Culture shock anyone?

Hello everyone! We are about a week in now and have officially started our first days of work and are up and running with our teaching schedule. Above is a picture of Brendon’s school and believe me it is quiet a maze. It is three stories and I get lost almost everyday. Staci works at a different campus for the females only in a different part of the city because single males and single females can have no interaction what so ever. It's very different but more on that in a minute. We are both fitting very nicely with the job the teaching has been tons of fun. It's amazing what the students think about America and their questions that they have. The top Americans they knew were in their words: President Bush, President Obama, Condoleezza, Hilary Clinton, Oprah, Micheal Jackson, and who else? Akon (I know. Super random). They also thought it was funny that we only wanted 4 kids as each of them come from families with at least 5 or 6 boys and 3 or 4 girls. My favorite question so far that they have asked though was: "How close to your home is the Bermuda Triangle?" Glad to hear that out of the few world facts they know about, Bermuda Triangle is on the list.

Ok so back to some of the different things of Saudi culture. Male and female interaction is what they call haram, which basically means extremely off limits. What also fall in the category of haram are things like: movies, alcohol, music, talking about religion or politics, and of course – chess. Why chess? No clue. But don’t, worry checkers are ok. :) I don't understand it either.

Things that are haram are often very easy to spot here in the Kingdom. For example in the mall you will see huge pictures of a women in the store windows where the faces are all blurred out (sometimes its just the eyes blurred out) and all the skin covered up. How do they cover the skin? Well, as we saw just last night, just staple pieces of paper over it.

The malls are also policed. They are not the typical mall security you think of with their little night stick and watching for burglary. There sole purpose is to to kick out single guys. You see most most malls are woman and family only for 90% of the time. So single guys get the boot, but what happens when your wife goes into the girly store and you are waiting outside? Well that is something that Charlie found out the other day when he got kicked out of the mall after Corrie went into store to look around!

Many times we just have to laugh, play the ignorant american card and scratch our heads later about how different it is here. It is an amazing culture and one that we are growing to love for all of it’s differences. Our interactions have been wonderful with the people and we have learned the amazing hospitality of our Arab brothers. We love you all and always love to hear how you are doing as well. Keep in touch!