Saudi Arabia

So we are settling in, we spent our first two nights in Saudi staying at a friends house (they were on vacation, so it worked out nicely) on the Schlumberger compound called Mutlak.  We moved into our house on the third night, which is in a compound called Canary Village, it is full of expats from different companies.  I was eager to get out of suitcases!  Greg took me to one of the grocery stores the night before we moved, we hit it at prayer time, which is the wrong time because everything closes, so we waited for them to open up again, and we did a bit of shopping.  Needless to say it wasn't a stress free event, when you go out at night around here you are going out with everyone else.  The Saudi's do most of their shopping at night, when their husbands can take them, and when prayer times can't interrupt.  

I went to one of the malls here, called Dahran mall, with a SLB lady, it was very nice of her to take me over on the bus.  It gave me a taste of how the bus system works here, and of the mall.  It was my first time out without Greg, and I was glad that I wasn't alone.  The mall is HUGE, I guess all of the malls are big.  It has very nice stores, anything you could want, you can get there, it is very westernized with the different kinds of shops, such as Gap, Banana Republic, Carters...  plus it has many of the higher end designer names.  This sort of shocked me, all the Saudi women are covered, head to toe, and most of the men wear the traditional white robes, so why do they need to have such high end clothes?  Even fancy evening wear!  I guess they like to wear nice things at home, or under the Abayas.  The thing that I am going to have to get used to is always paying attention to the time, I have a tendency to lose track of it, and here I can't afford to do that, because if I miss the bus, then I am in trouble.  The other thing is trying things on, you have to be very certain of your size when you buy clothes here, because you can't try anything on in the stores, there are no dressing rooms, and all the stores are clerked by men.  Women do not work here.  So you buy something and take it home, and try it on, if it fits, great, if not, then you have to go back within the next few days (2 days) to return it, or you are stuck with it.  This type of shopping shouldn't be a problem for Lily.

Greg took me to IKEA on Thursday, (which is like Saturday here), that was great, we spent a long time there, because we were there over prayer time, and when you do that you have to stay in the store and continue shopping until prayer time is over and they open the cashiers again.  That was okay, and I got quite a few things that will help out until our shipment gets here (more on that later), and a few ideas for some solutions to storage in the bathrooms, and maybe a desk.  On Friday (AKA Sunday) we went to brunch at a hotel near here, and then out shopping for a TV later that day.  Greg found one he liked, and we also got a DVD player with a system - boys and their toys!  I got a microwave, a fancy one that says it can grill and roast, so we will see, I think I will be testing it!

Today I went out for the first time by myself, from the Canary compound.  I went to a grocery store, called the Hyper Panda (this is not an animal full of energy).  I am trying to get used to the grocery stores, they are very similar, except for the products, they carry some American products, but not everything, and I haven't been able to find things like chicken stock or boullion, I guess I will just have to make it myself.  

Lily is tired of trying to crawl, so I had better go and rescue her, she gets very frustrated these days, I will continue things later.  

Back online!

We are here, we arrived safely without any complications, in all it was a very easy flight to make.  I have a lot to blog about, but for now I am going to stick to the trip here, and to let you know that we are all safe and happy to be together again.  

The trip here:  We took a direct flight from Houston to Dubai, which is a 14 hour flight.  We flew with Emirates, which was an awesome airline if you have kids.  This was a wonderful flight for me, but I wouldn't have predicted that, flying that long with a 7 month old.  Lily was wonderful, I couldn't have asked for her to be any better, really.  After take off they brought the bassinet and hooked it up to the bulkhead for me, where, after an hour on the flight I proceeded to put Lily to sleep, and she did sleep, for close to 8 hours, which was awesome, I wish I could say that I slept, but I had a very annoying child behind me that kept banging on his TV screen, or kicking my seat, and the mother did nothing, even after I spoke to him about it, this was the most annoying part.  Lily woke up, ate a little, and played in the seat next to me (the plane was far from full), where she took her morning nap while I ate breakfast.  Then she was awake again, and so was everyone else, people would come by and want to hold her, or play with her, and I just let them while I organized our things and got ready for landing.  It was great how they entertained her.  Landing was fine, but the Dubai airport was a little stressful, not much, but a little because I didn't know how it worked, or where I was going to be meeting Greg.  Over all I ended up just following the crowd, through Passport Control, then through baggage, where I made sure that I didn't need to pick up my bags(this was very important, one person and a baby, 6 checked bags, and only 100$ fee!), which I didn't, and then proceeded through the no claims gate where, finally, we saw Greg.  He had a car waiting, with a car seat and we went to the hotel.  I was tired and hot, but Lily was ready to go for her day, that was the worst night, she was up almost all of it, and Greg and I took turns sleeping.  The next day we woke her up after she had only 2 hours of sleep, and kept her awake for most of the day (her night) with a few naps here and there.  We flew into Bahrain that morning, a totally different airport, tons older than Dubai, and a little scary, thank God I didn't do that one on my own the first time!  Another miracle, all 6 bags made it, and we headed out with a driver to head across to Saudi.  Saudi territory begins halfway across the causeway, so there is a little island built up for border control and customs...  You had to leave Bahrain, and enter Saudi, I had to have my picture taken, and get fingerprinted.  Oh, I forgot probably one of the most comical parts of this trip, Greg had bought me an abaya (the black robe thing women have to wear here) and it was huge, HUGE, you could have fit 5 of me in the thing!  So I had to wear it across the border, until we got into the compound, so i had it all bunched up, trying not to trip over it.  (I now have one that fits, but it was a nice gesture of Gregs to get me one, he didn't have a clue how to buy one)  We got to the Mutlaq compound (the Schumberger compound) and stayed there that night.  This was really long, so I guess I will continue tomorrow.