Practicing Our Customs

Bill wearing his camel-riding glasses

In my job in HR, one of the things I do is take care of all of the details for the classes we put on for staff. Last week we had our own HR training session so I confirmed everyone in the department via email and split them up into 3 class sessions. Since everyone gets emails from me, most of the staff know who I am even if I don't know all of their names.

View of the beacon from inside the library. This is where my friend and I study Spanish/English.

When the day of the class came, and I was also required to attend, I started out walking with some Saudis from my department (2 men, 2 women) over to the class across the plaza. There was a lot of giggling from the 4 of them (don't ask me what about, but it must have had something to do with me walking with them), and a lot of speaking in Arabic. All friendly, but I felt like all paranoia aside, they must be talking at least a little about me. I started to wish I had worn pants instead of a dress, but it was all very lighthearted. One of the women asked me what I thought of living in Saudi Arabia. This is a common question and I always try to answer it with something the person asking will be pleased to hear and still truthful. This time all I could come up with was, "It's quite different." We both agreed that living at KAUST isn't like living in Saudi Arabia. She had lived twice outside the Kingdom, in Australia for over a year and in Malaysia for I don't know how long. She said something I thought was funny, "Yes, living at KAUST is not like living in Saudi Arabia. You can dress as you like here and practice your customs."

Flowering tree, close up.

The idea of practicing one's customs seems so exotic, but I guess it's true. Here I am practicing my customs.

Among the customs, I think you could count throwing the ball for Wally. Actually we have the Chucker now, so that helps. It finally came in the sea shipment. People are so fascinated watching Wally fetch the ball. Bill said a bus driver stopped the other day to watch for about 5 minutes.

Here's the grocery store where we finally managed to find Siracha. Yay!

They have security guys on segway scooters here, making the rounds of campus. One guy stopped while I was walking Wally the other day, completely enthralled. I asked him if he wanted to pet Wally. What I actually said was "do you want to touch him?" He did, but he couldn't bring himself to actually do it and got no further than letting Wally smell him. "I'm afraid," he said, staring. I was trying to reassure him about all of Wally's panting and teeth showing so I said, "He's tired." The guy asked why and I explained about throwing the ball and Wally running to bring it back. "Oh, you play with it," he said.

Bill and his golf partner rippin' it up at the golf course

Food remains a high point of my overall experience. We are hosting 5 other people for a Vietnamese dinner this Wednesday night (our Friday). I can't get rice paper wrappers easily, so my standby favorite spring rolls are out. I think the grocery is also sold out of pot sticker wrappers that I was lucky enough to buy once. That's ok though because it forces me to branch out into some other new Viet dishes. I got a cool Vietnamese cookbook from the library and am going to make a soup with ground beef and cilantro, marinated baked bone-in chicken, a salad with mung bean noodles, lime and mint, and (I think) a squash/sweet potato side dish with coconut milk. I'm pretty excited about this upcoming meal. I miss Vietnamese restaurants above all.

Goodies grocery store in Jeddah. Oh how I wish this store was on campus!

We are going sport fishing on Thursday and diving on Friday this week, which should be fun. The diving is a highlight though we haven't gone the last 2 weekends due to weather-related cancellations. I really should admit, however, in the interest of full disclosure, that we went to another party at the US Consulate and we both simply could not hold back from all the fun. We danced and carried on and had a super time. Even the drive back was fun since someone in our group of 7 remembered to bring a connector for the car's stereo so we even had music!



Before the Hawiian-Theme US Consulate Pool Party (women in abayas)

Before the Hawiian-Theme US Consulate Pool Party (women without abayas)

You can't go diving after having as much fun as we did at the Consulate, so we were not going to go. Lucky for us they ended up cancelling due to weather anyway. We had such a great time at the party, I was determined not to regret all the fun even though diving had to be scuttled.

Bill and me diving in the Red Sea

 More on food: We have continued to enjoy the Shri Lanka specials at the Golf Club restaurant. That is definitely the best restaurant here. Best pizza, the best specials and it's nice that the chef puts on some of his own home country food because so much of the food in the outlets here gets to be a lot of the same after a while. I know I've said it's good, but variety is the spice of life and the ethnic outlet makes it interesting.

There is a lot of fast food here. How homey.

We made another trip into Jeddah last weekend to look for some diving equipment: a BCD for me, so I am happy to have my own now rather than rent. We will eventually find a good place and pick up a couple of regulators and then we will have all of our own required equipment. I found a book on diving the Red Sea at the library here, and although there is a big section on Egypt, one on Jordan, Israel, Eritrea and Sudan, the section on Saudi Arabia consists of only 2 spreads and mentions near the beginning of the chapter that it is difficult for most westerners to gain access to diving here. The book lists many of the cultural requirements for women and a serious warning not to try to enter the country with anything less than an official visa. It simply won't be allowed, the book says.

Purple-blue sponge. Photo by Gary Taylor.

Diving here in Saudi Arabia we have seen some things I've never seen before, and the soft coral is definitely a highlight. One variety I've seen rapidly opens and closes the flower-like shapes that collect its food. It's like an amazing cross between a plant and an animal. There are all sorts of sponges too, coral of many shapes, sizes and colors, and of course the fish with colors so bright they practically glow.

March Photo Journal

Wally, the main reason for our recent trip to Jeddah in our backyard

I have really been trying to be more reliable in my reporting of how it is living here at KAUST in Saudi Arabia, but yet not really in Saudi Arabia since we live on campus. The campus is so different from Jeddah and the rest of the country. Now that I am working, I have a lot less time to keep up the blog, but since today's entry is going to be largely photos, hopefully I can convey a lot through pictures and captions and give a bit more visual information about what it's like.



Bill and I took care of our friends' two dogs. Thuwal Park, a huge park in the Island District is in the background.

 We made a trip into Jeddah on Thursday (our Saturday) to run some errands, and most importantly to buy dog food for Wally. They don't carry quality dog food anywhere on campus, and since everyone knows, "You are what you eat," (even dogs) we want to feed our dog good food. Wally is a big dog, and he needs big bags of food which are not convenient to try to get on the bus. Not only that, the buses that go to Jeddah don't go near enough to the vet's office where we have to go for his food. We have found that one big bag lasts for one month, so we bought two bags of food for him. We also picked up a bag of food for another lady and some medication for her dog. Getting dog food is not as easy as just getting in your car and heading over to Petsmart, so we wanted to help out a fellow KAUST resident get her dog supplies.

Bill riding his bike. Island District.

Since we couldn't rent a car to simply drive ourselves, something we tried to do the last 2 weekends, we ended up having to rent a chauffeured car. It's about four times as expensive at about $120, but to justify the cost, I guess I could say we don't spend any money on transportation otherwise, so if we have to run important errands, that's simply a transportation budget item.

The main mosque.

In addition to dog food, we stopped at a fairly high-end grocery store and picked up a number of imported food items I have not seen at our on-campus grocery. When I say "high end" I don't mean the equivalent of Whole Foods or a "Local" type of grocery. I just mean a store where they have more than one kind of rice. The predominant kind here is basmati, and I actually managed to find aborio (short grain) rice as well as dried mushrooms, anchovies and the long-searched-for Siracha chili sauce!

A typical street in the Garden District



Sushi lunch at Shogun in Jeddah

After grocery shopping we drove to the sushi restaurant that was advertised in a local magazine called Shogun. We have been craving Asian flavors and are also fairly burned out on most of the on-campus dining at this point. I still like the dining hall for lunch because they have such a great selection and it's all very fresh, but as I'm sure most people can imagine, when you only have 3 or so restaurants to choose from, it becomes more and more appealing to simply cook at home.

After lunch we headed off for the Red Sea Mall where we bought some swimming goggles for Bill, visited a candy shop, had coffee at Starbucks and watched people shopping and kids playing. When prayer time started, we left for the Home Depot of Saudi Arabia, Saco World for a few villa-improvement items.  

After what doesn't seem like that many stops (groceries, vet, lunch, mall, hardware store) it was almost 5:00 so we began the drive back to KAUST.



There are at least 3 fairgrounds-like places for family entertainment between Jeddah and KAUST

 On the second day of our weekend (Friday) we went scuba diving again. It's about the most fun thing there is to do here on a regular basis. Of course there's golfing, which Bill has been doing quite a bit of, and I have even gone with him. The golf course here is quite nice, and for Saudi Arabia standards, it's really nice. I understand they have some courses that are all sand and you just take along a little piece of astroturf. Wherever your ball goes, you set it up on the astroturf and hit from there. The golf course here is all very beautiful and green. Quite a feat in the middle of a lot of sand, as I'm sure everyone can imagine.

Family pool

We also have a really nice pool that's set up for family use (except two different evenings when it is men only). There is also a ladies only pool which I visited once shortly after arriving. It's quiet and relaxing, but the family pool is really the best place to hang out, and we go there sometimes on our "Saturdays". Getting used to the days of the week being different in terms of the weekend is really difficult. I am barely getting used to the idea that Wednesday is the last day of the week, so when describing something I did on the last day of the week (which I would normally think of as Friday) it really happened on Wednesday. In terms of getting used to things, I have only just gotten used to seeing palm trees every morning when I open the blinds. It's finally to the point where it is no longer a surprise.

Retail space

There is also a bowling alley at the sports club, and I bowled my best game ever a couple of weeks ago when I managed a 112 score. One of our friends got 206, so my score really is not that good, but for me, breaking a hundred is quite a feat. It was a lot of fun and it was a big group playing together which made it so fun. I didn't even go planning to bowl; I was just going to cheer the other bowlers but they ended up being short.

Bill and me diving. Photo by Gary Taylor.

I have registered us to dive again this coming weekend. You have to go and pay and get your name on the list several days in advance, so I just took care of that. Most transactions here are cash-based, and paying for diving is no exception. Unfortunately I spent most of the cash I have and the ATM machines are out of money again. This has happened twice before, same time of the month. There is a run on all of the cash machines on campus after all of the contract laborers get paid and the bank machines run out of money. It's a regular crisis. At least you can use a credit card at the grocery store, but not being able to get cash is a big problem here at KAUST where, as they say, cash is king.

Facing the sea

One thing I really like about living here is riding my bike around. It's usually really quiet on the residential streets, and most everything is a 5-15 minute bike ride away. The paniers on my bike work really well for picking up groceries, though I do have to be a little bit careful not to overdo it.

Bill's office building

The following photos are from our trip into Jeddah over the weekend. Most were shot out the window of the car.

Camels by the roadside

Central Jeddah

Central Jeddah, residential

Central Jeddah, residential and commercial

Central Jeddah

Ladies Branch of SABB bank