Driving in Jeddah: like bumper cars, but with less rock music

Last week I had the opportunity to drive into Jeddah to help a fellow Scout Leader with an errand, and pick up the brand new custom scout trailer that the troop had built.

It was an adventure from the beginning.  We started with a quick trip to the clinic because Abby hadn't been feeling well (ended up being heartburn and a virus) and then we had lunch at the school with the Scout Leader, his son, and some of the other teachers.  It was quite refreshing to sit down to a meal with other people and be able to converse comfortably with them.  We ended up talking about plagiarism and it seems that they have as much trouble with it at the primary and secondary levels as Abby has had in her classes. (No, she's not plagiarizing, but some classmates have.)

Next, we drove to pick up the second vehicle, only to find that we couldn't get in to get the car keys.  After talking to some neighbors and calling around, we finally got the family maid to come over and let everyone in.  Not so bad, except that it's summer in Saudi Arabia and we were hanging around outside at the hottest part of the day.  The date palms offered little shade and comfort from the scalding sun.

The traffic wasn't too heavy, but it was incredibly windy, mostly because there aren't any trees planted along the roads to act as wind barriers.  Drivers continue to rock the awful driving and it was more stressful to actually have to drive rather than sit back on the commuter buses that we normally take to Jeddah.

The traffic got much worse once we actually got into Jeddah, and then it got really stressful. We stopped at one car dealership, which directed us to go to another car dealership. On the way to the second dealership we got into the truly crazy driving. A big rig decided to turn across 2 lanes of traffic to make his left turn, because nobody would let him move over, and he was even using his turn signal (I can confidently call all the drivers male, because women aren't allowed to drive cars in Saudi Arabia).

Then we came to a roundabout, which had waaaay more traffic on it than it was designed for. Instead of the smooth inward and outward flow of traffic, it was a start and stop cluster of terrible. At some point during the weaving around, we lost our lead car. Well, we didn't lose it, we just substituted it for one of a dozen SUVs of the exact same model and color (tan Yukon). So we followed a complete stranger all the way around the traffic circle, and out in the wrong way (we did 450deg, instead of 270deg). After a phone call and some tough driving we found the lead car again, and made our way to the second car dealership. Also, rather than going half a kilometer down the road to find the next turn around, we just used our 4WD and jumped over the lane divider (the road system in Jeddah is crazy enough that I won't bother to explain it. I have decided to rename the "Michigan Left" to the "Saudi Left")

Once at the second car dealership, we went inside, because Abby had to use the restroom. I asked where it was, and was politely directed to a door just around the corner. When the man saw that Abby was with me, he laughed and said "We don't have a bathroom for women!" as if we were crazy to expect that they did. After laughing in their faces, we convinced them that women do indeed have to pee occasionally, and they directed us up a set of stairs, and around three or four turns, into an apartment like area, where Abby would be allowed to use the bathroom if I stood guard at the door to make sure nobody came in.  This isn't the first time Abby's had trouble finding a bathroom in Jeddah, I guess they just think that the female anatomy doesn't require relieving.

After dropping off one vehicle, we continued on in the lead car to pick up the newly commissioned Boy Scout trailer.  We drove over to the iron works area, which has a ton of shops that make all sorts of metal works like fancy gates and doors.  Most of the market areas like these are separated by type of shop in the Middle East.  So all the iron shops are together, the lumber shops are together, fabrics, furniture, etc.  It's really nice for shoppers because you don't have to drive all over the city to visit several stores, they're all next door!

The new trailer was super nice.  It has room for them to store all their gear, has popup canvas awnings, and even has pop-up metal shelving for them to cook on.  Unfortunately we didn't get a photo of it, but it was very impressive, especially considering that it was built to order.

All that was left was a smooth quick drive back to campus, and thus the end of our one (and only) Jeddah driving adventure.

Kitty got a Present

Whenever we need to take Algebra out to visit the vet, she had to ride along in a modified cardboard box kitty carrier.  It did serve the purpose, but it was kind of embarrassing to take her out in a duct taped box.  While I was at the dentist, Steve went to Al-Ballad (Old Jeddah) and did a bit of shopping.  One thing he got was a proper kitty carrier.

This is the carrier Steve found in Al-Balad.  It's adorable.

Here's kitty checking out her new carrier. Umm, Algie, your body is supposed to go inside with your head poking out.

We also needed to have one so that we can take her on the plane when we come home.  We're a bit concerned about her traveling on an 11-13 hour flight so we're trying to be as prepared as possible.  Now that we've gotten this carrier, we aren't sure that it was the right kind.  The airlines are very strict apparently about how animals can fly, and we need to make sure that we know what is the right way.  Despite being strict, it hasn't been easy to find much information from their websites, and we don't even know which airlines we would have to deal with coming home.

I'm sure kitty will figure it out eventually, right?

Has anyone traveled with cats before and have advice to share with us?

Minor Clothing Crisis

I'm having a minor clothing crisis here lately.  When we packed up and moved to Saudi Arabia, we both had to pare down our clothing significantly so that we could fit everything into two suitcases plus one carry on each.  For me this ended up being about 25ish shirts and tops, 5ish jackets/cardigans, a dress, two pairs of jeans, a couple pairs of shorts, and some capris along with some other minor items.  I got a few of the shirts in Jeddah when we were preparing for our trip to Athens.  This is significantly less than I am used to having and quite honestly I have become so bored with the clothes I brought.  This was rarely if ever a problem back home because I didn't actually wear all of my clothes on a regular basis whereas here, the few dress shirts I brought are the only ones that I don't wear regularly.

At this point, I really only have two options: suck it up and deal, or go buy some new clothes.

Suck it up and deal
I really can live with what I already have and I just need to accept that being slightly bored with clothes right now is temporary and will most likely go away once we're back home and I can cycle clothes less frequently.  This is definitely the easier option, since it just requires that I get over myself and stop whining, but might not be so easy to accept.

Go buy new clothes
The other option is to try and add a few items into the mix.  If I want to be able to try on the clothes before buying them, that means I'm limited to the one clothing store on campus.  This pretty much limits the options to solid polos or screen printed tees.  I've never actually been a huge fan of decals and decor on the front of my shirts because it flat out looks funny when curved around boobs.  So, not so much a super option.

Route two is to haul down to Jeddah and hit one of the nearly five million malls that grace the metropolitan area.  Downside is buying clothes without trying them on, scurrying to the bathrooms to try them on, and then returning anything that doesn't fit or is ugly.  This also means I need to check out the store's return policy before we go buy anything, because when we picked up some clothes for our trip to Athens, one of the stores overcharged us and it was a bit of a fight when we went back and pointed it out because apparently their policy is not to give cash returns, just store credit. Obviously I don't want to get stuck with store credit when returning clothes, so this might be tricky.

I wish this country could give their men some credit and trust and then realize that every man isn't going to go stark raving crazy knowing that women might be changing in a dressing room.

Ta'if Scout Camping: Part 1

Just this past weekend (Wednesday through Friday) I went camping near Ta'if with the Boy Scout troop here on campus. We were camping with Troop 454, from Jeddah, at one of their favorite camping spots.

We left at 3 pm on Wednesday, and headed to Jeddah to meet up with the other troop. From there we headed towards Makkah (Mecca). We had to take the road around Makkah, because only Muslims are allowed there. Interestingly, that stretch of road, traveled almost solely by non-Muslims, was the only section of road that was in any state of disrepair. I have heard that asphalt roads can last upwards of fifteen years here with very little maintenance because of the lack of snow, and water in general.

Non-Muslims only have one choice at this intersection, assuming "PRIVAT" really means "PRIVATE".

Most of the 5,000+ feet of elevation gain between Jeddah and Ta'if is in a series of switchbacks just east of Makkah. As we approached the switchbacks in the dark the streetlights traced a pretty zig zag up the face of the mountain. The local drivers illustrated their recklessness by passing during hairpin turns at double to triple the posted speed limits, with deadly drop offs just beyond the edge of the road. My mother would have passed out from terror alone had she been with us.

Jagged peaks in the escarpment at the edge of the central plateau.

The roads had street lights almost all the way to the campsite, on a road that probably received fewer than twenty car each night, it seemed a bit wasteful. We had a little bit of car trouble near the campsite: one of the SUVs blew the fuse for the starter motor. This was the same SUV that got two flat tires on the previous campout.

The campsite was absolutely gorgeous; it was situated in a valley that had been terraced for farming. The way that they accomplished this terracing was pretty cool: First they would lay a series of short walls made of loose stones across the valley. Then they waited until the occasional torrential rain had deposited soil behind the walls. Then they would add more stones to each wall, making them taller. Then they would wait for more soil to accumulate, and repeat. Over many years the terraces grew, until the originally sloping land was converted into a series of flat steps separated by four to ten foot high walls.

Our tents on the step above the stone retaining wall.

The sunrise ignited the rocks into a brilliant bronze.

The area where we camped was divided in two by one of these walls. Troop 454 brought a custom made trailer with two huge awnings and we set up kitchens below them. The ground was mostly smooth dirt, because the troop would rake most of the rocks from the site each time they visited, and only flooding could move new rocks in. Setting up tents was easy, and went quickly. Some of the scouts found a flat spot up the side of the hill, and pitched their tents up there. Not very convenient, but very cool.

The scouts hurry down from their tents when they are called to fall-in.  Some of them chose to put their tents a bit out of the way.

That night we had a series of clouds blow right through the campsite, reducing the visibility to ten or twenty feet. It was very fun to watch as the whole world was engulfed by the fog.

A cloud blows in over the hills. Notice the almost entirely obscured hill.

The whole campsite. It is much greener than I expected.

Some Techno-Troubles

Ever since we arrived here we have noticed something wrong with our laptops: they are electrocuting us. It is just a mild shock, but it really hurts sometimes, especially places with thinner skin, like the bottom of the wrist.

I am not certain of the cause, but I have a few guesses: the power distribution system isn't properly grounded or our laptop power supply's can't really handle the 220V AC very well. I think it is probably the first, because using a voltage adapter with the power supply doesn't solve the problem.

And now my laptop from Rose-Hulman kicked the bucket. I'm not certain that it is related to the electrocution, but that is my suspicion. This idea is supported by the fact that it continuously trips the over current breaker in the power-supply. I took it apart, and have tentatively identified the motherboard as being the problem. So, yeah, that is a big problem. I doubt if I could find a new motherboard here, and I know that I would have trouble trusting it, based on the abundance of knock offs here. Knock offs are so common that when you ask for a computer part at a store in Jeddah, they immediately ask if you want an original or a copy. I suppose a knock off of a specific motherboard is unlikely, but I wouldn't want to test that hypothesis, because even the items they admit are copies are priced higher than originals in the US.

I am now using Abby's laptop from Rose. The hard drive from my computer isn't compatble with her laptop (my hard drive is EIDE, her laptop wants SATA). So now I have to try to find a EIDE to USB convertor so that I can move some of my important documents and files over. I will probably have to go to Jeddah to get one; the iZone store here on campus is little more than an Ipod and Macbook vending machine.

I would normally turn to online shopping as my first choice, but that really doesn't exist here (if you have a website to suggest please let me know in a comment!). The reasons for this are many, and I have identified three: 1) credit cards are very rare here, 2) the banking system does not allow someone to take payments unless they have a brick and mortar store, and 3) the postal system here is abysmal.  Point 3 is one we've learned first hand, as we've already had two packages get lost on their way from the US, one is about six weeks late!

On the upside, it is nice to get started on an brand new system all over again occasionally, to clean out all the widgets and doo-das that you never really used anyways. Hopefully next time I start over it will be on a new laptop, that has a working battery.

Jeddah and Cairo Make the News

I was going to post the next part in our Athens vacation recap, but instead I want to show you a bit more about what's going on near us.  So I'm going to talk about rain again.  It might seem strange that the only weather I talk about here is the rain, but it's because it has a huge impact on the people here in Saudi Arabia.

It rained again on Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning here.  It wasn't really worth updating about, because for us, it had little negative impact.  The leaks we had last week had been fixed, and held tight this time, so the only inconvenience was having to ride our bikes home in the rain.

Sadly this was much worse in Jeddah.  Here are two videos of the flooding.  I saw the first one on Facebook from another student on campus, and the second one was posted at Susie's Big Adventure.





As much as I wish I could say this was a one time weather catastrophe, it wasn't.  The same thing happened in November 2009 and left Jeddah in much the same state.  Promises were made to improve the infrastructure, but in Saudi fashion, 14 months later, little has been changed.  What makes this sting even worse is that as part of WEP, a Saudi businessman came to speak.  He talked about how Saudi Arabia has benefited by avoiding investing in foreign countries.  He expressed how much better off Saudi Arabia was because they kept their money working at home.  Clearly there is some disconnect when keeping Saudi Arabia's money in the country can't even provide a safe city for it's people to live in.

In other news, there have been huge riots in Cairo and throughout Egypt about the recent elections.  Considering that we were just there a few months ago, it was shocking to see places we recognized filled with angry protesters.




So that's what's going on in our little part of the world.  We'll be back tomorrow with more pictures from Athens!

Athens Day 1: Too Much Travel

Getting to Athens was an exhausting trip.  We left campus around 4 pm on the 28th, even though we weren't flying out until 3:30 am on the 29th.  Our first stop was the Mall of Arabia, because we needed warmer clothes.  We were expecting a package from my parents which supposedly had some warmer clothes in it for us, but when the US Post Office says Priority International shipping is 5-7 days, apparently they mean more like 14+ days.  We picked up a sweater jacket for Steve, two long sleeve shirts, leggings, a hat, and gloves for me.  Clearly I'm the one who can't handle cold weather.  Steve had to go back and argue with one store after we realized they overcharged us, but in the end they gave us the difference back, so small wins!

After eating (delicious grilled sub) and shopping, we decided we were done with the mall and picked up a cab to the airport.  We still had a lot of time before our flight, at least six hours, but we figured the airport would be better than a mall full of loud, rowdy kids.  Turns out that was a bad, bad choice, because we forgot that Saudi doesn't work like everywhere else in the world (or at least the US).  You can only check into the flight when they open a specific counter for that flight, whereas in the US you can basically show up at the check in desk and get checked in.  Since we couldn't check in, we couldn't go through security or anything, so we just had to sit around the airport and wait.  We ended up having to kill 2-3 hours before we could check in.  Definitely something to remember for next time!

Getting through security after we checked in was a breeze, and then we settled in for another wait, as we had another three-ish hours to wait.  Far and away my least favorite part about Jeddah is the squat toilets and lack of toilet paper.  Without being too gross, I just don't know how it's supposed to be effective when wearing pants...

Thankfully, planes have lovely westernized toilets.

Both of our flights were pretty short, about two hours, but the layover in Cairo was about 5 1/2 hours.  The airport was decorated for Christmas, which was so nice to see, since the only Christmas decor we'd seen so far was in our own apartment.  However, Santa seems to have the Seven Dwarfs in his beard, which befuddled and amused us.

Santa greeting us at the Cairo International Airport.

Santa's helper are the Seven Dwarfs?  This was so confusing!

We got some food, and seriously contemplated the VIP Lounge, but declined because all but one of the couches were full.  We've got an eight hour layover on the way back, so we might take advantage of this when we've got more time to enjoy it.  We watched The Sorcerer's Apprentice since neither of us could really get comfortable enough to sleep.  The movie has Steve's least favorite actor in the whole world in it, Nicholas Cage, so it was fun to watch, even if the movie was more than a bit cheesy/corny/terrible.

After a croissant and pizza breakfast, we headed to the gate to wait for boarding.  We both managed to get a tiny bit of sleep waiting for boarding because they had seats with no armrest between them!  They needed more of these in the airport, it would have made it more comfortable to try and get some sleep.

Steve waiting for boarding in his new sweater jacket, so snazzy!

Abby waiting, sporting a new hat.

I was pretty tired by this point, and managed to sleep through almost all of the flight to Greece, and Steve got some sleep too.  The trip through customs and the metro ride to the hostel were uneventful, which is always nice.

Our first impression of Athens was that it was just so darn cute.  It's definitely got that European charm, and even though it's freezing here, all the trees and grass is green, so it's pretty too.  We're staying in a small shared apartment so it's got a kitchen, living space, and bathroom all attached.  And it's just a few minutes to the Acropolis, which seems to be a great location to be staying.

After sleeping for a couple hours, we grabbed dinner, and the real fun will start tomorrow!

On a side note, apparently there's a 60% chance of big thunderstorms back in Saudi, so let's all hope that our apartment doesn't end up flooding!

*Catch up on our entire Athens adventure by checking Our Travel Page, or our Greece tag.*

Making a Christmas in Saudi

Christmas isn't a holiday that is typically celebrated over here so we were surprised to see some decorations and small fake trees show up in the campus supermarket.  Despite my amazing collection of homemade ornaments that I've been collecting since elementary school, here in Saudi, we're starting from scratch.  We don't have a Hobby Lobby or other crafty type place to go to get all of our crafty goodness, so we're making due with what we can find at the ever amazing Danube, Saeco, and a few stores on campus.  I found some crafts that look pretty easy and will add a lot of holiday cheer to our apartment.

We were able to find:

glass paint
wrapping paper
ornaments
glitter - tons of glitter
colored paper
skewers
modeling clay
tinsel
bead ropes
fold out stars
ribbon
Christmas lights


Here are the projects I've worked on so far, and there will be more coming during Make It, Bake It, Do It!

Paper Drops
Stacked Tree
Paper Evergreens
Paper Tabletop Trees
Wrapping Paper Stars

Most of the decorations I found online are from Martha Stewart and Disney's Family Fun.

Since our decorated season is going to be pretty short, I'm considering leaving the decorations up through January.  I love Christmas and the winter, so who says we can't celebrate it in the desert!

Around the Web

I don't spend a lot of time following the news here; it isn't something I did back home, and now the fact that most news isn't in English here makes it even less likely for me to know what's going on off campus.  But then I found this blog, and she does a great job highlighting issues and news primarily out of Jeddah.

Reading posts like this really makes me question being here.  But hearing about these two events makes me think sometimes that improvement is possible and somehow through small changes over a long period of time, it might get better here.

In other news, I found this post at Make It and Love It, which links to an offer for a free 8x10 canvas print.  I'm thinking about getting one of our wedding pictures printed.

Finally, go to Hyperbole and a Half and read about the God of Cake, I was dying of laughter all the way through, and so will you!

Boat trip during last Eid

Trips to Jeddah

This weekend we took another trip to Jeddah.  We're looking for a kitten, but aren't too keen about picking up a stray from around campus.  Getting around Jeddah is an interesting experience all by itself.  There are weekly trips scheduled to a few of the malls in Jeddah and to the International hospital.  The more we go to Jeddah, the more malls we find.  We've been to four different malls, and honestly they're all the same for the most part.  The Mall of Arabia did have a really cool indoor amusement park which included a water slide!  Anyway, after a lot of searching online and talking to the vet clinic here on campus, we were able to get a decent idea of where a pet store was in Jeddah.  Finding this out was no small feat, because unlike in the US where you can just Google a business and find their address and phone number and such, you can't really do that for businesses here.  We did manage to find a blog that mentioned a specific store that actually did have a website; it turned out to be pretty close to one of the vet clinics in Jeddah so the vet here on campus drew us a general map of the area.

After getting to the Mall of Arabia, we then had to catch a taxi to the pet store.  Again, no small feat.  The key seems to be to find a driver who speaks enough English to actually understand where we want to go.  Thankfully it only took a couple of tries to find a taxi driver who knew where to take us.  The trip to the store was terrible on my nerves.  I feel like everyone here drives like they're the most important people on the road and everyone should get out of the way.  Lane lines, turn signals, seat belts, and even medians all seem to be suggestions when driving in Jeddah!  After only one minor slow down from traffic (the police were checking if taxi drivers were wearing seat belts, apparently it's a 100SAR ($27) fine if they don't) we managed to make it to the pet store.  We had a really interesting "conversation" with the taxi driver which started with him asking whether we liked Bush or Obama.  Talk about an awkward question.  I can't really say this is really the place where I would wear my political affiliations on my sleeve, so it was interesting to see that the taxi driver supported Obama and thought Bush was bad.  He also liked Martin Luther King and Jimmy Carter, but I honestly don't know much about Carter at all.

We darted to an electronics store to get a printer cable, since the printer we bought didn't come with the necessary one.  We're still looking for a slow cooker, I swear one day we'll find one mixed in with the rice cookers and what a day that will be!

We got to the pet store right as they were closing down for one of the prayers so we had to hang around outside the store for about 20 minutes until they opened back up.  It's always so much nicer to get stuck inside the store, rather than outside; with big stores like the hyper markets they just close you in the store until they open again.

Sadly, they did have super cute kittens, but they were way over priced.  There's no way we would reasonably spend 1,000 SAR (~$280) just for a kitty!

So we ended up back at the Mall of Arabia and settled for dinner at TGI Friday's where I got the best mudslide (nonalcoholic of course) and then did a bit of shopping.  I really needed a new sweatshirt.

Now we're going to wait and see if we can find/capture a stray kitty from around campus.