The best burger in town

Being French, my first reference of what a good burger should be, was - dreadfully - McDonalds... And then I moved to Mexico, discovered Carl's Jr., my standard for a good burger went up, and I swore never to eat at McDonalds again. But that was before I moved to Saudi Arabia, discovered Johnny Rockets, and swore never to eat at Carl's Jr. again!

I mean, look at these!

And they also serve ketchup smiley faces!

Table jukebox which unfortunately does not work (The restaurant looked so western, the waiter had to remind us music is forbidden in Saudi Arabia)

You were not thinking about drinking a Coke with your burger, were you?

A vanilla milkshake is the best way of enhancing your burger's flavour
(twice the calories, twice the pleasure!)

The emptied restaurant just about to close for the evening prayer

Happy Saudi national day!

Yesterday was Saudi Arabia's national day, commemorating the unification of the Kingdom in 1932. As it fell on a Friday (weekend for us), the King was very generous and gave us today (Saturday, normally the first day of the week) off! How cool is that? 

Obviously the roads were very busy yesterday, many people had adorned their cars with green Saudi flags, and the malls were absolutely crowded! It was nice though, as many kids and young men were wearing green shirts / thawbs / wigs / make up! (It would almost feel like St. Patrick's day!) And on top of that, there were National Day offers!

Can you figure out what all these green heart-shaped balloons are?

Let's have a closer look:

Balloons portraying King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia

Isyraf, Merwede, Jabran, Zainab and Co.

Teaching at an international school offers great challenges, some of them specific to the international audience you're facing. Here are a couple:

- Learning the students' names is never an easy task, but here it's particularly hard! (and getting the pronounciation right is another challenge) 

- As a French teacher, working on nationalities had never taken me that much time. When listing everyone's nationality in French, I thought the list would never end: most kids have at least two nationalities and they didn't want to leave out any single one!

- Pronounciation and language difficulties are different for every student, since their mother tongues are as diverse as Rumanian, Afrikaans, Urdu, Spanish, Arabic, Malay, Italian, Tagalog, English, etc.

- Having so many languages spoken in the classroom, it's very likely that some kid will find a similarity with his own language and want to highlight it in front of the class (guaranteed interruptions!)

- Assignments written by Arabic speakers who are still relatively new to the English language can be very hard to read! It kind of looks like it's been written with the left hand... (which is probably what my Arabic teacher must think of my Arabic handwriting!)

- You want to be very careful about what you say in the classroom since the kids, in spite of being only 12 years old, already have their own (or their community's) political opinions. 

  For instance, mentioning Denmark can put you into trouble (I thought the cartoons affair was an old story, but apparently it's not!).

  Or, when working on French-speaking countries with an atlas, you'll catch a Pakistani kid pointing at a map of the Indian subcontinent and arguing with a young Indian about why Pakistan has more legitimacy over Kashmir.

On the positive side, when asking them why they wanted to learn French, they were able to name plenty of good reasons, and these didn't include the typical "I like the way it sounds", or "my parents want me to". 

The fact that they're both immature young and already open onto the world actually makes it really fun for me, and I hope to have some more stories to share with you soon!

Imagine a world...

... where, getting up on a Sunday afternoon, you don't need to face the first tough choice of the day: decide whether you feel like having breakfast or lunch;

... where well-behaved boys are rewarded with balloon dogs;

... where Parmesan cheese does not come out of a box and can be savoured without pasta (but yes with wine!);

... where pasta is prepared to order with fresh ingredients;

... where the chef actually understands how much Nutella you mean when you order a crêpe with "a lot of Nutella";

... where oysters does not have to be eaten by the dozen;

 ... where everyone eats at his own pace, four hours long;

... where you can pick the sweet just because of their colours, and not be disappointed;

... where you can wear ridiculous balloon hats and not be pointed at!

Come and visit me, and experience the magic of a Friday brunch in Bahrain!

The post everyone is waiting for!

Oh yeah, I'm setting the expectations really high here, but I'm not afraid, not at all! 

And for good reasons: this famous middle eastern sweet is everyone's favourite, and I can see more than one reader lands up on this blog hoping to find the famous recipe. 

See where I'm going?

Luckily for you, I've got this ancestral Om Ali recipe from a Saudi friend. The basis of the Om Ali can be puff pastry, croissants, or even corn flakes. I personally prefer it with croissants, and the better the croissants, the better the Om Ali. 

If you live in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, you'll be lucky to find delicious croissants at the Suisse Patisserie (one thing to be really thankful for!), if you live in France, you should be able to get reasonably good croissants (probably not as good as these though...!) and if you live in Mexico or the US, you'll have to use the famous canned croissants (nothing as good as the real thing, but fun to bake!).

You'll need three or four of those

Crumble up the croissants and place in an oven-proof dish

Ingredients:

4 cups of milk
2 eggs
4 tablespoons of sugar
1 small carton of thick cream
Vanilla
A pinch of cardamom
Raisins (you can also add almonds, pistachios, etc.)

Mix the ingredients and pour the mix onto the crumbled croissants

Cover the dish with aluminium foil and bake in the oven for 45-60 minutes at 180°C

You can also top it with sweetened condensed milk and leave it for another 5 minutes. 

Enjoy!

It's best served warm, and you can also pour some extra warm milk on top to make it creamier. 

Keep it for a rainy day, uh?

It's been months since it's rained here, and day after day after day after day, without any exception, the sun rises high in the sky, warming us with its overwhelming 45°C. 

During the first few months, it feels great, you don't even need to check the weather channel, you forget about trousers and jumpers and proper shoes, to trade them for flip flops, shorts and t-shirts. You go to the beach, to the swimming pool, and you're confident the weather will never ruin any of your plans. 

And then you find yourself dreaming about your next vacation: you consider Scotland, Denmark and Brazil (up North in the state of Pará, where they only have two seasons: one where it rains every day, and the other one where it rains all day long!). I'm even thinking dreamily about the crappy weather of my native Vendée...

What I would give for a fierce Brazilian thunderstorm:

Thunderstorm on the Amazon river

Honestly, how can you combine this kind of mood:

Abuelita hot chocolate, one of Mexico's many flavours

With this kind of weather:

Well, obviously, I'd just need two days of crappy weather, after that, I'd be fine for another couple of months of sunny hot weather!