Call me maybe?

I learned soon after our move that 2-year contracts with cell phone companies seem to be a uniquely American thing. Over here, we pay as we go. That's right, paying for excess we don't use is a thing of the past! (sidenote: leave us a comment if you know a good pay-as-you-go plan in the US since we will need something when we visit on our vacations).

Here are my pros and cons for this new (to me) system:

Pro: You only pay for what you use! Sending a text always costs a certain amount and phone calls are always a certain amount per minute.The cost is relatively low, so these two little cards which cost me around $10 will probably last about a month! Of course, you can spend much more than that monthly if you make a lot of calls. You can purchase these all over town, then just enter the number on the back into your phone and hit send, and presto! You are now free to communicate.

Con: When you run out, no more outgoing calls or texts until you re-charge. If I call someone and then run out of money while we are talking, the call ends immediately. So, if you want to keep talking you have to sit and pray (while the lyrics "call me maybe?" start running through your head), and if they call you back so you can finish the conversation. Otherwise you can run next door to any of the little shops to buy a few more cards (as long as it isn't during city-wide nap time from 2-4, but that is another post for another day!)



 

 

We love SpongeBob

This post is dedicated to two special men in my life (my dad and my brother) who share my sense of humor and enjoy a good episode of the cartoon world's stupidest show, SpongeBob Squarepants. Apparently I came to the right place, because this little guy shows up everywhere in my new town.

Here he is on the wall of a children's daycare. I pass by this every day!

 

And then I found him in a gift shop!

I think he hold business cards or something. (sorry for the poor picture quality!)

 

 

Last night we found him in the grocery store!

 

And today I found him on the bumper of this car! I think I totally freaked out the little kid who walked by when I stopped the car to take this picture. Crazy foreign woman! (but seriously, how could I not preserve this beautiful homage to our favorite sea-dwelling sponge?)

 

Happy Thursday everyone!

Blackouts, birds, and homework by candlelight

We have had several power outages in the house these last few weeks. These were all just blown fuses in our house, not power lost throughout the neighborhood, so they were quick fixes. Last week we lost power twice in one hour when I turned on the A/C in the front room of our house. The A/C has given us trouble on and off since it was installed, but I couldn't figure out how it was causing the whole fuse box to blow in just minutes. When our maintanence guy came and opened up the A/C in question, he found a huge bird's nest in the compressor. Guess we know why it was struggling! The bird was never found, but the nest was removed and the A/C sealed so as to prevent further house hunters from settling in.

Then last night we experienced our first true neighborhood-wide blackout since moving here (after 8 months, I can hardly complain). So I ended up doing my homework by candlelight.

 

(I guess this picture also gives a little preview of our office/TV room - more house pics to come!)



Kitchen Tour!

Hi Everyone!

I realized the other day that so many things that were once "weird" to me now seem commonplace. Many of those things can be found in a room I frequent everyday, the kitchen. So here we go with the kitchen tour and the myriad of strange things that make it work:

Here is an overall view from the doorway. Yes, it is very pink. Not much can be done about this.

 

Starting on the left side we have the deep freezer and the water cooler. The deep freezer is mostly for convenience, but the water cooler is a necessity. The water here is clean - as in, no parasites or bacteria in it - but it is de-salinated water from nearby oceans, so it lacks fluoride and is considered a poor long-term choice as drinking water. These coolers are in every home, school, and office building and you can even get the 5 gallon tubs delivered to the house!

 

All of the bathrooms and kitchen have these small fans in the top of one window. Not sure what the functionality is, but we leave it running to keep as much sand out as possible.

 

This is the tank that heats the water for the sink. It is activated by a switch on the other side of the room, then it heats the water inside it to a near boiling temperature (we have the same heater in both bathrooms, so this is how we get hot showers).

 

This is the A/C unit. It has trouble keeping up with 100 degree weather and a gas stove, but it tries really hard! I was in an apartment today with central A/C and I was shocked! These split units have become my norm. They need cleaned, serviced, and fixed for some reason all the time it seems, but they really are refreshing when it is over 100 degrees in April!

 

 

This is my gas oven/stovetop. We have it connected to a cylindrical gas can outside which the locals call "slinder gas," (for some reason that cracks us up every time). After 8 months of consistent use, we finally had to re-fill just this weekend. While the initial purchase of the "slinder" is around $75, a re-fill is only about $8! It was a little sad when it finally quit because I heard the gas stop while we had cinnamon rolls in the oven! I just left them in while the stove slowly cooled down and we deemed them edible :)

 

This model has buttons that indicate the flame can be lit by pressing the button, but the shopkeepers who sold it to me told us (in their limited Arab-ish language) to light it manually. That means that for every use of the oven, I turn on the gas and then light the bottom pilot light and the grill at the top (I discovered that this heats it quickly and evenly), then I turn off the grill before I put anything in to bake. If I forget though - you can get a charred-on-the-outside-not-at-all-cooked-on-the-inside coffee cake. Sad day.

 

This is the electrical plug where my gas oven plugs in. Since the shopkeepers told me to do it manually, I have been scared to ever try otherwise! So this is a virtually useless switch. Like all of our electrical outlets, you can see the switch on the right that turns the outlet itself on and off. I have it switched "off" here. And yes, on top of the switch is a layer of desert dust.

 

gross huh? yes, I wipe this off almost every day. The window above apparently isn't sealed well. Adding that to the "honey do" checklist.

 

You can also see in these pictures below how electrial wiring is done. Basically, they run cables around the room on the outside of the wall. Good news is, if there is an electrial fire, you'll see it quickly!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally, these lovely pieces of furniture function as our pantry/spice cabinent.

 

 

That is my lovely, local, pink kitchen! thanks for checking it out :)

 

 

Sandstorm aftermath

I've realized lately that my cleaning style seems to be inspired by the children's book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. For example, what started out an hour ago as the innocent thought of throwing in just one load of laundry turned into an hour of sweeping and mopping floors I never even walk on. Here are the events that conspired this week to make this late night cleaning binge seem so necessary at 10 pm this evening:

1) we had the BIGGEST sandstorm we have seen yet just last week. Unfortunately, sand doesn't seem easily captured on camera, but maybe I will go ahead and post some of our attempts to film and photograph the chaos. As a result though, literal PILES of sand blew under our doors (they are not very well sealed and that is now on the official honey-do list), through window cracks, and just got tracked in on shoes and people. Seriously, I spent enough time outside to get to and from my car at the grocery store and I have been trying to get sand out of my ears all week!

2) A power outage a few days ago caused some damage to some of our breakers and they were in need of replacement. We had power in about 2/3 of the house: office (internet, A/C, treadmill = all good!), kitchen (lights, refrigerator = all good), and master bedroom (A/C and a fan so we can sleep  = all good).

Somehow though, the en suite master bathroom did not get power back, so that meant my washing machine was out of commission. No big deal. I always have intentions of keeping up with laundry, but honestly, it builds up until someone is out of an essential article of clothing. So tonight, our repariman came and we got power back in the rest of the house! yay! which prompted my thought, "Hey, I'll just throw in a quick load of laundry before bed."

Then... I realized I would need to hang the laundry to dry,

which is when I realized that the dust I had been tolerating on my feet for several days was likely to end up on my wet, freshly laundered sheets if I didn't sweep.

So I swept.

Then I remembered that because the dust covering everything is so fine, the floor never feels clean to my feet until it has been mopped.

So I pulled out the bucket and mop.

Then it occurred to me that the stairwell to the roof had NEVER been mopped in the time I have lived here and probably was a great source of more dust getting tracked through the house (note: these stairs are only used when we need to access the air compressors on the roof, so very rarely, but with recent events, the repairmen have been traipsing up and down, spreading more dust through the other parts of the house).

And so, I swept and mopped the stairwell I have used all of 3 times since we moved in 8 months ago.

For a minute I worried the floors still be wet when my laundry was done, but then I remembered that the daytime temperature today was 99 F with 0% humidity, and I found my floors dry before I had dumped out my mop bucket :).

In short, I have cleaner floors and clean set of sheets drying safely over the clean floors. But maybe next time I should start before 10 pm. :)

Wadi's and 4x4s

There really is so much to catch up on from our first 6 months of life here, but for today, I'll just share some pictures from our recent adventures through a few local Wadis.

First, you're probably asking, "What on earth is a wadi?"
A wadi is basically a river-cut canyon. Some of these wadis still have pools of water and can be refreshing places for a swim (popular with Western expats), and others are all dried up. To get to any wadi, you need a good truck with 4-wheel-drive, and around here you may even need your 4-wheel-drive-low if you make it out of the rocks and encounter soft sand. They are great places for hiking, picnicing, camping and just getting out of town for a little while.

We also find ourselves making a lot of jokes about journeying through Mordor or driving on the moon since it is often rocky and foreign looking for us (and we are a little bit nerdy!).

Here are some favorite photos:

My handsome hubs next to a wadi

 

 

our awesome "new to us" 4x4

(check out the rock walls climbing friends!!!)

 

 

 



Having me in the picture gives a little bit of perspective so you can see how huge that canyon wall really is. The little rocks sticking out are really similar to an indoor climbing wall, but I'm not adventurous enough to go any higher.

 

 

We called this the stair to Mordor and came upon this view from the top:

 

 

 

If you drive far enough in one direction you eventually come to sand and....

 

camels!!!

 

 

There are tons more pictures we could share, but hopefully these give you a taste of desert life.