It Rained Today

It rained today with shots of lightening thrown in for added drama.  I was so excited.  For those of you who know me, you will be smugly chuckling to yourself, considering how much I constantly proclaimed my undying hatred for rain.  But it hasn’t rained here since I arrived in August.  And until this week, there hasn’t even been a cloud in the sky.  The weather has also cooled off significantly.  The highs are averaging around 85 degrees (F), and lows around 65.  It’s positively COLD now.  I’ve heard that it will rain so intensely in Jan/Feb that the streets will flood 3-feet deep in minutes.  But apparently that’s only for about 2-4 days of the whole year.  Today it was just a light rain.

Since I haven’t added anything here for over a month, I will just add some little bullets of info or observations that I’ve written in a journal in the last month or more.

• I’m not a Mall shopper, so it has taken me forever to make my first trip to the Dhahran Mall with Melissa.  It’s beautifully modern with all the latest fashions from Europe and even lingerie shops.  However, all the salesmen in the shops are men, and there are no dressing rooms.  Why?  Because God forbid that a woman take her clothes off anywhere but home.  So the system is that you buy what you think you want, try it on at home, then return it if it doesn’t fit.  And all the women shopping for that sexy lingerie are completely covered from head to toe in black.  It’s so strange.


• Once a week on our compound, a worker walks around behind and in front of all the houses, spraying a thick white cloud of some sort of pesticide.  I’ve been told that it’s a petroleum based product that is supposed to kill the mosquitoes.  But I’m a little suspicious that it’s something more sinister.


• A slightly surreal conversation took place in the lunch room the other day.  Melissa was offering to take care of David & Kim’s baby for a weekend so they could get away to Bahrain alone.  But then…what if there was a problem and we needed to evacuate?  Could they leave her passport so Melissa could get the baby to Bahrain?  But what if the causeway closed?  Would she be able to get the baby out of the country another way without the parents?  Yes, it occurred to me that in America, we wouldn’t ever be having this sort of conversation when it centered around babysitting.  David said that I should have heard the conversations after the bombing last year:  which room should we sleep in?  If someone attacked the compound by coming in the main gate, then the front bedrooms would be the most dangerous.  But someone could climb over the back wall and then the back rooms might be the least safe.  If we had to escape to the roof, how would we get off?  Etc.


• I chaperoned the Halloween Dance at the school last weekend.  All the girls walked in wearing their black abayas, which I forgot was a requirement for travel outside the compounds.  I just thought they came dressed for Halloween.  But no, they went immediately to the bathroom and stripped down to their skimpy party dresses.


• Sometimes, when I put the abaya on, I forget that I’m wearing it even after I’ve reached my destination and can take it off.  Other times, I completely forget that I’m supposed to be wearing it.  I hitched a ride home with another teacher this week who needed to stop at a store/mall on the way.  Great!  I had some shopping I needed to do anyway,  So I strolled in, walked around to different shops getting what I needed and was about to leave when it suddenly hit me that I wasn’t wearing an abaya.  My reaction was to gasp in horror and to suddenly feel naked.  Seriously!  It’s amazing how you your brain can learn to think in such a bizarre way after only a few months.  

Other than that, life has been OK.  I feel very much like the lousiest teacher on the planet most of the time, which often makes me cry uncontrollably.  I hate feeling that I’m incompetent all the time.  I miss mom, and wish so much I could be with her now to help her in this time of trying to adjust emotionally to being alone.  I’m trying to call her at least once a week using Skype.  Still trying to get DSL so the Skype connection will be better.  Not much else to tell.  Oh, went to France for the holiday we just had.  Bought the ticket before dad’s death.  I wouldn’t have gone otherwise.  It was a good time, though.