Out and About!

Even though I woke up yesterday at 4:00 AM, I felt pretty darn good the whole day.  Did not feel sleepy at all.  I feel pretty good again today too so that's good.  I spent the morning watching TV and drinking coffee.  Nothing too exciting or taxing.  Apparently Late Night with David Letterman is on in the morning here so that's nice.  I also watched "Fantasy Island."  Bet you forgot about that show didn't you!  Da plane! Da plane!  I used to love that show.  It was in English with Arabic subtitles.  I guarantee there will be more blogs about television later once I watch a little more.  (Museums and fine arts are not generally my thing... so if you are looking that kind of stuff... well, you probably won't find much of it on this blog... sorry;)

Later, we had a snack and went to the gym where I did a treadmill run.  Felt really excellent, probably because I had a few days off since my last run.  Afterwards, I took a shower and since I have no hair dryer here, I had to drip dry.  (Doesn't take long when it is 115 degrees outside)  I mention this only because my hair looks kinda bad in the pictures later in this post.

After having lunch in the compound restaurant, I was still feeling good so we decided to go to the mall.  Well, one or two of the malls anyway.  (And there are TONS!)  Since it is Ramadan, a lot of things are closed during the day and don't open up until late at night.  For some reason, I really want to go to the Ikea in Saudi Arabia.  (again, not your usual cultural fare)  I read about it somewhere and I want to see the cafeteria.  Supposedly they have booths in there that you can pull shades around so that women can take off their head scarfs (I'm sure there is another name for that but I don't know what it is yet) and eat without being seen. We looked up the location and the hours but, since it is Ramadan, the Ikea doesn't open until 9 PM and closes sometime around 2 or 3 in the morning.  In the meantime, we decided to go and see what stores were open at the local malls.

The first mall we went to was the Sahara Mall.  Only about 40% of the stores were open but I wanted to see what was in the mall so we walked through it.  I am super excited because there is pretty much everything that we had in the states, plus stores that I liked shopping in while visiting London and Hong Kong.  (Marks and Spencer, Boots, etc.)  Upstairs there was a food court but everything was closed because of Ramadan.  Still, we checked it out just to see what was up there.  I took a picture of one sections.  There were bunches more but the AC was off up there and the lights were dim and I was using my ipod to take the pics and it has no flash... so my apologies, but it's better than nothing!

Not sure if you can tell, but that is Cinnabon, Popeyes, and McDonalds.  There was also a Subway but it was on the other side.

Here is a picture of me in my abaya.  Yeah, definitely not my best look but I am getting used to it.  (This one is for you Andrea!)  The head scarf is in my purse.  So far I have not been told to put it on, so I don't.

This one is me outside the bathroom.  Some guy was mopping outside and he was laughing because Matt was taking a picture of me at the WC.  It was probably not a good idea for Matt to be taking a picture of the woman's bathroom but since it was Ramadan, the mall was pretty empty.  Those of you who are familiar with my last blog may remember that I have a bit of an obsession with toilets.  Evidently I still have a bit of that going on.  I will wait till I check out a few more before I elaborate on the bathrooms of Saudi Arabia.

After we made a few purchases at Boots, we decided to go to the mall down the street and check that out as well.  Now while I was in Macau we kind of had to get used to not having a very large selection while shopping.  There were often times when we went to the grocery store and they were completely out of things like milk, bread, or eggs.  There was really not a lot of selection or choices when you finally found what you were looking for, and the quality was generally very poor.  Household items were generally very inexpensive but they were very poorly made and tended to break or rust (humidity was a huge problem).  Usually we just felt pretty lucky to find what we were looking for in the first place.  I spent a lot of time missing my favorite store in the states.... Target.  (I love that store!)

Mall number 2 was even more empty.  Only about 20% of the stores were open.  Also, the AC seemed to be turned down very low or was off because it was pretty warm inside.  But, mall #2 had the greatest store ever!  Even better than Target!  I know you are thinking, "Better than Target? How is that possible?"  Well, I don't quite know how, but I am telling you... IT IS!  For starters it is GIGANTIC!  It's called Danube Hypermarket.  Now I didn't really look at the clothes, but there are so many clothing stores in Saudi, that if I can't find what I am looking for here, well then it probably doesn't exist.  Anyway, this store has EVERYTHING!  Electronics, housewares, small appliances, Nick knacks, bedding, toiletries,  and a HUGE food/ grocery section.  We didn't even make all the way across the store.  It was just too big and there was just too much to see.  Here is just a small example of what I am talking about.  Now the US generally has a huge selection of whatever it is you want to buy.  We have plenty of choices... but this place is ridiculous.  Matt and I were walking around amazed at all of this STUFF and Matt made a joke that, "I really need to buy some soap... but I just don't see any." Here is the pic that explains that joke. (It was actually funny but I think you had to be there.)

This is all bar soap.  I have never seen so much soap in my life.  I couldn't possibly count all of the different kinds.  How is anyone supposed to choose? But Matt was looking for shower gel.  And we actually looked around for quite a while not sure where to find it but we should have just turned around because this is what was on the opposite wall.

Twenty minutes later, I think Matt finally made a choice.  Evidently, there is a such a thing as too many choices!

We finally made it home around 6:30.  Around 7:30, I realized that there was no way that I was going to be able to stay up to go to Ikea, so that will have to wait for another day.  There is only so much shopping that you can do in one day anyway.  We had dinner in the compound restaurant and I was in bed by 10 and conked out!