Mall Amusement

Despite a rich historical heritage, Saudi does not have lots of cultural activities going on. There are a few museums here and there, but to get in is a problem, as there are male days and female days and most of the time, you don’t find out which one it is until you try to get in. Movie theaters are totally nonexistent, so no chance on catching the last Hollywood hit either…so the Saudis have devised ways to do activities as a family or more likely ways to entertain the children without parental supervision but under nanny watch.


Every Mall has a play area decorated around a theme, Under the Ocean, Huge Insects, In the Backyard…and we are thinking way more serious that the few climbing toys at Cortana Mall or the single video arcade at Mall of Louisiana. What I’m talking about are full fledge amusement park rides inside a mall. You want to ride the roller coaster, it’s there; the pirate boat, got it; bumper cars, always there; the wild river canoe drive with waterways, check; the parachute up and down ; the rock-wall with complete harness; merry-go-rounds; shooting range; interactive video games; remote control cars competing against each other, a fake moving elephant you ride on. Anything you’ve seen at an amusement park you may/will find in one of the malls in Riyadh.

This phenomenon is not only unique to Saudi Arabia: when we went to Bahrain, we all went to the Wahoo water park, at the City Center Mall. Imagine a two year old Blue Bayou inside a mall, with an outside area on the rooftop. At the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai you can even ski at the world-famous Ski Dubai. At the Dubai Mall, there is a walk-through fish tank, similar to the one at the NOLA Aquarium of the Americas.

So, for lack of better words, a trip to the mall has a different appeal depending on your age: over 20 year olds enjoy the shopping, the teen crowds like the socializing, among the same sex though and the 0-12 year olds are widely attracted to the rides. They make it easy on you and your wallet. Purchase a card, with whatever amount you wish and each time you go on a ride, your card is swiped and a certain amount is debited. The powerful merchandising and food court also use that card. Of course, the more you buy the better deal you get. Buy a 500 Saudi Riyal card (125 US) and you receive one with 1000 SR! Emma has gone with one of her little princess friend who did purchase that huge card and the two of them ended up riding enough rides to use it all up! Two girls and one plastic card…imagine the damage that can be done, on the rides now and later in the shops!

Women driving in Saudi Arabia

There is one thing people learn very quickly about KSA... change comes slowly, so don't believe it until you see it. But the public discourse about finally allowing women to drive seems to have become more intense during the past month, including:
An April article in Riyadh newspaper, discussing how to implement change in the law, translated and explained very nicely How do we start implementation? One point made is that, for the first time, the discussion is no longer about "whether or not" the ban should be lifted, but is publicly focused on the logistics of making it happen.

A very popular program on Al-Arabiya TV covered the topic last Friday night, after being promoted during prime advertising space on MBC4 during "American Idol." I watched the program (with my daughter's translation help) and found it to be refreshingly positive. Guests (all of whom spoke in favor of lifting the ban) included a former member of the government Advisory Council, a sociologist, and a religious scholar. An article about the program appeared in today's Arab News: Women driving issue resurfaces
Dare one hope... that the driving ban may be lifted during our time in the Kingdom? I'm not going to speculate about exactly when... but maybe... hopefully... before our time here is up? :-)

Written by one of my colleagues who has been living here for over ten years...

Springtime in Saudi Arabia

Not many people would associate much with Saudi Arabia other than sand and heat when it comes to climate. The truth is that Saudi Arabia is indeed hot for a significant part of the year. And I do mean REALLY hot. The desert has many areas with sand but you are likely to find much more rock and gravel. What you might not think of when you think of Saudi is plants and green areas.
In southern Saudi Arabia there a mountains that get enough rain to stay green all year long and there are the proverbial Oasis areas too. Riyadh in its current form is neither. In the earliest incarnations of this city there was enough of a water source to support a population of about 10,000 people. The advent of oil brought wealth of an unimagined scale and that money was spent on desalinization plants where sea water is turned into potable water and piped by the millions of gallons a day 280 miles from Dammam to Riyadh. To give an indication of how much water is needed, know that this city has about 4.5 million people and is expected to double in size in the next ten years. In fact, Riyadh uses more water to water the 3 million palm trees than the city of Jeddah uses in an entire year for all purposes.
I am proud to say that our compound contributes heavily to this water usage. Chris and I walk around the compound most evenings and realized how green our living space is. All houses have shrubs to offer privacy and a grassed front lawn, big enough to say you have grass but not big enough that mowing would take longer than two minutes. When we walk around, there are different types of trees in every yard. Some of the trees include some types of willows, palm trees, date palms, and citrus trees. There are various types of flowering trees that have beautiful blossoms and other trees that produce pods that we thought might be vanilla pods but are not.
Of particular interest to us are the date and lime trees. Dates grow in clusters similar to grapes and are incredibly thick and hang down from the top of the trees. Most people that want to harvest the dates will put a bag around the dates a month or so prior to harvest to prevent birds from eating them. I have no clue if the compound will want to cover the dates as some of the clusters are at least 30 feet in the air. We also like the lime trees which are completely loaded with limes and will offer us a great opportunity to make lime aid.
Who said Saudi Arabia isn’t green.

Up at 2:00 AM

The other night, I had to relunctantly get up at 2:00 AM; a driver was picking me up to welcome a PYP workshop leader leading a workshop at the school, and since that’s kind of what I’m in charge of, it fell upon me to go to the airport and be there for her! For those of you who know how much sleep I get each night and even for the others, I can tell you that I was not happy about having to miss on my precious sleep. OK, enough complaining. Let’s get to what I want to tell you about.


Imagine 2:00 AM anywhere in the Western World on a weeknight…What do you expect to see…Not much, a couple of cars on the roads, nobody around, nothing lit up…well, you get the picture. Hence, this is what I was expecting, early Tuesday morning. How wrong was I!

At the intersection of two heavily traveled highways two major soccer games were raging. Yes, at 2:00 am, on fields of dirt, only lit by the road lights. A whole bunch of guys were playing, and another bunch was on the sidelines watching. Since I’ve been here, I’ve heard that the Saudis are a nighttime society.Well these two soccer games were one proof.

Upon arrival at the airport, it was so busy you would have thought that it was the middle of the day. Guys upon guys were waiting for their friends arriving from faraway places, all standing next to each other, without any consideration for personal space. From their clothes, the majority of them were not Saudis, as very few were wearing thobe and gutra. I can even venture and say that they were Pakistani or Afghan, again from their dress. Now, of course, all these were guys! Very few females were around. Thankfully the driver was waiting as well, so I was not totally alone. I wasn’t feeling too comfortable there but would have felt a whole lot worse had I been totally by myself. I did draw a lot of glances, sideways look and straight stares. I guess not wearing anything on my head and letting my hair flow free was not the wisest thing to do to go incognito! For the majority of these guys, seeing a woman’s face is rather rare and seeing hair even more. They are working all day long, staying up a majority of the night, playing soccer or waiting at airports, and always in the company of men. Many have wives and families who stayed in their home country. But few interact with women here at all!

An interesting sight was a group of six guys, wearing the traditional Saudi thobe and just sitting/standing around, moving their prayer beads and having what looked like the time of their lives, talking, laughing… After observing them for a while, I asked the driver what they were saying. He told me they were just joking around and waiting for customers as they were taxi drivers. The bad kind! The kind that prey on people who don’t know not to travel by taxi in Riyadh, the kind that take you all around town and charges you twice as much as what you should pay for! We were heavily warned NOT to take a taxi anywhere, and as a woman, doubly warned that by taking one you may never reach your destination, as there have been attacks on women traced back to taxi drivers…

Around 3:00, the person we were waiting for finally arrived and we loaded the car and brought here to the hotel and finished up by dropping me back at home. We passed a mosk by the house at 4:00 am, all lit up, front doors wide open… yes, you guessed it, morning prayer was about to be called, at 4:15 that morning, right about the time I managed to climb back in bed to be hit by the alarm clock not even two hours later!

What's this?

OK, so Alex came home with this today...  At first look, I'm thinking belated birthday gift from a classmate?   Well, came to find out that the beautiful box was a birthday invitation!  A little wooden box, personalized with his calligraphied name and a little pirate glued on top. 
Delicately open it and inside there is a treasure: gold chocolate coins and nestled among those a delicately rolled piece of parchment with the details for the birthday...

Ahoy Matey
Come sail the ocean blue
Hunt for treasure
And be part of our pirate crew!

So, party is on Thursday afternoon, starting at 5:00!

Hockey Night

One of the more interesting aspects of the expat life in Saudi Arabia is how most ‘western’ countries embassies tend to host events that offer little slices of a normal life at home. Those slices include and are not limited to; actual for real life drinks- spirits and beer, Pork, and dirty dancing. But thanks to the Canadian embassy we can add sports to that list.


We teach with a young Canadian couple who are regulars at the Canadian Embassy functions. J.J. and his wife K are excellent young teachers who have a very good perspective on what life and our job is like. We enjoy their company very much and have been hanging out with them a good deal lately. J.J. and K invited us to a coat and tie fancy Wine Tasting and Cigar party at the embassy where I met the Canadian Ambassador. J.J. has been inviting me to the ultimate in Canadian life….HOCKEY NIGHT!

Hockey Night in Canada is the night to commit a crime. Every man, woman, child, moose, and beaver is sitting in front of the TV watching the game of the week and to see what kind of ugly coat announcer Don Cherry is wearing . In Riyadh it is a rather small function ranging from 5 to as many as 30 people who go the bar (Yes! A BAR) on the Canadian Embassy grounds where there is a giant flat screen television. There are seats and a pool table which is covered by wood to serve as a table. Smokers have reign over the outside seating of course but the bar is large and the selection of beverage choice is excellent. You can get Stella Artois, Sol, Becks, or Heineken beer. Sprits include Rum, Scotch, Bourbon, and of course Canadian Whisky.

People are invited to sit around and watch the game. You help yourself to the drinks and keep a tab on an honor basis. Drinks are 10 SR or about $2.50, which isn’t too bad. Typically they order pizza but also will order Quiznos sandwiches and everyone is charged an equal share of the food plus your drinks. So it really does make for a relatively cheap night out.

I have always been someone who enjoys hockey though I can’t say that I am very sophisticated in my knowledge of the game. I am sympathetic to the Canadians who have lost many teams to the south to the USA. Frankly, I am not interested in watching Carolina v. Tampa Bay play hockey. It is much more interesting and romantic to me to see Montreal or Edmonton play than Anaheim. So, I have scored good points with the Canadians for voicing my opinion of that fact. I am all about Halifax, Hamilton, Regina and Quebec City getting franchises.

So we watch hockey, drink beer and eat pizza. Sounds a lot like what we do back home during football season. And for a short period of time…..I don’t feel like I am in Saudi Arabia.   PWT

Rain in the Desert

These past few weeks, we’ve been having the weirdest weather! I’m just saying this based on what the old timers are recounting: usually, at this time of the year, it’s already unbearably hot with cloudless blue skies! We’ve been having grey overcast days where it threatens to rain until the clouds open up and let all the water fall on our heads! Now, coming from the sub-tropical climate of Louisiana it shouldn’t be a problem…except that Riyadh was built in the middle of the desert where it usually does not rain much. Houses have flat roofs, streets have no gutters and sand on the side of the streets. So, what happens when it rains that is so special?

Well, for one thing, the Saudi children go crazy! I was with a group of 10 year old when it started pouring! The wind was quite violent and the rain was beating on the door, windows and roof. The girls were out of control, scared and jumping at each thunderclap! Older girls had left their classrooms and were outside, in the rain, screaming of joy and terror at the same time! During a previous light rain, a group of boys begged me to let them go play soccer in the rain. As you can see, they are not used to the rain, to say the least.

Another problem with this rain is that the city infrastructure is not built to evacuate rain or to function with all the water. Roads flood, the sandy roadsides end up on the roads mixed with water, quick rain erodes the sand at the bottom of fences and the fences fall down! Water accumulates on the roadways and the Saudi drivers, who usually are not the most cautious drivers on dry days, decide to drive through the waters and get stuck! Traffic comes to a standstill and the city literally shuts down.

Depending on where you are living, you may have heard of school closures due to snow or to hurricane, well, this week, school was cancelled for a rain day. They announced the closure by text message around 8:00 PM the night before. You already know we were totally crushed! Parties around the compound started at about 8:01 PM!! Before going to bed, we left a note for Emma and Alex who were already asleep when the text message came, letting them know that there was no school and not to wake us up. It’s nice to have reading children after all! As you may guess, it did not rain at all on our day off, not that we are complaining!

 We did take a drive around town and could not believe what we saw: it may have rained 2 inches but the destruction was unreal. The number of flooded cars abandoned on the side of the roads, the trees fallen all around, collapsed fences, and sand all over the road, a constant reminder that we are, after all,  in a desert!

FYI: These pictures were all taken more than 12 hours AFTER the rain!