Trip Highlights, Part 3

Yep, like the title says, this is part 3. Parts 1 and 2 are below. Scroll down even lower for pictures, if you bore easily!

Friday, May 28

• Alan drove me to the airport and gave me more advice on the way. He's a wise man, and I appreciate his advice . . . like that he examines his heart to make sure that he's not harboring attitudes that block revival. Good stuff.
• I let the guys at the airport help me with my luggage, and I tipped them like an old pro. I felt so different leaving than I did arriving--more confident in my balto and minutely increased understanding.
• The airport itself was a little intimidating in its simplicity. Man at check in counter speaks English, yes. Officials everywhere else speak English, maybe, they think so. Other people everywhere else speak English, probably not. I managed to get my exit stamp and figure out which way to go to the gate. I don't think there were signs, even in Arabic. There are only two international gates, so they probably don't figure they need to point the way. Then I sat and waited and tried to figure out how I would know which of the two gates the bus to my plane departed from. No monitors, no signs . . . just a line of people waiting to go beyond a security checkpoint. (No smoking restrictions, either!) I waited a while, knowing it was far to early for my plane to board. Then, when I deduced that everyone was getting in that line and moving through that checkpoint, I decided I might as well. So I did, and the man said I was going the right place, but I don't think he really spoke English. I tried asking a couple of people, including a man at the help desk. Again, I don't think he spoke much English. So I sat and waited. Once or twice officials came through and hollered "Gulf Air [or whatever airline]--Ankara." That wasn't me, so I waited. Eventually, around the time my boarding pass said I was to board, there was a migration of people to the doorway. I spied people with tickets that looked like mine, and I brazenly assumed that this must be my silent boarding call. When I boarded the bus and saw it was taking me to an Emirates plane, I breathed a sigh of relief, only to panic momentarily when I got on board and the flight map showing me going to a different destination than my final destination. Oh, no--I got on the wrong plane! I thought, until I remembered that I had a layover in the country on the flight map. Whew.
• The flight was fairly empty. I watched "Leap Year" and found the movie itself so much fluff but loved the concluding message.
• On my layover in Dubai, I looked around an concluded that my balto was passe, so I shed it. I loved wearing it when I needed to, but it was awfully nice to lose it and be a little more normal again.
• The airport was very cosmopolitan, and I ate lunch at Burger King. I was disappointed to not catch any good glimpses of the famed skyscrapers of the city, but I did see some buildings off in the distant haze.
• On my next flight, I sat next to a girl from Saudi, who was traveling with her mother and maybe aunt, and who spoke enough English to carry an interesting conversation. She is a devout Muslim who spoke of truly loving Allah. She also told me that she had studied the Injeel (New Testament) in university, and I think she was telling me that she had studied how it had been corrupted, a common Muslim view. I didn't try to contradict her, but I did share how much I love God, and how love for him dictates my actions, as she had explained that her love for Allah dictates hers. She said I should come visit her if I ever come to Saudi, and she gave me her e-mail address. Alas, I didn't realize how difficult it is to "visit" Saudi, so I will probably never vacation there.
• My hostess Melissa collected me at the airport, then took me to meet Marty D. and her friend Hanan for a service that evening. It was a small fellowship, but kind, and I enjoyed talking with several people afterward. I was really happy to see Marty and Robert again, too. It made me feel more at home.

Saturday, May 29

• Today's outing was to a water park with Melissa and her team! Yippee! Blazing heat + water rides = sheer bliss! The team was apologetic to introduce me to their country this way, especially in light of the contrast between water park and the country I came from, but I didn't mind a bit. Well, beforehand it did cross my mind, "Oh great--that's the way to bond right away--hang out with people in my bathing suit!" But it wasn't that bad. After all, they were in their bathing suits, too. And I understand the value of outings like this for team morale after enjoying outings to Six Flags and the zoo and the Creation Museum after hard work in Indianapolis. So I had a great time going on water slides and floating in the lazy river and eating fast food and watching baby Thomas so that Amber and Francois could ride slides together. Melissa had a buy-one-get-one-free ticket that I could use, and Lynette kindly paid for all of my food, so I was a humbled and grateful kid.
• I love, love, love the team there. They show a lot of love toward each other. They're a good combination of fun and serious, too. Oh, and one of them graduated from Bishop Guertin in 1985. What's up with all these NH people in this part of the world?! One of the men talked to me in the snack shop pool, while we sipped smoothies, and gave me some good thoughts on pursuing social service options in this country.
• Melissa and I went grocery shopping after the park, and it was interesting to note how western the store is. It seemed to have most anything we would have here at home.

Sunday, May 30

• Let a new week of adventure begin! I called a taxi company for a taxi to my interview at an international school this morning. Melissa left for work, and the taxi driver couldn't find my address, so I had to get the owner of the cold store (mini grocery store) across the street to give her directions. He had seen me standing waiting in the heat and invited me into his store, anyway.
• Mona, the driver, finally arrived, and got me to my interview only five minutes late. I think the principal forgot I was coming, so he didn't seem to care.
• Even though he did forget I was coming, he spent about an hour and a half with me, including interruptions, and explained the history and purposes of the school. The bottom line was that he didn't have any current openings for me, since I'm not certified. He pondered creating a position for me, but I don't think he thought this was a very viable option, and he took me to meet a teacher who had another contact with a job possibility for me, teaching English at the British Language Centre. I took down the contact info and called the lady later in the day, then e-mailed her my resume (CV) at her request.
• I was supposed to meet Marty at a cafe across the street from the school after my interview, but her plans changed, so I called my trusty Mona and she took me to the house where Marty was staying. Had a nice visit with Marty there. She did warn me that I need to be prepared for people in this part of the world to try to set me up with potential husbands, and proceeded to explain that such a plan was already underway at the fellowship I had visited Friday evening. Well. To confirm this, a lady who had offered to take me to the national museum stopped by and mentioned that she and a certain single man in the congregation were going to take a whole day off work and show me around the country! Well. Melissa's advice, when I asked her later, was to distance myself, which seemed right to me. I didn't want to give any false hopes. So I declined the all-day outing in favor of the museum outing with the lady alone. Slightly awkward.
• Melissa had to run an errand at the mall after work, so we went to dinner there, as well. That's where she introduced me to mint lemonade, and I fell in love.

Monday, May 31

• Melissa left for work after breakfast, and I stayed home alone. I got really groggy after breakfast myself, and went back to sleep for a while! A little unusual, since I should have been well over jet lag after 10 days in the time zone. I was having other signs of a possible parasite picked up in the previous country, though, and one of the symptoms of that parasite was fatigue, so I dismissed the tiredness as a symptom of the parasite. Now I realize that it may have had something to do with coming down with chicken pox, but I had no idea then.
• I worked on proofreading a Math-U-See project I had brought along. I tried to go to the cold store across the street for lunch stuff, but I picked all the wrong times and still haven't figured out exactly what hours it closes in the middle of the day!
• Mid-afternoon Nicole called and offered to take me sightseeing before bringing me home for dinner, as we had planned! So she took me to the old part of the city. I called it the old city in my pictures below, but I don't know that it's technically called that. But it is the oldest part of the city, I think. She took me to the house of a sheikh from bygone years, and I loved going with her because she knows a lot about the country and is excited to talk about it. I also like Nicole because she's 40 and hanging out with her made me feel like I was hanging out with one of my Street cousins, who are about that much older than I (well, a little older, except John, Melissa, and Janelle). She also took me to a posh coffee shop and treated me to an amazing smoothie. Then she took me to a pottery place, where we could watch an expert potter mold things on the wheel, and she bought me the few little pieces of pottery I picked out for souvenirs! I felt very spoiled. Then she took me home to a yummy lamb dinner and her friendly family. After the three children headed for bed, I had a good time talking with her and her husband Dan.

Tuesday, June 1

• Had another somewhat sluggish morning, but I didn't sleep again. I did laundry instead and decided against taking a taxi to visit some social service offices, because I discovered how far away my interview at the British Language Centre was going to be, and gulped at how high the taxi fare was surely going to be.
• Had a good interview at the BLC, and they offered me a job! Turns out they are also starting a business skills branch called the British Training Centre, which made me chuckle, because I had thought I was finished with training centers forever! They liked my resume with its business education on it, and it was such a nice feeling to have people actually like my resume!
• On the way home from the BLC interview, I had Mona (she was my taxi driver of choice all week) take me to the Be Free Center, a center that promotes education for children so that they can avoid abuse. I ended up spending a few minutes chatting with the director, one of several moms who founded the center a few years back! I asked her some questions about how social services work in this country. She really couldn't tell me much about how government run program work, because Be Free is actually an NGO.
• Mona and I tried to visit the national NGO center, but it was closed.
• When I got back to Melissa's, I sallied forth to find the cold store open, picked out some lunch/snack food, then went to the bakery and requested an order of fresh cheese bread, which I refer to below. It was heavenly.
• I joined Melissa for a prayer meeting on Skype in the evening.

Wednesday, June 2

• Amber, a teammate, picked me up for coffee mid-morning. I love Amber. She's a year younger than I and has two young children. Her husband is a pilot, and they are both from South Africa. She's really sweet, and I enjoyed swapping life stories. I also enjoyed another smoothie!
• I spent a lot of the day proofreading.
• Lynette came and took me out to dinner. (See picture below of the curtained booths.) She gave me lots of good advice on teaching English jobs and living in the region and opportunities and language study . . . she's a wealth of information and great to talk to. After dinner, she took me to another place where we hung out and she smoked shisha . . . and I could have smoked if I had wanted to try . . . and I had another smoothie.

Thursday, June 3

• Oh, dear. I just realized that my journal notes stopped with Wednesday. So I'm on my own to reconstruct from here! I did a lot of proofreading today.
• Oh, yeah. And a friend Luciya, whom Marty had put me in touch with, took me out to lunch--Indian food. I had not yet experienced that in all its splendor. Boy, was it spicy! I don't do a lot of spice, so I tried tasting a little of everything, then picked out the things that were least spicy and chowed down on those (like rice, though even part of that was spicy). I felt like I got full fast, which I've heard happens with spicy foods. Luciya was good company, and I was happy for the new experience!
• In the evening, I went to the national museum with Hanan, which was fun. It's not huge, but it's very nicely done and informational. She was very patient as I read many of the captions. I do that in museums.
• Melissa was out when I returned home, and I had finished my MUS project before going out with Luciya, so I plopped down and found a movie to watch on TV. I felt like my dad.

Friday, June 4

• I got up and made pancakes and eggs for breakfast, so that Melissa could enjoy the maple syrup I brought her from home.
• Melissa and I went to a fellowship this morning, then out to lunch with Lynette and Christen afterward. (On the way to fellowship, I noted that I had what looked like bites up and down my right arm.) Christen had more helpful advice for me. She and her husband studied language in the first country I visited, and her comment was, "If I were you at your stage, I would definitely go there first." Much as I like the team here, and the atmosphere, I'm still tugged toward the other country! And the team here seemed to understand that, and support it, which makes me like them even more. I could see myself coming back here--at least to visit, and maybe to work sometime in the future.
• In the evening Melissa had to run errands in the suq, so we went there. It was good we went in the evening, because it was super hot then, and it would have been even hotter earlier. There's a reason that stores close from 1:00-4:00 PM! Melissa needed a new abaya, so I tagged along as she looked for one, and saw all sorts of abayas! :-) She was also looking for some souvenirs for her nieces. We had fresh fruit juice, too. This suq was different (what suq is not?)--it was full of more far easterners, and cars could drive right through it, which made it more chaotic. It also felt more modern.
• When we got home we had snacks and watched "Finding Neverland," which I somehow had never seen before.

Saturday, June 5

• We slept in, then Melissa drove me over by the water to the border crossing to another country. It was hot as blazes, so we didn't spend much time walking outside--enough to take some pictures and see some white jellyfish floating along in the water.
• She also drove me to a "land reclamation" spot, which means that the government dumps a bunch of sand in the ocean and creates more land for people to build on. I'd be a little scared to build on something man-made like that, but I guess I travel across man-made bridges all the time and trust them.
• We joined Lynette for lunch at a coffee shop, where I had--you guessed it!--another smoothie. Pretty much I'm a smoothie addict--at least in this country.
• After lunch Lynette took me to a carpet shop and explained some things to me carpet shopping. I never knew that quality carpets are appreciating items, so they are actually good investments! They are wicked expensive, though--a little out of my price range at this point in my life. Maybe some day . . . I settled for buying two little carpet squares, made in India.
• Lynette dropped me off at Melissa's, and I packed some and read a lot from Melissa's book Half the Sky, about the oppression of women around the globe. Very interesting. I read all of it but the last chapter before Melissa drove me to the airport.

Sunday, June 6

• My KLM flight left at midnight, and I had an eight-hour layover in Amsterdam. I slept some on the first flight, but not quite as much as I would have liked.
• The layover was tedious, but it could have been worse. I slept some, and read Mitford some, and people-watched.
• On the second flight, I should have been tired, but I couldn't sleep very well. So I watched "Alice in Wonderland," which was a little ho-hum, "The Young Victoria," which I loved, and another shallow movie that I won't even bother naming, because I wouldn't recommend it. I might have watched something else, too, but I can't remember. My seat mate worked at the University of Maine at Bangor, and he was pretty nice. He had had a five hour layover in Amsterdam, and had taken advantage of it to do see the city! Man, why wasn't I brave enough to try that? I expressed some regret, and he expressed the irony of me not being afraid to travel by myself to the middle east, yet hesitating over taking a train from the airport into Amsterdam. Hmm, guess it did seem ironic.
• Our arrival was delayed due to a storm in Boston, and I was so glad when we finally made it in, I made it through customs, collected my luggage, and found Clyde.
• Lewis & Donna Hansen, our trusty nurse friends, met us on the way home and unofficially diagnosed my "bug bites" as chicken pox! The advantage to that diagnosis, basically confirmed by a doctor the next morning, is that I am quarantined to my apartment and had time to write up this report of my adventures! It could have languished in my journal and mind for weeks if I had not been quarantined. God does work all things together for good, to be sure.

Thus end these adventures of Kendra!