The DMV

This weeks big adventure involved me trying to navigate my way through the local Saudi bureaucracy to get a drivers license. It seems that everyone here has a story and when it comes to getting your drivers license they are all long and varied. One guy said (women can't drive here so they don't go through this) it took him 10 trips into town to the license center to get his. So here it goes:

Trip 1:

I have to leave school to go to the drivers license center. The drivers license center is run by the local police. For the most part Aramco tries to handle all paperwork type stuff for you but when it comes to getting a license you are on your own. Those who have already done this have put together a list of all the forms and papers you need to take with you and that is a huge help...but not enough.

I arrive at the station at 9:00 because the sign said they opened at 8:30. Well I forgot about Ramadan. Ramadan is the month long holy period in which Muslims fast from sun up until sun down. The reasons for this vary but it is similar to how Catholics abstain from meat for the 40 days of lent. I can remember trying to pull off the no meat thing and thinking how terrible it was. Well say what you want about Islam but these people are deeee-vout! They go for a whole month and have absolutely nothing to eat or drink all day long - in this heat! Not one drop. Plus everything is either closed all day or is open during really late hours. In the end people break the fast each evening with large meals called Iftar. They stay up late and eat and go shopping etc. Marie was out the other night shopping after dark and was out well past 11 PM. Because people stay up real late all month long nothing opens when it is supposed to. So back to my story - when I arrive at 9Am the station is not open. Damn Ramadan. So back to school I go.

Trip 2:

I get another ride after lunch from a fellow teacher and sure enough the office is open. The cop looks through my folder and begins to staple the forms together and I think "Wow, I am going to get this done." NO!! The cop looks at me and says "your third form is not good. You need blue stamp from Aramco security office" and gets up and walks away. So off we go back to camp to get the stamp. I am starting to sense this could be tough.

Trip 3:

Back we go to the station and I think I am home free. I got the blue stamp on my paper and I have everything else on the list. We wait in line. We get cut on twice and in Saudi an American must just say OK and let them get in front of you. I finally make it to the window and the guy looks through everything again and hands it back out and says sorry your picture is black and white. Damn, damn, damn. This one is my fault. I was supposed to bring a passport picture with me for them to use on the license. I picked up a black and white instead of a color. In fact I don't have a color and have you ever seen a black and white drivers license picture? So the guy tells us to go up the street and get one taken at the photography shop and bring it back. So off we go up the street. I am not licked yet! Oh wait. It's Ramadan and of course at 1 freakin' o'clock in the afternoon the picture place is closed. AAHHHHHHHHH! My patient friend who is driving me says he will bring me back that night for my picture. Wahid, ithnan, thalatha, 'arbaa, khamsa, sitta, saba, thamaniaya, tisa, ashra (I am learning Arabic from my 9th graders and we are starting with numbers - I am counting to ten to keep from blowing my cool.)

Trip 4:

A good friend, Keith drives my back into town at 8PM to get my picture taken. At 8 in the evening during Ramadan the town is alive with people. Ok it is alive with men. Women are not seen. (I am thinking we need to apply these rules back in the states to driving and golf.) Anyway, we get my picture taken and while we wait we go across the street for some tea and pastry at the local bakery. I guess I should stop at this point and explain what the local town looks like. It's easy. Star Wars. Call me a dork or whatever but the local town, Rahima (Rah-he-ma) looks like Mos Eisley. You know the town where Luke first meets Han Solo. I lost you didn't I? The guys know what I am taking about and just in case here is a picture of Tatooine. We leave to return back home for the night pictures in hand feeling good about returning the next morning.

Trip 5:

I take a cab back into town at 10AM confident that I will be successful. The cop looks through the folder for what seems like the 200th time and seems to be moving toward acceptence when he turns to me and tells me I need to go get an eye check. OK, Mafi Moshkela - no problem. Off I go with my driver up the street to find the "eye clinic". Luckily my driver knows his way around Rahimah and we are there in no time. I kid you not when I tell you there are chickens running around in front of the place. I am feeling confident and stroll through the front door where I am greeted by two lovely ladies in full abyas. I shoot them my most debonair look and I am told to head to the back to pay 25 Riyals for the exam. I am taken into a room by a nurse who uses a piece of printer paper to cover my eyes one at a time and I am made to read off the wall. But wait the wall has a mirror. The room is too small and I am looking at a mirror with a reflection of the eye chart in it. The actual chart is behind me!! They basically covered each eye and made me read off the wall. Ok - back to the police to finally turn in my folder with everything complete. When I get back they take the folder and flip one more time through the contents. They close it and stamp the cover then look at me and say "Where is the money?" I begin to take the 75 Riyals out of my wallet and the guy shakes his head "No, no, no. You need transfer." Huh? "You need to tranfer 75 Riyals from your bank to the police account. We cannot accept cash here." Wahid, ithnan, thalatha, DAMN IT!! At this rate I will be able to count to 10 in just a couple of days.

Well that is it. Here I sit at home contemplating my next move. How do I transfer the money to the police bank account without a Saudi bank account of my own? The guards at the guard house outside of school are Saudi and extremely kind and generous. They've translated my drivers license forms for me and now they have offered to go on their own time to get the receipt I need. So on Saturday it will be trip number 6 into Mos Eisley and I am very confident that will be it. We shall see. Wahid, ithnan, thalatha....

You have got to be kidding me...

All we have to drive right now is the golfcart. In the next few weeks we hope to pick up an SUV of one kind or another but for now that is it. The gas mileage on this thing is insane. You have to fill it once every three weeks. And that is without another vehicle. I suspect that it will be once a month eventually. For those of you wondering gas is $.60 a gallon for regular. When we do have to fill it the only gas station in the camp is at the extreme opposite end from us. In a car it would take less than 3 minutes to make the drive. In the cart that is not so. Our cart is slow!! We are getting the engine tweaked up this week but for now it is like sprinting to the gas station. And I don't mean Carl Lewis sprinting. I mean chubby Steve sprinting. So the other day I finally need gas and I drive all the way down to the station on fumes. I know this because you can lift the seat and look at the gas tank. It is white plastic and you can see the gas. I was on serious empty. I pulled in and jumped out to lift the seat as that is where the gas nozel goes as well.
The attendant comes running out and says in his best Bollywood accent :
"Hello sir. I am sorry sir."
Are you ready for this,
"I am having no gas this day."
I looked at him. I looked at the worlds largest oil depot sitting literally a kilometer (notice my very Middle Eastern use of the metric system) behind us and asked him if he was serious.
"Yes sir. I am being sorry but the truck is having no sticker and could not leave the gas."
You have got to be kidding me!
I am in Saudi freakin' Arabia and the gas station is out of gas. So I had to drive the cart all the way back to the north end of the community again but I needed to go even slower to conserve gas. Once again - welcome to Aramco.

Shout out to Aunt Paula & Aunt Val

Happy Birthday - We love & miss you!

Swimming in circles...

I made a decison upon coming to Saudi that the relative lack of alcohol and fast food (I found out since that you can get it everywhere here - (McDonalds, Burger King, Hardee's, Chili's, Friday's, Applebee's and KFC) would lend itself well to losing weight. After settling in for a week and getting over some minor jetlag I started my work out regimen. This would encompass running and swimming on alternate days of the week. Our work week here starts on Saturday so I figured I would jog on Saturday morning (5:45am - it's nice and cool) and swim after school on Sunday and then rotate from there on out.

Running along the beach in the early morning is fantastic. It is usually only in the upper 80's and the humidity has not yet started come up. The sun is just coming up over the gulf and there are these really cool green parrots that feed beneath a palm tree along the beach path. One of these days I am going to take pictures.

My first day of swimming was quite interesting. First of all I had to borrow goggles from Jack as I can't drive outside of our community until I get my permanent residency papers. Jack's goggles are very cool in that they have these nasty holgraphic sharks on the lenses. So everytime you move your head the shark looks like it is coming to eat you. I arrived at the pool and jumped into the swimming lane where there was a hand full of adults swimming slowly along. I thought "This is great. Everyone is swimming nice and slow!" This was my first time swimming for excercise since my days at LaSalle High School in old Mr. Farrell's swim class. So I get in and swim 1 lap feeling pretty good about myself. As I get to the end of the lap all the people who were swimming slowly are waiting for me wearing big smiles and speedo bathing suits. "Hi! We're the health and fitness club. Glad you decided to come out and join us." Oh crap. I tried to explain to them that I had spent the month before coming to Saudi trying (successfully) to consume the years worth of cheesesteaks and beer I would miss living abroad and that I really didn't think I should workout with them. They would have none of it and before I knew it the leader of this group was rattling off distances and directions and the others were all falling in behind him. "Ok we are going to do 5 freestyle at warm-up pace. One lap both arms and one with just your left. Ready go!" What!!! I just want to swim some laps. Before I could object they were swimming away. Ok. I can do this. I knew I was in trouble when I reached the end of the first 50 meters and they were all doing the olympic flip turn and shooting off in the other direction. I tried it and came up gagging with mass amounts of water up my nose. Damn.

Did you know that when some people try to swim a lap with only one arm they will swim in a circle? I do now. I kept hitting the plastic doughnut things on the lane divider. (Side note: I really, really miss Dunkin Donuts!! Their coffee was so sweet and the jelly doughnuts were so jelly-ee.) I had only planned on swimming for a half an hour each day so after trying real hard not to look like a total fool and get out of this alive I was going to bail. Their warm up took half an hour and they seemed disappointed when I told them I had to go and could not stick around for more fun. I was dizzy and breathing heavy and they were all giving me this weird look of concern when I realized that I was standing there with these atheletes ( I have since found out one of these people there won their age group in the Phoenix triatholon) wearing Jack's shark goggles - everytime I moved my head, the sharks flashed across the lanes. Yes, in the end no matter how hard I tried, I looked like a fool standing there amongst these triatheletes in my flowered board shorts and shark goggles that I borrowed from my six year old. Welcome to Aramco.

Here is our house - outside only.

I was up for my early morning run the other day and it was beautiful. This time of the year 5:45 am is about the only time of the day that is tolerable around here. The sun comes up around 5:30 and it gets dark by 6:00 pm. We are at a much lower latitude then in Philly and that effects the amount of sunlight. When I finished up I went inside and grabbed the camera to shoot some pictures of the house and the flora and fuana. So here you go:

The first shot is of the front of the house from down the street. We have been borrowing the Suburban that is in the driveway but we are returning it today. That leaves us with our newly aquired golf cart (topic for another blog) as a means of transportation. We have a couple of palm trees and a green leafy tree with big white flowers. Very pretty and the flowers smell amazing. BTW - if you click on the pic it will open up larger. The window upstairs is Jack's room. He has a view of the Persian Gulf from his room.




This is our back yard. Not much to see now but we have grand plans for this space once the temperature gets below 110. The two bushes you see should be covered with these beautiful red flowers. These are not because they were trimmed back pending our arrival. Here is the one flower I could find.

Well I am off to play an afternoon round of golf with some of the guys from school. The temperature on the computer is saying it is currently 108. It will drop significantly over the next couple of hours. Yipee - 98 with a relative humidity of 800%. That is a real feel temperature of 150 degrees. The upside is I can use the heat as an excuse for my always crappy score.

Ahhhhh...Structure & Routine!

-Marie

This week school started for Steve and the kids. WOO! HOO!

Sarah carefully picked out her outfit, put in a request of how she wanted me to do her hair, picked out matching earrings for her outfit and even convinced her brother to wear his blue shirt so that they would match:) We did our "first day of school pictures" and figured out where the bus stop was.....success!



This is them getting onto the bus:



When Steve and the kids came home for lunch, I could tell by Steve's big smile that he was happy to be back teaching kids. He has enjoyed meeting his new students and has a soft spot for all the proper English accents:) The big joke in our house is about how ugly and mean their new P.E. teacher is (did I forget to mention that Steve is the P.E. teacher?).

Now that the kids and Steve have started school, Anna and I have been able to get our groove on....we went to our first Mommy and Me swim class yesterday and we have a Mom and Tots Playgroup today and on Wednesday morning. The more mommies I meet, the happier I am. I'm learning where to shop and how/where to make pediatrician appointments, etc. Anna is also meeting lots of new friends. I don't know if its because of her age or if its because these are the first organized groups she's been involved with, but she LOVES it! She's learning how to share which is a very new concept for her, everytime another child takes a toy from her she exclaims, "OH NO!" with such drama:)

So I guess I'm not ready for retirement anytime soon. I still need structure and routine. I like knowing what is expected of me. I'm sure there will be a time when I won't check the clock to see what needs to be done next. But then again when I retire, instead of scheduling drop-offs, pick-ups and playdates I can schedule lunchdates, naps and cruises :)

Getting Acclimated

-Marie

Steve's co-workers, my parent's friends and the community in general have made our transition here so pleasant (people we don't even know went on vacation and left their Suburban for us to borrow until they return this week!). But my sister in particular has been WONDERFUL! She took an hour ride just to see us in the airport for a short while when we arrived and then has brought lots of goodies for us everytime she visits. By goodies, I don't mean chocolates & cookies....even better: a cutting board, a crock pot, extra bath towels, a colander, a casserole dish, cookie sheets, etc. She has even babysat already so Steve and I could go into town to get a couple of things! We have a standing dinner date at my house with Cheri every week, so as the newness of us being here wares off, we'll at least see each other once a week and be able to enjoy being on the same side of the world again:)

Our first 1 1/2 weeks were pretty low key. Steve started work, so I spent my time with the kids trying to find where everything is and learn what activities were available for them. One morning I took them to the beach, one night we went to the library, another night I took them bowling, and we also took them swimming at the pool and took walks on the beach after dinner. Anna has added "beach" to her vocabulary. When we get in the car, she points down the street and says, "Mama, beach? beach?". Here are some pictures of us at the pool and at the beach:










This past weekend I saw that the community was running a bus to 'Sunset Beach', which is a mini resort that has a man made beach and waterpark. Not only was it beautiful, but it was a blast! My sister went with us and really enjoyed playing with the kids. There was one water slide there that swirled you around and dumped you out at the bottom through a hole. The kids have dubbed this slide, "The Toilet"! HA! We all had a really good time. Every Friday is "Ex-Pat day" ( definition of expatriate: one who has taken up residence in a foreign country). That night, we were all exhausted from a really fun day!

The nice thing about a "small town" is that it's fast to get acclimated to. I think we're all finding our way around and figuring out where we belong in this little corner of the world.