What do your dogs say?

Once again, I have a wonderful memory with my English cluster secretary that I will cherish.

Today, after school, we were working on my Arabic (it's coming along at a snail's pace), and I was looking the word for "bookshelves." Because the word is plural, it's said "rufoof" (a creative transliteration, of course).

"So what should I say if I want to say 'one bookshelf'?" I asked

"One bookshelf? Ruff." she answered.

"Oh! Like what dogs say!" I said, more for my benefit than hers. However, I knew from her quizzical look she had no idea what I was talking about.

"You know! What do dogs say? 'Ruff! Ruff!'" I said.

"Oh. Is that what dogs say in English? Here they said 'howw howw!'" she replied with a laugh.

We had a great time with that one! I love the fact that animals "say" something different in each language!

Vicariously yours,

This whole ordeal of course made me think of this, my favorite dog:

Heilarious

I've mentioned before how wonderful the secretary in our English cluster is. Today she was on a roll! This morning she sang a little love song to her tea. "Tea, tea, tea. I love tea."

It was classic! At the time I was standing right next to her, with my tea in hand as well. We weren't talking; it was still early in the day. I was pondering my next stunning instructional move (read: day dreaming) and she just busted out with her little ditty with no other audience than her tea cup and plastic spoon. Hilarious.

At the end of the day we usually pow wow. She gives me impromptu Arabic lessons, we talk world events, or just discuss weekend plans. Today, she was still in a silly mood and after a quick review of the classroom Arabic vocabulary words (desk, chair, chalkboard, etc) she taught me the other day, she started bouncing her way to the door like a giddy little girl.

I think the teacher who shares the classroom with me is having her class do a novel study of a book set during 1940s, so next to the door there's a poster with WWII facts and photos on it that a student made. In the top left corner was a biggish picture of Hitler, swastika fluttering in the background (Google image search is the Saudi student's best friend).

"Oh! What is this?" my dear friend said. "Hmm 'World War two.' What's this for?" She started mumbling the captions out loud under her breath.

"I dunno, that's not for my class."

She started bouncing on her toes a little bit. "Hey! Who's this?" she pointed to the top left corner. "Is that Hitler? Hi Hitler!" she said in a little voice with a giggle. At the same time she lifted her right arm straight out and gave Adolf a little wave.

She was just being silly, but with the arm motion and her accent, her cheery hello to Hitler was PRICELESS!

I doubled over in laughter. She joined in, but I don't think she really understood why it was so funny. She later told me that generally Saudi students only study Saudi and Islamic history in school. She hadn't learned anything about World War II until college. I knew once she was in on the joke she'd enjoy this moment as much as I was.

"No, it's funny because when the Nazi soldiers saluted Hitler, they would raise their arm straight out and said 'Heil Hitler,'" I explained.

She made the connection and joined me in laughing at her unintentional silliness.

Vicariously yours,

Climate Change, Shmlimate Change

Students are the same all around the world. No matter how dedicated they are, every one wants an unexpected day off now and then. Saudi students seem to have perfected the art of finding a reason not to do work.

Lately, the weather has been the scapegoat. While North America is getting battered by snowstorm after snowstorm, the Middle East gets rain. We've had a total of 3--count 'em--THREE days of rain over the past couple weeks. This is a very exciting reality for the students, and on the first day of straight downpour, the girls took it as a cue to go out dancing in the rain Gene Kelly style. This, of course, resulted in girls with sore throats and a heavy case of the chills asking for an extra free period so they could cope with their wet skirts and frizzy hair.

"But teacher, we're so cold! We can't concentrate in class!"

"Wah. You should have thought of that before you spent your entire recess puddle jumping and rolling around in the rain."

On the second go-round with the weather, we were preparing for exams. The veteran teachers were telling me not to expect to have first period because so many students would be late. Even though we were expecting it, a few of the teachers still took a firm stance when the girls came crawling into the cluster asking for extra time to prepare for their tests.

"But teacher, it was raining today," one of them pleaded with a colleague. I, of course, was eavesdropping.

"Yes, and it rains every year around this time. You're a teenager, rain is not a new thing."

"But teacher, please! It's not our fault. Our drivers, they don't know how to drive in weather like this. They don't know what to do about the rain."

"Really? Has global warming changed things in Indonesia that much? Doesn't India still get a monsoon season? Didn't the Philippines get a lot more rain over the past 10 years than Saudi Arabia? How long has your family employed this poor driver that he's forgotten what his home country is like?!"

I loved it! The drivers are always to blame for half the girls' problems, and for once we were able to fire back with a response the girls couldn't refute.

Vicariously yours,

Copy and Paste

I think I was an anthropologist in a former life. I find other cultures so fascinating. Even though it can be infuriating sometimes, coming to know the quirks of Saudi culture is by far my favorite part of living here.

I'm loving learning the language almost as much as I'm enjoying learning about the people. I'm sad that we only have Arabic class once a week, but I'm so glad that our cluster secretary humors me every Wednesday and gives me another lesson after my last class is dismissed. If I didn't know better, I'd think she enjoys sharing her language with me. Being the nerd that I am, I enjoy occasionally helping her with English words.

Today, however, she just might have updated my English dictionary a bit.

She was showing me pictures of her siblings and other family members. Her brothers and sisters all resemble her so much, I would say they are carbon copies of each other.

She showed me how outdated that phrase--"carbon copy"--is.

"They are a copy and paste of me," she said with a smile.

Times have changed, and I'm afraid I've been left behind with some of the cool lingo.

Vicariously yours,

Serenity amidst madness

We have a fantastic secretary in the English cluster. She is super organized, bilingual, and a real hoot. I am so glad I've gotten to meet her and I really think if we'd worked together in the States that we would have been friends there too.

Because she's got such a sweet disposition, I feel like she gets taken advantage of. She often has to do menial tasks that should be done by the principal's assistant or the librarians. One such case is the English resource library.

Granted, it's not a major leap to understand why the librarians passed this task off on her: she speaks English, the books are all in English. But that's where the logical connections end! She's not a librarian, and she wasn't hired to be a librarian's assistant. But, as with most things in education, the tracks of logic are pretty short. Saudi Arabia is no exception.

So she's got to catalog these books. There's some sort of computer system that the library uses, and they showed her how to enter the books on it. Get this: The information that the librarians require includes the title, the author, the ISBN, the number of pages, and the height.

That's all.

No Dewey decimal number. No topical category. Just a physical description.

Our cluster secretary is just OCD enough that she's taken it a step further. She went to the Aramco librarians, and asked for a list of the Dewey categories so she could at least categorize the books.

I found out this information and my jaw dropped. And then I had a moment of clarity: When I went to the library a few months back searching for a Jon Scieszka book, the librarian asked me if it was a tall book...BECAUSE THAT'S HOW THEY CATEGORIZE THE BOOKS! Fiction or non-fiction, then height!!

I was ranting about the stupidity of this system--I think I said something about John Dewey rolling over in his grave--when I noticed that one of my colleagues who has a desk next to our secretary's was looking at me with a hopeless expression and saying something. I couldn't hear her over the screaming inside and outside my head.

"What are you saying?" I asked her. She didn't stop to repeat her words, she just kept on truckin'

"--to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

I exploded in laughter! The Serenity Prayer has definitely become my new motto in my new home.

Vicariously yours,

Alton Brown would blush

If I'm honest with myself, I admit that I'm addicted to food. And like any good addict, I look for a someone or something to take the blame for my ballooning weight. Usually the blame is being declared between bites of ice cream or on my way to the Burger King.

Since moving to Saudi Arabia, I've grown an extra chin and tacked on a few more inches. The scapegoat for this phenomenon? My colleagues. I never have to worry about bringing food for lunch because the wonderful Indian and Pakistani ladies that I work with provide me with an exotic feast every day. My tolerance for spicy food rivals that of any native Indian, and I have developed and unhealthy appreciation for the chapati. All thanks to the exotic, savory, flavorful dishes they bring every day.

After eating and eating...and eating, a few months into the school year I decided that I should start contributing to the daily feast. I started by bringing the leftovers from a chicken stew that the Mister and I had one night. The tomato sauce was mixed with the rice and it had various spices and sauteed onions.

"...mmm. Amber. It's so....yummy," my polite coworkers cordially commented. I noticed that the container with the curry vegetables was practically licked clean as I was securing the lid on my still-almost-full plastic bin at the end of the day.

I tried again on New Year's Day. I brought in a Southern tradition: Hoppin John and collard greens! Granted, there is no pork in the Kingdom, so the greens were a little bland and the Hoppin John looked more like and Egyptian dish than a Southern delicacy, but my colleagues humored me and tried both dishes. I ended up eating the lion-share of the collards.

I didn't even introduce them to my Granny's chicken casserole. I just ate all those leftovers myself.

But I decided to keep trying. They've expanded my culinary horizons, I should try to expand theirs. So yesterday, I brought in Sunday night's leftovers.

I had recess duty, so I wasn't in the room when they served up our improvised lunch. After I returned to the English cluster, I was greeted with, "AMBER! This dish you have brought! It is so yummy yummy! How did you make it so flavorful? The texture is just perfect! I've never had anything like this! Thank you so much from bringing it in!"

They raved! They cleaned the dish, they asked for the recipe, they chattered away about it for at least two class periods.

As one of them was tying her hijab to leave at the end of the day she asked, "Amber, this dish you brought. What do you call it?"

"Broccoli casserole."

How funny that a simple, classic American dish was such a hit with my exotic counterparts!

Vicariously yours,

Say what now?!

We have some interesting characters in the house with us. Living upstairs, we have two lonely, single men. Well, lonely isn't the right word because it makes them sound desperate...but you can definitely tell that neither of them have seen or talked to an unmarried woman since he arrived in the country.

The other night, I mentioned to them that I had invited a co-worker of mine to dinner at the house. She had just arrived from Canada and I thought she would enjoy a little camaraderie.

"Really?" one of the guys said, "...is she married?"

I chuckled a little bit and said that she wasn't. Both stayed quiet for a little while. After about ten minutes, one of them, we'll call him "Michael," said, "Wouldn't it be funny if we went home and studied up on Canada to impress her with our knowledge of her home?"

We all laughed. I thought it was so funny that he had been thinking about her visit this whole time.

The other single fella, we'll call him "Neil," laughed and began a hypothetical conversation with my female colleague, who wasn't in the room.

"So," he said, "that election of 1873. It was crazy, wasn't it?"

Everyone in the room thought this was hilarious and we all started chiming in with hypothetical cheesy pick-up lines related to the US's northern neighbor. The men were rapid-firing with the jokes and we were all having a great laugh.

Keep in mind that our Thai house mate was also with us, and she doesn't speak much English. She was barely keeping up with our normal conversation, but she was being a good sport and laughing along at all the fake flirtation, even though she didn't really understand what was being said.

After a minute or so, Neil says in a lusty voice--still to my colleague who is not in the room--"So, ever been to Regina?" which is said with a long "i." It's a city in Alberta. It mean "queen" in Latin. It rhymes with a certain...female body part.

"...what did you say?!" the petite voice of our innocent Thai neighbor half whispered.

To borrow a phrase from my mother-in-law, we all died laughing! The expression on her face was so funny, and once we all realized what she thought Neil had said, it was even more hilarious.

I am definitely so thankful to have such good-humored and fun people around us all the time. It's nights like that one that have certainly made this move considerably more fun.

Vicariously yours,

A Pakistani wedding...in Saudi Arabia

I think it's hilarious that I had to come all the way to Saudi Arabia to get to see a Pakistani wedding!

Technically I didn't see the wedding itself, but just part of the event. The actual nuptials will happen in Pakistan in November. What I was invited to last night was the Pakistani equivalent of a bachelorette party. ...with no alcohol...or talk of sex....or men at all.

Essentially it was a party for the women in the bride's life. The bride is a fellow English teacher at the school and she is so much fun! It was funny because she was supposed to just sit in her "throne" at the front of the room and watch the proceedings, but she said she likes to dance too much, so she joined the crowd.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

I bought a traditional Indian/Pakistani outfit for the event because I wanted to fit in, and how many times will I get to wear an outfit like this?! I didn't have to wear traditional clothes, but I'm glad I went shopping because I would have stuck out like a sore thumb if I didn't.

Here's what my outfit looked like:

I bought it at the Lulu. That's a grocery store with a department store on the top floor.

A colleague of mine did the henna on the bride's hands and feet. It took 6 hours, but golly did it turn out beautifully.

After all the guests arrived, the music started. The family of the bride put a sheet on the ground and all her closest family and friends gathered in a circle and played a drum and sang songs in Urdu. I have no idea what the songs were about, but I was told that when the bridal shower is held in conjunction with the groom's party, the two families kind of "compete" against each other with the songs. I would have loved to have seen that!!

Then the dancing for everyone else began. I thought it was so funny that these women were so shy in a room full of other women. I was hoping it wasn't due to the fact that a strange American and a few Saudis were in the room.

The other English teachers didn't let that stop them, though! We let loose and had a great time!

After that, the bride's family members performed dances in her honor. It was so wonderful!

After all the dancing was over, the caterers (gasp! MEN!) brought the food and we had an amazing meal of traditional Pakistani dishes. Golly it was spicy, but sooo good! I didn't take any photos of it because I was hungry at the point that I was too busy stuffing my face to document the wonderfulness.

I hope I get to experience more weddings while we're here. That's one part of worldwide culture that I find so fascinating.

Vicariously yours,

My funny co-workers

The biggest irony I find about my moving to Saudi Arabia is that I don't really work directly with that many Saudis during the day-- adults, I mean. 95% of my students are Saudis, but my co-workers in the English department are all Indian or Pakistani, so what I've learned about Saudi culture has been gleaned from conversations with my students and the Mister's co-workers.

Anyway, Saudi or not, the women I get to work with everyday are a real treat. It's such a fun mix of personalities and so far we all mesh really well.

Last week we all gathered at one house for a ladies' lunch and all-around fun time. There is one lady in particular who always inadvertently makes me laugh. I don't want to say she's spacey because she's very smart and organized, but I think she sometimes zones out and when she tunes back into a conversation, she hasn't quite gotten the whole story, so her comments are really random!

One such case happened at the ladies' lunch. It was time for the 4th prayer of the day, so she was suiting up and there was a discussion as to which direction Mecca was. All the ladies then took to pointing in one direction or another. The house we were in is located right behind the school, and since that's a place that they all pray in regularly, they used the school and its surrounding landmarks as directionals.

Right next door to the school is a Burger King, and as the crow flies, Mecca is in the same direction. So to help clarify the situation, one of the ladies said, "Yes, that's the direction because Burger King is that way."

To which my funny colleague gave a confused look and simply replied, "...we don't pray to Burger King!!"

It was so hilarious because she was so serious and couldn't understand why her friend had been praying to the fast-food-monarch all these years!

Just thought I'd share a funny story.

Vicariously yours,