A foretaste of the Christmas holidays

School's been canceled today.

Not because His Highness decided to grant us yet another bank holiday, not because one of the many industrial plants in the area exploded or leaked (which would actually be more likely to happen), not because it's snowing (!), but simply because of a (sand)storm alert. 

So we're in for some cocooning!

Love to watch the rain from a safe, dry place

Some cat trying to get inside
(oh please don't pity him, it's not so cold outside, and the porch is dry, and I gave him some milk he didn't even deign to touch... ungrateful cat!)

Drowning plants in our backyard

Our nochebuena reminding us Christmas is coming very soon

For the moment it's only raining. And I wonder if a sandstorm is actually compatible with rain: would it be raining mud then??

The sky might be dark, Lila Downs's luminous voice is lightening up my day (thank you Ramiro!):

A little generation clash

This post has nothing to do with living in Arabia but it might give some of you a laugh, so what the hell! I'm the one you'll be laughing at anyway!

Some context first: I'm teaching some 14-17 year old at the international school, mostly girls, who wear make up and nice clothes and whose hair look better than mine, and who are quite mature, too. I, for my part, am in my late 20's now, but still feel as if I were just out of college. So sometimes, I don't feel there's so much  of an age difference with the students although, as much as it might hurt to admit, it's almost a one-generation difference. 

So I was doing this game during the Spanish class (a fun, interesting and obviously pedagogical game featured in the movie Inglorious Bastards), where we had to pick famous Spanish-speaking people for the rest of the class to discover. 

As I thought Shakira would be too obvious (which it actually was: it was picked by two students in the same game), I thought about this guy:

Much to my distress, I soon noticed that half of the class had never heard his name before, and the other half could hardly remember what he sang! I suddenly felt soooo old!

The worst (or best?) part is, when I was thinking about how to help the students recall what Ricky Martin used to sing, I obviously thought about the 98 World Cup. Somehow - and thanks God! - I didn't mention anything to the students. Only later did I realize that my 15 year-old students were only 2 years old back then! No wonder they can't remember that!

Have a good Sunday everybody; I for myself will keep thinking about who my next famous person will be (I'm between Julio Iglesias and Selena Gómez...)

Science ≠ boring

When we're not working, eating or socializing, we try to attend local events or visit local points of interest. 

Speaking of local events, which are fairly scarce, Al-Khobar is hosting a Red Bull motorsports race next Wednesday, which unfortunately - although it was something to expect - will not be open to women. 

Anyway, after we'd eaten a reasonably good brunch at the Intercontinental and socialized a bit with our Saudi friend, we decided to go to the Sci-Tech museum (whose IMAX we'd already visited in January) and visited the Sci-Tech part this time. This is a great museum with many many practical activities to try so you can learn while having fun.

We used robots to stack up some foam blocks

We tried to manoeuvre a plane moved by a blower

We helped a solar powered car model gain speed

We built a suspension bridge model

It looks like we passed this one!

We discovered the power of pulleys to pull our own weight up

We built an anti-seismic building model
(which collapsed once the shaking belt reproduced an earthquake!)

We went on a NASA mission (which we also failed!)

We also tried to solve complicated puzzles (with the help of the security guard!)

Richard learnt a lot of new stuff; I only realized how vast my ignorance actually is...

A great read!

Sometimes - rarely! -  reading can be just as good as travelling. As we were forced to stay home during the Eid holiday, my only salvation was reading!

Girls of Riyadh - Rajaa Alsanea

This book was such a good pick I wanted to share it with you. Described as the Arabian "Sex and the City", it's just a must-read if you want - and who doesn't? - to get to know the young Saudi girls, their dreams, their conception of love, of friendship, of happiness. As they fall in love, get engaged, get married, get divorced, fight against their families, their friends, and try to find their place in a conservative society, you'll find yourself thinking they're not unlike your own friends.


What about love in Saudi Arabia? The last paragraph of the book sums it up very nicely:

"As for love, it still might always struggle to come out into the light of day in Saudi Arabia. You can sense that in the sighs of bored men sitting alone at cafés, in the shining eyes of veiled women walking down the streets, in the phone lines that spring to life after midnight, and in the heartbroken songs and poems, too numerous to count, written by the victims of love unsanctioned by family, by tradition, by the city: Riyadh."