A night under the stars

Since I last wrote, much has happened, yet little worth writing about. We spent our ten day Eid holiday back home in South Africa. We needed some medical advice about Mieke's teeth. We ended up spending a morning in hospital while they performed two root canals and two additional repairs on her little baby teeth. Since she doesn't ever eat sweets or drink juice, the jury's still out on the cause of our problem. But it was a huge relief to be able to speak to someone who we could communicate with and have her teeth seen to. The sight of the black nurses who worked at Femina hospital made me want to cry. They are so warm and soft and sassy. We really shouldn't complain about health care in South Africa, we have much to be thankful for!

Big girl!

Back in Saudi, the long hot summer is slowly drawing to a close. Schools started and kids steadily flowed back into the compound. The poolside had been crowded by moms and kids, all sharing their summer stories. Mieke has started going to the nursery school on the compound. I'm so proud of her, she's so confident and independant and is starting to put together little sentences.

 Three times a week the kids go to the 'Big Gym', a recreation hall next to the restaurant where they play with balls of all shapes and sizes for an hour. The little tots love to stick balls under their T shirts and make 'babies'. Late one afternoon Mieke and Rean went for a walk and she saw one of our neighbours, a man with a big tummy, walking to the pool. She pointed to his tummy and said 'baby!'. I hope he didn't understand, or if he did, that he had a well developed sense of humour.

Jipee, my first ice cream!

Eugh, tiggers don't like ice cream!

 The cooling weather also allows for other activities to recommence, such as camping. On the spur of the moment we decided to join some friends for a night under the stars. We rushed to a huge camping store and had the most incredible fun choosing camping gear. I really learnt something about the local people there. Camping is really a feature, although not really the domain of women. They sell all their equipment in nicely sewn bags with pockets and zips and velcro, toilet paper bags to hook from the roof of whatever, grill bags, cooler bags of all shapes and sizes, wind shields with matching bags etc etc. Camping carpets, amazing sleeping bags. The list just goes on and on. Guess what you're all getting for christmas!

At 4pm on friday afternoon we jumped in our car and drove out to the dunes. Only about an hour out is a wadi that lies between the gravel plains and the red dunes and here is a sheltered spot where we put up our tents. The kids spent the evening climbing up the dunes and sliding down, and the grownups made a fire and cooked dinner, and chatted, or simply listened to the quiet as I did. It was warm and dreamy, quiet and safe. The next morning we had an early breakfast and then packed up and came back home since it still gets quite hot early in the day.

This is definitely something we're going to be doing often in the coming months. It was wonderful!

Rainbow Spagetti

As promised, here are some pictures of our Rainbow Spagetti. The pasta stuck to the paper nicely on its own, it wasn't neccessary to use glue. When we were done for the day, I put the remaining pasta in seperate ziploc bags and keep them in the fridge until next time. O yes, and a nice twist is to put glitter in the pasta. It looks beautiful!

Words in our lives

We got our Iquamas! After seven months of waiting and regular inconvenient travelling, it feels as though we have surely earned them! Now we can apply for a medical aid and get ourselves really settled in. We shouldn't complain though, I heard of a family who have been waiting for two years where for most people the process takes three or four days.

It's getting really hot. As I write the mercury is soaring to 47degrees C in the shade outside my front door. Practically it means that we don't really go out after 8am and before 5pm although we do go to meet the shopping bus at 9am and go to join the nursery school children for a run in the gym hall at 10am. The we walk quickly and go strait there and back, you can really feel the heat melting you bit by bit.

Ramadan started yesterday. For the ladies in the compound this means that shops are only open after 8pm, although we can get groceries during the day. We are all careful not to eat in public, not even drink water in respect of everyone who is fasting.

I thought you might enjoy a few beautiful words that have infiltrated our lives. My favourite is habibi which is arabic for 'child' and is used by the compound ladies with a very specific inflection when their offspring venture into the realm of the disallowed (if you know what I mean). Then there is matapat which is the word used for a speed bump, shukran; thank you,  inshallah; if God wills.

Mieke and I have been trying to get creative with things to keep busy with. There is a wonderful website with incredible activities for little people that is currently our favourite: http://www.theimaginationtree.com/. We recently had a green glitter bath with lost of green glitter, food colouring and different textured toys. I was a bit too cautious with the food colouring though. Next time...

Painted pasta is fun to stick into play dough, and can be sorted into endless variations of kitchen containers. It is also nicely crunchy underfoot and can be used to paint things with if you mix some spit with the pasta.

One of our favourite was a huge big bowl of spagetti. The idea is really to colour it into rainbow colours using food colouring. I just wanted to test out the concept. We'll try rainbow spagetti this week and post a picture!

Four and bran are fun and relatively easy to clean from the floor and furniture. Nice to scoop and sweep with your hands, spoons, brooms and all sorts of things. You can also rub it all over your body without permanent effects.

The littel flour footprints all over the house just melted by heart...

Fingerpainting friends

No, not just a witty title, we really painted our friends.

It started out quite cheerfully, with loads of clean white paper, pretty pots of colourful paint, and three little babies on the lawn.The first of Mieke's artworks was her leg.

Then came her other leg, little Jibriel who was stitting next to her (Mommy managed to get sume paper under her hands and feet at that stage), Mieke's tummy, then her head, the tree, the cat...

I couldn't get a picture of the cat, it ran away too fast.

O its grand to be one!

The Secondhand Souq

One of the compound's shopping bus' most controvertial stops is at the secondhand souq. Here second hand clothes that have been given to charity are sold for next to nothing. Some ladies wrinkle their noses at the mere mention of it, and others may consider receiving treatment to cure them of the frenzy that comes over them at the sight of so much ridiculously cheap clothing. I have been to many social getherings where the ladies strutt around in their finery, if you look carefully you can see some of them winking to each other, and may hear them whisper that they paid the enormous sum of five or ten riyals for their gorgeous outfits (Five riyals is about R11, depending on the exchange rate).

Many ladies go to dig for evening gowns. Some have reported buying designer dresses still with the labels on. I haven't come across any of those, and have found the dresses to be quite garish, decorated with tons of sequins or costume jewellery. I have bought many girls outfits there, some a bit moth eaten, others perfectly fine. Children's clothes go for 3 riyals a piece (about R7), and adults clothing from 5 riyals. If you can get your husband to accompany you you will certainly pay quite a bit less. Obviously you can't try anything on for size and it is inevitable to come home with some duds and the haggling is an inevitable part of the experience. It certainly is dusty, and during the summer months is too hot as it is not in a building, but outside under tarpaulin. Forget about the grand malls and designer boutiques, there is nothing quite like digging around for treasure at the second hand souq.

It's been a while

It's been a while since I've had the time to write. My days are filled with small domestic things and the general goings on in this hot dusty place we're calling home. I can give you an update on my new year's resolutions: I have painted my toenails! A beautiful blue. I have eaten healthy food and I have been to the gym three times or so. That takes me off the hook for this year I guess.We still have no Iquamas and all our furtive attempts to move to a house with a garden have been unsuccessful as yet. Mieke is growingup so fast. She is potty training very nicely and has a vocabulary of words that her mom and dad can lovingly decipher. She likes to choose her own outfits every day, mostly from the dirty laundry, complete with hats. A few days ago she managed to open one of Rean's drawers and draped every single one of his underpants around her neck. She thought it looked beautiful!

I'll quickly tell you about our recent travels. We had a lovely trip to Oman around my birthday. Rean booked us into a smart hotel for a treat. The evening of my birthday I had a tall, cool Gin and Tonic. I have never enjoyed a drink quite so much!

Our last trip was to Dubai. We had both hoped to work in business meetings whilst we were there but none of them worked out. Since it was too hot to spend time outdoors, we hung around in a mall. Dubai Mall has a nice aquarium which Mieke really enjoyed. We also went up the world's tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa.Quite impressive to watch the tiny buildings far below. I was suprised to find I had to equalise my ears in the lift to the top!

Iquama medical

We were called to do our medical exams required for the work permit or Iquama, a sign, we hope, that the process is progressing, so to say. Rean has three colleagues who did their medicals the week before us, so he got clear instructions about where to go in the King Saud Hospital complex, and also quite detailed stories of what to expect from the experience. We were told that we would need to have blood drawn, chest x-rays taken, would have to provide urine and stool samples and have an interview with a doctor.

We packed the nappy bag with snacks and toys in the hope that we could keep Mieke relatively happy during our possibly lengthy visit to the hospital and planned to take turns, one staying with Mieke while the other went through the medical. Alas, as with many great plans, reality was quite different.

From the Google Earth image we were able to find the correct examination center for the men. However, the absence of English signage quite complicated our search for the female quarters. Rean flagged down a masked lady with a white coat, and she immediately took me by the arm and said, 'follow me'. I grabbed Mieke and the (enormously heavy nappy bag) and set off hopefully. Inside a dark and very crowded hall, with several unmarked doors leading to several other crowded rooms, my lady in white waded through waiting women of all ages and shades. We got to a cubicle with two women behind a glass window. They asked for our passports and photos, and I realised that Rean had them! And then my phone chose to freeze. And I didn't know the pin number in order to reset the blasted thing! Our kind lady went in search of Rean and finally brought back the passports. My nerves were getting more frazzled by the minute. Mieke obviously noticed this as babies tend to do and started acting up. We got called to do the blood test, and I was provided with two plastic containers for my two samples and pointed in the direction of the WC.

So, off we went, Mieke and I and the nappy bag (and the two plastic bottles) to look for the loo. It wasn't that hard to find, and was relatively clean, but turned out to be the arabic kind, where the porcelain is comprised of a trench with two foot pads on either side. A water spray nozzle thingy was also provided, in the absence of toilet paper. In for a penny, in for a pound, I thought. My years at Yoga class served me well as I balanced precariously over the trench with my two bottles, trying to keep my Abaya out of the water, and Mieke out of the trench, and the water, and off my lap. And producing my samples. Before prayer time, because then everything grinds to a halt for three quarters of an hour.

In retrospect, it was quite funny.

I was enormously grateful for the kind ladies who helped us through. They were really compassionate and professional.

Hold thumbs that we pass our medicals with flying colours, and that our permits will soon be in the mail!