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.