Schools, Food, Weather, Clothes, and Music

Thanks for all your posts. It is Thursday night and we have been in Jeddah since Tuesday. We leave for Riyadh tomorrow. Here are the answers to some common questions. Keep 'em coming!

Schools

There are two kinds of schools here, public and private, just like in the USA. In both schools, there are rules that the government says schools must follow. Boys and girls must be separated from kindergarten. They don’t even see each other throughout the day. This is because Saudi Arabia is avery conservative country with a conservative society, which means their rules about boys and girls can seem very old-fashioned, especially to Americans and Europeans. Boys and girls are not allowed to date, by law, but they find a way to meet anyway. Many use Facebook and MySpace.

Clothes

The clothes people wear in their own home are exactly like the clothes we wear in the USA. Girls wear a robe to go out in public called an abaya. This is a rule in Saudi Arabia. The reason is to be modest in your dress. Girls also cover their head with a scarf called a hijab. The hijab must cover their head. Other girls wear veils that only show their eyes. Some girls wear veils that cover their whole face. I even saw girls who wore gloves. The color is almost always black. This is part of Saudi culture and tradition, and is not necessarily related to the Islamic religion. There are Muslims in other countries who do not dress like this.

Boys wear a long white shirt that goes to the floor which looks like a white robe. It’s called a thobe. They also wear a head covering called a gutra.

Food

The food is just as diverse as the food in the USA. They have every fast food restaurant we do. They also have a lot of very delicious Arabic food. This includes shish-ka-bob, grape leaves, taboulee, hummus, seafood, and much more. We have breakfast at our hotel (anything we want) and then lunch and dinner at fancy restaurants. I mean really fancy. Usually there are these gigantic buffets that have countless types of food. Everything is all you can eat. Most days I feel like a huge balloon ready to pop after meals.

Everywhere we go, people offer us hot tea in tiny cups to drink and dates to eat, which is very traditional in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Middle East. They also offer us little sandwiches and cookies. I’ve never eaten more amazing food over a 10 day stretch in my life!

Weather

The weather here is about 85 degrees every day. It rarely rains. I feel like I’m on Spring Break in the Caribbean. We went to the beach once on the Arabian Sea, and tonight we will go to the beach on the Red Sea. The water is a beautiful blue-green, like Cancun. There are also lots of coral reefs, so much so that they used to make the bricks for houses out of coral.

Music

A lot of people listen to Arabic and English music both. I actually saw some graffiti on the wall on the street that said some words in Arabic and then “50 Cent.” (as in the rapper) I was amazed! There is satellite TV with video music channels from everywhere. Kids seem to like a bunch of different music, just like at home.