The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Good news and bad news, everybody.

The good news, I found out today that women aren't allowed to visit graveyards in Saudi. Thank goodness. So noisy and irritating. They'd either wake the dead or seduce them. Better to keep them out altogether.

The bad news, thanks to Saudi fantasticness, I was called at 8am and told that I had an hour to decide if I wanted to leave on vacation after all, knowing that what with the visa process I almost certainly wouldn't be able to come back on time. Yay!

So now I'm staying here indefinitely.

No, seriously. The REAL good news is that thanks to some very nice people and an excellent nap I am no longer crying hysterically and dehydrating myself further. Now i'm making plans as to how much time to spend on my Arabic presentation.

Ciao everyone. Enjoy your family time. Sorry I'm not coming home.

But you never know. Perhaps there will be a miracle of some sort.

Merry Christmas!!

Hello everybody, life's been busy and lazy over the last couple of weeks, but now it's crunch time. Thursday night I fly out of here, headed home for New Years.

But that's not the exciting thing. The exciting thing is that for the first time ever I'm celebrating Christmas far away from my family and everything, but that people here have conspired to make it fabulous. I've baked two batches of cookies, with two different batches of girls, and I've got christmas lights and christmas music. What more could I want? You should have seen the four of us today dancing around in the dark with the sparkling lights. Instead of being upset I was laughing hysterically. And that was only Christmas Eve! I've also had one dinner-party already, and another one is in the offing for tomorrow. None of this is very conducive to work, but you know, it's Christmas. You can't work on Christmas. So now it's 2:16 am, and I am sitting here dancing to some pop Christmas songs, talking to my lovely mother, and trying to think of how I will spend the rest of my evening.

Life is looking up. Of course, even though it's Christmas, I have class in 6 hours, but I can't take that too seriously.

It's fabulous how strange things turn out well, isn't it? We might even dress mona up as Santa Claus, although I think none of us have bright red clothing.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everybody! Enjoy it!

Bahth Party

Wow. There's always so much to say. It's particularly bad when I've been out of commission for the last couple of weeks. But I like to think perhaps now I can be slightly more pro-active, at least until the term ends.

So my most recent project has been the creation, over the past two weeks, of my first ever arabic research paper, or bahth. Obviously, what I turned in was pretty pathetic, and took a heck of a lot of time, but I am proud that I managed to create something 8 pages long, in Arabic which, while full of mistakes, was at least Arabic and not gibberish. I found it really frustrating to discover that I really can't put together complex thoughts yet. I also can't create any sort of subtlety or nuance in my writing. So I have to stick to the textbook-style simple sentence, declarative active verbs, kindof like I was writing a story. A badly written story. But I have to start somewhere, right?

So I turned it in today, and I'll just have to hope she takes pity on me for not actually speaking Arabic. I also realized, as I was talking to her (haltingly) today, that I am capable of carrying on a conversation with people, if they are patient enough. Or if they don't speak English.

On that note, I love people. I have been very fond of my friends over the past two weeks... well, everybody else too. Everyone I've talked to has offered to help me. S2 and D spent hours and hours going over my paper with me, helping me correct it and at least make it grammatically correct. The last three pages, hehe, may be slightly lacking in the grammar department, but my introduction is dynamite. And the girls down the hall offered to help, and everybody gave me so much encouragement. Everybody is great.

Speaking of great, D and S2 (Dr. Doom) and Mona and I were in my room after school one day, and we got out Pictionary and started to play. I haven't laughed that hard in years, I think. The four of us sat on the floor crying with laughter for practically three hours. It was fabulous. I could try to describe it, but suffice it to say none of us are very talented artists, except for S2, and so what we came up with was... unorthodox, to say the least.

Also, Mrs. West gave me a bag full of Christmas music and some Christmas lights today, so I can decorate and get in the Holiday spirit!

Basically, the world is treating me well at the moment. Of course, last night was the first time in two weeks I've actually slept through the night. I'm not sure if that had to do with the fact that my sleeping habits are totally messed up, or whether it was stress or what, but it felt great. And I have great friends.

Of course, because I've been wholly distracted the past two weeks, I've been totally ignoring my other classes, and I completely forgot that I had a meeting with Ms. East-West today. So I feel pretty bad about that. I seem to be more easily stressed out here by work, since the actual quantity of work I have is clearly less than what I am used to. I am going to guess it has something to do with the fact that I don't have as much opportunity to release that stress in creative ways, but I think maybe that just means I'm not creative enough. I have this sneaking suspicion that if I were a normal Saudi girl I would be releasing that stress in any number of not-entirely-legal ways, but I appear to be more conservative than many of them in terms of the behavior that makes me comfortable here. There is, for example, no way on earth I'm going to go to a party with a bunch of guys I have seen once in my life, with no obvious quick exit strategy, and just assume everybody will treat me well. I also have no desire to drink illegally, or run screaming through the streets. There is at least one crazy girl I know who really demonstrates the worst judgement in the world when it comes to what behavior is appropriate, and I am going to have to watch out that she doesn't get me in trouble.

I have all sorts of interesting comments to make on things, but I think this will have to do for now. I think it is becoming clear to me that more and more I feel like this place is home. I haven't quite gotten there yet - one of the Ablas told Mona she wasn't allowed in here during the school day, so that's a little unfortunate, but overall I am feeling very much at peace with my surroundings. Of course, I also have boatloads of stunningly insightful observations of life here, but I prefer to bask in the normalcy I am feeling at the moment, and make insightful comments later.

And on that note, my fabulous Christmas music is calling me. As is my reading. And my laundry. I still have mountains of stuff I ought to do. In fact, I have so many mountains I've actually created a list of things to do. Which was bad, because I didn't list my meeting, which I subsequently forgot. Sigh.

Oh, I have so much to do.

But who doesn't?

Binat Arriyadh

Check this out! The economist mentions not only the election of women into the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce (yes, this is a big deal, it's the first time women have gotten to be involved in an election and run and vote and everything), but they mention a book, Girls of Riyadh, that I really want to read. D suggested it to me. I wonder if it's in English.

I will post over the weekend. Promise.

apologies

Hello faithful blog-fans. Sorry I have been so remiss in my updating. There will be something interesting soon, I promise. Hilights include:

1) Exploration of the total lack of historical education of Saudis
2) First Arabic Paper experiences
3) General comments on end-of-semester crunches

And much, much more.

And now, to sleep.