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.

How the Other Half Lives

This weekend we were invited to visit the Oasis compound.  Compounds are like gated communities for expats.  And by gated, I mean, gated, walled, barbed wired, armed guarded communities. You might say that is being a little paranoid, but this particular compound was attacked by terrorists in 2004 who killed about 27 people.  Since then they have added an extra layer of walls with electrified fences and a ton of other safety measures including face recognition software and big brother cameras everywhere.

So we got picked up from our regular Friday night shopping trip bus stop at the supermarket by a couple of American guys who are here working on contracts and staying in the villas on the compound.  We drove through three separate gate checks before we were officially on the compound, but even after the first gate, I could feel the difference.  There was so much greenery everywhere for one thing.  The other is the architecture of the apartments and "villas" looked like some thought had actually gone into planning the place.  The streets were laid out in typical suburban style with date palms lining the sidewalks.  We parked right in front of the villa they shared between five guys.  We walked into the entryway, which was the size of two of my bathrooms, and then into a living room dining room that was bigger than my whole apartment.  there was a second living room, just for the TV, a kitchen (with a dishwasher!) and then a completely separate laundry room that was bigger than my kitchen/living room.  There was even a room just for the maid with it's own private bathroom!  (They didn't actually have a live in maid, but they could have...)  There was also a back yard porch area with a grill and lawn chairs and everything, even though at the moment it is too hot, even at midnight to hang out out there.

Gemma and I were stunned.  We probably looked like idiots standing there with our jaws hanging open.  They all just sat back and watched us like we were crazy while we oohed and ahhed over the simplest things, like a toaster and coffee maker, an oven, the fact that there was more than one electrical outlet in the kitchen, and that they had real chairs instead of stools, the fact that the ceilings were a good 10 maybe even 15 feet high, all the ways this place was just superior in every way to where we were staying.  Then they dropped the bombshell.  This was just the first floor and there were two more stories of this paradise.  It took us over a half an hour to get the whole grand tour of the place, it was that big.  One guy had a hallway of closets longer than my bedroom and living room combined leading up to his bathroom.   Another guy had 2 TVs, and all of them had their own bathroom (with bathtubs!).  It was all so overwhelming.  I felt like we had been dropped right into upper middle class America.

And just to solidify the impression, we were offered a glass of wine.  This may not seem like much, but you have to remember that Saudi is an alcohol free country.  So to give us this glass of wine, grape juice, sugar and yeast had to sit around for three months in water jugs, then be bottled and sealed up for another little while before it made it into our mouths.  They called it "Shower Wine" because they used the maid's spare bathroom shower to store all of the water jugs while they were brewing the wine.  The wine was impressively good for having been made in a shower.  With an actual fancy wine glass in hand, we had now become fully immersed in little America.

And Gemma and I would have been more than content with just that, but wait, there's more.  This compound has not one, not two, but three swimming pools.  Of course, we had to go swimming, so the boys took us over to the fitness area, which was less than five minutes away, and the best part was, we didn't have to wear our Abayas!  We passed through a really long fancy looking dining area and then down some stairs to peek into an indoor tennis court.  Actually, two indoor tennis courts next to each other.  Then we went down another flight of stairs to an ice-skating rink.  Can you believe it?  In Saudi, an ice-skating rink?  How much refrigeration equipment do you think it takes to keep ice frozen in year round temperatures of 85-120 degrees fahrenheit? There was also a whole gym with cardio equipment and weights and basically any exercise stuff you could think of.  Finally, we went back up a level to the olympic size swimming pool.  It was crazy.  There was a diving board, and a ceiling that had to be three stories above us.  Suspended from the ceiling were bunches of large fiberglass dolphins, usually in families of three.  I counted at least 27 dolphins, but there may have been more.

And the best part of all of this?  We were the only people there.  There was absolutely no one around.  I couldn't believe that more people weren't spending their Friday night swimming in a pool.  If we lived in a place with a pool, I would be going swimming every day.  No, twice a day.  You would have to drag me out of the pool kicking and screaming. Nowhere on earth has swimming ever been more on my mind than here, where the heat and the dust constantly make you dream of water.  We swam until 10pm, when the pool officially closes, but there was no one there to kick us out, so we could have gone on swimming forever if it weren't for the fact that we were hungry.

We went back to their villa, and they were kind enough to offer us the use of their showers to rinse the chlorine off.  They even let us use their towels!  I was happy to have a shower, but I was ecstatic when I discovered the water did not taste salty.  For the first time in three months, I was bathing in fresh water!   Just when I thought nothing could top that, they offered to wash and dry our bathing suits for us right then and there.  They had a washing machine and a dryer!  I can't believe how lucky they are!  They can't believe how easily impressed we are.

So we made our way to the restaurant for a buffet.  The restaurant was large, and because it was one of the only places in Dammam where women were allowed to smoke shisha, the place was full of women.  It was oddly decorated in a weird combination of traditional Arabic designs and patterns crossed with neon colors and high tech tables lit with rotating colored lights.  So when we sat down our table went from blue to green to red and back before we had even decided who would sit where.  This was cool at first, but got to be somewhat distracting when we were trying to eat. There were a lot of Philipino and Indian staff waiting at every turn to be helpful.  One woman followed me around the buffet, and at first I thought she was following me because I wasn't in thier face recognition software so she was worried i was a terrorist or something.  I did my best to pretend I didn't notice she was there.  I focused instead on the many kinds of meat and hummus and salad, and only after I had already filled my plate did I notice that they had a chef making fajitas and another chef making mongolian noodles.  The woman who had been following noticed my plate was now full, and insisted on carrying it back to my table for me, while the chefs insisted on cooking me up some fajitas and noodles.  I told them what I wanted added to each dish, and then they sent me away.   I thought that was weird, but maybe I hadn't used the secret code word or something and chef-made dishes were only for people who actually lived here, but after a few minutes, someone dropped off both dishes to our table.  Every time I started to get up to get something, water, more juice, knapkins, someone was right there to get it for us.  They were so attentive, I was beginning to wonder if they would even go to the bathroom for me.

The food was just as good as the service, but unfortunately, because of Ramadan and all the fasting, I couldn't eat half of what I wanted to eat.  I didn't even have room for dessert even after sitting around for an hour after we had all finished eating so we could smoke shisha.  Normally when we smoke shisha, we get one or two shishas for the whole group.  But here, shisha automatically comes with the buffet, so we each got our very own.  And they had some unusual flavors too.  I got watermelon, which was pretty great, but not quite as good as grape mint.  Gemma got grape cherry, which I thought tasted like feet, but which one of the guys insisted tasted like lifesavers.  By the time we had finished it was nearly 2am, and I didn't ever want to leave.

Lucky for us, the guys offered to let us stay the night on one of the four couches in their two living rooms.  Sadly, those couches were ten times more comfortable than my own bed.  I had probably the best night's sleep I have had since arriving on that couch.  I'd like to attribute all of that to the softness of the cushions, but at least some of it was the shower wine, and the rest had to have been just knowing I was free of all the Saudi restraints so long as I was tucked up inside this amazing Oasis Compound.

In the morning, they offered to make us breakfast, and who would turn down eggs served up Mexican style by our very own in house chef?  After breakfast, I asked reluctantly asked about getting a taxi, but the guys insisted we should stay since we hadn't experienced all there was to do on the compound.  Even though it was the weekend, some of the guys still had to work, but a few of them were off, so they took us to the bowling alley.  That's right, the bowling alley.  We went to another part of the compound, which was also somehow only 5 minutes away (how is everything so centrally located to their villa?)  The bowling alley was attached to a pool hall with six pool tables and an arcade area.  The best part?  It's all free!  The arcade games don't take coins, the bowling is free, the pool is free, it's all free!  I have no idea how they can afford to pay the indian man with a suit and bowtie who took our food orders and brought us drinks when we don't have to pay for any of the activities.  I want to make this perfectly clear, it wasn't free because the guys were nice enough to pay for us (even thought they were nice enough to pay for dinner the night before).  There was no need because the activities were all free.  Completely free!

We played two games, and I lost both times, but I really didn't care.  After we finished we decided to waste a few hours in the arcade.  I played pinball and packman and some weird virtual sword slashing game that didn't really recognize arm movements.  Then I played a basketball shooting game and I managed to get 61 points in 40 seconds!  I beat Gemma, but was outdone by one of the guys who managed to get 85.  Believe me, I spent at least a half hour trying to beat his score.  My arms got tired before I came close.  I've never been that into video games, but Gemma is, so while she played every game to her hearts content, I wondered next door to the indoor soccer field.  I had only worn flipflops, but the soccer ball was made out of tennis ball material so we decided it would be okay to play barefoot, so we did some one on one for a while, and then slowly a few more of the guys joined us and we kicked the ball around for a while. I really hit my toe hard on something at some point, maybe the ball, maybe somebodies shin, I can't remember, but it has a nice purplish tint to it now.  I also started to get a blister on the ball of my foot after a while, so I called it quits. Sadly, that little bit of swimming and soccer and shooting hoops was probably the most activity I've been able to do since arriving in Saudi!

 It took a little longer to pull Gemma away from her games, but eventually we managed it.  The crazy part was, with all this free stuff to do, we only ever saw one other person come in that whole time.  What is going on?  How can all these great features be free, and no one takes advantage of them.  I can only suspect that most of the people are away at the moment for the Ramadan and Eid Holidays and it will be busy again in August.

Somehow we managed to waste that entire day.  When we left the arcade I was surprised to find it was already dark.  In fact, it was nearly ten o'clock.  The guys offered to drop us off at the mall, our pick up point for the bus back to our crappy lives.  Before we left though, they let us raid the maids bedroom, which they had been using to store all the stuff they didn't want.  I got an awesome rice cooker, a can opener, some measuring cups and a tupperware container.  Gemma got a pan, a cheese grater, an alarm clock and a vegetable steamer.  We made out like bandits.  The hardest thing was putting on our abayas to leave.  They don't weigh that much, but when I slipped it onto my shoulders they felt instantly heavy.  There is no way we can ever repay these guys for that beautiful escape from reality.

But as we drove back out of the three gates, and nearly died in several completely normal near misses in our drive back to the mall I started thinking about how bored the guys are living there in their expat bubble.  I thought about how little they knew of life outside of the compound walls and beyond their office. For them, there is no amazing great escape from Saudi for a weekend.  For them, it is all the time.  So, there is nothing to look forward to but leaving.  It got me thinking that I'm glad I live in such a crappy apartment.  I'm glad I get to experience both worlds, so that I can appreciate both what I have, and what they have.  Maybe someday we will take them to see our pool, our teenage mutant ninja turtle green cesspool that is. Somehow, I don't think that is the best way to express our gratitude.  Still, we got to see how the other half lives.... maybe they would like the same chance?

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.

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.

Friday Night at the Movies

This weekend, a few of the teachers and I decided we wanted to go to the movies.  There is really only one place here that shows movies in a theater setting - the IMAX in the Scitech museum.  So off we went.  We took the usual weekly company bus to the corniche in Khobar ( a nearby city).  The corniche is a fancy name for a sort of boardwalk area.  Here there is a big park, lots of American chain restaurants like Chili's and Red Lobster, and a mile or two down from our bus stop, a Science Museum called Scitech which includes and IMAX theater.  I presume these movies are okay to show because they are educational and not strictly entertainment.

The bus dropped us off at about 3:30pm, and since it was still well over 100 degrees, we opted to take a taxi instead of walk to the Scitech museum.  When we got there it was prayer time, so all the interactive exhibits were closed.  In fact, aside from one other family, we seemed to be the only people there.  We stood in line, and after some discussion, we decided we should splurge and buy tickets not only to the IMAX, but to the museum as well.  So for the low low price of 40 Riyals (about $10) we had tickets to see Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Journey  and to peruse the center, which according to the brochure they handed us with the tickets "has 7 main exhibition halls, addressing topics in different areas of science and technology, carefully chosen to support the educational subject in the Saudi curriculum, which is closely linked to.  The topics are also presented in a scientific learning with fun style."

We had about 15 minutes to kill before the IMAX started, so we checked out the main entrance hall which described the different regions of Saudi Arabia, had architectural models of a proposed "perfect city" which seemed to have more parking lots than anything else, and a giant column with pictures of Makkah (Mecca).  I had already seen Makkah on the TV in my room, but the small camera angles only showed about 1/4 of the whole thing.  In this picture you could see just how large and crowded the area was.  Imagine the biggest football stadium in the US.  Then imagine that they sold two or three tickets for every one stadium seat.  Then imagine that all those people were circling a box the size of double wide trailer home, some lucky enough to be close to it down on the field, and others making laps around the whole stadium.  It's amazing.

But we couldn't stand around forever staring at these pictures of a place I will never be able to see unless I convert to Islam, we had an IMAX to catch.  By this time, there were more children and families in the center and we wanted to get good seats, so we were the first ones in line.  One of my friends, Fazia, hadn't eaten yet, and was hoping there was food in the center.  She spotted a security guard with a cup of tea, and since she speaks Arabic, she asked him where he got it hoping to find out where the cafe was. He told her it was upstairs, but said it was closed for prayer and would open later.  His security guard buddy gave him a nudge and whispered something fiercely in Arabic.  The first guard looked sheepish and then looked at his tea a little sadly,  and then sighing extended the cup a little to my friend saying something softly.  She laughed and thanked him, but told him no, she didn't want his tea.  The other guard let us in, but as we passed, I noticed that he shook his head and gave his friend a look that seemed to say something like, you are hopeless man, you had a perfectly good chance to impress this girl, and you blew it because you wouldn't give her your tea.

Inside, the theater was more like a half moon shape.  Instead of one great big screen, it was like being in a planetarium.  One of my friends, Gemma, had never seen an IMAX movie and was already impressed.  I told them we should probably sit towards the middle for the best effect.  We sat down and waited for the movie to start.  As we watched Saudi families climb the steps to their seats, Gemma commented on a two or three year old girl leading her fully veiled mother up the stairs, "If that isn't the blind leading the blind, I don't know what is...."

Just as we had gotten comfortable, one of the guards was back.  He motioned for us to get up, and move to the other side of the theater.  We were confused but thought, maybe there was some rule about where women could sit or something.  So we got up and started walking down the stairs to get across to the other side.  As soon as we were at the other side, he motioned for us to come back and handed us each a set of headphones. We all felt very cool and extra special having wireless headphones for translations.  We decided to sit back down on the original side, thinking he had motioned us over just to get the headphones.  Nope, as soon as we were seated, he motioned for us to move again, so we crossed to the other side, and up the stairs.  He pointed to some seats in the corner, but vaguely, we weren't sure what row he meant.  Gemma made her way down one aisle and sat right behind the camera, which had big bars around it to keep people from leaning in.  I suggested that we move down the row a little so we didn't have bars in our faces.  We went a few seats over, and then, as a joke, because we had moved so many times already, I told Gemma we ought to move one more time for good measure.  Clearly, I need to work on my British to American humor translation, because she took me seriously and we moved yet again.  Once we were settled in, and the movie started, we all put on our headsets and hear... nothing.  They were on, the green light was lit, but only white noise was coming through.  We motioned to our guard friend and he came over to test the headset.  He wasn't hearing anything either so he took my headset off to fix it or something.  Turns out, nothing was really wrong with it.  Once the preview was over, and the movie started, the voice over narration started and Gemma and Fazia had no trouble with their headsets.  The guard was long gone by now with my headset, so I just looked at the pictures and tried to decipher some Arabic.  Unfortunately, Rosetta stone doesn't have a unit on prehistoric sea monsters, so there wasn't much hope.  Luckily, the guard returned with my headset, and that familiar voice that narrates all nature movies took over.

About ten minutes into the movie, two women entered the theater late.  The moved into our row, and one women crawled over all three of us to sit closer to the middle.  Her companion resolutely sat to the right of us, clearly not wanting to climb over us during the movie.  The woman stood waiting beside me for her friend to follow, but the friend was obstinate.  Neither of them moved.  The woman on the other side of us sat down and stubbornly looked at the screen.  The woman on the other side of me made impatient jerking movements with her head, staring the woman down.  My head was whipping back and forth, wondering who would give up.  This little drama was far more interesting than the discovery of a Tylosauras in Kansas in 1918.  Finally the seated woman got up and moved over us to join her friend, in the process stepping on Fazia's toe.

After the show, we mad our way out but were temporarily delayed by watching the man reload the IMAX camera for the next show.  They had a glass wall above the projection room that let you look down and watch like an operation room in fancy hospitals.  Gemma and I were transfixed.  The reels were huge, at least 5 feet in diameter, and the film itself was pretty wide, maybe six inches or so.  It was really cool to watch the operator change the film, and I was suddenly like a little kid again, excited about simple things and curious to know how everything worked.  I guess that is what museums are for, isn't it?

Of course, we had to make a quick pit stop to the restrooms before we were off to explore the real exhibits.  I was waiting for the other girls to finish when a cleaning lady came in and starting talking with me.  She asked me where I was from and I told her America.  She told me I was beautiful and thanked me for coming.  She told me the last time Americans had come to the museum was months ago.  When Gemma and Fazia came out to wash their hands, she was in the middle of a great outpouring of affection for America, and all the great things about America.  She clearly assumed they were also Americans, and gushed all the more for their benefit.  When we left she was still going on.  Gemma said, "Well, I guess us Brits are just chopped liver then, eh?"  I promised that I hadn't paid her to say all those things before they came out.

Snowboarding Challange

The first exhibit we went to was the traveling Math Alive! exhibit.  I know what you are thinking, because it's exactly what I thought.  An exhibit all about math?  Dull.  Not so my friend, not so.  There were all kinds of really neat interactive activities, and even better, there were tons of Saudi families and kids playing away with tessellations, and stationary bikes, and snowboarding games, and photosensitive cameras and code breaking, all of it fun, and way better than an afternoon at the mall!

Light Dancing with Digital Delay

I won at peddling on the bike to match the graph, Gemma won the snowboarding match, and Fazia took home the dancing queen prize in front of the animation camera.  We all got our pictures taken in the 360 booth.  The most shocking thing was the men helping demonstrate all of the hands on activities.  In the states, you would never have a worker be allowed to pick up kids and help them by moving their hands on the controls at the right time, or lean down and kiss them on the top of their heads when they did a good job.  Here, it was all welcomed, encouraged even.

We spent way more time than we meant to in the math exhibit, and when we finally emerged the center was crowded.  In the once empty entry hall, there were now a bunch of different stations with hands on activities for kids.  There was a coloring station, a blocks station, a dental health station maned by two (women!) dentists, and a cake decorating station.  Unfortunately, some poor planning meant the dentist table was right next to the cakes, therefore, the dentist station was empty, while the sugar drenched cake frosting area was bombarded with kids.  The three of us contemplated just how bad it would be if we were to stand in line for a cake for longer than I care to admit before heading up to the other exhibits.

We headed first to the living hall which according to the guidebook "contains samples of different kinds of animals and plants that adapted - with God's well (their typo, not mine) - to live in different areas in the Arabian Peninsula." One corner of the exhibit housed a rather dusty collection of taxidermied birds, lizards, small mammals, and one hamster.  It also had a skeleton of a camel with all sorts of fun camel facts.  For instance,  did you know that camels have a third eyelid that is translucent so that they can close it during sandstorms, but still see?  Also, camels have an extra long tube in their intestine, or bladder (can't remember which) that lets them filter and recycle more water, which means, they can drink salty water and plants with high salt content that humans can't.  Human urine is nearly all water, while camel urine has almost none.  Camels are also extremely loyal and smart.  When it's hot, they turn themselves so the skinny part of them faces the sun, when they are cold, they turn the broadside to the sun.  The hump is fat storage, not water storage, and they have a split lip, which lets them eat plants low to the ground.  Camels are great environmentalists too, they never rip up plants by the root, or eat all the leaves on one plant, instead they just sort of trim the plants up and move on to another plant.  I could tell you more about a camel's brain, liver, and skin, but I ran out of time to read the whole thing since we wanted to move on to the aquarium.

This fish was bigger than the Sea Turtle

The aquarium was really just a round fishtank.  I don't think it could have been more than 30 feet in diameter, which may seem like a lot until you realize there were at least two sharks, three enormous eels, a sea turtle and a huge fish, plus lots of fake coral and other fish.  I think I'd rather live in our apartments than crowded in that tank.  The huge fish turned out to be the most interesting.  It had a cartoony human looking eye, and made you simultaneously amazed, sad, disgusted, and curious when you looked at him.

We passed the prayer rooms (men's and women's separate) on our way to the next hall and we realized it was almost time for prayer and we had better make our way back if we wanted to catch the bus in time.  We called the taxi who had driven us here, but he was busy, so we figured we would just start out along the road and grab a taxi on the way back.  It was dark by now, and the temperature wasn't so bad.  We walked along and got plenty of honks, but oddly, no taxis.  We passed a huge building which looked too big to be a house, but which didn't seem to be anything else.  Just as we were turning to go up a street to get to another main road, an SUV with at least a half dozen boys under the age of 12 in it.  The car slowed, then stopped and with all the windows down, they simply stared at the three women walking along the road.  Eventually the driver moved on, but stopped about 100 feet ahead of us and began reversing.  Luckily, we had already started to cross the road and soon we were on the opposite side of the road with a median between us.  It's possible he would have offered us a ride, and it's possible that it would have been a genuine offer of help.  But I'm glad we didn't end up needing to test that possibility.

Once we reached the main road, and were by my best guess about halfway to where the bus picks us up, we finally found a taxi.  We got in, and at the next light, pulled up next to two cars that had just been in a fender bender.  This is such a normal and frequent occurance, that no one really bothered to bat an eye.  Granted, the lights here last a long time, but even so, before the light was green again, they had exchanged information and were back in their cars and on their way.

We made it back to the bus with 20 minutes to spare.  I went into the grocery store to get clothespins, but ended up making out with a whole meal of free samples.  I got a chicken salad sandwich, a tuna fish sandwich, some grilled chicken, and about 4 cubes of cheese.  I almost got a drink too, but they ran out just as I got there.  I have to say, it was pretty much the perfect way to spend a Friday in the Kingdom.    I plan on going back when they release the newest IMAX flick.

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.