 2 chocolate?.... oh, and strawberry? ... So, 2 chocolate and 2 strawberry.  Oh, 3 strawberry?  hmmm.  I think I have it, 2 chocolate and 3 strawberry? Yes?  Are you sure you don't want chocolate?"  It was like watching Abbot and Costello played by a single person.

Eventually we got our correct flavors of ice cream and headed out for the park.  There aren't sidewalks to speak of, so we decided our best bet was to walk along the median in the center of the road.  It was only wide enough for one person so we fell in line single file.  Five black shapes marching away down the road.  We got a lot of honks and stares, and several cars passed us on one side, and then a few minutes later were passing us on the other side of the road.  They sure have interesting ways of getting places if they have to keep flipping U-turns.  My ice-cream only lasted about half way to the park, so the last half of the trip felt longer and hotter than the first.  But I persevered.

The Park at Sunset

Finally we arrived at the small oasis of green surrounded by several apartment buildings.  There were two small playgrounds and one family had even brought a mini trampoline for the kids and enough jars of peanut butter to feed a small army.  It made sense when you started counting the number of kids that appeared to belong to the 5 women sitting around the trampoline.  We chose a spot with some bunches under a canopy, even though the shade wasn't really necessary any more since the sun went down just as we arrived.  We sat down and busted out our treats... cucumber sandwiches, deviled eggs, mango tang, and my watermelon.

Everything was delicious, except the watermelon, which I thought tasted a little worse for the wear, having been in the fridge all week.  It didn't taste like it had gone bad exactly, it just wasn't quite right.  The other girls noticed it too, but they seemed to like it.  "Wow, this almost has a minty flavor.. Did you add mint to it?"  I shook my head and added sheepishly, "You don't have to eat it, it might have gone bad..."  but the other girls said, "No, no, it's good!  I think you may have hit on a really good idea!"  "Yeah, we could have watermelon mint smoothies!"  That did actually sound like a great idea, only the closest my watermelon had ever been to mint was sitting a shelf under some mint-like local plant in the refrigerator.  Perhaps it soaked in the flavor?  I don't know.... I still think the watermelon was probably bad, but I guess if they liked it, and no one got sick, it's a win win.

Vogue Saudi Style

Never too old to be a kid again....

After eating, we made the most of my trip back for the camera and took a lot of "selfies" with the self timer. Its amazing how much fun it can be to act ridiculous in front of a camera.  Its a good thing too, because thats pretty much the only kind of fun your allowed to have in the park. There is a huge sign near the middle of the park with a list of things that aren't allowed.  I think if I were to design a t-shirt that explained what it was like to live in Saudi Arabia, it would just be a series of icons for fun things with big red lines through them.

Everything fun is forbidden

When it got too dark for pictures, we decided to head back.  We thought we would try a back road which probably went straight through to our apartment and would be a shortcut... we thought.  I don't think we will ever try it again.  The road ended up being a maze of back alleys, which somehow led us further out than we wanted to go, and in the meantime, we were being followed by a creepy guy in a pick up truck who would drive by and look us up and down.... I've never felt that exposed while being covered from head to toe.  He would slowly drive past, then speed off only to come back for a second and third pass every few minutes.  Meanwhile we were making our way through construction zones and attempting to avoid puddles of sewage in the middle of the street.  Luckily, our having gotten lost must have also confused our stalker, who couldn't find us either.  Eventually, we found our way home, having gone at least 3 blocks out of the way.  Even though it was dark by now, it was still over 100 degrees outside, and I had to ring out my t-shirt when I finally got back to my apartment.

It was worth it though... and we all agreed we should make it a regular Wednesday outing, minus the getting lost bit.  I secretly decided to nix the over ripe watermelon too.

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.

Treasure Hunt

So two weeks into Fun Week, the woman who has been in charge up until now, choosing days etc... has decided to pass the buck.  So now, we have split up into teams, with each team claiming a day and deciding what to do on that day.
My group got Tuesday, and I suggested we do something like Treasure Hunt Tuesday instead of bringing in food, since everyone brought in food and making clues and finding them would be more fun than a sandwich swap.  Nobody wanted to have to come up with clues, so I was over ruled.  We tossed around some other ideas, one was having a veggies and dip day, but we could think of a way to make that alliterative with "T". Someone else suggested bringing in different kinds of fruit for a fruit salad and calling it Tutti Fruity Tuesday, which reminded someone else of pies, but since 2 out of the 5 of us have no ovens, we couldn't really do the pies.  We tried taking a vote, but since everyone voted for their own idea, that didn't really work out.  In the end we decided on a veggie fruit pie day.  Basically, everyone was just going to do whatever they wanted, and it would be a sort of themeless Tuesday, which would have worked better on a Thursday, but it was the best we seemed to be able to do.  I volunteered for carrots, because they are cheap, I could find them at the local shop, and they required almost no preparation.
Each day that brought us closer to Tuesday brought some sort of change.  On Sunday our group members changed unexpectedly.  We lost some people and we gained some people.  Rebecca, who has just announced that she is pregnant (seriously, at least half of the teachers are pregnant or were just pregnant), joined our team.  I liked her right away since she thought my original idea of a treasure hunt was pretty cool. So, now that I had help, we decided to go ahead and do the treasure hunt since it was no theme Tuesday and it wouldn't matter anyway.
On Monday, we suddenly found out that half the teachers were going to be sent to  a language institute to teach a summer school session there starting tomorrow.  Since there seemed to be no rhyme or reason for who was being sent where or why, we decided it was best to cancel our fun week.  This way the burden didn't fall on only half the group members, and those sent to the the other site wouldn't miss out on the fun.
Rebecca and I were crushed.  We spent a lot of time working really hard on our clues, which we wrote in the form of limericks and haiku's.  We even rounded up a bunch of classroom supplies, like dry erase markers, red pens, and sticky notes to hand out as prizes.
We had one final shot, everyone would have to come to the University on Thursday for an end of year celebration, so we decided to do it then.  It was so exciting!  We wrote out our clues on different colored paper for each group and hid them all around the office and the building.  Each clue leading to another clue, until the final clue led to the school supply prizes which had been neatly wrapped by Rebecca who is much craftier than I am.  There were four teams, but only two prizes, so the teams to arrive first would win the prizes.
I didn't anticipate the competitiveness of some of our co-workers.  The minute we handed over the first clue to the team captains, they went crazy.  Grown women were running through the hallways, shouting clues at each other, tossing tables and chairs out of their way, and frantically looking under pillows on the couches and underneath stacks of books.  You could see groups huddling together as they read the next clue, and then dash off excitedly when someone figured out the next location.  It was really really entertaining to watch.  The best part was that all of the students were still wondering the hallways, and probably wondering what had happened to their normally composed teachers who were now crawling under tables and chairs looking for clues.
It couldn't have lasted more than ten minutes. The ladies were so determined to win that they found the clues in record time, but it was probably my favorite ten minutes I've ever spent at work.

To pass on the enjoyment, see if you can figure out these common office locations from the clues:

Location # 1

When the day is too long to pass

It’s a place to put down your mass

Grab a blanket and pillow

Make yourself mellow

And sit yourself down on your @$#

Location # 2

One button, four walls

Many crowded journeys down

Calories go up

Location # 3

You can heat and eat but beware

This is a hygienic nightmare

It’s dirty and smelly

And bad for your belly

Are you really putting that in there?

Location # 4

Swamp of water and waste

Sweet relief in a hole

No solace for nose

Feel free to make your guesses in the comments section.  I'll post the answers to these clues in a week or so under the comments section.

The Great Student Swap

The first few days of summer school went pretty well.  I had just about gotten all of my students names down, and I had figured out about where most of them were in terms of levels.  We were given books, but with only three weeks left, I knew we wouldn't be able to cover the whole book, so I asked them to vote on which three units they wanted to cover and decided we would do one unit a week.  They chose the units on food, fun, and milestones.  I was a little surprised at their choices, but figured I had the weekend to plan, so no problem.

On Sunday, I introduced our first project, a recipe and story about why it was special to you.   We spent the first day reading sample stories and choosing a dish.  They all seemed really excited about putting together a recipe book. I was excited too!  I'm getting pretty sick of spaghetti and Raman noodles, which is pretty much all I know how to cook.  I would finally have some new recipes to try out.

Also on Sunday, we got to discussing how our classes were all pretty mixed in ability level.  I suggested it was because the test was only for reading and vocab, completely leaving out listening, speaking and writing, so of course it was hard to judge the level.  Sue suggested that we all write down what we thought the levels of our students were now, after three or four days of teaching.  She said we should put them in three groups, beginner, intermediate and advanced.  I said I didn't think it made much sense to switch the students now that we were already a week into our four week summer school.  She said we weren't necessarily changing the classes, just seeing how the levels were.

So I divided my class based on comparative ability level.  The most advanced girls in my room, the middle of the road girls, and then the ones who were lower as beginners.  Everyone else also did the same, using the other students in their class as the yardstick for comparing levels rather than one empirical standard.  Sue then presented this great variety in class levels as evidence that we needed to re-organize the classes to better reflect the ability levels.  Although I knew that Sue wanted to switch the classes up, I didn't know she had gone to Chris, and I didn't know that the official decision had been made to remix summer school.

So there we were, two days before our project was due, working in groups on peer editing when Sue walks in with my class list.  She tells me we are changing classes.  Instead of looking at what level I already had written on the list next to each girls name, she starts saying each name in turn and asks me to say out loud what level the girl is.  I was so embarrassed for the students. I hadn't even warned them that this might happen since I didn't know it had been officially decided.  So now, not only were they being told they were switching their classes, I was publicly announcing their level in front of the whole class.  The advanced girls were taken to one room, and the beginners another, and I was left with the intermediates.  Suddenly my class of 19 was down to about 8.  After everyone left, we all just kind of looked at each other with deer in the headlights expressions.  What had just happened?

We recovered a little and re-assigned groups and did what we could, but since new students were trickling in the entire rest of the class, it was hard to accomplish anything much.  It was all I could do to get down the new student's names.  I was so relieved when the class finally ended.  My relief didn't last long though, a bunch of my students who had been switched rushed back to my class during the break and begged to be let back in the class.  I wanted my class back as much as they wanted to come back to it, but I figured I had better not stir up any trouble.  After all, there was only two and a half weeks left at this point.  I told the girls they could ask Chris if they wanted to switch back, but that I couldn't say yes or no, I didn't have the power.

I'm not sure if they ever did check with Chris about switching classes.  I do know that from that day on, my attendance roster was never the same from one day to the next.  Some of my old students did come back.  I decided I wouldn't  press the issue and ask them if they had gotten permission or not.  Other students drifted in and out again, coming to my class some days, another class other days.  Some girls left for holidays in Turkey or Egypt and stopped attending all together.  Other girls showed up so late every day they might as well have been absent.  All in all, I had over 40 students, but probably never more than 20 at any one time.   And the level problem?  Well, turns out is was twice as bad now than it had been before.

It went like this.  Each person divided her class into three groups; beginner, intermediate, advanced.  They did so based on the comparison of all the students in their class.  So in my class, which apparently had been a "high" level class to begin with, the beginners were the girls who maybe knew most of the vocabulary, but weren't successful at using the grammar yet to form more or less coherent sentences.  But in another teacher's with an overall lower level, the beginners were those who were still learning, "hello, my name is..."   While her advanced students were just mastering the present tense, my advanced students were using subjunctive clauses and transitional phrases.  However, when we switched it up, my beginners were sent to the same class as her beginners, and my advanced to the same class as my advanced.  As you can imagine, this had somewhat of the opposite effect of it's intended purpose.

From the beginning we didn't know much about the summer school.  We didn't know who was coming or when, and we also never found out why.  I'm still not sure what the program was designed to do, or what they wanted the students to accomplish in those three and a half weeks.  I'm pretty sure many of the students themselves didn't know why they were there.  But I do think (hope) they got something out of it.  I know I did.  At the very least, I now know about 40 Arabic girls names.  Anyone need any baby naming advice?

Sophia's Birthday

I obviously don't get British humor.  Twice in the past two weeks, I've jumped in on what I assumed were long running jokes, but which were in fact, not jokes at all.  Or, well, I guess, paradoxically, they are jokes now. Jokes on me.

When we got on the bus to go home one day, some of the male teachers were laughing.  They told one of the my teacher friends that a male friend of theirs was still upset that she had read his aura and told him that his aura was very small.  Well, you know how men are when you tell them anything of theirs is small.  So now, months after the fact, he was still bringing it up from time to time.  She defended herself saying, "It was, it was quite small, that happens you know."  When she said "you know" she happened to look at me and I nodded, simply because that  is what you do when you are conversing with someone and you want to let them know you are listening and have gotten their secret message.  I figured she must have been having a go at the guys by talking about their auras in the first place.  I was sure she wasn't the kind of person to believe in that sort of thing.  One of the male teachers saw me nod and got the wrong idea.  "You can see them too." he said more than asked.  I decided to play along.  "oh, yes," I said, in my most sarcastic tone, "can't you?"  Apparently, the British sarcastic tone is different than the American sarcastic tone, because he clearly thought I was serious.

The other joke actually started the night we went to the beach.  One of the girls, Fozia, was telling a story about her mother, and then one of the boys asked why she said "my mother" because the two girls were sisters and shouldn't it be "our mother"?  I had met these two teachers at separate schools, and I knew they lived in separate apartments, and until then, I had never seen them together.  Though they were both on the shorter side, they looked nothing alike and I was sure they were not sisters. But I also noticed the look they gave each other when the guy had called them out on familial terminology.  I quickly realized what was going on.  They were trying to pull one over on the guys and pretend to be sisters.  The sisters were still both looking at each other blankly, and I figured if no one said anything soon, their cover would be blown, so I jumped in and said, "You know how it is, if it's something you are proud of, you say my mother, but if it's something you don't like about her, you always say her mother.  Just like when parents say "do you know what your son did today?"  He bought it.  It set off a whole other conversation about times we got in trouble as kids.  Crisis averted.  I gave the "sisters" a knowing glance and slight head nod. Later that night we got into stories about how siblings torture each other, and I was amazed at the creativity of these two who earlier hadn't been able to save themselves with quick thinking.  They were telling ridiculous stories, where one would start and the other would finish the story.  I thought they were doing a great job improvising.  They were even making up hairstyles for each other.  "When she was little she had this awful perm done..."  "She used to have this pair of shoes that she bedazzled with all these jewels... you needed sunglasses just to look at them they were so bright and sparkly."  A few times, I thought they had gone overboard inventing stories so crazy the other was sure to deny it and blow their cover.  But they never did.  I was sure they had those guys convinced that they were really sisters.

About a week later, Fozia asked me to help throw a last minute surprise party for the other girl.  We had one of the other teachers take her out to a restaurant and got her key.  Then we blew up balloons and stuck them around the room and had a cake and "crisps" and got everything ready.  Then we tried knocking on all the doors of the other teachers, but because of traffic, they were late getting back and by now it was after 10pm on a work night so most people were asleep.  But we managed to round up five or six of us, and we had a great time yelling surprise (a little late because we were all trying to figure out how to light these candle things and she came in when we all had our backs turned) but it was all very good.  Then the girl had a present for the birthday girl and I thought, oh no, I didn't know! So I hadn't gotten her a present or anything, and by the looks of the other girls standing around empty handed, no one else did either.  When she opened her gift she said, "oh, wow, aren't these the shoes you bought yourself last week?  and isn't this the shirt I picked out for you?"  They both laughed and the other girl said, "yes, I know, I'm the worst sister ever!"  And suddenly, I thought, oh, of course, they are sisters!  No wonder she went through so much effort for her birthday, and had a key to her place, and bought her a present.  Now I felt supremely foolish.  They really had been sisters the whole time, and here I was thinking I was in on a private joke!

To make up for the sort of thrown together last minute birthday party, we all met up to go to a restaurant on the next weekend shopping trip.  The place was on the corniche and it was new and fancy.  Since I still hadn't gotten paid yet, I was a little nervous about going, but I figured I could always just not order anything, and it was better than sitting around waiting for the bus to come back in three hours and take us home from our weekly shopping trip.  So we made our way to the restaurant on foot, and even though it was only about two blocks away, it was over 100 degrees and when you are wearing an abaya and headscarf, it automatically adds about ten degrees, so I was sweating pretty heavily.   It just so happens that while we were walking, one of the guys who had been on the bus to hear my sarcastic comment about aura's was walking with us, and so was the man with the small aura.  You can imagine my horror when they asked me to read his aura and see if it was still small.  Would this joke never end?  So, sweating more than ever now, I looked at him and squinted and stared and finally said simply; "yes".  By the time we arrived at the restaurant, I was pretty much soaked in sweat from the combination of heat and embarrassment.

The Front Entrance to Naia Restaurant

I could tell I was in trouble when the name of the restaurant was lit up in a giant water fountain wall out front. That, and the doorman who ushered us into the lobby with modern art covering the walls while we waited for the elevator to take us up to the top floor.  This place was way out of my league.  I was wearing sweaty pajamas under my abaya, and only had about 40 riyals ($10) to my name at this point, to last me until whenever they decided to pay me, so I clearly didn't belong.   When we got to the top floor, the restaurant looked like a strange combination of zoo and strip club.  All of the seats were zebra print, and the chandeliers were covered in black and white feather boas with LED lights that rotated from red to green to blue to yellow and back again.  Even the tables themselves were lit from underneath with rotating colors.  Everything was marble or polished chrome. I kept expecting stripper poles to descend from the ceiling or rise out of the tables, it had that kind of a vibe, minus the music.  There was (as there always is) a separate room for praying in the restaurant, but during prayer times, they turn the muzak off altogether.

Naia Restaurant Decor

There was a waiter or bus boy standing around about every 20 feet, just in case anyone needed another napkin or dropped a fork.  The didn't have traditional menus.  Instead they had iPads, and you could just scroll through the menu and select anything you wanted.  There were actually three different menus, a Chinese menu, a Lebanese menu, and a Sushi menu, plus all your standard American fare.  There were about six pages of appetizer options and another half dozen or so pages of just drinks.  Which is surprising when you stop to think that alcohol is illegal.  Saudi's may not be able to drink liquor, but they sure have excelled in inventing creative ways to drink just about everything else.  For example; avocado and watermelon juice (those aren't two separate juices by the way, that's a favorite blend).  As you can imagine, ordering took a while.

Happy Birthday to Sophia!

When the food came, it was beautiful.  It was probably the prettiest looking food I have ever seen.  I hadn't ordered anything myself, so this part of the evening was sheer torture.  I watched people eat and eat this amazing food and struggled not to say "are you gonna eat that?" when peoples appetites started to wane.  Luckily, Fozia had gotten an ice-cream cake for her sister from Baskin Robbins earlier and the ever helpful waiters brought it out with firework style candles before my scavenger instinct overcame me too greatly, and I was able to satisfy my hunger with chocolate ice cream cake instead. Overall, it was a very pleasant evening, and well worth the mad dash back to the bus so we wouldn't be left behind.  I'm sure Sophia had a marvelous birthday, but I think we all got something of a present out of that day.

Week of Fun

Our reminder email for the week

All this week, we are proctoring exams.  This basically means that for two to three hours everyday we go and help an Arabic teacher make sure the students aren't cheating.   Other than that, we have nothing to do.  To alleviate boredom, and to help fend off the impending cattiness that inevitably ensues when you leave 30 women in a room together with nothing to do but gossip, a few of the teachers decided to have a week of themed events.  The schedule included Salad Sunday, Motivational Monday, Taco Tuesday, Workout Wednesday, and Thirsty Thursday.

On Salad Sunday, we were all supposed to bring various salad supplies so that we could have a big salad bar. I opted to bring red cabbage since I already had it in my fridge and wouldn't need to buy anything special since I'm still on a budget.  The trouble is, Sunday is our Monday, and after a long weekend, I forgot all about Salad Sunday.  I felt really bad.  But not bad enough not to enjoy the salad bar anyway.  It was delicious!

On Monday, we were all encouraged to put up our favorite motivational quotes around the office.  It's really interesting what people come up with as their favorite quotes.  I've put together some of my personal favorites from the office in this collage for you.

Some of our favorite quotes

On Tuesday, we had tacos, and even though it is slightly unconventional, my contribution was the shredded cabbage that I forgot to bring on Monday.  If nothing else, it added a bit of color to the meal.  Some of the ladies had never had tacos before, and it was amusing to watch some of the Saudi Women attempting to cut apart their tacos with knives.  Don't worry, we schooled them in the proper method of devouring tacos.  Much hot sauce was consumed, and everyone laid around the rest of the day feeling too full to do anything.  I took a nap outside and nearly missed the bus home.

I was most looking forward to Wednesday.  I have been somewhat successful at doing Yoga every morning, and thanks to my lack of funds, I have been eating less.  I think that I have shed a pound of two, but with no scale, it's hard to say.  I had wanted to go jogging around our outdoor area with some of the other girls, and even brought my tennis shoes once or twice, but it just kept working out that I was teaching when they were free, or they were teaching when I was free, so instead of pushing myself to do it on my own, I had just given up.  Having a group workout sounded like a wonderful excuse to get me going.  At first we had planned on going to another room to do the workouts, but it turned out that there was a man in the hallway, so we had to stay put, or put on our abayas and hijabs just to walk to another room down the hall.  We opted to do our best in the tiny hallway.  We did a few warm up stretches, then we did squats.  We did 3 sets of 20, and one set of 15.  I know that doesn't seem like much, and at the time, it seemed like no big deal.  But then we decided to run up and down the stairs (3 stories) three times.  By the end of it, my thighs felt like jello.  I was barely able to do our cool down, the electric slide.  Now, if you have never seen 20 women trying to do the electric slide in a 4x15 foot hallway, with no one who actually remembered how, I highly recommend it.  It was so hilarious, I forgot all about my aching legs.  At least until I got home that night.  Getting up and down from the  couch was torture.  Going up and down stairs was worse.  I was glad I only had one day of work left so I could sit in my room and recover the rest of the weekend.

On Thursday, different people signed up to bring different drinks so that each hour, we had a small sample of each different type of drink.  I was able to have the first drink at 8am, hot chocolate with marshmallows, yum!  Unfortunately, I had to proctor an exam at 9am, so I had to miss out on the 9 am and 10 am drinks.  I was pacing up and down the back of the room, trying to think how I was going to make it through standing for the next two hours on my soar legs, when there was a knock at the door.  Low and behold, one of the teachers was going around bringing the drinks to the teachers who had to proctor.  It was so sweet!  I was so grateful.  On top of that, it just so happened to be my new favorite drink, lemonade with mint!  There were several interesting drinks the rest of the day, including carrot juice, hibiscus juice, a gross spinach and cucumber thing called green goo, and something that tasted like black jelly beans (maybe it was fennel?).  Our final drink of the day was supposed to be mock-tails (virgin strawberry daiquiris and pinacolodas) but the ice had melted and the blender gave out earlier, so we just had extremely thick mix.  It was a disappointing, yet sugar filled end to a whole day of crazy flavors.

At the end of the day, we all also received certificates of participation in the week of work fun.  It was fun.  And I now have a pink certificate that tells me my efforts were "admirable" to prove it.