Saying Goodbye

By the time this blog entry posts, I will have flown away, looking back and reflecting at my two year stint in the Magic Kingdom. Saudi Arabia, despite all that is said about it, is a mystical place to live in, with the strict religious adherence to Islam while at the same time many of its youth wanting to jump head first into all that is offered by the West and pictured on TVs and the internet...

When my French friend Eugenie left last June, she made a list of the things she loved in Saudi and the things she wouldn't miss about the country. I really enjoyed her idea and I'm just going to be completely unoriginal and use the same headings:

What I loved about Saudi Arabia

- getting to know the country, still very closed to tourism and tourists
- discovering the Arabian Desert, its rocky floors and its red sand dunes
- becoming a member of the Hash, the walking club
- sleeping under the starriest sky in the quietest desert ever
- seeing camels up close in their natural environment, free roaming in the desert
- eating Middle Eastern Food at any given time, with the best Arabic bread possible
-  meeting Saudis and finding out they are just like us!
- making friends with other expats and being able to talk, discuss, share common interests and talk about what we are missing from outside the Kingdom...
- finding out ways to make do without pork products and wine (although, that's not quite true, since there are ways around those lacunes)
- learning some words of Arabic and being able to greet people and receive a big smile in return
- roaming the souks and local markets, looking for rugs, scarves, Arabian knickknacks and having to haggle over everything
- listening to the many calls to prayer, giving a rhythm to life
- the access to the French grocery store Carrefour and its plethora of French products
- living on the compound in a spacious villa
- seeing behind the closed doors and high walls of Royal palaces
- taking the children to huge birthday parties where all a kid could dream of is available
- having Alex loose his first teeth biting into an apple here and hoping the tooth fairy would find him
- meeting like-minded people and knowing that, even if they were here in our lives only for two years, we have made friends for life...nothing better than sharing the same war trenches to never forget.
- going to the various embassies in the DQ and making acquaintances with familiar faces seen over and over again.
- shaking hands with ambassadors...I lost track after a while, but before moving here, I had only shook hand with one ambassador!
- visiting friends at Arizona compound and feeling like we were in the States, just for a few hours
- having Alex loose his first teeth biting into an apple here and hoping the tooth fairy would find him
- hearing Emma making huge progress in her fluency in French by blabbering with her little BFF...
- having the children understand that not all places in the world look like and behave like Louisiana or Belgium.  Having them become more world-aware and willing to see new things.


Who I will miss

- our work friends who, for some, turned out to be great friends
- the compound friends and neighbors
- the Hash group
- friends of friends, met by chance, but such great people
- the friends I made and who I am very sad to say goodbye to. I've told them that I hope we will see each other again and I do really mean it, Josh, Kristy, Claude, Nenita, Jay, Cheryl, Vinciane, Pierre...hopefully, one day, somewhere, we will meet up and catch up, Insh'Allah!

What I won't miss about the Magic Kingdom

- the division between men and women, not being allowed to interact
- wearing the abaya in the summer and in hot weather. In the winter it acts like a coat and keeps you warm while it 110F/45C temperature it's just an unbearable black oven.
- always being on the lookout for the mutawas because I did not wear the headscarf, standing out in the crowd sometimes by a head over the women around
- not being allowed to drive and having to depend on my husband or a driver to take me anywhere
- the closing of everything during prayer and having to plan to go to the store, bank or restaurant so that you're not caught by prayer
- the feeling of entitlement and superiority some Saudi have..but I guess that happens all over
- the way Filipinos, Bangladeshi and Indian workers are treated
- the censored magazines, with black markers and white stickers
- the filtered news in local newspapers
- seeing a sea of black abaya at the mall, never hair and rarely faces
- navigating a city where traffic signals are suggestions to stop, where street names have 4 different spellings and when you get misguided, you can't read the traffic signs as they are in Arabic!
- having to purchase an exit-re-entry visa to LEAVE the country for vacation
- the bureaucracy and convoluted ways to get anything accomplished
- the stamps, needed on everything, from store receipts to copies of paper to ads to put around the compound
- the butterfly in the stomach I felt everytime I was going through immigration, hoping that all my papers were in order and that I would be let in/out!  The final exit was a little stressful, but more will be written in a later post)


All in all, a great cultural experience that I won't regret having with my family.


Masalama Arabia!
Goodbye Saudi Arabia...

October 2009, right after our arrival in the Kingdom

Maybe we will meet again...Insh'Allah!


PS: We are moving to Malawi on August 1st and I will keep a blog of our new adventures in Africa.  Make sure you come visit it www.familyonthegeaux.blogspot.com