Home Sweet Home (wait, what am I saying!)

I have a new home now...Sharbatly Village.  It is a community with close to around 3,000 people.  The entire community is walled off from the outside with only one main, secured entrance.  The reason for this is to keep the community seperate from the outside so that the residents living inside can live as they would anywhere else in the world.  That means that women can dress how they want, shorts are allowed, and if one were to be drinking an alcoholic beverage, no one would stop them.  Saudi locals are not allowed to live here, so most everyone here is European or from elsewhere in the Middle East.  I haven't run into any Americans yet.  There are quite a few communities similar to this around Jeddah.  They are usually referred to as "compounds".

Sharbatly Village has 2 pools, a restaurant (which I eat at basically every night), tennis courts, basketball courts, a fitness center, grocery store, laundry, and even a bowling alley.  The villa I live in has 3 bedrooms and is really no different than any 3 bedroom apartment.  It is a nice place to live, especially with all the recreational activities available.  Plus, the shisha at the restaurant is only 15 SR which is pretty cheap in comparison to all the other restaurants that sell shisha in Jeddah.

Shisha, or hookah, as it's called in the US, is pretty popular over here and in the Middle East in general.  If you don't know what shisha is, you can read the wikipedia article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hookah.
I have been smoking it fairly regularly, mainly because there is nothing else to do.  It is really the only vice, besides cigarettes, that one can legally have in KSA.  I was thinking about giving it up for Lent, but then I remembered that it is illegal to practice any religion other than Islam over here.  Sorry Jesus :(.  I'm sure He will forgive me.

Still, no one has come to pick up their car.

This past week Jeddah got some rain.  It was amazing to see how freaked out people get over even the chance of rain here.  Everyone leaves work early if there is even a chance of rain.  No one wants to take the chance of getting trapped in a flood or even drive in the rain.  I guess I would feel the same after what happened in January (look up "jeddah floods 2011" on youtube and you will see what I mean).  The drainage here is terrible, but I suppose when it rains only a few times a year, its not all that necessary.  However, from what I hear the King was pretty upset about those floods in January.  I'm sure it really hurt the tourism industry here in Jeddah...

It didn't rain much but the next day most
of the roads were under water.

This past Friday I spent my day off by waking up early to go golfing at the only golf course in Jeddah (I think).  It was probably the most interesting thing I have done in Jeddah so far.  I definitely recommend it if you ever find yourself in Jeddah.  What's so unique about it is that there is no grass.  The course is entirely made up of sand!  I will save that for the next post.  I need to watch Michigan pull off this upset of Duke.  Can anyone tell me if MSU is still in the tournament?  You can just leave a comment, thanks.