Moving to Saudi: Thursday, September 8, 2011

It's the weekend here in Saudi Arabia, so Bruce and I have planned to get up this morning and take the shopping bus to another mall so that we can get the cell phones fixed. When we entered the country, Jordan's and my Saudi cell phones didn't work. We tried buying more minutes at the comm, but they still didn't work. We decided to go into town to the phone store and find out how to get them to work. Bruce wasn't sure how to drive to this mall, so we decided to take a shopping bus once again and see how the bus got there. The buses are such a pain because the last one leaves at 9am unless you want to wait for the evening bus. So... no sleeping in on Desert Saturday. Our girls all decided to say home and sleep in and relax... and Jordan wanted to get a jump on her homework.

Here are a couple of houses in main camp as our bus leaves the compound.

I think the nurses live in this building, below. Most of them are single and therefore, here without a husband.

Below are some pictures taken from the bus on the way to the mall. There always seems to be a building under construction.

I wonder why it's so hard to find your way around when you're told what street it's on. (Heck, I can't even pronounce the street name!) I have to say, I'm pleasantly surprised to see that most things are in English!

We've arrived at the mall... ex-pats in abayas (men can wear whatever they want.)

I think this mall is beautiful.

I was glad to see the no-smoking sign.

Here is the phone store... the guy who works here is wearing the red checked head covering on the right. We are told that we need to buy new sim cards for both phones and get new phone numbers. We will also lose the $26 we had put into the old number. I guess we let our phones expire while we were in the States. Darn! So I guess they just take your number back and reassign it.

There were so many more Saudi people at the mall on desert Saturday morning... it's just so different to see everybody moving around the mall in black or white robes. This is also the big weekend before school starts for most people.

A husband and wife shopping below.

More ladies in abayas shopping.

I think this is a rug store below with all the spools of thread displayed in the front window.

There always seems to be a grocery store in the mall, so we stopped in to pick up a few items before the bus arrived. I still couldn't find ricotta or cottage cheese.

It's time to catch the bus -- 11:30, so we're heading outside into the heat. As we sat at the bus stop, our groceries just melted. Everyone comes swarming up to the bus stop at the last minute in order to squeeze every last drop of air conditioning out of the mall. There's no way to buy ice cream when you have to take a bus!

We're on the bus now... whew... hopefully the sweat on our bodies can dry now. I can take my abaya off once I'm in the bus, but today I wore a summer dress with spaghetti straps underneath it to see if that helped... it did... so I'll keep my abaya on until I get in our car, just to be more modest. Bruce is sorry he wore long pants... he can wear anything he wants... he was just trying to consider me when he dressed this morning.

We were absolutely exhausted. And we only accomplished one task on our list for the weekend. We still need to get the bike tires fixed downtown, find some clothes for Jordan that comply with the school dress code, and we would like to buy a barbecue, and maybe a lawn mower and a vacuum as well.

After resting at home for a couple of hours, Bruce decided that he could drive downtown to Lulu and hit the bike shop on the way home. Lulu is a department store & grocery store combined.

Once again, here is the desert landscape outside the compound on our way to Lulu.

It is very wild to drive here because there is usually construction going on somewhere; people are usually in a hurry; drivers communicate by honking; small cement dividers that cannot be seen until you are upon them are used to block lanes; and driving rules are apparently not enforced. Here we are driving into Khobar. The streets are very empty in the afternoon because people usually come out in the morning or evening.

After a couple of U-turns, we found Lulu.

Inside they sell caramel corn--it smells so good!

Here we are checking out with some groceries.

Now we're heading upstairs to look for school clothes. We also need to buy an abaya for Brooke. Reese wishes she could have one, but we'll save the money until she really needs one.

We didn't find any school clothes for Jordan, but Bruce found a chin-up bar -- yay! Now he's making us all show him how many pull-ups we can do. Of course, he's the champion.

We didn't find much at Lulu, but we bought a printer so we can print school work or make copies -- that's a relief! Now, to the bike shop to get our flat bike tires fixed. We've been there before, so it shouldn't be difficult to find.

There's construction and a detour up ahead... four lanes are merging into one lane... it's a mess!

We're driving through Khobar...

Wait a minute... we're on the freeway again!... where's the road with the bike shop!? Oh no.. we must have missed it when we detoured. Now we're on the freeway back to the compound. I guess we could exit and turn around and try again... never mind. It's hot and we're tired and the traffic going the other way is packed... everyone is heading out for their evening shopping... we'll just head home and try again tomorrow. We didn't accomplish much on our list today, so we'll have to try and get the rest after church tomorrow. Too bad... Bruce bought some steaks today in anticipation of barbecuing tonight -- guess they'll have to wait.