Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Saudi Summary

If you'd like to find all the posts about our Saudi trip without reading backwards (or out of order!) start here.

The reason we went - Epic Adventure
Getting there - We Survived
Jet lag and the Welcome Dinner - What Time Is It?
First day of touring (with camels!) - Desert Tour
More sightseeing - Busy Arabia
Visiting an orphanage - Girl's Day
A day at the beach - Arabian Gulf
The real desert and an oil facility - Shaybah
The Farewell Dinner - Saudi Style
An Evening of Style - Saudi Fashion Show
Lunch with old friends - Saudi Colleagues

One last excitement - Overseas Medical Adventures
Church on Friday? - The Final Day
The trip home - And...

And here are some of the other things that I noticed while we were there...

Driving: Only men may drive there and they drive like crazy! On the highway if you are in their way they will pass you on the shoulder, either side! They don't really use their signals and the stop lights in town are right above the first driver so when it turns green he can't see it and the guys behind him must honk to let him know it's green. Makes for a lot of honking and I just thought they were all impatient until Paul showed me where the lights were.

All public buses are like tour buses. They are nice and some even have toilets in them. The school buses there are for worker transport only.

People: The people are called Saudis there and the language is Arabic. They are extremely hospitable. For example, the welcome dinner was put on by the reunion committee and the chairman is Saudi. There was more food there than 3 times the people would eat.

Everywhere we go there are always snacks and they are trying to feed you. I gained 5 pounds in 2 weeks, but at least Brian gained more!

They especially love children so Cory was our pass for a lot of things! He was especially helpful to me if I was carrying him everyone finds a chair for me or lets me go to the front of the line.

Money: They use the Riyal, abbreviated SR (for Saudi Riyal) and it is tied to the dollar so there really is no inflation. It also means that stuff isn't that much cheaper there than here. Some things are, but not generally. The exchange rate is 3.75 riyals for one dollar and for some reason that was really hard for me to get used to. I kept wanting to multiply the wrong way and was thinking things were way cheaper than they were.

There are many other small custom notes in amongst my picture posts!

2 comments:

  1. Really cool you got to see such a different culture. I've really enjoyed hearing all your adventures and your observations :) Thanks for sharing them with us!!

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  2. Wow, what a wonderful experience! I think I would be too chicken to take an opportunity like that if it came my way. Way cool.

    ReplyDelete

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