04/02/10
Happy Birthday Mom
I write this today my mom’s birthday the past few days have been eventful and really great.
First I moved out of the compound that I was staying at and into the hotel that is in the center of the city, it is called the Tulip Inn. Pretty nice place and the company covers our breakfast and dinner here in the hotel. It is nice to be able to go out of the front and walk around and see people. Even though I can’t speak to most of the people I see, it is still nice to be in the heart of the city. The past few nights I go out and take long walks and just venture around seeing whatever I can. All of the shops here open late and stay open til almost 12am. This will be my 4th day in this hotel and I’m happier than a pig in shit to be where the pulse of the city is. I blend in well here because I have had many people turn to me and speak Arabic and every time I reply Mafi Arabi ( I don’t speak Arabic) I get a shocked look and what I assume is a statement like bullshit you don’t speak Arabic to start. But then I tell them where I’m from and if they speak any English I can usually have a nice chat about New York or Florida.
Time is interesting here since I haven’t started work and won’t probably start for another 10 days if not more, so I find things to keep my mind and body busy. The other night after dinner me and my buddy Tom walked around and found a shopping center across from our hotel. We saw our first little person working behind a counter and we looked at women’s dresses…And took pictures of them with our phone. I know the people in the mall were already staring at us cause we looked different but then you add on that we were oohing and ahhing the beautiful designs of dresses that all these shops had. Yes I know very macho thing to do. Ah I know Amira probably has a proud tear in her eye to know her husband had a dandy old time window shopping. But really I have never seen such beautiful designs. So me and Tom had a laugh at our own expense and imagined our significant others wearing these works of art.
On Wednesday I went to the health council to get my paperwork together so I can get my work visa. I can say it was my pleasure to wait in this building for 10 hours. My ticker number was 68, so I walked around in a circle for hours and when it became later and they were up to number 53 I noticed a bunch of guys standing my one of the window. I decided it was close to closing time so I should see what’s up. Well apparently some time after 3 o’clock the number system goes out the window and it is a kind of a free for all. So I found a person who could speak English and tell me what to do. One of the guards told me just go to the window and this one particular will process my paperwork real fast… Anyway, they went over my stuff and I ended up being the last person leaving the place. There might have bee a small amount of pushing and squaring off in front of the window but by the grace of God I didn’t have to go back on Saturday.
Later that night me, Tom, Allen, and Doug all went to a compound called The Ranco Compound. Now this place was a real compound it had a Supermarket, Tennis courts, Pools, Hair dressers and 2 machine gun nest. Me and the guys hung out with one of the Aussie medics Matt who was really nice and gave us a tour, introduced us to his family and brought to the local gathering spot where we played pool, darts, drank apple juice, coke and non-alcoholic beer. It was a lot of fun and we met people from all over the world. It was a great night. All the expats that I have meet so far have been really great sociable people. This is turning out to be a really great experience, I’m glad I came out to this side of the planet. I hope you enjoy the pictures I think that say a few more than a thousand words ; )
It’s now 9:44pm and I just came back from dinner at a Korean restaurant. Earlier today Tom,Allen,Doug and I drove to some racing, family day event. It was such a AWESOME!!! experience I have to put it in another post with a bunch of pictures. I should have all of the pics from the other guys tomorrow and I will post the majority on facebook.
Today has been the best day I have had here in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We got to hang out with 2 princes (that we know of) and their family and there was a race track involved…
Nuff said for now. To be continued…
Carlito
No comments:
Post a Comment