Bathroom Humor

I have had many discussions about the bathroom situation with friends and family, and many facebook questions on the day I posted a few comments about bathrooms.  It seems to be a fascinating subject, so I am going to go into a little bit more detail about the public restrooms.  Please note that his is not the reality of the community we live.  This is the reality of the rest of the country.

Yesterday I caught the 6 p.m. bus and ventured an hour south to the mall.  This mall was huge!  It was three floors of shopping and then the bottom level was an amusement park.  I noticed log rides, swings, waterslides, bumper cars, and lots of other activities.  It really looked like a great place to pick up some middle eastern germs! 

Now about the bathroom.  I bought 2 new dresses (one from the gap), and since they don't have female dressing rooms I had to buy the dresses and go into the bathroom.  The bathroom was huge with an entire section of dressing rooms. 

However, the toilets were a different story.  I am going to call them squatting toilets.  You have to stand over the hole and squat down.  Also, remember you have to hold up your abaya, and then you do not have toilet paper when you finish.  Instead you get the jet propelled nozzle that looks like it could do some permanent damage, and then you must drip dry. 

I am one to go to the bathroom in many places.  I have sat in open pits in the Amazon Rainforest, had a stomach bug in some type of dark hole in Costa Rica, dug holes out in the woods, and don't forget Bryan's college house toilet!  I am good with toilets, but I choose to not use the one last night for fear I would pee on my abaya.  It is a lot of material and it looked to wet to take a chance.

I think this will be my last time I blog about toilets.  So I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit more about my adventures. ~Rebecca 

Hired Help

I have felt the need all week to blog about the hired help here.  Every morning a bus rolls in from Jeddah with workers that keep our community looking nice and really clean. We have every type of worker needed to keep all of our area clean and often sparkly.

Every morning I walk into our school and I notice how the floors shine.  Our school has a man that keeps our school looking nice.  He works 7 days a week (on Fridays he gets to come late).  I have been in on the weekends and he has been outside watering the trees, polishing the floors, and fixing anything that needs to be fixed.  He is wonderful!  We also have several ladies in our school that clean.

Our third grade helper cleans my room twice a day.  She scrubs desks, empties garbage, washes doorknobs, cleans the bathrooms, sweeps the hallways, and wipes down the lockers. All of this is done daily, and sometimes more than once a day.  Our school is very clean and tidy!  These people are so nice but my heart breaks each time I see them.  They are not from this country and they had to leave their families behind in order to find a job that pays enough to support their families.   These people have spouses and children that they only see once a year.

Last week I threw a few pencils away in the garbage not even thinking about it.  When my helper came she pulled them out, sharpened them, and put them in my pencil area.  It made me realize a lot about myself.  To this lady I have everything a person could ever dream.  I have a family, clothes, good job, huge home, and all the little things that most of us never think about. To her pencils are expensive. To me it was garbage.

So, this week I have been reflecting on what I value and just life itself. Meeting these wonderful people that work hard to make my life clean and pretty, and sacrifice their own happiness makes me realize how lucky I am. I am taking the time to get to know these people and I believe this might be the most important lesson I learn while I live here.

I have been wanting to share this with you all week! Hopefully I can sleep better tonight with these thoughts off my chest. Expect lots of blogs this weekend. It is a holiday weekend, so lots of adventures are in our near future.

Girl's Night Out In the City

After a long work week and not shopping in weeks I decided to jump in with 5 other ladies and a personal driver that took us all around Jeddah.  Our journey began at 4:30 when we left the protected walls of our bubble. The view from being in an SUV on a Saudi Arabian freeway is much different than being on a large charter bus.  Traffic was moving fast and furious and I was thankful that I cannot drive in this country, and I don't think Bryan should ever drive!  I am not sure if there are any driving rules, and you just merge and change lanes whenever you feel the need whether it is safe or not.

Our driver was nicely dressed and drove very safely on the roads.  He did not take any chances and dropped us off at the front door of each place we wanted to go. 
Our school counselor is from Saudi and she was our tour guide for the night. Our first stop was a huge office supply/book store.  We only had 30 minutes since the first prayer time happens at sundown, so we rushed buying lots of different things.  I bought picture frames, wall decals, and a few toys for the boys.  Stores close during prayer and all the employees leave.  They will close you in the store, so you have to time it just right.  The evening is the trickiest time for scheduling around prayer.

During prayer time we drove to our next stop, which is similar to a dollar store, but was the size of a grocery store!  It was really busy, and I had fun maneuvering my cart down the tiny isles.  I was surprised to how many nice items I could find, and how many things were similar to Ikea.  We only had thirty minutes in this store because we needed to get into a restaurant before the next prayer time.

The final prayer time is when the moon reaches a certain point in the sky. This is the longest prayer time and everything shuts down.  The traffic to our restaurant was terrible!  We ran to try and get inside before prayer starts, but we did not succeed.  We had to wait for 45 minutes  before everything opened back up.  This  is the final prayer of the day, and the next prayer happens at sunrise.  (I will talk about school prayer time later.)

We decided on an Italian Restaurant.  It was so good!!!!  The menu was hilarious!  It was a chapter book with over 40 pages. The drink menu was also entertaining.  You could buy white or red grape juice by the glass or bottle.  There was a bartender shaking non alcoholic drinks and it was a fun bar scene minus the alcohol! 

We left the restaurant and went to an organic store.  This place sold honey, tea, coffee, pasta, etc.  It reminded me of a small Trader Joes.  Next door was a specialty chocolate factory and then next to that was an ice cream place that was similar to Cold Stone.  There were about 10 employees and they sang and threw the ice cream as they made your dish.  It is funny how there is never any music in playing in any of these places.  I thought when I first arrived it was because of Ramadan, but I believe it is always the rule.

Our final stop was a small fruit and vegetable market.  They had a great selection!  My favorite buy there were two baby pineapples.  They are so cute and smell delicious.

We arrived back into our bubble at 12:30.  Our driver delivered each of us to our home and then the fun evening was over.  It was great to see Jeddah alive at night.  Many large groups of women were out, and I noticed many Westerners.  I never saw any women employees working in any of the places we visited.  I am not sure if that was just by chance they weren't on shift or if these places didn't hire women. 

Next weekend is the National Holiday weekend.  We have 4 days off, so Bryan and I have already scheduled a driver to take the 4 of us on an adventure.  We might visit the snorkeling beach in Jeddah and visit an old Souk. We haven't quite put a plan together, but I am sure you will be able to read about whatever adventure we decided to do. 

 Here we all are waiting for prayer time to finish so we can eat. We were starving!  Our Saudi friend did not pray because there are not any places for women to pray.  She had to pray once she arrived home. (I choose to wear my "hip" abaya, which isn't black.  Don't you like my gray head covering?)

Cameron's Story

Cameron's Point of View: Today I am going to tell you a story about my class. 
My Class
My class is very nice.  My friends are named Hazam and Ayan.  My teacher's name is Ms. Mydland. We also get to get take care of an egg.  We go to Arabic classes.  My favorite thing to do in school is music because I like instruments. 

I will tell you another story about an egg.
The Egg
Today I got an egg.  If our egg cracks we lose points.  Today my egg has not cracked.  We will not get another one.  We have to make shelter for our eggs.  We cannot leave our eggs alone.  If we want to go play we have to find a babysitter to babysit our egg.  I named my egg Uzangy.

Our Backyard!

I just finished typing an entire page for all of you to read and then I lost it!  Here it goes again.

 

Here are some pictures of our backyard.  At the moment the plants are quite small, but they are supposed to be large in about 6 months.  They are watered twice a day and the outside is like a huge green house.  These plants will have beautiful flowers on them soon and I will post more pictures.  I left off the picture of our patch of grass.  We are planning on putting a trampoline there.  Please excuse some of the hazy pictures.  It is so humid outside that it is tough to get a clear picture.

 

 Our outside furniture is currently in our garage.  We had a party in our front yard/street.

 Clouds!  Beautiful, fluffy clouds!  This is a rare siting.



I wanted to let all my American friends and family know that we are quite a unique breed of people.  We do so many things and say so many words that are different than anywhere else around the world.  For example: Our measurement system, pronunciation of words that have a lot of vowels, our spelling of words that end in ize (everyone else does ise).  We spell color one way and everyone adds our to the end.  We call nappies diapers, Flip flops have a lot of names and our word for them is not one of them.  A grocery cart is called a trolley and recess is called morning tea or afternoon tea.  You would never realize how strange we are until you live with 80 different cultures!  Many people get a giggle out of us. 

However, the Kiwis (New Zealand) get the most unique award.  They do not often use the short e sound in words, they call sandals jandals and a bathing suit a tog.  An electrical socket is called a powerpoint, which was quite funny when someone called to have their powerpoint serviced.  No one knew at the front desk what they were talking about.  We enjoy our Kiwi friends!  They are a hoot and we get a lot of good laughs.