Getting a Driving License in the Desert!

Bryan's Point of View: Had the opportunity to visit the Saudi version of the DMV so I could get my driving license.  There was 11 of us in total and as we piled on a small white bus that said "school bus" all over it, we knew we were in for a fun day.  The driving license office was 40 minutes north in a town called Rabigh and many of us had not been north of our community (we always go south to Jeddah) and I know anyone who is reading this will be surprised, but there was lots more sand and desert!  Our first stop was at the hospital to get our blood and eye checks done.  I got to go first on the blood test which was a basic finger stick and then the dr. shoving my finger onto a marble plate next to lots of other blood.  I told everyone I wanted to go first because they probably just used the same needle.  That done, we headed to the eye portion of the hospital where the eye test consisted of a nurse asking if we had glasses or contacts...that's it and we were done!  We piled back on our kindergarten-looking bus and headed to the driving license office which was about 10 minutes away.  First we are dropped into a small shack across the street where we had to put our paperwork into a 3-ring folder so everyone's paperwork looks the same.  They filed us back to the main office that was quite crowded and so our government rep that was with us had us sit down and he stood in line for us.  Once he got to the front, we were all called up but the manager caught wind and came out yelling at our rep.  As those two yelled at each other in some speedy Arabic, we held strong in our place in line, although we had to push our way in.  When the first member of our group made it to the front, he was kicked out of line because the holes in his 3-ring binder were not correctly punched.  For each of us, the same thing happened and each of us had to go back to the small shack across the street and re-punch our binders.  While we were doing this, our rep was still going at it with the manager and finally had enough and took our paperwork and headed to the main office, where he got things done.  He came back 5 minutes later and we were expedited to the front of the line and funny, but all of our paperwork was perfect - helps to have a bit of government pull helping us out. Then we filed out and each of us got a turn to drive on a closed course.  5 of us would pile into a car the size of a Toyota Yaris and demonstrate our driving.  The test consisted of pulling forward 20' or so, then backing up about 20' or so, and we were done.  Pretty tough one, and I managed to pass.  We all passed with flying colors and got the hek out of there.  We all patted our rep's back and we bought him a fancy Carls Jr. lunch.  In all, it took us nearly 5 hours to complete everything but we got through it.  Hopefully we will have our driving license in the next day or so.  I often mock the DMV back home for being a horrible experience, but it does not hold a candle to this place.  And even though it was a pretty tough day, it made for some great stories and a ton of laughs along the way.