We found an awesome produce stand. It is a little store with the most amazing selection of fruit and veggies. I am so excited! We snapped a couple of pictures. You can go to a regular grocery store to get produce but you have to go through waiting in "line" to get it weighed. It is also very picked over and not extremely fresh as it is imported from so many far away countries. This is very fresh and looks like the produce you would buy in the states.

Ice Cream and a Dirt Bike

I was washing up from an early dinner last night and my husband comes in quite excited, telling me about a dirt bike and trailer for sale and we have to go tonight and see it, please, please, pretty please. (ok, he didn't say pretty please but that would have been fun right?) I said, ok, as long as we stop for ice cream on the way home.

So off we go to find someone's house with a dirt bike and trailer. We have a GPS but I don't think the GPS really knew where we were going because as we were driving my husband pulled out the paper map and started asking me for street signs. Notice he didn't give the map to me to navigate as we would have ended up in Saudi if I took over. So I was in charge of watching for street signs and green lights and making sure we didn't wreck as he looked at the map and drove at the same time. This sounds dangerous if you are from the states, distracted driving, but I don't think it matters here. It is also funny to call out which street we are on because I am trying to pronounce and spell the signs so he can find it on the map! I am making this up, but streets have names like Ala Bani and Ben Syriani.

I soon figure out my husband is just making random turns and ignoring the GPS, throwing the paper map in the seat. I can't say we were lost....but we didn't know where we were going. We are in a strange part of the city. I am not saying it is a bad part, but not a part we have ever been in before. We are near the edge because one side of the road had houses and one side was a dark desert. We give up and pull over. I am on lookout duty for suspicious activities...and my husband calls the man selling the bike. For the purpose of this I will call him Jerry. My husband starts telling Jerry stores and mosques nearby for landmarks....these are on every corner so this is not helpful. Jerry decides to drive and find us. We drive to find Jerry. It must have been fate as we actually find him and his house in the dark. Everyone here lives behind concrete walls in little neighborhoods. It is a little scary to go behind the wall not sure what you will find, holding your breath as they close the gate behind you. Fortunately, although it wasn't super fancy, it did look ok for us to be there.

So we park and walk to his house. He is from Britain, was very energetic, obviously single. He is moving to Malaysia and selling all his "toys". So they talk and my daughter and I stand and watch. He turns on the bike and revs the engine. My daughter is very scared now. Thank you Jerry. This is a sincere thank you as it will postone my husband from getting her on a bike one day too soon. He says...lets take it out for a ride. We run to the car and buckle up so we don't lose this guy once he gets out of the gate. I don't know if energetic was a good adjective because crazy is more like it. He takes off down the street without a helmet or gear. We go a few streets over to a block that is dark and mostly dirt. Off Jerry goes, popping wheelies and zooming down the road. Pretty reckless. I give my husband the...if you do that, so help me look. His eyes twinkle as he basically runs out of the car to get on the bike himself. He hops on the bike and off he goes. My daughter is calling out from the back seat...."Daddy crazy, Daddy crazy"! It is very strange to be on a dark street in the Middle East watching my husband tear off on a bike. I can't say it is comforting.

He didn't ride long. Thank goodness. He gets in the car and Jerry does two or three wheelies and rides back to his house, manic style. I looked at my husband and said..."If you want the bike, lets make the deal and get out of here!". He is like a little boy at Christmas by now.

So we make the deal and my husband will pick it up tomorrow. Jerry had a car he just sold too. Mercedes something, sorry for you car lovers out there, I don't know the specifics. He said he was at a car show looking around. He and another gentleman (turns out to be a sheik)  are eyeing the same car. So the sheik asks him to come look at his personal collection. Jerry follows him to a warehouse full of about 30 to 40 cars! Jerry says there was any make of car you could imagine, ferrari, vipers, anything and everything! So Jerry found this mercedes and commented on how nice it was. The sheik told him to take it. Jerry couldn't just take it. So the sheik insisted he take it for the weekend. He did and came back and offered to buy the car. So the sheik sold him the car for what comes to 20,000 US Dollars. This is a car worth 100,000. Jerry just sold it for 20,000, the same he paid for it two years ago. We finish talking with Jerry and get back in our old, dusty, inexpenive SUV. My husband and I both look at each other and without saying anything I know we are both thinking the same question, "where are the car shows around here and how do we meet a sheik?"

You might ask...what about my end of the deal? What about the ice cream? Yes, I got a milk shake from Baskin Robbins. So the night was complete. Ice cream and a dirt bike adventure!

Photography Club



Mosque in Fishing Village



My husband and I have joined a photography club with some of his coworkers. There is a large mix of experience levels in the small group, which makes it very interesting. This weekend was our first outing for a photo shoot. My husband and I just wanted to go exploring more than anything. We drove about an hour outside of the city to a fort called, Al Zurabah, as well as to a small old fishing village. When you drive outside the city you find out there isn't much to see. All sand and very, very few houses or small towns. When I say sand.....literally, I mean that is all we see. We have seen camels out before but unfortuanately we didn't see any on this trip. After driving for what seems like hours to nowhere, all of a sudden on the horizon popped up a small fort. Our little caravan of drivers pull up, we get out and start snapping photos. There is nothing around in sight besides this fort, the sealine in the distance, and sand. There were three small outbuildings near the fort for vistors doing archological work (Fortunately, there was a restoom or we would have had to turn around and head back to the city. I would blame it on my two year old newly potty trained child, but it was me the pregnant woman that was walking with my legs crossed. It isn't like I could go behind a bush either, one for fear of someone from the country thinking I am exposing myself and two because there are no bushes to go behind!) The fort wasn't much bigger than a large house. It was four very thick walls with towers on the corners. It was open on the inside with litte rooms along the walls. It was pretty intersting to walk around and look inside. From what we understand the fort was built in the 1930s over an older castle. There was a well inside that I am sure was very precious and needed protecting too. The sun was beginning to go down but it was still extremely hot outside. After about 20 minutes exploring it was time to return to the car to cool off. Our caravan of photographers then drove a couple miles to a fishing village. This was a great example of what life was like before the discovery of oil when the people were dependant on fishing and other ways of life to survive. It wasn't set up as a museum, only the ruins and half way standing walls to show what once was. It was right beside the coastline and so with the setting sun and breeze it was easier to walk around and really explore. It was a lot of fun climbing through the paths and doorways. The morter for the walls was obviously the sand from the shore as there were tiny little seashells everywhere in the walls and in the sand we walked upon. We couldn't go all the way to the water as unfortuately the sealine was covered in trash. It was really pretty nasty not only to see but smell. (I am not sure if all coasts are this way as I haven't seen any other sealines besides in the city, which look pristine.) But, there was enough ruins that we could all spread out and snap pictures and explore as the sun was fading. The tall tower in the pictures at the villiage is of the mosque. We had a long drive back at night with not much too see on the way but we had a wonderful evening. My husband took all these excellent pictures!



View from the car on the way




More sand....




Al Zurabah Fort





Looking through one of the defense "peep" holes from inside the fort.





Old Fishing Village





As you can see it is mostly ruins but fun to explore.





You can see the trash along the shore in this photo. It was pretty nasty and covered the entire shore. I spared you the dead sea life photos we have....





The tiny corals and shells in the mortar and sand.




Sunset at the mosque.



We went grocery shopping Friday evening. Turns out that is not a good idea. Mornings are the way to go but we didn't know. The grocery store was packed Friday evening. I mean, Thankgiving or Superbowl packed! I had my list in hand, I even had my list organzed by sections of the store, like diary, meat, canned goods. This didn't help and just let me explain. 

 

It was a combination of finding the food I wanted and the shoppers that made my life difficult. Some shoppers will actually run into your cart and not even acknowledge they bumped you. Many of them stop and shop with their cart in the middle of the asile. They don't move out of the way for you to pass or even share shopping space. They just stand there staring at the food until the find what they want, with no recogniton you are there. I would try and go around them but it is so crowded I can't even make a path. I ended up leaving my husband with the cart and then embarking on my own to find food from my list.

 

I would say about 80% of all the food in the store is imported from another country. All produce and meat is 100% imported. This could be from Holland, China, South Africa, USA, New Zealand, Australia, pretty anywhere but here. With all this food being imported from various locations the prices vary a lot. There are two things you have to do before placing an item in your cart. First, check the expiration date. They are usually ok but not always. Second, figure up the exchange rate. For example, I wanted pecans in the small snack size cansiter but when I did the exchange in my head it came to $26 US dollars for one! That is crazy. Some foods are really reasonable when you compare the cost in US dollars but not always. It makes it very time comsuming to figure this out for each and every item. Not to mention that we only brought so much cash and had to make sure we didn't pick out too much food for the money we brought.

 

 So, I had made it all the way to the meats and produce section of the store and my list was halfway complete. I was pretty happy as I found many things I wanted. Most of the time I realize half way through that I don't have all the key ingrediants for the recipes I planned and have reinvent the recipes in my head, while shopping, or just give up and put the ingrediants back and start over.

 

 In the produce section, all fruits and veggies must be weighed before you go to the cash register. Just like in the states, I pick what I want and put it in a little plastic bag. But here I take my bag to a little counter in the produce section and some young men weigh the produce and place the price sticker on the bag for me. This sounds fine and great when you aren't in the middle of a huge crowd of people shopping. I would try and make a line but people here don't understand lines I guess. They would cut in front of me and literally stick their bag of produce on the scales to be weighed, right in front of my face. It didn't matter how close I stood or if I changed spots to another scale. They still cut in front of me. I was getting pretty fusterated and started actually marking random things off my list....celery...who needs celery? Thankfully, I finally finished shopping or you could say I called it quits as I didn't finish my list. We checked out and went home. Who knows what food we really have to eat. Has it always been this difficult when we went grocery shopping, no. But, I think I will stick with Friday mornings from now on. Just to be safe.

Repair Story #2

In a previous post I told a long story about my experiences with multiple repairmen on several projects. The air conditioner unit in our bedroom was still not functioning properly. While I can handle sleeping in mild warmth versus chilling temperatures, my dearest husband cannot. So two times I went to ask our neighborhood's main office for help in the repair of our air conditioner. By the second visit, it was mildy embarassing as he knew which house I lived in and my problem before I spoke a word. He said, after 5:30pm tonight. I was relieved, I had notice of the work to be done and an approxiamate date and time. I could also prepare my barking beasts for our visitor. I put them in the farthest, smallest room in the house, the servants quarters. (Yes, we have the room but no in-house servant.) We also have a radio set up to play wonderful arabic music, although I think they prefer NPR from DC. So, I stand guard at the window to watch for the repairman in hopes of answering the door before he rings the doorbell.  When I saw him ride up on his little bicycles, it was one of those slow motion moments like on the movies. I ran to the front door and just as I touched the doorknob the doorbell rang. I don't know how he beat me as he was carrying a tool box and what looked like a propane tank. The dog barking frenzies were on full blast as I led him to the broken unit. I decided to stay and watch him work as I wanted to make sure there was actual work being completed. I did not want to have to go through all this hassle again. Within just a moment I hear him chuckling to himself and he calls me over. "Mam, it not work because you set on fan, not cool". I didn't find this so funny. He thought I just couldn't operate the settings and this poor woman had called him for nothing!!! I managed to maintain my dignity and blame it on my husband, whom I said put the ac on fan because when it is set on cool it makes noises as though it were about to explode. He said, "ah, to the roof". (not so poor and helpless now, huh?)

I didn't realize so many workings of our home took place on the rooftop...but up he went. I decided not to follow as it is just too hot up there and who knows what he is going to do with that metal tank. I can hear him clanging and banging and in about 10 mintues he returns and says...."fixed".  I said "thank you, but I will wait until tonight to know for sure". Turns out it is fixed and now I am so relieved not to have to repair anything for a while!! Oh yes, and my husband sleeps soundly in the cool air.

Homemade cookies...

I am making homemade peanut butter cookies right now. I have to say they are pretty tasty. It is hard to beat a warm homemade cookie right out of the oven. It just melts in your mouth. I don't know about other people out there but I just can't resist eating way too many cookies when they are just baked. I just keep thinking....one more, one more. They are so good! The funny part is that I end up eating so many right out of the oven that I just don't want to eat anymore at all. So the rest just sit there. Cookies anyone?