Driving Miss Dhakayah

Driving here is pretty scary.  Every time we hit the road, we are really putting the ADVENTURE in Our Arabian Adventure.  So when Mike went to the old McDonnell Douglas compound the other day and saw this sign on the gate as he left, we all got a good laugh!

Ha!

Yeah - good luck!  It's a veritable zoo out there.  I don't really have any pictures of the traffic here, but it's chaotic.  Sometimes there are lane lines and sometimes there are not.  Sometimes there are street signs or stop signs or interstate signs, and sometimes there are not.  Not that any of these signs really matter anyway - men just drive the way they want to, like animals herding in the road.  (I really don't mean that in a derogatory way, just objectively; the way the cars bunch up around turns or mesh together for an intersection, it really does look like sheep all squooshed together and running forward.)  Do you find yourself in the right lane, and need to do a quick left U-turn to turn around and go the other way?  No problem!  No, don't bother to signal - just do it.  Allah will protect your car.

The Saudis here REALLY DO think that either Allah will protect them in their cars, or it was their time to die.  That's why they don't wear seat belts.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Usually, the driver (husband or father) has one on, but women don't wear them supposedly because it has to go across their chests, giving them "shape", and kids are just loose in the car.  Yes.  Just loose in the car.  On all the roads, including the interstate.  It is so hard to watch.  The really progressive Saudis have car seats, but they don't strap their kids in to the seat - they just sit them there with no belt.  (Seems so me that that places them up higher and so they are more likely to be injured.)  So it's no wonder that the top killer of kids over 4 is car crashes (the top killer of kids under 4 is drowning, with car crashes being second...why drowning is so high will be the subject of a future post.)  It's also no wonder that the interstates are all called  "Highway of Death", by westerners at least.

Here we are on a Highway of Death (this is the road to Abqaiq) with slightly-less-than-typical traffic.  Notice how the sand continually blows over the road.  It would cover the road completely, except that there are bulldozers all along the side that push the sand back off the road.  (Not that they give you any warning of where the bulldozers are.) (Lawrence, our Vehicle Boy, LOVED this!)  But notice how quickly we come upon one that does have a barrel out front.  Yikes!  And people drive whatever speed they want, too.  We are going about 70 mph here.  (Also, just try to block out all three kids crying and the kid music in the background.  That's what we do, too.)

(LHS - don't play this while the baby is sleeping!)

We decided that Allah helps those who help themselves, so back when we were buying, we bought the biggest, most humongous metal car we could find, and we strap ourselves and all our kids in so tight that they can barely move.  That way, if something happens, at least we will be as safe as we can be, and certainly better off than the other people.  And we'll take that wish for good luck, McDonnell Douglas - thanks!  - we're going to need it.

PS Dhakayah is an Arabic girl's name meaning "intelligent".  

Close. But no cigar.

Holster your weapons at the door, please.

Feeding Frenzy

Everett's new thing is to feed his sister baby food.  It's very cute - what a good brother! - but I do feel a little sorry for her, having to learn to eat, and get used to the food, and sit in the high chair, and wear a bib, AND get occasionally poked in the cheek with a spoonful of runny apples.  However, Everett loves it so much we let him do it anyway:

He's demonstrating how to open your mouth for the bite.  Really, he is pretty good at it!  He even sings to her when she gets upset about the process. 

And of course, "I do it, too!" wants a shot.  He gets a little extra help from Daddy.  Wow, look at all that blonde hair on that kid.

Ha!

Little Did You Know...

Little did you know that you were living amongst heroes.  But the secret is out!  By day, we maintain our mild-mannered personalities.  By night, we are known as....

The Super Family! 

Here we are in our Super Jammies.  Our super power is -  sleeping!  We are all super sleepers!  We work together with our friends Nice-Warm-Bath and Bedtime-Stories to do battle against our sworn nemesises (nemesi?) Dessert-Sugar-Rush, But-*You're*-Not-Going-To-Bed, and One-More-Drink-Of-Water.  So if your kids can't sleep, you can call on us to come and help you (if we're awake, that is).  Ha!

PS But remember, we are not awake after 2:30 pm your time unless we are home for Christmas.  So, basically, we are almost always asleep when you need us.  :)  This time change thing is handy!    

Our Pantry

As promised, here is a picture of all that baby food we brought back for our little Arabian Princess:

It's like having a grocery store right here in our own pantry.  Here you see sixteen different flavors represented, and each flavor is eight packages deep.  Adding eleven loose packages on top, plus three applesauces, gives us 142 packages total, but 139 of those include two tubs, so it's 281 containers of baby food.  That's the first shelf!

The second shelf is for meats (we have about 50 jars), plus rice, oatmeal, and mixed cereals, formula, four kinds of puffs, and three kinds of yogurt tabs.  We also have a few of those pouches with the screw top lids in the back.  Oh yeah, and one extra Target brand pears in the front there.  Think we've got enough??

While I was rearranging the pantry to accept all this baby food, I found this, which Mike must have bought while we were gone:

COUNTRY Corn Flakes??  Are these somehow different than regular corn flakes?  As opposed to City Corn Flakes, perhaps?  Maybe they mean country like nation.  Each flake is shaped like a country?  "Look, Mom!  I got Sweden and Japan in the same spoonful!"  ???  (Speaking of countries, these Corn Flakes were manufactured in Lebanon by a Swiss company and distributed from Dubai for sale in Saudi.  Maybe it means Multi-Country Corn Flakes.) 

Hurricane Benchich Makes Landfall in The Sandbox

Well, we made it!

The trip back was about the same as our trip over - it was long (but not as long as before - only 22 hours this time).  We had our fair share of just-plain-awful moments, like when Lawrence figured out how to undo his seat belt *during* the landing into Atlanta and proceeded to run and jump and scream "I don't want to be on the airplane!" while the flight attendant belted over the intercom "WE ARE ON AN ACTIVE TAXIWAY!!" (Ok, so should I get up too and restrain him??  You're not helping me, dude!)  (What happened was that I did get a hold of his arm and I put him together with Everett in a seat next to me and I held out my arm across them both while holding the baby in the other.) (It got us through that moment, anyway.)  And then there were moments like on the way to Dammam when Everett was happily watching movies on the screen in the seat back, Lawrence and the baby were sleeping, and I got to watch about 45 minutes of a movie, too!  Wow!  That part was easy.  The lines in passport control in Dammam took two hours, which was also long, but Mike was waiting for us after customs and he scooped us up and took us home.  We are just now getting over the jet lag.  Hopefully the kids will sleep through the night tonight. 

It's a little easier to come back to something the second time.  We came home from the airport to our home with all our stuff, and everything is really familiar, as it should be.  I guess I was expecting that it would be as difficult as when we first came, with no stuff and no car and no idea where anything was or how anything worked.  But after a day or two, we are back in the swing of things.  We took a family trip to the commissary tonight, and we signed Everett up for T-ball this afternoon, and Lawrence has his first day of preschool on the 16th of September.  So life will continue to plug along over here, and maybe it will even get a little easier once both boys are in school (hooray!! but not until October - Everett's preschool starts really late!)  Our friends were all already back.  We went to Shawarma Night with one family and bumped into another while we were there.  Our next door neighbors were thrilled to have us back, too, and I hope to get in touch with more playgroup friends this week. 

Hopefully some pictures will be upcoming tomorrow...I have a shot of all the baby food that I packed and brought back (you can't get baby food here) and we somehow managed to get four months worth of it onto two shelves in the pantry.  Good thing I am married to an engineer!  (Can hardly believe little C is already eating pears, rice, and banana!  Big girl!)