Contingency

With all of the unrest in the Middle East lately I know many have been worrying about how it will affect Saudi Arabia, especially our family back home.  While this worry may be well placed, here on campus we haven't noticed any changes or signs of uncertainty.  Regardless, according to this article, a significant number of Saudi Arabia's military has been moved to the northern region in response to recent events in Bahrain.

To be on the safe side, we went ahead and registered with the US embassy in Jeddah (the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program), and truthfully we should have done that when we first arrived.  Now we'll be notified by email if something were to happen that the US State Department deems worrisome.

We also came up with a brief emergency plan.  If necessary, our plan would be to try and buy airline tickets to somewhere outside of the Middle East leaving as soon as we could.  It's kind of a lame, super obvious in a duh kind of way, but there really isn't much else we could do.

I do suppose that we'll actually want to figure out where the US embassy is in Jeddah, so we'll have to research that as our next solid step.  We'll also need to get an airline approved cat carrier so we have it if we need it before we come home in August.  Like we said before, we have no reason to believe anything bad will happen, but it's always better to have thought about a contingency plan before you actually need it.

On a much happier note, the State Department also recommends registering with the local embassy whenever traveling abroad so we went ahead and registered for our trip to Italy which is coming up very quickly.

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.

Tasty Treats

One of the benefits of an international student body is great exposure to a wide variety of delicious treats we've never even heard of!

We were just recently exposed to some fantastic Brazilian dessert treats, and I thought I'd share my favorite one with you, because it looks easy enough to repeat on a much too frequent basis!

The pink arrow is pointing to the brigadeiros and the purple arrow is pointing to another super tasty dessert I loved, but I don't remember it's name.

Recipe modified from Maria Brazil to suit what I could actually cook with.

Brazilian Brigadeiros

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1/2 stick of butter or margarine

2 heaping Tbsp of Hershey's Cocoa.

In a heavy saucepan mix chocolate with condensed milk and add the margarine. Cook in low heat stirring constantly until you can see the bottom of the pan. Continue to stir for another two minutes. Pour onto a plate and let cool completely before you form the little balls. Butter your hands slightly to form the little balls. Roll the balls in chocolate sprinkles and put them in small paper cups.

I've got to say, I like the furnishings much better in these apartments.  The blue walls and white/tan furniture looks really sharp.  Plus it seems more comfortable.

On our way to the party, we walked past the stairway to nowhere.  It's been like this since we got to campus, and kind of looks a bit silly don't you think?

What's Out There

There is so much to read out there on the internet and since I'm sick in bed (or on the couch) today, I figured I'd share some of it with you!

Bridget talks about the Eternal Sunshine of Sharjah, UAE and this is one of those posts that just makes me shake my head in agreement about every stinkin sentence.  It's spot on how I feel about the weather here in Saudi lately.  I love this blog, because the head nodding in agreement happens all the time, and it's nice to have someone else with similar experiences.

J.D. just got back from a three week trip to Africa, and does a brilliant job talking about both wealth and poverty that he saw on his trip.  Our trip to Egypt brought about many of the same feelings for me.

Allie made chocolate frogs (and a good grade), which makes me all kinds of jealous, because those are just too cute!

This is the kind of crafting I want to be doing these days courtesy of Make it and Love it.  Sadly that won't happen until I get all of my lovely craft equipment back.

On an even sadder note, the Easy Bake Oven is on it's way out, those dastardly politicians legislating for a better environment *shakes fist*!

Weekend Wednesday

Another week has gone by here in Saudi and I'm both glad and sad to say that all of my classwork is starting to pick up and I'm getting a bit busy.  Sadly I'm also getting a bit dull, as I'm not doing much outside of classwork and reading.  But I did a ton of reading in February. So far in 2011, I've read 13 books and abandoned two others. That's almost a book and a half each week!  Even worse, consider that two of those books were from Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, which easily run 800+ pages.  Reading is one of the few hobbies I can easily continue here, so it's no surprise that I do it so much.  Maybe this is okay, because if I had knitting needles here, it wouldn't really do anyone any good if I knitted a hundred scarves and hats.

Anyway, point is, I haven't been the most interesting person to read about lately, but I've managed to get invited to three! parties this weekend, so maybe that'll spice up my life.  The first is a female only costume party tomorrow night, and the other two are birthday parties; one for a friend of Steve and one for a friend of mine.  I'm not sure I'm excited about the costume party, but I'm trying really hard to convince myself that some female bonding time will be worthwhile.

Next week starts a four week string where I have a midterm on three of the four weeks.  Thankfully, by the time this round of exams is over, it'll be time for spring break!

(photo source)

We are officially going to Milan and Florence and will be spending 3-4 days in each city.  I had really wanted to go to Rome, but the flight was a bit more expensive, and Rome as a whole seemed like it would be more expensive.  But I'm convinced we'll make it back there in the future; I'd love to see Vatican City, though I'm not really sure why.

(photo source)

This is the first trip where we'll be splitting our time between multiple cities, so we're hoping it'll be enough time for each city.  Going to Florence holds a new experience for us, as it'll be the first time we spend an extended period in a city with no metro.  We did a day trip to Alexandria when we were in Cairo, and getting around Alex with no metro was quite challenging, so hopefully Florence will go a bit smoother.

If the multi destination trip works out, maybe we'll do it again in our future trips.

Hope everyone has a lovely end of the week as we enjoy our weekend.