Najran Trip

Wow, I just checked the blog and realized that I missed a whole trip. Najran is near Yemen and we could actually see Yemen from where we were. The border is not an easy one so there are checkpoints everywhere. The picture above is taken at the dam and directly on the other side of the river is the Yemen border. The other picture is taken at the women's souk.

Najran is much more local culture than we see where we live. On Thanksgiving day we ate a traditional Arab meal which included whole sheep, all kinds of fruits and vegetables and great pastries. Not exactly turkey and stuffing, but it was good.

The entertainment was dancing with knives. David actually DID the dance with the knives. I'll post the video on Windows Live if anyone wants to see it. I think it's a bit large for this blog. We sat in a large hall covered with carpets and seated on the floor with cushions. The pre-dinner is coffee and dates. The coffee is super strong; I don't like coffee anyway, but this is too much for me to even attempt to drink.

We went to a dagger souk which sells, ding, ding ding, you guessed it, daggers. We bought a beautiful dagger with all of this embroidered fabric covering it. It is an entire market and all they sell are daggers. They are very typical with the curved end and come in mostly smaller size blades and are considered a hand weapon only. They are exactly what was used in the dance I referenced previously.

We also visited the Empty Quarter. That's me with an endless sea of sand behind me that goes on for miles and miles. This one camel is part of a huge herd that we saw being driven through the desert by a herder. They crossed the road right in front ofus.


We visited ruins that were thousands of year old. One of the ruins was a Christian site that was obliterated during fighting and the figures you are looking at are prehistoric.

Vacation

We went to the Czech Republic, Germany and Istanbul. First of all, back to the wonder that is air travel here. Most of us left the country for the holiday and every single one of us had a flight that left between 1 AM and 5 AM. Do they even fly planes at the hour of the day anywhere else?? So the challenge of getting up at 2AM to get to an airport that is 20 minutes away starts our fun-filled adventure. Can you say bone tired?

There are very few airlines that serve this airport so you have to take what you can get. We flew Turkish Airlines, with mixed reviews. Outbound flight was not good but inbound flight was very good, so who knows? Istanbul was very nice and was our first hint of Christmas, big tree in the airport and all of the stores decorated. We spent most of our time in Prague, which was truly lovely. We have tons of pictures so it will hard to pick the ones that go up here. I may simply post the Prague pictures in Snapfish or something as we have too many to count.

First of all, public transportation is a dream. You can get anywhere you want to go, cheaply and easily. A five day unlimited pass to use subway, tram or bus is about $5 US a day. The smarter way to do it is simply pay as you go, it's about 75 cents a trip.


The astronomical clock is amazing. It was built several hundred years ago and they actually blinded the man who designed it so it could never be replicated. Check out this website for the complete scoop. http://www.orloj.com. The clock was built in 1410 and has the ability to track solar movements, lunar movements, and tell time in addition to having the march of the 12 apostles at noon and all of these other things to watch and look at. It's worth standing there to see it chime at least once.

The Christmas Markets are everywhere and while it's mostly about food there are some great traditional Czech crafts such as marionettes, wooden puzzles and chess sets, and lots of Bohemian crystal jewelry. There are also linens and beautiful pashminas for sale. I managed to get some beautiful handcrafted items for presents.

Traditional Czech food is what you wold expect. Roast pork and dumplings or goulash. Soup is a standard with any meal and the deserts are excellent. Portions are so much smaller than in the states. We also visited a lot of foreign restaurants while there. Believe it or not we went Czech-Mex restaurant (I mean really, with a name like that wouldn't you have just had to go?)and it was some of the best Mexican food we've ever had.

We also spent one day going to Dresden, Germany and visiting the Christmas Market and some of the bigger sites. Since Dresden was leveled in WWII it is simply amazing the amount of older architecture that has survived. One of the places we visited was almost completely restored according to the original plans even though a single wall was left standing.

EID holiday

I decided to write about EID in general as many of you who are following this may not be familiar with this Muslim holiday.

Eid ul-Fitr or Id-ul-Fitr ( عيد الفطر ‘Īdu l-Fiṭr‎), often abbreviated to Eid, is a holiday that marks the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting. Eid is an Arabic word meaning "festivity", while Fiṭr means "to break the fast" (and can also mean "nature", from the word "fitrah"); and so the holiday symbolizes the breaking of the fasting period. It is celebrated starting on the first day of the Islamic month of Shawwal. Eid ul-Fitr is a three day celebration and is sometimes also known as the "Smaller Eid" (Arabic: العيد الصغير al-‘īdu ṣ-ṣaghīr‎) as compared to the Eid ul-Adha that lasts four days and is called the "Greater Eid" (Arabic: العيد الكبير al-‘īdu l-kabīr‎). (From Wikipedia)

First of all, let's talk calendar. It is called the “hijira.” It starts in our year 622 CE on July 16^th. The Muslim calendar is not our calendar in much the same way as the Jewish calendar is not. It is shorter, only 354 days and therefore holidays move unlike being on a specific date because the calendar year is actually shorter and the months are based on lunar cycles, exactly 12 of them in a given year. So your seasons change too and that is on a 34 year cycle. I have a very funny story about my visa because I didn’t understand the dates on all my papers are done in this calendar and not in the western calendar. Funny now but not funny at the time.

So anyway, it is a really big Holy Day here and our offices were closed from December 3-13, hence a holiday break. (Next post I'll talk about where we went and what we did.) So anyway, part of EID is that all Muslims if they can afford it and are in good health are obligated to go to Mecca and partake in the hajj. The picture is of the Ka’Ba, considered to be the core places of Islam and the place where the divine revelations began. There are 5 pillars of Islam (declaration of faith, prayer, almsgiving, fasting, and pilgrimage to Mecca.) There are a series of rituals that take place and they can cover 3-6 days. Literally millions of people come through Jeddah to do this during this time. There is a huge multi-acre site which is near the airport which is built to accommodate these travelers even though it is only once a year. The number of people are almost unbelievable.

Social Life

As ex-pats, our social life is somewhat different. Since all of us live almost exclusively on western compounds, the vast majority of our social life is centered on activities within the confines of the compound. Hundreds of people live on any given compound so there are lots of events. Some of the things have included Halloween parties (that one is organized by the Brits and that was a trip). David, in his usual dry manner came as an American ex-pat, which was actually pretty funny.

There has also been a jazz concert with the No-Name Band...and they are actually quite good. Most of the guys in the band work at my company and it's kind of funny to see these straight laced guys up there on stage. I've put some pictures of this concert here. There were probably a couple of hundred people there. There were hot dogs and hamburgs and non-alcohol beer. I bet you didn't know that virtually every beer has a non-alcoholic option. I can get you a Heineken, a Bud, you name it, all in non-alcoholic form. There were other more questionable contents floating around. These are more commonly referred to as the white stuff and the dark stuff. (Seriously.)

There are also house parties. The picturee here are taken at a birthday party for one of our friends. With the upcoming holidays there are tons of options in the compounds for children and adults as like and you are free to participate as much a or as little as possible.

First Beach Trip

We live right on the Red Sea and we've been here over a month and we finally actually made it to the beach. We have to go to a beach for westerners because women have to wear their abeyahs into the water at the public beaches. It sort of makes swimming a bit of a trial. It was a day trip even though it is only 30 minutes or so across town to get there. It was very different from the beaches back at home. First of all, the actual beach area is quite small, no large expanses of sand on the private beaches. This beach was perhaps a couple of hundred feet across and no one lays on the sand. Everyone has a lounge chair underneath a palm frond umbrella. As you can see, from David's picture, it was a really strenuous day.

The water is azure, extremely clear, with 20+ feet of visibility. The fish are beautiful, vivid colors and designs. I truly wish we had an underwater camera so we could share those views with you.

The beach is totally self enclosed and requires ID cards to get on and security is pretty tight. There is a restaurant and snack bar on site. You can rent a little cottage that is literally on piers and is constructed completed over the water for $300 USD a night. We thought the price was outrageous but it was pretty.

The end of the day was gorgeous.