Hello from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia! I should have known by the difficulty in learning the greeting that learning the culture here would be difficult as well. It is difficult and fascinating and challenging and exciting all wrapped up in one and covered in sand. Its like one of the biggest puzzles in the world and I am loving the process of figuring it out.
I have now been here for 2 full weeks and am beginning to wrap my mind around the complexities of living here as a single, American, Infidel, woman. I know now that all four of those adjectives are strikes against me, but so far this has not proven to be like American baseball so they have not kicked me out, they have just made life complicated...as punishment. :)
The morning I left I ate a lovely breakfast sandwich with Laura, mom and Lila and said farewell to bacon. I went to the airport to begin my LONG journey to the other side of the world. On my flight from Bakersfield I sat next to an LDS woman from Tehachapi who was knitting with yarn that was coming out of her "Time Out For Women" bag. I decided to chat with her about church things, as a farewell to speaking about religion publicly. After a layover in Houston, I headed to London on a red eye and was sitting next to a couple who had (I firmly believe) never flown before and were a bit wacky. I had never been to England before and I don't know if it being hour 18 of my journey had anything to do with it but I kept laughing at everyone because it sounded to me like they were all faking their accents. I felt like I was being punked and had been placed in a big building filled with people with fake British accents.
As we were waiting to board I was looking around and noticing that 99% of the people looked Arab. We got on the plane and before we even left the gate we were offered dates and coffee and then there was a prayer of sorts to bless our journey. The flight attendants were women and their uniforms covered their head and hair completely and even included a loose veil on their face.
I still was not nervous at all about going; I was excited.
The whole flight to Riyadh i was wondering when I needed to put on my abaya and what would happen if I somehow didn’t get the message. I kept looking around and seeing that everyone else seemed to have put their abaya on before boarding. I asked the flight attendant but her broken English implied an even more broken understanding of my question so I just made my way to the bathroom and put one on and began to understand just how uncomfortable the next 9 months might be. We landed and got in the lines at customs and waited for over an hour. I got in the line for foreign women. Men were in another line. I happened to be standing next to a girl from Connecticut and one from England so we had a lovely time chatting about our fascination with and concerns for life in KSA. The American was going to teach at a University and the Brit was visiting her father. After going through customs i grabbed my bags and they were sent through another scanning machine. This scanning machine seemed to be unmanned probably because it was now 10pm but the other women i work with said that after passing through that machine their collection of DVDs was removed and they were brought into a back room where each DVD was played on fast forward to screen it for any inappropriate material.
I then walked out and saw a sign for Princess Noura Univeristy and was greeted by an Egyptian and an East Indian man who spoke no English. They drove me through the pitch black desert night to my apartment. I have come to realize that uneducated work like driving would never be done by a Saudi. So, while I would like to learn Arabic, it apparently will do me very little good, as Hindi and Urdu are the languages most commonly spoken by all the drivers and shop keepers and waiters and cashiers and basically anyone who I will need help from.
There is sand as far as the eye can see and the air is filled with dust I feel like I have already inhaled a good portion of the desert but it hasn’t seemed to make a dent. Riyadh seems like a city that hasn’t quite decided if it is third world or first world. There is a mixture of the types of shops and roads you would find in any 3rd world country next to big beautiful new shopping malls with Gucci, Louis Voutton etc. The price of gas is cheaper than water.
I think that is enough to whet your appetite. More to come...
