Day 2: On the hunt

25.4.09 - This morning was decided to go on a mosquito killing spree. Based on the number of Oliver’s spots, we calculated that if every mosquito bites once, there must be about 50 mosquitoes in the flat. So the children and I, armed with books and magazines went hunting around, determined to kill as many as possible, they had caused us so much grief. Despite turning up the air cons so cold that we needed duvets, they still bit us. They also bite during the day so we are never safe. Well, it was not a success, we only got 3.

Our first trip to the supermarket was quite interesting. A french supermarket called Carrefour, It was fairly large and was not so different looking to ones at home. There was definitely not as much choice, ie. We couldn’t find 15 different varieties of potatoes, but they had potatoes. That kind of thing. They are big into their fresh natural yoghurts, so there was a whole aisle of those. And same with fresh cheese that looks like Feta. The only fruit of veg we could find that had been grown in Saudi were cucumbers, the rest was all imported. And didn’t look terribly fresh, but then I think we’re quite spoilt in England. We saw our first signs censorship, where products with photos with ladies showing flesh (eg. Swimsuits, fitness equipment) had been coloured in with a black marker. Same with product descriptions, we bought a bottle of Olive Oil, which had something like this on the label “the devoted Italian women hand pressed…”, and the words ‘devoted women’ had been blacked out in pen. Must have taken them ages.  We found lots of alcohol free beer, which actually tastes surprisingly good. We only saw men working at the tills, in fact I don’t remember seeing any women working since my arrival. The challenge with shopping are the opening times. Shops open mornings, then close between 12 and 4pm, they then open until late (10 or 11pm I think) but close for prayer, several times throughout the evening for about 20 minutes but never at exactly the same time. During prayer time, you could be stranded in the shop (all workers are required to leave their post, we're not sure if they actually go praying or not but that's the idea), with no one at the till, or asked to leave the shop. At that point you can wait outside for 20 minutes or forget the whole thing. Even Starbucks closes, outrageous!