A gorgeous Friday/Sunday morning and I am sitting out on my patio drinking coffee and listening to my Sunday morning playlist. I wonder if I should rename it my Friday morning playlist. I am also working on last Sunday's crossword- I print it on Sunday but never really work on it much until Friday. I am short on pictures this week so am including some of plants in my yard. If you can identify any of them please let me know as I am only familiar with the four season plants. These tropical plants are a mystery to me. I think the short shiny green leaf plant is a Gardenia? They sell vegetable seeds in the grocery store but I am not really sure what would do well. Someone told me they planted garlic. I wish I had brought my olive tree with me-- I am sure it would enjoy the climate. Though I know my parents are enjoying it at their house. The weather the past couple of weeks has been perfect- sunny and warm but with a breeze so in the high 70s- not too hot. I have been told there are two seasons here- summer and hot summer. We are in summer now and this should last until March or so. I wish the beach on campus was ready and open but it is not. I have heard about a private for "families" (This is the Saudi way of saying where men and women are allowed together versus all men or all women.) But we haven't quite figured out how to get there.
I finally feel like I am settling into more of a "normal" routine. Work is still very busy but at least I have cut back to 10 hour days 5 days a week and only a few hours on the weekends rather than the 12+ hour days 7 days a week. We have two additional full time professional staff joining us after the holidays and some temporary staff coming in this week to help with all of the processing of paper and credentials students are submitting. We actually have over 3000 applications started and about 500 submitted. Not to get too technical but the functionality of our on-line selection process was, well it needed lots of work. And things are actually starting to come together. We read our first applications this week and moved them to the faculty committee.
I even went to the mall one evening this week. There are about 4 or 5 big malls in Jeddah and every night there are KAUST service buses to the malls. It is really very convenient except that they are an hour away. I went with Jess who is our administrative assistant. It was so nice to go shopping with a girl!! And not my usual group of male friends. Jess is from Bath, England and her husband is Director of the water sports on campus. They have three children so she was doing some Christmas shopping and I was looking for shoes and stationary. I need to get away from my "traditional black pump closed toe shoes." And I think you'll like what I found! They are a fun color, open toed, dressy, AND comfortable. They are by clarks. I know they don't look it! My grandmother would LOVE that they are "wedgies." And you'll see the great stationary sometime in the New Year ;-)
Last night was another party at the US Consulate-- a fish and chips party. I know, you would think that would be the kind of party they would have at the British consulate. At least we found it this time. Not as crowded as the Halloween bash but it meant you could mingle more-- lots more KAUST people too. The music was excellent so there was lots of good dancing. No pork served but the french fries were delicous and the gin devine. Such interesting people too-- I met a Lebanese woman who grew up in the UK and her family moved here when she was 21. She was married off within 6 months, had three children, hated her husband. It took her three years and a million dollars to divorce him and now she is married to the love of her life. Her nephew, who I met first, is an "event planner" for Saudi nationals all over the world. Something of a concierge service no matter where they are going.
Let's see, I got my first package this week-- thank you Mom and Dad! Two little Christmas trees and some fake snow. I loved that my mother wrote "evergreen trees" rather than "Christmas trees" on the customs form. It took less than two weeks from CT! Brings a little Christmas to my home! There were pointsettas one night in the grocery store but when I went back yesterday to buy one they were all gone ;-( Otherwise it really doesn't feel like Christmas- not just because it is warm but there is no acknowledgement of the holiday here- no decorations in the malls- just another day! Since I can't take vacation time yet I am lucky that Christmas is on a Friday. So nest week I will be wrting from Istanbul where I'll spend the weekend with friends and at least go to mass. Oh, I forgot to tell you that at the Consulate party they had a little Christmas bazaar table set-up-- With all this religious stuff!
The other picture this week is of Jamal (on the left) who works in my office- He is Paletinian/Jordanian and went to school and worked in the US at the University of Arizona. And Waqas and Abner who are both post docs. Waqas is from Pakistan and went to school in the US. He has an interesting story about a month he spent in immigration detention/jail because as he was entering the US from a weekend in Canada they confused his name/passport with someone else. He just got a letter of apology from the US Department of State. And Abner is from Singapore-- he was working on some special project with the President of KAUST(also from Singapore) that day so that is why he was wearing the thobe and hence the reason for the picture. I will have to blog about typical Saudi dress soon!
Enjoy your weekends!! Only 7 days until Christmas!
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