My apologies to Madam Rau.

Like every other American high school graduate, I was required to take a language in order to get my diploma. I enjoy the eclair and Beauty and the Beast was a personal favorite as a kid, so I decided to take French as my language of choice in high school.

I really did enjoy the classes. Because French has the same roots as English, it helped me understand my own language a lot better. I felt very exotic repeating phrases such as, "Where is the restroom?" and "Are you my driver?" But I was honest with myself. I was never going to use the language outside of the 4 required semesters. I just needed these classes to graduate, so I just did the bare minimum. Surely the teacher understood that.

I would just like to go on record and publicly apologize to my high school French teacher for being such a punk. Madam Rau, you were a great teacher, and I sorely regret not applying myself to my studies more when I had the chance. But most of all, I apologize for making you feel like you were completely wasting your time and that your choice of career was a foolish one. Because that's certainly how I feel sometimes when I work with some of my students.

For example: Amber says, "Class, we're going to work on these vocabulary words this week and you'll have a test on them on Wednesday."

The students respond, "Whaat!? Oh no, teacher! Please! Teacher please we have a math test that day. We need to study for the math test. Please teacher please! We have so much to do!"

Amber hears, "Look, lady, I'm only in this class because I have to be! I'm not actually interested in learning this language. Just be a good girl and give me the A I need and I won't bother you with completed assignments and all that mess."

Amber says, "It'll be easy. I've spent hours creating resources like games and research-based manipulatives that'll help you retain the information without having to work that much at home! Come on! It'll be fun."

The students respond, "But teacher we never use the workbooks. Why don't you do like our other teachers and just give us book assignments and let us work alone in class?" **This was literally a complaint I had from a student**

Amber hears, "Woman, you've got to get it straight. We just want to get the grade, finish the work, and then just sit and talk. In Arabic. So just put your little games and kinesthetic activities away and start boring us to death!"

It's so frustrating because I can kind of sympathize with the kids, but I also know how much I regret not really mastering another language! Granted, these girls already speak English leaps and bounds better than I ever spoke French, but golly does it ever make me feel like I'm toiling in vain trying to conquer these girls' literacy issues!

So students, if any of you are listening, at least pretend to be interested. Study for the tests. Don't complain when your language teacher puts in a little effort in the classroom. Because every time you complain, a little piece of her soul dies.

Vicariously yours,

I'm a little intimidated by the food here

If ever the Mister and I need a reminder that we are living in a foreign country, we just need to head to the grocery store. Granted, there are a lot of familiar objects like Ritz crackers and ramen noodles, but there are SO many new things, every time we go grocery shopping, it's like walking down the Silk Road with friggin' Marco Polo! There are spices I never knew existed, lots of new smells, and not a single Rice a Roni or Hamburger Helper in the whole joint!

We shop at a grocery store that caters more to the Indian/Bangladeshi/Filipino expats of Saudi Arabia rather than actual Saudis, so not everything we see is unique to Saudi Arabia. But boy is it still weird!

Case in point:

The purple mangosteen.

I spotted this freakish fruit in our first few trips to the grocery store, and I really wanted to buy it...but I was too intimidated. I didn't know if you peel it, boil it, juice it, or all three! I wasn't sure which parts were edible and/or tasty. So I just watched in envy as the Thai, Filipino and Indonesian grocery patrons snatched these bad boys up.

Then the newest addition to the English staff--who had lived in Indonesia for two years and enjoyed the mangosteen frequently--introduced me to the odd fruit.

As you can see, this fruit has very little in common with the mango. In fact, in all my extensive research (read: scanning the wikipedia article), I couldn't find any relationship between the mango and the mangosteen.

Anyway, you're probably wondering how you go about eating this bad boy. Lemme show you.

There's kind of a hard shell, which you punch through with your thumb.

Then you kinda dig down a little bit and pull the bright pink, juicy rind away from the fruit.

The white part is the edible part. It's in sections, like an albino mandarin orange encapsulated in a fleshy pink crust. It's really really juicy.

I kind of tastes like really highly concentrated mixed fruit Kool-Aid. It's very very sweet, so it's a good thing the edible part is so small.

So there you have it folks, a food item that I'd never experienced until coming to Saudi Arabia.

Vicariously yours,

Name Game

Working in an inner city school, I always had creative and interesting names on my rosters. Parents combined their two names into one (appropriate considering the whole process of conception), so I had kids with names like "Jacwelynarius" or "Jimesha" or "Juantanya." There were often creative uses of the apostrophe or poetic license taken with the long "e" sound (it could be spell "ee" or "i" or "ea" or "ye" or "yy" or "y". the possibilities were endless)

When I was first handed my roster in Saudi Arabia, I was a little intimidated by the names that had the uniquely Arabic phonemes. For example, the "gh" sound might be transliterated a "gh," but it's actually a glottal sound that has absolutely no equal in the English language. Thus, saying names with the "gh" sound elicits snickers from my student.

After practicing the pronunciation of my students names and getting as close to correct as I could, I found out that just about all Arabic names have a meaning behind them. Like a real meaning, not a sentimental meaning. I love that fact and it makes my students even more beautiful. I get a mental picture each time I call out a name in class.

I've created a word cloud of my students' first names. You'll see a few familiar ones on there, but they are not pronounced the way you think. Arabs roll their Rs, so "Rhonda" sounds much more beautiful over here than at home. If there is an A in a name, it's pronounced "ah" not "ay." So "Nadeen" is so much more sophisticated sounding, in my humble opinion.

Anyway, here's the word cloud. Enjoy.

Vicariously yours,

p.s. I create my word clouds using wordle. I ::heart:: wordle

You know you live in a country run by men when...

It should come as no surprise that women are slightly inferior in the minds of Saudi men. Women do not hold a position of power in any form of government, are restricted as to what jobs they can have, and their faces are even pixelated out of advertisement billboards and posters.

totally stole this picture from a housemate's facebook album. Thanks, Charles!

Sometimes, the lack of the feminine is so painfully obvious. First of all, unless you are shopping at a store that is owned by a Western corporation like Mango or H&M, you're shopping at a store that is completely owned, operated, and staffed by Saudi men. Their buyers are men, and they certainly don't go to Fashion Week to find what will be the hot new trend for their female patrons. No, no. These are men who wear white thobes and red gutras every day. They buy the cheapest items, and they buy them in 50 different colors, presumably to save time and money. That means there is a LOT of polyester going on over here! If I don't want to spend $60 on a long skirt for work, I can buy one for about $20...but it's going to be polyester, pleated, and too long. I have yet to buy a skirt that is properly long (they have to be floor length, but the store owners just get them with raw edges so you have to take them to a tailor to be hemmed). ONLY in a store owned by a man would this happen!

Secondly, the window displays and curb appeal is clearly catered to men. Some windows in the malls are done nicely, but I think that's because they have corporate guides for how the window should be designed. Otherwise, you're looking at a window that a chocker block stuffed full of ...well, ANYTHING! Toy stores only display the back sides of their shelves. Electronics stores will show you discarded cell phone boxes, computers that are only meant to be used for parts (and most of them have those parts just hanging out), and the occasional Apple sticker on the glass door. The clothing stores will hang a dress on a mannequin, then attach fishing wire to the side seams, which then gets attached to a suction cup attached to the window and pull the skirt out. One can assume they do this so you can get the full effect of the pattern on the fabric, but it only makes the dress look like an undesirable tent. Only a man would think this is a good idea.

Construction sites are left in shambles every night. There's no tidying up your work place so the neighbors don't have to run over your discarded nails and broken glass.

Business and directional signs are scrawled out in Sharpie marker on a piece of scrap wood or heavy cardboard, and the English --when present-- is not spell checked.

Buildings often have guards, and these guards need a place to sit while on duty. Instead of giving him a nice desk with a rolly chair or something like that, the Saudi men have just plopped an old section of a couch or a torn up armchair on the sidewalk. So not aesthetically pleasing.

Instead of getting decals for their work trucks or company vehicles, the Saudi men just rough out a stencil and spray paint their company logo on, often with the shadows of the stencil's outside border.

When the Bangladeshi street cleaners glean their way through the mounds and mounds of litter on the side of the road, they will cull out the recyclables and leave them for the city pick up...and by "leave them" I mean it quite literally. They just leave the cans in little piles on the side of the road like a little aluminum monster took a dump on the curb. Only a man would think this is acceptable. A woman would have a cute little box or receptacle of some sort for the recyclables to go.

There are so many other examples of the extreme lack of the female touch on this country...but I'll save that for another day.

Vicariously yours,

Parent/teacher conferences in Arabia: What they don't teach you in college

I distinctly remember having a few college class sessions about how to conduct a parent/teacher conference and I've applied those lessons in my classroom each time PTC day has rolled around. Professors told me to 1. lead with something positive, even if it's hard to think of 2. have an anecdote or two about the student, it makes the parents feel like you pay attention to their student 3. break the negative news and immediately follow up with how you, the student, and the parents can fix it 4. don't let the parents commandeer the conference with rants and/or verbal threats. Stay cool.

I was running these guidelines through my head as the first of my mothers walked through my classroom door (since we're an Islamic school, the dads can't come to the conferences for their daughters, only the mothers). I went into my schpeal, saying good things, breaking the bad news (which really isn't all that bad), yadda yadda yadda, and I could tell that my first mom had kinda glazed over and was looking at me like, "Why are you still talking?"

I quickly figured out that they just wanted to hear the first bit: "Your daughter is a pleasure to have in my class." Some asked if there were areas for her to improve and I got the typical "That'll change" with an "insh'allah" added at the end. After that they were ready to go. Khalass. Why does this white lady keep telling me stories about my kid? I gots other places to go!

There were a few exceptions, and of course a few awkward moments.

A mother and her two daughters sat down in front of me and I commented, "You all look so much alike, it's like I'm talking to three copies of the same woman!" and the mother laughed and said, "Well, my husband looks a lot like me, so...." (for those who don't know why that's funny/awkward: Arabs marry their cousins, and marrying your first cousin is not as rare as some would like to think. So the gene pools are pretty shallow over here)

A few weeks ago I had a phone conversation with a heavily accented mother who proudly proclaimed "I am not like the other Saudi mothers. I want my daughter to have homework. More homework! Homework just for my daughter, no one else!" She was very passionate about putting her daughter to work...which was ironic because her daughter rarely had homework ready on time.

Anyway, I got to meet that mother face to face, and I found that her message had not changed. This time I was prepared for it when she passionately declared, "I want you to boosh my daughter. Boosh her and boosh her. She needs a boosh every day."

When I first heard this "boosh" word during my phone conversation with this mom, I was slightly taken aback. I wasn't even sure that her request was legal in this country! It took me a few minutes to realize she was saying "Push her" as in "challenge her." There is no "P" sound in Arabic, so Arabs substitute the closest thing they have: the b.

This time, I was more than a little tempted to reply, "I'll be sure to boosh her every day."

All in all, I was very happy to meet the mothers of my girls. I was greatly encouraged by how many of them were happy to have me here and teaching their daughters. I hope I live up to their expectations before this school year is over.

Vicariously yours,

in which "yeah, i live in saudi arabia...so?"

I have started about 5 or 6 posts in the last month or so but just haven't had the energy or desire to finish them. They are all very good...one about TV, one about doing everyday errands, etc. Amber has been encouraging me to "write a blog post or people will stop reading!" So to hold off your exodus, because I'm posting, already.

I think the biggest reason that I couldn't finish a post was because I don't think it's that exotic. I was totally stoked to write these big blog entries about all this stuff I'd been doing because it was all new to me. But I have now lived in Saudi for awhile now...and it's getting to be normal.

That's right. I'm starting to feel at home here in KSA. This is just where I live. Sure, every once in awhile I have that "oh crap, I'm in another country moment" but mostly the awe has really faded. I say this as I eat Poppadums ("An Indian Gourmet Snack Perfect for Today's International Lifestyle"...says so on the Pringles-esque tube) dipped in homemade hummus that I got at our grocery store, LuLu. It has been totally strange to sit and think about the stuff that is now the norm. I have always been amazed at how able to adapt humans are...but this is ridiculous.

Some examples:

1. I was awakened yesterday morning in that "woke up in the middle of a dream and have no idea what's going on" haze by the call to prayer. I literally rolled over and said out loud, "What IS that!?" Amber looked at me like I was crazy and said..."Ty...it's the Athan...you've heard it a million times..." A little later, I realized it wasn't that the actual call to prayer woke me up...it was because the muezzin was different. That means that I've grown so used to the way the other guy does the Athan that the new guy threw me off. WHAT!?

2. A couple of mornings ago, a car drove by me on the shoulder and missed my side mirror by MAYBE an inch. I didn't even blink. WHY AM I USED TO THAT!?

3. I have a shawarma guy, a barber, a computer repair guy, an oil change guy, a shiisha "bar", and a grocery store. These guys are the only guys I will go to for their respective errands. I am turning into an Alwahab.

And these are just a few things that I've noticed right off the top of my head.

I have my days where I don't like it here. I have my days where I am amazed that I live in a country like this. But most days I'm just going to work, getting on facebook...normal.

Before I left, my Dad and I were talking about living abroad as an adult. He said something like, "You'll go to the grocery store and it'll be really crazy...but after a month or so, it's just going to the grocery store." Well said, Dad. Well said...

...have I mentioned that my grocery store is covered in neon lights and adorned with two pyramids?

Vicariously yours,

Baby It's Cold Outsi---wait... (alternate title: It's Beginning to Look a lot like Muharram)

Not a current photo of Saudi Arabia.

I apologize for our week-long vow of silence. It was completely unintentional. You'd think after having almost 3 weeks off from work the Hubbins and I would be well rested and totally ready for our first week back to work. H'oh boy was that not the case! One night I went to bed at 6:45 p.m....and STAYED asleep! Ridiculous.

But hopefully we've found our stride and are back to our normal selves. At least I certainly hope that's the case because we are in it for the loooong haul! NINE more weeks before we get another break--no long weekends, no half days, no inservice days. All school all the time.

Yes, I said 9 weeks. Yes, I realize Christmas falls somewhere in there. No we don't get time off for Christmas.

The fact that I'm having to mentally gear up for weeks of school when I'm typically gearing down, combined with the fact that there is absolutely NO Christmas spirit in this country, leads to me sometimes forgetting that we're in the Advent season.

I'm not surrounded by Christmas carols in the stores and on the radio. There are no stockings, no Black Fridays, no stores hawking their cheap ornaments or buy-one-get-a-worthless-singing-snowman deals. Instead, I'm surrounded by the sounds of the call to prayer, lesson plans, English cluster meetings, and more lesson plans.

I don't mind it so much right now. Christmas isn't about the presents, the concerts, or the movies. I think that feeling will change when more and more people start posting Christmas party pictures on Facebook and my favorite movies like Elf and White Christmas never make an appearance on TV. But what this lack of Christmas has shown me more than anything else is that I don't really celebrate the Advent the way I'm supposed to, and I'm not entirely sure how to start!

I know that every Sunday during the Advent, we light a candle and the preacher says a little something about what the season means. When I was a kid, we always hung the Advent calendar in the living room (not far from the stockings) and put an ornament up everyday until Christmas Day. There are always wonderful parties at ornamented houses with hot apple cider and lots of carol singing. And I've always loved every minute of it. I will cherish those opportunities more after the Mister and I live outside of the Kingdom.

But what REALLY is the Advent, and how can a girl in the middle of the Islamic desert celebrate it without all the other Christians around to help?!

I'm not gonna lie to you, I'm really excited to find out and to genuinely celebrate Christmas in the most basic way. I won't have all the distractions. I'll just have my Bible, my husband, and God.

Vicariously yours,