Family Field Trip to the Mall

We went to the mall today. We don't do family mall trips. Hisham hates the mall, so that was probably our first and last trip to the mall as a family. :)
I believe i've mentioned before that women can not drive off camp. This is a Saudi law but even expats have to abide by it. But, Aramco (the company Hisham is working for) tries to make it as easy as possible for people to get off camp and do the things they need to do, which is great. They have tons of nice "shoppers buses", the same kind of charter bus that Adam rides to school. We took the bus to the mall today. We left a little after 9 and got dropped of right in front of the Mall of Dhahran. This is not a mall, it's a little city. Probably nothing like Mall of America (which I never want to visit, by the way), but it can hold its own. It felt like we walked for miles and miles. The stores all close and shut their doors for all prayer times for about 20 minutes or so. You have to leave the store and go pray, or walk around the mall. If you are in a coffee shop or restaraunt, you can stay in, they just close the doors half way. I took the kids to a little cafe and got Adam a milkshake and a muffin while Hisham went to pray, then I went. There are mosques in the mall and the Athan (call to prayer) is called over the
speaker system. :)
I did go to the mall with just the kids last weekend, but I only went into two stores because I was short on time. Today I saw most all of the stores. I felt like I was back home, except there are no fitting rooms here, althoughI did see a fitting room area in the women's mosque. I bought a pair of jeans from Gap. The guy told me I could return sale items for a refund within 1 day, regular merchandise within 3 days or an exchange within 7 days (or something like that). I'm thinking women try the clothes on in the fitting rooms in the mosques so they don't have to go all the way home, try something on, then bring it all the way back within 3 days, and worry about stores closing for prayer, getting out in the heat, etc.
We walked around until we got to the food court, and the amusement park!!! Sometimes I hope Adam doesn't see something or is not paying attention to it, like the HUGE candy store we walked right by. But there was no missing this. There was a massive hamster maze for humans, of course he wanted to go inside. I was taking pictures in the mall with my phone (so pardon the quality), and I was aggravating Hisham. He said I looked like a tourist. :)
I asked the shop manager/worker most of the time if I could take a picture, other times I was trying to get it quickly so I wouldn't upset/offend anyone. Here are a few:

There is no shortage of fashion or high-heels here. Don't let the black abayas fool you, women here are very much girly girls :)

Pottery Barn Kids, complete with monogramming station

Pottery Barn

Tons of gummy candies (Adam's favorite). The best part is that I don't have to worry about them having pork in them! Yay!

Yumm!

A Dolce & Gabbana child's plain white t-shirt. About $150 dollars. No big deal.

Sign for the women's fitting room in the mosque

The hamster maze!

This made me feel like I was at the fair, but here they have steamed chestnuts instead of grilled corn on the cob

Ice skating. No, we probably won't be trying this unless Adam magically learns to ice skate on his own. I need wheels on my skates!

Chocolate bunnies in the candy store

I don't care where you are in the world, people like cheap shoes......

fried chicken.....

and little girls love their daddies.

Trying to get settled

So, we've been here now for 14 days. I still don't feel very settled or in a routine yet. Part of that has been because of Adam not being in school, our furniture not being here, not having a second car, etc. I know all of that will come in time, i'm not stressing about it. But......Adam has been having a hard time. He's not sad or depressed or anything, he has just been dying for kids to play with, so he's driving ME crazy with all of his energy! There are plenty of kids in the neighborhood, and most of them come out in the evenings (too hot in the afternoon), but it's hard to explain to a 5 year old why our neighbor kids don't come out to play. They have homework, probably chores, dinner, bath, etc. Our backyards are connected, and most people leave the back yard door unlocked, so I have to keep explaining to him that he can't just walk into someone's back yard and knock on their sliding glass doors!! BUT, today was his first day at K4. In Birmingham, he started at Creative Montessori School (best school ever!) when he was 18 months, so he was no stranger to school, routine, great teachers, lots of learning and playing, etc. I was very excited for him when we went to meet his new teacher and see his classroom. But I was bummed that they only go for half a day, which is really like just a couple of hours. Not because I want him out of the house (mostly), but because he loves to be around other kids and people, and I know he gets tired of looking at me and Sophia all day. He will be in this class for two months, then summer break, then he goes to Kindergarten!!!!!!!! I can't believe it.
Kids ride the bus to K4 here (as long as you don't live too close to the school). This is the one thing he has been most excited about. I dropped him off this morning, and he rode the bus home. When I dropped him off, I kept asking him to stand up so I could take a picture. He kept telling me to "hurry up before the kids see you taking pictures of me" and when he got off of the bus after school I kept trying to kiss him and he told me to hurry before "J" saw us, the little girl his age that lives next door. Isn't 5 too young to not want kisses from your mommy in front of your friends?!?!
My little man-child.

Showing off the back of his awesome book-bag.

In our front yard getting ready to leave for school!!

In front of the gate I had to walk him to. The blue and yellow covering is the playground area.

Getting off of the bus. 

First school-bus ride ever!!

So, there are no big yellow school buses here. These kids ride in style and comfort! This is the best shot I could get of the whole bus. I didn't want to ask the bus driver to wait for me to get a good shot (well, I really did want to ask, but....). I'm kind of sad I probably won't ever get a yellow school-bus picture, but  I think this one will make for a better story when he's older.

We went to a gathering tonite that i'll post more about later. We walked there, and kept getting stopped by Adam's friends. Here he is with one of his friends, chatting about his new re-useable water bottle he got at school today during their recycling program.

Baseball at sunset.

Tears and laughter

Today we had to go to the hospital for all of us to have our blood drawn. We had to complete this in order to get our iqama (residency). You almost can't do anything without your iqama, it's kind of like a driver's license, or social security card. So we find our way to the hospital, and it's a sea of niqabs. Niqab is the face covering that Saudi women wear, it has an opening for their eyes. They wear the niqab in addition to the abaya, the long black "dress". I didn't expect to see so many women in niqab ON camp, I expected it off camp. There was even a woman that passed by wearing it, in addition to her white lab coat. It's such a stark contrast when you see all of the black compared to the other colors in the room.
The lady that drew our blood is from India. I asked her how long she has been here, and if she likes it. 5 years, and yes, but she misses her family. She told me about her husband and her children (10 years old and 8 years old) back home in her country. Some people come here for the money, some come for the experience, some come because of the benefit of having more time to spend with their family. She is here because she can make a good living and help support her family. She gets to see them twice a year and they skype every night. As she was drawing my blood, tears started rolling down my face (i'm getting teary eyed just thinking about it). I was trying to put myself in her position and imagine what it felt like to be apart from my husband and kids. Just like i'd be doing if I was going through it, I started crying. I always try to stop myself from crying, because once I start, it's over. I didn't want Adam seeing me cry because it was his turn to get his blood drawn next, and I didn't want him thinking I was crying because of the needle!! Then Hisham walks in, and he thought I was crying because Sophia was going to have to have blood drawn (and that was the first I heard of her having to have her blood drawn!!!). So the tech told him I was a little emotional. So we finished up with Adam comparing his muscles. He said the muscle of the arm that the blood was drawn from grew bigger than the other. He kept comparing and when Hisham told him the other one was bigger too, he said "no, that one didn't have blood taken from it". Oh, and yes, he screamed like his arm was being cut off, then immediately stopped once the needle was in. One of the men felt so badly for him that he gave him almost a whole roll of stickers!
I left with Adam and let Hisham hold Sophia while they stuck her. I couldn't handle any more crying, mine or hers.
Adam and I were waiting in the women's waiting area (see picture below) for Hisham and Sophia to come out. There was one woman sitting in the waiting room, she was wearing a full face veil. Of course, Adam was staring at her. I told him it wasn't polite to stare, so he looked ahead, then immediately looked at her again. I told him again not to stare, and it was like there was a loaded spring in his neck, he looked ahead, then immediately to the right where she was sitting. "Mommy! Where are her eyes?!?!". "Mommy! How can she see me?!". Now, if her face wasn't covered, I would just give her that smile and nod that moms give each other, the "yep, he's at that age" nod (I did look over and smile at her), but I couldn't see her face either. So I didn't know if she was looking at us, if she could understand us (we were speaking English), or if she even cared that we were in there. Then when she got up to meet her son, I assume, Adam said "Mommy! How can she see where to walk?!". All I could do at that point was laugh. Back home, I was always worried he'd ask something out loud about a handicapped person. Now I have to worry about him asking about covered women!!
Some women see other women dressed in modest clothing like a long skirt and think they're ultra-conservative. In Alabama, people would look at me and think i'm ultra-conservative because I wear hijab. Now, i'm here in Saudi Arabia, and I see these women who wear niqab as ultra-conservative. Really, we all have different comfort levels and we're all just living in this world the best way we know how.

There are Male and Female waiting rooms here. Adam said he had to wait with Daddy because he's a man now since he's 5 years old.

Starting a new chapter

We've been in KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) for 2 full days now (and i've already managed to do 4 loads of laundry, how does that happen?!?!). So far so good. The house is nicer than either of us expected. It's very clean, very spacious, and has tons of storage. It's a shame we had to move from Homewood, AL to KSA to get a huge walk-in closet (Homewood dwellers know what I mean about the closet issue). There were lots of things here for us when we arrived. A set of dishes, a set of pots/pans, utensils, glasses, some food items (the bag of chocolates was my favorite), towels, toilet paper, shampoo, body soap, baby soap, razors, laundry detergent, dish detergent, a dish sponge, and some other things. It was perfect. Just enough to get us started. The house is semi-furnished also. We'll use this furniture until our shipment arrives. As soon as I can i'll post some pictures of the house.
The kids are fine, just a little jet-lagged. We rented a car today so I don't have to call for a cab for awhile. I've only been out a few times, just trying to get rested and settled. Our first trip to the commissary, the grocery store on camp, was yesterday. I was surprised at how many American products they had, and I was also surprised at the crazy prices!! Expensive crazy, not cheap crazy. Tomorrow I go to Adam's school to enroll him. I think the school year is almost over, but he's dying to play with some kids, so maybe he can go to school for the last few weeks at least. Everyone seems to be friendly. I don't care what country you're from, or what country you're in, everyone loves to smile at and touch a baby. It's a great ice-breaker.