Like a woman under cover...literally.

The Mister and I went to the Al Rashid mall today. We have a long weekend this week, and we knew that if we stayed in our hotel room for 3 days, only one of us would come out alive, so we decided to get out.

Saudi culture is very mall-centric. There are no movie theaters, no skating rinks. It's too hot to hang out at the beach during the day, and there's not a single putt-putt course to be found. So for entertainment, the people here shop. We decided to join them today.

As mentioned in a previous post, the call to prayer doesn't stop Saudis from enjoying their mall time. They just blast the call over the P.A. system, and everything comes to a halt for about 20 minutes. We were in the mall today when the 4 o'clock prayers were to begin, so I whipped out my camera and got some footage.

We tried to be sneaky about it because people don't like to have their pictures taken here (not entirely sure why yet...will continue to investigate), so we didn't want to attract too much attention by video taping everything we saw.

As a result, you get a great view of the ceiling of the mall...and of my nostrils. Sorry in advance.

Enjoy!

Vicariously yours,

Insh'allah: The "bless her heart" of Saudi Arabia

Every culture has its little phrases that are unique. In the South, we all know that when one says, "Bless her heart," or "God love 'im" it's not really a compliment, or a blessing.

For those who have been living under a rock for that past 9 years, Saudi Arabia is an Islamic country, and that means most of their colloquialisms involve that religion in some way. The most frequently heard phrase is "Insh'allah."

Directly translated, it means "If God wishes it." But just like "Bless her heart," I've come to find that Insh'allah can also have another meaning: "But don't bet on it."

For example: Our school hasn't yet gotten it's cargo shipment of school supplies from the US. This means that I haven't gotten a stapler, tape (masking or scotch), paper, pens, pencils, or any sort of school supply you would expect to be on hand in a school. While this would normally mean I just needed to pop into the nearest Office Max and stock up, the Hubsy and I are currently dependent on a hired driver to get around town, so errands are exponentially more difficult.

When I asked last Wednesday when the supplies would come in, I was told, "They will be here on Saturday or Sunday, insh'allah."

Guess what hadn't arrived by Saturday or Sunday.

Here are a few examples of insh'allah in action:

"When will I get a copy of my class schedule?"

"You'll have it before the students arrive, insh'allah."

"Can we meet to talk about my discipline plan?"

"Yes, I will come to your room in 5 minutes, insh'allah."

"ALL the bathrooms are being renovated at the same time?! Will they be finished by the time school starts?"

"Insh'allah."

"Don't worry, the meeting will only last a few minutes, insh'allah."

"You will be moved out of the hotel and into your apartment by September 22, insh'allah."

And one for which I hope insh'allah REALLY means insh'allah:

"This will be a successful and great school year, insh'allah."

Vicariously yours,

Grocery shopping. Alternative title: Oh hey! They have (insert brand name here)

The hubs and I went grocery shopping last night, as well as all kinds of other exploring--all thanks to our wonderful Bangladeshi driver Nour (whose name I'm sure I'm misspelling).

It was such a comforting experience because every aisle had familiar food items that we weren't expecting to find so far from home. For example, they have Progresso soup--and anyone who taught on the sixth grade team with me (Lee Shreeve) can testify to my undying love of all things Progresso. They also have those Hormel ComplEats meals, Lays potato chips, and Garnier Fructis hair products (which I use cause they're cheap).

The hilarious find of the night was this beauty:

I don't think we even still have this in the US anymore!

We were also surprised to find that things really cost just about the same as at home, with a few items costing maybe a dollar or two extra.

For example: My shampoo cost SR 14.95. That looks like a shocking number, but when you convert that to US$, it translates to $3.98. If memory serves me correctly, that's the exact same price I used to pay at home.

This is both a blessing and a curse. We exchanged all the money we had to Saudi Riyals before we left. What use did we have for US dollars? We didn't really have ALL that much money before we left, but we were under the assumption that because the exchange was in our favor, some things would be cheaper over here. Now that we know that everyday items are roughly the same cost, budgeting will be super easy...but we've still got about a week and a half before our first paycheck, and the Riyals are disappearing fast.

After we went to Carrefour (that's the name of the "grocery" store here. I use the quotations because it's really like a Sears meets a Wal-Mart meets a Kroger. EVERYTHING in one place!!), Nour was so kind to drive us out to Al-Khobar, the part of town where Hubsy and I will be living once our apartment is ready. Al-Khobar is at the end of the Bahrain bridge, and it's a really really nice part of town! There's all kinds of public art--I can't wait to get our own car so we can drive around and take pictures to show you guys. There are parks along the beaches--which I still haven't seen in the daytime. Insh'allah that will happen soon.

Nour went way above and beyond the call of duty, and he showed us the New Villas, the townhouses the school has purchased and is renovating for the new teachers. This is where the language barrier kicked in because I don't think he understood that we're actually going to be living in the new apartments which are somewhere near the new villas, but it was great nontheless to see our soon-to-be stomping grounds.

THE NEW VILLAS WERE SOOO BEAUTIFUL!! I wanted to take pictures, but they're not really where I'm going to be living, so I thought it would be silly. They have wonderful tile floors, great bedrooms and the kitchens are fantastic! If our new apartment is half as lovely I will be a happy girl.

Nour was so sweet to then drive us through what the Mister and I dubbed the Green Hills of Dammam. It's called the Golden Belt and Green Belt. I cannot even begin to describe to everyone how opulent and amazing these houses were!! Take the McMansions of Brentwood and multiply them by like 5 and you've got an idea of the sizes of these houses! We'll go back in the daytime and take pictures.

Anyway, now it's the weekend, and the Mister and I are kind of holed up in our hotel room just lesson planning, internet surfing and all around vegging out. We have no car, and Nour was out so late driving us around last night that we feel kind of bad calling him up to work on his weekend as well.

I think it goes without saying we're excited to move into our apartment and get our car so we can reclaim some of our freedom.

In the meantime, we remain

Vicariously yours,

p.s. I've been trying to post a recording of the evening call to prayer, but we can't find the cords the connect our video camera to the computer. So that little tidbit might have to wait until we get into the apartment and can really search through our stuff.

My first Mutawa

So I went to the mall last night to buy my abaya.

Now when I say "mall" in America, I think we all generally get the mental picture of a two leveled, large-ish building with a food court and maybe a carousel (unless, of course you live in Minnesota).

Seriously, the mall I went to last night makes any mall (even the mall of America) look pathetic. Yes, I've been to the Mall of America and I realize it has an amusement park in the middle of it.

This one did too...and an ice skating rink, and two food courts and it had two airport concourse-wide main aisles with stores on both sides. It. was. huge.

I was so completely blown away by the enormous size of this building, and then I looked at the stores. They're all American. Gap, Hollister, Zara, Mark Spencer, and every possible other kind of store you could ever want.

The most striking image from last night was seeing a Starbucks, and looking at the patrons and they're all in niqabs and thobes. It was such a funny juxtaposition. I wish I could have taken a picture (btw: you'll pretty much only see photos of me and the Mister, the other American teachers and landscapes. Saudi people are "kind of sensitive" about having their pictures taken, according to my new boss).

In addition to my first Saudi mall experience and my first abaya purchase, I had my first Mutawa sighting!

For those who don't know, the mutawa are the religious police in Saudi Arabia. They're essentially like the detention hall monitors. They make sure the women are covered and everyone's following the correct Muslim code. They're famously described in newspapers as the men who go around spray painting women's uncovered toes and hounding couples if they're not supposed to be out alone together.

So here's how it went down.:

It was sundown, so they broadcasted the call to prayer throughout the mall (totally bizarre. You hear the bing boom of a typical P.A. system and then out comes this booming chant, "Allllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh akbar." Very surreal), and all the stores have to close and theoretically everyone's supposed to stop what they're doing and pray. They didn't. Apparently the sundown prayers are kind of do-them-when-you-can-as-long-as-it's-before-you-go-to-bed. So everyone leaves the stores and just sits on the benches and waits.

Well I was with my new boss and she said we should just take the opportunity to window shop and then we could pick out a store to go into once prayers were over. So while we're getting lost in this monstrosity of a mall, a very nice woman in a niqab and abaya stops us and says, "You should know there are mutawa here and if they see her walking around like that [referring to me who was sans covering], she is going to get in trouble and I don't want you to have to get in trouble."

It was so nice of her! She was just looking out for me, and I was grateful for the heads up. So my new boss just says, "Well we're here for the purpose of buying her an abaya, so if they stop us we'll just tell them that," and then we turned to walk away.

Not 20 steps later, my boss goes, "And of course there's one of them walking with a police officer."

I just played it cool, didn't make eye contact and walked with a purpose. He didn't say anything to me, but he did look me up and down. I wasn't scared. I asked my boss what he could have done if he did stop me, and she just said he would make a fuss and that's it. I could tell that she, like most Saudi women, aren't thrilled with having to worry about mutawa in the first place.

I asked her how you can tell if a man is one of the mutawa or not.

"Short thobe, long beard."

Vicariously yours,

Three Words: Surprise Stool Sample

(for those who found us through a google search and just want the nasty details on collecting a stool sample, see this entry.)

So today was our first day of "work," and it was interesting to say the least.

Lemme start from the beginning:

Woke up this morning around 4 am when the first call to prayer began. Conveniently, there's a mosque less than a block away from our hotel, so one of the calls was LOUD and clear. The cool thing about the calls to prayer is that each mosque has its own guy who says the call (he's got a job title, but I can't remember it at the moment), so the mosque down the street will start its call, and then the mosque a few blocks away will start its call a few seconds later, so they kind of go in a round. It's so unique and just...I just can't describe it. We're going to record it soon and post the video so you can experience it too.

Anyway, it's 4 am, I'm now wide awake, even though I don't have to get up for another 3 hours. It's just me and my thoughts. That can be dangerous. That's when the anxiety starts to rise.

It was like my first day of high school all over again. What should I wear? Will I make friends? Are they going to like me? Will I hate it here?

Anyway, long story short, we get to our respective schools, find out we have more paperwork to file--really not all that shocking--and we need to have passport photos taken as well. So we get a driver to take us to a photo studio.

Here's what's funny: I could have brought photos from the US, and they would have been like any other passport photo--no hijab, hair down, everything normal. But because these photos were being taken in Saudi, I had to be covered. So I had to borrow my new boss's abaya and hijab to go run this errand! It was so bizarre!

Here's what the photo ended up looking like:

Nothing new for those of you who are friends with me on facebook.

So then we're told we have to go to the hospital. We're not entirely sure what for. We were told last night that we had to do some "blood work" as a part of today's paperwork, but we didn't realize we'd be going to a hospital! Keep in mind that the only person affiliated with the school that is traveling with us is our driver--and he's Filipino. He just goes where he's told. Literally.

So we show up at this "hospital" and I'm immediately shoo'd into the "family section" of the waiting area. This is where the women sit. We have no papers, really no idea what we're at the hospital to do, but some man in a thobe told us to sit, so we sat (by "us" I mean me and one of the other female new hires who thankfully speaks fluent Arabic or I never would have made it through the day!). Apparently the authoritative man in the thobe works for the school, so he was telling the nurses at the reception desk what we were there for.

Get this: We were there to give blood samples, urine samples and ANOTHER STOOL SAMPLE!

NOOOOOO **side note: for those wondering how a stool sample works, see this post.**

So after waiting for almost 2 hours, watching all the male new hires go first, but having a great time with my new colleague, I'm brought back to get my blood drawn by a nurse who I'm pretty sure was wearing the same gloves she had on when she started her shift earlier in the day--she definitely didn't change them between me and my colleague.

I'm then given two cups. "One for you-ryine, one for zee othear," the kind Asian nurse tells me.

Thanks, but where am I supposed to go to collect these samples?

I'm pointed to--get this--THE PUBLIC RESTROOM DOWN THE HALL!!

Keep in mind that I'm still wearing the borrowed hijab and abaya. I'm also wearing a floor length skirt that my mother so kindly sewed me before I left. I'm supposed to take all that and my two plastic cups into this teeny tiny bathroom stall and collect my samples to the best of my ability.

I'll spare you the details, but it wasn't pretty.

I can't believe we got sneak attacked by a second stool sample! I thought I was traumatized by the first one! This one was in a dingy Saudi Arabian bathroom and I had NO GLOVES!

I'll stop there.

So yeah. That was my first day at work. Not your typical first day kind of story, but I guess I'm not working your typical kind of job.

In other news, I got my very first abaya and hijab of my own after evening prayers. Aunt Suzanne, the hijab is the head scarf that covers my hair. The abaya is the long black dress. Here's what it looks like:

So what do you think?

The trip to the mall is a whole 'nother post in itself. I'll have to save that for later.

Vicariously yours,

Quote/unquote Hospitality

Somewhere around the final match of the rugby world cup, right as Matt Damon is declaring that this is the team’s destiny; I realize that we are flying over Iraq. Amber leans over and points out that this will be the closest she will ever get to her father’s hometown. I consider this for a moment, and then get lost in the rest of Invictus.

There are 35 minutes left in the flight. My stomach wis turning somersaults as I grip my entry card. The plane starts its rapid descent. My ears pop. A few rows up, a child starts crying. I sympathize. With 25 minutes left in the flight, my new life in Saudi Arabia is about to start…I feel like crying too. I’m not upset, but I am nervous…and the somersaults are turning into full-on backflips as we get closer to our destination. I am beginning to feel a little overwhelmed.

The plane touches down almost perfectly. I am totally impressed with the Dutch pilot. He got us here early and everything. Meanwhile, I feel like I’m gonna hurl. We step off the plane and immediately, I am brought back to that night in July almost 15 years ago when I did the same thing in Kuwait. The smell of the airport is very…unique. There’s also something very Arab about the décor: mirrors…geometric shapes. We head over to passport control.

There is a sign that says “no smoking” in both Arabic and English. There is a man smoking next to it. We wait in a line. Amber asks if this is the right line. I say, “I think so…” She pauses, “You just picked the one with all the white people in it, didn’t you?” “Yeah,” I say. We switch to the line that says “foreign citizens”. It is our turn. The young man in the green beret behind the desk looks…bored. I can just barely sound out his name from his name tag: Abdullah. Abdullah types on the keypad as if it had said something about his mother. He calls out to another officer and makes a thumbs down gesture. I tense up. Amber glances at me. He had run out of ink…just needed a refill. We get fingerprints and photos taken…but honestly, how many photos do they need? We’ve already given them 3 a piece. We’re allowed to pass through. “Khalass,” Abdullah says, with a dismissive gesture.

We collect our bags and walk out to meet the school welcome committee. They are all very helpful and very, very kind. My new boss is a grandfatherly sort of man who when we ask, tells us with arms opened wide, that he founded the school with Amber's new boss and has been there for 34 years. Our apartment is not ready yet and won’t be ready for another week. We’ll be living in a hotel. The elevator takes an absurd amount of time to arrive.

The drive from the airport is longer than I thought. The man driving is amazingly careful for an Arab driver…which leads me to believe that he is not actually Arab. Amber and I are lost in thought. We finally made it. This is totally different than anywhere we have been before. The desert stretches for miles in each direction. We crest a hill and see our new home, a thin string of lights on the horizon. I think of Las Vegas. Amber and I hold hands for the rest of the car ride.

It seems that driving in the city demands a kind of aggression that only Bostonians or New Yorkers could muster. There is construction everywhere. The lines on the road seem more like suggestions than rules. A wildly painted Toyota truck passes us. The driver is talking on the cell phone as he flies down the road. Just like in the US.

The driver refuses to let me help him with the bags. It seems like it’s frustrating him that I keep picking one up and carrying it. I even get an eye roll for holding the door open. “Sorry,” I mumble. The hotel itself is hot. The air feels heavy. I feel the first prickle of sweat on my forehead. The gentlemen from the school make the arrangements with the front desk. I glimpse the name of the hotel on the register: Gulf Flower Hotel; our home for the next week or so. The school gives us a fruit basket and a bag of snacks. Mr. Fawzi makes the quotation marks with his fingers. “Hospitality…” he says. We’re grateful for it.

Our room is small. “It’s like everything here is stuck in the 1970s…” Amber says. What can only be described as the strongest window unit in the world makes the room cool and comfortable. Sleep is in order, and it comes quickly.

I am awakened in the morning by the call to prayer. Its haunting tone does not allow me to return to sleep. It’s 4:30 am. I lay awake. The saying “we’re not in Kansas anymore” does not adequately describe our situation. I have to wait 3 hours before I can get up. But I’m ready now. I want to get to the school and get started. However, I need to stay in bed and try to sleep. The call to prayer ends and I roll over to try and get back to sleep. I can’t help thinking that the adventure we had set out to find was right outside the door. Waiting.

Vicariously yours,

It all changes in 24 hours

At this time tomorrow, we will be arriving at our new home in Saudi Arabia. The Mister and I have been in odd moods all day and I think it's because we're both a little nervous/scared about what we've gotten ourselves into. The emotions really run the gamut of total elation to utter fear.

In other news, I think I've officially become co-dependent. The roles were reversed today and I was the sleepy head, so I laid down for a nap while the Mister went to have the Heineken Experience. Normally this wouldn't have been a big deal, but we're in a strange city without cell phones and completely lack the ability to pronounce the name of the street on which we're staying, much less the last names of our hosts...if something had happened to him, I would have been totally screwed.

Of course, that thought didn't cross my mind as he kissed me goodbye. I was already fading into dreamland. But when I woke up at 4:30, and then Hubbins wasn't back by 4:45, our appointed time...I had to fight off the panic. I knew that he probably was just running late. It's Sunday, so the trams don't run as often, so he probably had to walk all the way back. Then it got to be 4:55, and we were supposed to be leaving for the Anne Frank house by 5:00. I was seriously having to talk myself off the ledge of going out searching for my Mister or calling the Scotland Yard or something.

Of course, he was just running a little late. He showed up at 5:01 exactly. But I quickly told him that we would not be playing that game again.

Sorry Hubsy. I'm stickin' to you like glue.

Meanwhile, I've really enjoyed staying in this gardenhouse. Airbnb.com will be our method of finding travel lodging from now on. We haven't had to worry about our luggage at all, and we can sleep soundly away from street noise and loud neighbors.

One downside is the fact that Amsterdam is crazy humid, and Europeans don't do air conditioning in the warm months. That means it is as humid inside as it is outside. Especially in a drafty garden house. Our towels haven't been dry since we took our first shower. Our clothes feel a little moist when we first put them on. It feels like I've been suffering massive night sweats every time I roll over in bed. These really are all minor problems, but I will say one perk of arriving in KSA is that we will finally be completely dry for the first time in a few days.

It'll be a while before we have internet hooked up in our new apartment, so farewell for now friends and family. Thank you for all the support.

Vicariously yours,