Back in the snow

I am back in the uk for a few days over half term. We flew in on thursday morning and the kids and I arrived home on friday night & surprised everyone, as apart from one, no one knew we were coming. We have a covering of snow & it is 30C cooler than when we left the kingdom on wednesday night! We are off back to Saudi next thursday.

Turtles, Dolphins and Abayas

So, another weekend been & gone and we have been back to the Red Sea. Him indoors diving as per New Year and the kids & I relaxing. The weather would have been warmer than new year but there was a pretty strong breeze on both days. On the beach this just meant that I got a good exfoliation as I was sand blasted in a minor way. Unfortunately for him indoors the wind had somewhat stirred up the silt under water so the visibility was not as good as it had been at New Year. We had a great day out on the boat again yesterday, & although it was windy the sea was fairly calm. Even I had a snorkel about ( it was a bit of an experiment to see if I could get away with wearing a mask and my contacts and i am glad to say it worked, I used one of the kids masks so now I shall have to get my own) I didn't stay in too long but I managed to see loads of different fish. I missed the main event of the day however as Him indoors and our oldest managed to see & swim along side a turtle. Cue a very excited 10 year old who thought it was one of the coolest things she has ever done and can't wait to go back and do it again. The captain of the dive boat spent most of the day in a balaclava as he thought we were all a bit mad to be diving in "the middle of winter" - after all the sea temp was a freezing 28C and it was in the 80s, but as he said "things will start to improve at the end of the month once spring comes" On the way back to shore (we sail for about an hour to get to the different reefs/wrecks to dive to) we were joined by about 20 dolphins, they were fab, using the wake to do their acrobatics in, we had a full blown somersault from one absolutely brilliant - it was just like being as sea world only for real. I was sat on the boat thinking what a fab place to live right up until we came back into the creek where the harbour is & I had to put my abaya back on top of my swim suit and get back to the real Saudi. Honestly if it wasn't for the rules here they would make a fortune out of tourists. Anyone would have paid a fortune to have a day like we had yesterday.

Pets

The Saudis do not seem to have pets in quite the same way as we do in the UK. The well off Saudis keep camels in the same way that we keep horses, they race them and breed them. Saudis are also apparently keen on birds of prey but I haven't seen much evidence of this. I have seen trill and whiskas food in the supermarkets so I assume that they do keep birds in cages and pet cats, but the one thing that they don't seem to do is dogs. This doesn't mean to say that there are no dogs here. There are millions of them, all wild and roaming around scavenging. This causes me an massive problem as we have a large and at times extremely noisy bunch of feral dogs living just outside the compound at the back of our house. When it cools down at night they fight. Last night I was woken at 2.30 by some huge dog fight that went on for at least 40 minutes. It is horrible if you are awake and inevitably the fight ends and you are left with the sounds of a dog or two out of the rival packs whimpering as they have been injured, which is really horrible. On the nights that they don't seem to have a mass fight then you can guarantee that there will be one or to dogs who spend half the night calling to each other so you still end up not having a good nights sleep. Luckily we are getting close to having to turn our air conditioning on again at night as the temperature here has really heated up in the last week or so. Once the AC is back on the drone of that in the house cancels out the noise from outside so normal sleeping will hopefully resume.

Andy Murray

Obviously I have been glued for the last 2 weeks to the Aussie Open Tennis. I have always maintained, having seen them both play at Wimbledon, that Andy Murray was streets ahead of Tim Henman and therefore our best bet to end the 74 year male grand slam drought. That was until yesterday, when I thought that Murray had come out without a game plan and seemed like a bunny caught in the headlights. Yes, he played some good tennis but was always a step behind Federer.. in comparison to the way he was beating Nadal when he retired, it was like a different person was on court. However I think my immediate reaction was wrong. Not only was the whole blubbing like a baby completely unexpected, showing his disappointment and frustration, and his own belief that he could do better than that, but the comments made by Federer this morning have made me realise that Murray did OK yesterday, Federer thinks that yesterdays match was the best he has ever played - and Murray still broke his serve and had him running about at times like he was an amateur. Having slept on it, I still believe that Murray will win a grand slam, and soon, and that once he has one the first many more will follow!.... Feel free to get me to eat my hat in a few years if I am proved wrong!

Religious Police

With the girls finally in school full time (& loving it!) I am finally free to get out of the compound on a regular basis, without needing him indoors to take me, as I can use the shopping bus which goes into town every week day morning. I went on the bus yesterday, it goes somewhere different in town everyday, always goes to one of the 4 main supermarkets and also goes to a selection of different shopping centres and souks. The shopping centres are pretty much like the ones at home, they have food courts, a selection of shops and invariably a Starbucks or two. Your feel very safe in these malls which are light, airy, and full of high street names familiar in the UK. Yesterday for instance I did a bit of shopping in Body Shop, Accessorize and Zara. The Souk however are a different matter. There are different Souks around town specialising in different shops. There is a gold souk, a computer souk, the main souk (which has a selection of all sorts) and the one I was in yesterday which is great for handbags, abayas, cheap shoes, in fact mainly women's stuff. The souks are generally a series of lock-up shops all undercover, a bit like a covered market in the UK, but generally alot dirtier. You can pick up some real bargains in these places. The Ladies on the shopping bus however tend to stick together like glue in these places, you tend to get stared at an awful lot more and I have heard of some instances of minor problems of being ripped off, propositioned by Arabs etc, and so I am alot more aware of my surroundings etc whilst in the souks. Yesterday, in the Souk, I had my first experience of a Muttawa (the Saudi Religious Police) It is the Muttawa's job to go around enforcing Sharia law as defined by the government, specifically by the "Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice"(CPVPV) - great name for a committee I think! The Muttawa are usually accompanied by a police escort. They have the power to arrest unrelated males and females caught socializing, anyone engaged in homosexual behavior or prostitution. It is also their job to enforce Islamic dress-codes and store closures during the prayer time. Yesterday's first meeting with one of them to be honest was quite funny. This Muttawa guy started shouting at us telling us to cover our heads. Most of us western women here do not cover our heads here when we are out about shopping. We would however if we had to go somewhere where we need to be particularly respectful, such a police station. Anyway this guy started yelling at us, his only problem was that because we had not covered our heads he wouldn't look at us, he was ranting away whilst looking almost in the opposite direction to where we were standing, so to begin with we had absolutely no idea who he was talking to. We were all staring up & down the souk wondering who it was that he was shouting at, when it dawned on us that infact we were the subject of his rant. Anyway, as we are not Muslim, there is no requirement to cover up, so we ignored him and after about 5 minutes he shut up and wondered off, presumably to find some other incident of "vice" to prevent. Luckily we were in a group of 6, if we had been in a smaller group I am sure that we wouldn't have had the balls to ignore him. I believe that in some places in Saudi the Muttawa can be particularly harsh, but I suppose we are quite lucky in the big scale of things to live in a relatively tolerant part of the Kingdom.

One year on..

A year ago today Obama was inaugurated (inaugurations always happen on the 20th of Jan, even if it is a Sunday) and this morning he has been dealt an unpleasant anniversary present. The election of Scott Brown to the senate to represent Massachusetts, is a slap in the face for Obama, and the political equivalent of the tories winning a safe seat in Newcastle in a by election. It is interesting that Obama's approval ratings in the US are sinking fast (not that you would know if you watch the media in the UK, who still report on him as if he is the messiah) I suppose it not surprisingly bearing in the expectations beforehand whipped up by the media. I suspect he is going to turn into a one term president as his rhetoric becomes even more empty. He has not held a press conference, where journalists can ask him questions, since July, presumably in order to avoid tricky questions such as Afghanistan & and his failure to shut Gitmo, as promised, within a year of his inauguration. Last April an estimated 2 million people took to the streets of DC as taxpayers showed their unease his policies and their cost. His healthcare reforms, although widely popular within the DC Beltway, are going to cost the earth, not least because the bill has measures in it that are completely unrelated to healthcare, such as the $300M of Government money going to Louisiana in order to make sure that the senator from that state voted in favour of it. If you put yourself in the place of an average middle class voter then it is easy to see why they are not happy. Your average working American is going to see a huge rise in taxes in order to pay for healthcare, but if you have a decent job in the states you already get the equivalent of Bupa healthcare free of charge, or for a nominal charge, as part of your employment package. This healthcare in most cases carries on for life after you retire. 80% of Americans have private healthcare, so imagine being asked to support something which would reduce your personal healthcare from Bupa to the NHS but cost you more. There are alot of people in the states who are not happy with the situation and I suspect that the election of Scott Brown reflects that.

Back to school at last!

I have not had much time to write over the last week but at last...finally after 4 weeks off the kids are back at school today. The Christmas holidays were extended by a week because of the new teacher (wife of the current & up to this point the only one) had her visa delayed again, but she is here now so full time school should start next week (the kids have only been going to school in the mornings up to now & concentrating on core curriculum stuff) Obviously one of the problems here is that there is no system where you can call in a supply teacher - if the staff are ill or have to go to see some Saudi official during school hours, which has happened, there is no alternative to shutting the school. Still it is not as if I, or any other mum for that matter, is at work. Once full time school starts properly I will be able to use the "shopping bus" which goes into town everyday (but at the moment doesn't come back until after the school has finished for the day) That should make life here a bit easier, as it means I will be able to get most of the shopping done during the week - so no more moaning from him indoors or the kids about having to spend every Thursday morning rattling around supermarkets. The shopping bus goes to a different part of town/souk/mall/supermarket everyday so I will probably find a whole host of new things and places that I didn't know existed here. I have been on it a few times before, when him indoors has been on nights so could be there when the kids finish school, and over the holidays the kids and I have been out a couple of times. The bus has a Saudi driver (who so far is the best Saudi driver I have seen by a long way, very reassuring!) he spends most of his time complaining at the standard of driving here and calling the other drivers "donkeys" or "Bedouin" as, in his opinion, the only/last thing they should/could drive is a camel. We also get a security guard who comes on the bus with us. He is in contact with the other security people back at the compound, just incase anything happens, but so far all I have seen him do is help all of us unload our shopping and carry it to our door when we get back.