Lashing Offense?

My naiveté is showing again. Awhile back my Nespresso machine stopped warming milk; an essential component of my morning latte. Thankfully, or so I thought at that time, I had a driver and a compound restaurant. The driver took care of all of the details with the Nespresso machine. Took it into the distributor, made sure it got fixed and made the trips back and forth hoping to get there while opened because, still, sometimes knowing when businesses are opened is more like dumb luck.

While the machine was being fixed I was thankful for the compound restaurant because I could get up in the morning, give a call and have my morning fix delivered to my doorstep. Not bad! After a short time an employee at the restaurant got wise to my calling and started to call me asking if I would like a latte...even better!

Then he started calling to chit chat (which I politely tried to get out of)

Then he asked me for my personal mobil number (which I did not give him)

Then he ran out of the restaurant every time I walked passed bringing treats for the kids (which I did not accept)

Then I came home one afternoon to find that he had brought food over that I didn't order nor did I pay for.

Uh oh.

I had a problem. What to do?

I pondered this for awhile. How should I handle this situation.

I could be straight forward...get in his face...order him to leave me alone...I thought in this environment, that could be dangerous. At the end of the day, I don't want anybody to have a reason to dislike me.

My husband was out of town...so, that wasn't an option.

Right! I have a maid and a driver. I decided that the best course of action was probably to remove myself from the situation entirely. I sent the maid with money for the food, asked her to pay for it. While there, she told the man that he should leave me alone because he could get in big trouble for his behavior. When my husband returned, he had words with the man and told him it was inappropriate for him to be calling and bringing over food to our house.

I relayed this story to some friends of mine and the man in the family commented that this was "a lashing offense". I think it is, but at the end of the day, if reported, I am unsure who would be getting the lashing.

Conversations With My Driver

Those of you who have been reading, know that we have had difficulty with our drivers. Earlier this year we decided that we had no other choice but to employ our own full-time driver. And, really, the problems that we had had with the driver's prior to new-new driver have vanished. Our current driver is reliable and likes the children and is nice enough. But, at the end of the day, I have had a problem with the basic idea of having a driver and the reality of having a driver.

I am not so put off by the fact that I am not allowed to drive here. As long as I get from point A to point B I am happy. Having a driver, however, means that there is always an extra person in the car, an extra set of eyes, an extra set of ears. This has been irritating to me. I have come to realize that the time in the car in the past was a time that the kids and I could talk, and be silly. My daughter and I love to car dance. Now I feel forced to watch my behavior as we are always in the company of a non-related man. It was either old-new driver or new-old driver that made me aware of this.

Over the past seven or eight months I have been hating having a driver. But something happened over the summer. We came back from summer vacation and all of a sudden having a driver wasn't the most irritating thing in the world. We have adapted. And recently I have realized that my driver is a wise man:

"Madam, I am learning things from you every day"

"Really?"

"Yes, you know you have one child on one side of you screaming and complaining and another child on the other side crying and screaming. And you, you never get upset. You do not hit your children. I see many parents hitting their children. You do not yell. This I see all the time. You are calm and you explain to them. When I have a wife, I will talk to her, I will tell her that that is the kind of parent I want to be."

This after what I would call the most challenging week of being a parent! Maybe having a driver isn't a bad thing...maybe an extra pair of eyes and ears isn't so bad. I think I'm keeping this one around. He's good for a little pick me up!

Comfortably Numb

I know, many of you are wondering if there is anybody out there.... Two and a half months have gone by without word..what is she doing????

Well in all honesty, I have been comfortably enjoying my life in Saudi Arabia. Where year one was filled with chaos and uncertainty, getting to know new people, missing old friends, and worrying about children adjusting; year two has been, thus far, filled with the comfortable predictability that comes from knowing your surroundings. Or at least those surroundings which one allows themselves to get to know.

We are enjoying our new found friendships. We are enjoying the quality of life that our children have here. We feel the good outweighs the bad. Yet, we are a little ambivalent. At the end of the day this is a temporary life, a life that one has to leave so the question of when to leave is omnipresent. This, I feel, makes it a little bit difficult to live in the now. Instead, we are always thinking one step ahead and weighing this life against a life we imagine we would have some place else.

So, how does Saudi measure up?

Today's weigh in goes something like this:

On the plus side, I personally am enjoying compound life. We have met some fantastic people and every day I know that if I want I will bump into somebody I know and can do anything from say 'hi' and give a passing smile to have a cup of coffee or chat for a couple of hours.

I am enjoying the multi-cultural-ness of it all. I am not surrounded by Americans, I am not surrounded by Swedes. Today, I am in regular contact with people from around the world. This is something positive for us all. The kids have friends from around the world, the majority of their friends speak two languages as do they. This, I believe, gives them a different view and understanding of the world as compared to the one they would have had had they lived their life in only Sweden or the US.

Another bonus is that the kids have time to be involved in quite a few activities and I am getting to spend more time with them here than I would have had we been someplace else.

On the minus side:

I miss having a home of my own. Living here is a little like hotel living. And, sometimes I long to get out into the woods....to go for a hike..to hear the wind rustling through the trees. To smell the rain. I miss the nature that is not desert.

As long as the plus side is heavier than the minus side I guess we'll continue to be comfortably numb here in Saudi Arabia....at least until we can figure out something else to do.