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.

Cultural Night

Last weekend, the teachers and I were all invited to a cultural night for women.  I felt so lucky to arrive just in time for this event.  One of the things I've been most disappointed in here is the fact that I work with and live with only foreigners, and haven't had any chance to interact with any Saudi women, aside from the students with whom I'm not allowed to talk about anything but the weather with.

So all week I worried about attending. I wanted to go, but since they still haven't paid me, I could not afford to get a taxi.  If enough women from work were planning to go, we could have the company driver go, but it seemed as if most of the other women weren't interested in attending, or going away for the weekend.  I was contemplating if I would have enough food to last me to the end of the month if I used my remaining grocery money to get a taxi when we got an email saying they were going to let us use the company van and have a driver take us.  I was so excited.  Now I had a new problem, what to wear?  It was a women only event, so I imagined we would be allowed to take off our abayas, but I didn't know what would be acceptable to wear underneath.  Could I wear pants? Was it a very fancy event?  Should I wear a dress?  Eventually I decided to wear my only skirt and a new button down collared shirt that one of the other teachers had given me because it was too small for her now.

I went downstairs and was surprised that of the 20 or more women living in our apartments, only four others had decided to come. I was particularly surprised since a) everyone always complains about how there is nothing to do, and here was something to do, and b) It was a rare chance to experience Saudi Culture, and c) free food.   Chris was hoping one of us had a cell phone with GPS since she did not know where it was. Unfortunately, none of us did.  I guess the type of women who are interested in free food are not the ones who have the money for a smart phone.   Even though she had looked it up on Google maps, and copied down the map onto a paper since she didn't have a printer, the driver didn't recognize the area and wasn't sure where it was. Funny, I hadn't bothered to even look at the address since I was obviously not going to be driving, but now wished I had looked more carefully at the invitation.  Armed with only our wits, and a hand drawn map, we set off into the night in the general direction of where it was.  There aren't really any proper addresses in Saudi Arabia, instead you have things like, "Between King Saad and Prince Faisel streets, across from the DaWaan Pharmacy."  So normally, that might be enough to go on, but there are more pharmacies in Saudi Arabia than there are pubs in Ireland.  And the only thing they have more of than pubs, is members of the royal family, and since every street is named after some member of the royal family, we were basically looking for a needle in a haystack.

We drove down to the area we thought it was in, and we found a King Saad street, and we found what was either Prince Faisel, or Prince Tasel street, and we drove the blocks between and around it for about a half hour, with no sign of anything saying culture night, or any indication that we were anywhere near where we were supposed to be.  We tried calling some of the teachers who didn't live in our apartments and said they were going to attend, but got no answer on the phone.  Finally, we pulled into a Best Western (in fact, it was the nicest looking Best Western I had ever seen) and asked the concierge inside if he knew where the address was.  Chris went in, hopefully clutching the invitation and her hand drawn map, but returned despondent.  The man inside had no idea where the place was, but didn't think it was anywhere near by.  We had driven about 45 minutes to get here, and had now spent another 45 driving in circles.  The event had already started and was only scheduled to last for two hours anyway.  I could tell we were on the verge of giving up and heading back.  I couldn't let that happen.  I asked Chris, if she had the phone number of anyone who was organizing the event.  She didn't, but thought it was in one of the emails they had sent.  I asked if she thought the concierge would let her use the Internet to find the email.  She seemed doubtful, but I wasn't ready to give up, and pleaded, offering to go in myself to ask, though I hadn't gotten the email so it would of been useless without her going in too.  Finally when everyone else agreed with me that we should give it one last try, she went in.  This time she was gone for longer, finally they came out.  She had a phone number and the concierge was going to explain to our driver how to get to the area we needed to be in and find the McDonald's and then the woman on the phone was going to explain how to get there from the McDonald's.  The trouble is, our driver only speaks Urdu, and the concierge only Arabic and English, so he had to call over a third man, who had been trying to get these giant marble balls in the front rolling in the the water fountains.  After some very confusing and animated attempts to give directions, our driver thought he knew where they were asking him to go.

We pulled out of the Best Western with renewed hope, and started driving, and driving, and driving.... Turns out we had been very very far off in our guess as to where it was.  Finally, we got to the McDonald's and Chris called the woman who was trying to explain the directions, but she was pretty fuzzy on how to get there, seeing as how she never drove there herself, but only sort of paid attention as her driver brought her places. "You turn right after the McDonald's, and then you take the third, or maybe fourth right, and then you will see a big patch of empty land, and then you turn..."  Chris was trying to relay these directions to the driver, who's English wasn't great, while still listening to the other directions the woman was giving her, and after a while, no one knew at which stage of the directions we were, where we were at, or where we should go next.  So we turned around and went back to the McDonald's to try the whole thing again from the start. This time she told us to turn left at the third or forth street, and we wound up in front of some very beautiful houses, but not the ones we were looking for, so we turned around again, and went back to the McDonald's, this time to wait for a driver she was sending to lead us to the place. Encouragingly, he arrived very quickly and within five minutes we arrived at the cultural night, an hour and a half late to a two hour event.

The private garden where the cultural night was hosted.

But it was worth it.  As soon as we arrived, we were ushered through a gate and into a mini-paradise.  Everywhere you looked you saw green.  There was a beautiful stone pathway through deep green grass leading to a big outdoor tent lined with rugs and little benches and tables with tea set out.  Immediately we were greeted by helpful and friendly women who invited us to take off our abayas and even gave us little bags to carry them in.  We got name tags and were led to the first of a series of little booths lining the edge of the yard.  The first one was offering scientific evidence for some of the events in the Quran,  I was in the back of a group of women listening to someone who was talking about the medicinal qualities of bees while on a laptop images of fetuses rotated on a slide show.  I couldn't hear very well, so maybe she was saying something that would tie it all in together, or make some connections somehow, but I left before I could find out, so now in the back of my mind I'll always be trying to find links between babies, bees, and biblical events.  The next booth was a Q&A about Islam, but it was crowded, and we were very thirsty, so we skipped over it and the calligraphy and traditional dress tents to get some juice.

There were two kinds of juice, and I highly recommend them both.  One was a mint lemonade, and the other pomegranate juice.  If you've never thought to throw a sprig of mint into your lemonade, do.  It's so delicious, I think I'm spoiled for life and can't go back to plain lemonade after this.

Saudi Crepes

Saudi Doughnuts

Just beside the juice table were two women on the floor in front of gas burners. One was making Saudi crapes, and the other one was making a traditional Saudi dish that was very much like doughnut holes. Only it was like magic.  There was a big dish full of nearly boiling oil, and the woman would scoop up some dough and drop it in, and magically, the dough would turn itself into a perfectly round ball.  You may think I'm exaggerating, and that there must have been some that ended up kind of lopsided, or with weird shapes, but no, everyone was perfectly round, and all she did, was just drop the dough in the oil, and wala, perfection!  I stood watching it for a long time, and I never could figure out the secret, but one of the Saudi women has promised to send me the recipe, so maybe I'll try it.  I wonder if I accidentally burn down the accommodation in the process, if the company will move us to a better one with a laundry room.

Food from the buffet - stuffed zuchini!

Before I knew it, they were serving this huge buffet of food.  I had assumed we had missed the food, and all that was left were these doughnut balls and crapes, so I had already eaten about half a dozen balls, and at least half a crape.  I was so mad.  I would never have room in my stomach now to try all of the dishes they had arranged on the table.  Each dish was carefully labeled and included the region of Saudi where it originated.  There were even tiny little salad dishes with lids.  We sat on the benches and relaxed and ate.  Saudi women came around and checked on all of us making sure we were having a good time and didn't need anything, and did we try her favorite dish yet?  She sent her daughter to fill up a plate for us to try.  Like everything else, it was delicious.  I was stuffed.  While I was recovering in the hopes of having room for a dessert, I talked with a Korean woman.  She has been in Saudi for two years now, and though she doesn't like it here and feels trapped and isolated, she is hoping her husband will sign up for another year because he drinks too much in Korea, and here, where it is so hard to get alcohol, he is much better.  What a difficult choice, your own sanity and freedom, or what you know is best for your husband.

Using bamboo for Arabic calligraphy

After a small but delicious dessert, I rushed to the calligraphy booth.  The women helped me choose a quote from the Koran, and painted my initials over the gold leaf on the page with the quote, then they offered to frame it and wrap it up for me all for free!  They even made me take a second one because it was getting late and they had so many frames left.  I was flabbergasted.  It was all so generous!  For the second one, they showed me how to do calligraphy, and for the first time since I arrived I was glad I had bothered to learn the alphabet, so I could stun and impress them all when I wrote my name in Arabic calligraphy.  It was so much fun I didn't want to stop.  But we had told the driver we would be out by 9 pm, and now it was almost ten.  We rushed to get our things together and I stood next to the booth with all of the traditional clothing waiting for the others who had gone to the bathroom quickly before we left.  I asked to take a picture of some of the clothes and the next thing I knew the woman had somehow managed to get me into the booth and was putting a dress over my head.  I knew I didn't have much time, but it was so pretty, and I did want a picture... So I let her.

Me in traditional brides dress
from the eastern province

And then she insisted on adding the head dress with shiny gold coins, and then of course I needed the necklace as well, and then the fan, and then she wanted her daughter in the picture with me too, and by now I was sure everyone was impatiently waiting for me, so I struggled out of the outfit as quickly as I could, and back into my abaya and thanked the woman for all her help, and ran to catch up with the others, who were trying to get out of going into the tent to have tea with another very gracious hostess, and I really wished we didn't have to rely on a driver and could spend the whole night talking to these friendly Saudi women, who seemed so different from the Saudi women administrators at Dammam University who never smiled and seemed so cold and unapproachable.

As we made our way to the gate, each of us were given a carefully wrapped bundle of goodies to take home with us, and some more cookies to eat on the drive home and many many well wishes.  We couldn't wait till we got home to open our gifts, so on the ride home we examined our SWAG (stuff we all get) and found a very nice mug for tea (which is great since I had no mug at all until then) and a small bottle of perfume, and about five different books, all having something to do with Islam.  We had famous Islamic Quotes, How to raise your children based on principles of the Koran, What every woman should know about Islam, and a very detailed biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Peace be upon him). I'm sure they will make for interesting reading.  I couldn't have imagined a better night. I am so very happy that we didn't give up on finding it, though I think by the time we finally arrived home at half past 11, our poor driver probably wishes we had.