First Impressions and Life in Riyadh

We made it to Saudi! And we have gotten partially settled. Settled enough, at least, for me to finally sit down for an update!

First Impressions

Saudi is a strange, wonderful and strangely beautiful place. Aside from men walking around in their thobes (white robes) and women in their abayas (black robes), you initially notice the construction. It’s everywhere. As in, I have not yet found a single place in the entire city that doesn’t have some kind of construction going on. There are street-widening projects. There are road repair projects. There are sidewalk projects. Oh, right, and there’s the metro project. For some reason, Riyadh decided to build an entire metro system from scratch all at the same time. They have enough manpower to do it, I suppose, but it really leaves a mess everywhere.

On our ride from the airport to my housing, we also immediately noticed the varied and fascinating skyscrapers throughout the city. Kingdom Tower is one of the older and more unique buildings, but there are now 2 fish towers* (I have no idea what their real names are) and my favorite, the Twizzler Tower**! Real names are irrelevant when you can call a building Twizzler Tower.

Housing

I have an apartment through work, but men are not allowed in the building. That means Husband is living with his family until we can arrange for a joint apartment nearby. We are almost ready to sign a lease, and my favorite part is that the apartment has a squatty potty! I actually have no idea what its proper name is, but it’s the style of toilet you would find in many places in India, Turkey, China, etc, where you stand on either side of a porcelain hole in the ground and squat over it to do your business. Yes, the apartment does have a Western toilet, too, but I love the traditional flare.

Work

I started work right when I arrived, though only as a substitute teacher until the end of term, which has now finished. Work is busy but very interesting. The students are delightful despite some of their lack of enthusiasm for the subject at hand, and the other teachers (both Western and Saudi) are very interesting and helpful. I have discovered that I very much enjoy teaching in a classroom!

As expected, there were are some differences between what I understood about work during my interview process and the reality of it now. Several of the other teachers have expressed the same thing, whether it’s about the work environment or the living quarters. Some understood that we would live on a compound with a gym and pool. In fact, we live in an apartment building, not on a compound at all. I understood that I would work at a university, but this is actually a school that only teaches English. If you hope to work in the Middle East, ask for the school’s website and the contact information of another teacher to hear more about it. That’s only if you’re really concerned about the details of your future employment. We are content with mine, for now.

Husband has begun looking for work and has a few prospects, though not quite in his field. We have time for him to find the right place, and he has been taking care of much-needed paperwork in the interim.

Family

Since we moved to Saudi in large part to get to know Husband’s family, Husband has told them about our marriage. Although it didn’t go quite as well as we’d hoped, we realize that we planned on living here for a couple years in case they were necessary to overcome the family’s objections. We hope time will help allay emotions and that I will meet all of his family soon.

*Actually called Al Anoud Tower

**Al Majdoul Tower if we have to be precise