Arabic Foods

Congratulations McDonald's you have become an international fast food restaurant. Do you really want to make everyone fat? I remember in China they opened up a McDonald's and over the past three years the Chinese became bigger and bigger. So now they want to make the whole world bigger! You gotta love McDonald's!
Something amazing happened! On Thursday morning I was in bed talking to my friends on Skype and then my sisters came in with this!! They came in with a card saying "Smile, you look good in it" :) So yeah that made my day :) I love my family.
This is one of the best foods that we have for dinner basically everyday. Everybody says that it's a Greek Salad, but I think it's a manna from heaven! It is so simple to make and it's super healthy. The salad includes cucumbers, tomatoes, goat cheese, and olives. It is SO good! And it is really easy to make. This is just another amazing food that we have for dinner sometimes. They are samosas and they are freakin amazing! I think I might get fat here from all the amazing food. Even the frozen foods they have here are amazing! :D I love Saudi Arabia :)

The Weekends

This is one of the best restaurants in the world!! I'm sorry but I think it might be better than In-N-Out O.o This place is called Golden Juice, I'm not sure why, but it's amazing. This place sells falafels and schwarmas. Every place in the Middle East makes schwarmas and falafels, but I don't know how the falafels and schwarmas here are so good! We have only been to this place two weeks in a row, and we have been satisfied with this place every time. Sadly only men can go into this restaurant so me and my mom have to wait in the car while my dad goes to order our food.

Can you believe it!!! They have non-alcoholic Budweiser here in Saudi Arabia!!! At first I couldn't believe it, but my mom and I were walking through Tamimi's (a store here) and we saw a pile of Budweiser cans. When I looked closer they were non-alcoholic beer cans!!!

It's crazy how people will go to extremes in order to feel cool with alcohol. That's what bugs me about the society now. The media shows that anybody with alcohol will seem cool. So now they even have the Saudi Arabians which aren't supposed to have alcohol pretending to be cool with an "alcoholic" beverage. Yes some people may say that there isn't any alcohol in those drinks, but pretending can lead to actually having alcohol.

So yeah it was funny seeing an "alcoholic" beer can, but its crazy to see how people will do something like that, in order to feel cool.

Since kids can't really leave the compound unless they are with their parents, they can get pretty creative in ways to spend their time. This is Vika and her best friend Ella performing a play for me and my mom. They took a large piece of cardboard and drew a house on it, and performed their play with barbies. It was a pretty good play :P Who knows they may become actors. :P

Here is a funny fact, there isn't a Wal-Mart anywhere in Saudi Arabia. The interesting fact about them not having a Wal-Mart in Saudi Arabia because the owner of Wal-Mart's daughters are married Jews. Our family is guessing that because the Arabians don't like the Jews, that must be the reason they don't have a Wal-Mart here!

So this is the "Wal-Mart" of Saudi Arabia. This place is called Hyper Panda. I don't know why it's called Hyper Panda, but it's just like Wal-Mart. It has clothes and food and food courts! So there isn't a giant Wal-Mart that takes up a huge amount of land, its just a Hyper Panda that has the same amount of things as a Wal-Mart.

My New Home

The houses in Saudi Arabia are the exact same as the houses in America. There are small backyards with little fences and the house has four beds and 3 bathrooms.

This is my room that I will be staying in for the next couple months. It's actually Vika's room, but Nicole has two beds so Vika and Nicole are sharing a room right now.

Saudi Arabia - January

Sorry, that it has taken me so long to update my blog. Anyways, I am in Saudi Arabia right now visiting my family until April 5th. And I know everybody wants to see what I have been doing while in Saudi Arabia. Just to let you guys know I won't be able to take a lot of pictures. One is because there isn't a lot of things to take pictures of, and if I want to take a picture with people in it I have to ask them for their permission. So I might not be able to take many pictures, but I will try.

So the first picture shows one of my FAVORITE arabic food. It's called a falafel and its basically a vegetarian burrito. Actually a burrito is an understatement to how amazing this thing is O.o First they use flat bread, and inside the falafel is something called Lebna, which is basically plain yogurt. Then there is chopped vegetables like cucumbers, tomatoes, pickles, french fries, and I think onions. Then the falafel is basically a fried ball made of chickpeas. You mash up the chickpeas and combine garlic, cilantro, flour, and falafel seasoning, and then fry it in oil. I made it once and it was AMAZING! This is a falafel that I got off one of the street vendors and it is amazing!

Here in Saudi Arabia the women have to cover themselves up by wearing an abaya. The foreign women have to wear an abaya while in public, but the native Arab women and some Filipinos have to wear the full burka, or at least cover their hair. So one of the benefits to wearing an abaya is that I can wear whatever I want underneath it!!! So this is a picture of what I usually wear underneath my abaya while I am out shopping. As you can see I don't have to care about what matches cause nobody will see it!! :D haha This is my favourite part of living in Saudi Arabia is while in public I don't need to dress up! I can actually dress down! :D

Even though I don't have to wear nice clothes while in public there are still some very nice and expensive stores here. The Arabian people take pride in their appearance. Sometimes while at the mall I will see women in their abayas with a Dolce & Gabbana handbag. So some of the women still wear expensive and nice clothes underneath their burka.

One thing that is a little annoying at clothing stores is that women cannot try on clothes. Women have to buy their clothes first before they can try it on at the bathroom. So while being here I have been forced to remember my size in clothing, and check whether the clothing is stretchy and everything. This may seem annoying but I can see the sense in the reasoning as to why. One problem that can be avoided without dressing rooms is preventing the men or other people trying to peep into the dressing rooms while women are changing. Another thing that can be prevented is the stealing of clothes by the women. If you think about it, women are wearing a big flowy gown that reaches down to the ground. So women can go into a changing room and walk out of the store with the clothes they were trying on without anybody knowing! So I don't complain about the absence of fitting rooms because I can see the logic as to why they don't have any. As long as I get my nice clothes I am fine :)

This house is the gathering house for religious purposes :P I am not sure whether I can say church on my blog because I am worried that some Arab person will see it and tell the government. So I am going to call it meeting house. So we meet in a house just like we did in China. The first time I went to church here I half expected to be walking up a giant hill and taking my shoes off at the entrance because that is what I have done in China for the past three years. So I have gotten into the habit of thinking that when I go to a house on Sunday/Friday for church I will be taking my shoes off. But it is different here. We don't take our shoes off, but we have things that make the gospel here in Saudi Arabia unique from other places. Since the government doesn't really know that we are here in Saudi Arabia there are two doors to this house. The first door is the one to walk into the house, and then there is a second door. The second door is to prevent Arabians that are walking by from seeing what we are doing inside. So once the first door is shut there is somebody there at the second door ready to greet us. I thought that was pretty different. What I love the most about this branch is that once that second door is open, the sound of beautiful hymn music is played, and there are people all around smiling and chatting and greeting each other. I seem to always smile whenever I walk into this house.

When I first went to the branch there was one thing that surprised me. There were Filipinos everywhere! I think there are only like four or five Western families, and the other 60-70 people are Filipino. But the Filipino people seem to always be happy and lively. During sacrament meeting whenever somebody says good morning the whole branch will say good morning back. I am used to everybody being reverent and silently listening to the speaker, but when that speaker says good morning everybody is smiling and gives a jolly good morning back. At first I got a little mad because I was used to tired college students sitting during sacrament meeting not making a sound. But here everybody is happy and talking to one another. Another thing I like and I never realized until todays meeting is how happy the members are while singing. During the opening hymn or closing hymn the whole branch is putting their all into singing. Which I like cause in the living room that we meet in it sounds like angels from heaven are singing.

So I am enjoying myself while being here in Saudi Arabia. I will try and take more pictures of where my family and I go to school as well as the malls and stores here. Honestly it basically looks like America, but there isn't very many colors and everybody is wearing robes. But I love it here, and I don't see why people are so afraid of the Middle East. The people are really nice and willing to help. I would say they are better Mormons than I am!!! They are always wanting to help, and they are really nice, and they pray five times a day! Sure its a scripted prayer, but they aren't embarrassed about their religion. In America I think people would be embarrassed about having to stop hanging out with friends to go and pray. But here you will see people close down shops to go and pray! I applaud them for that. So I don't like how Westerners believe that everybody from the Middle East are terrorists and hate Americans. That's not true! Anyways I will try and post some more stuff up later on. :)

Transition

So this is a dance that I did for my art class in China a couple of years ago. This dance is to show the struggle that I was having transitioning from a life of gymnastics to a life of school. The dance shows the frustration of spending all of that time and money on doing gymnastics and developing all of these skills only to realize that now I can't do those skills anymore and they haven't helped in life. At the beginning of the dance the movements are controlled, especially while holding the handstand. But as the dance goes on the movements get more frustrated showing the frustration of not being able to perform those same tricks anymore.

The dance was performed in our school's locker room to show the different lifestyle that I had to accommodate to. Also there are several words in the song that inspired me to do this dance. Some of the words in the chorus are "determination", "no substitution", "retaliation". These are words that go along with the feelings in gymnastics. While being a gymnast you become determined to do all of your routines at your best in order to get a good score. Or you are determined to work hard in conditioning in order to become stronger. While being a gymnast there is no substitution. While you are standing on that beam about to do your tumbling pass, it is only you. Only you can do YOUR beam routine. You can't ask somebody else to do it for you. While you are a gymnast there are many times when you want to retaliate and just give up. There are times when you just want to step off the beam and say, "No, I can't do this". But its that determination and that self-realization that only you can perform this routine. Which can go along with the frustration of going through all of these emotions and realizing that it didn't help me keep these skills after such a long time.

I guess we can put this into a real-life situation though. We may be discouraged when we realize that we didn't get the desired outcomes from something. But we may have learned something from these experiences that will help us in a different way than we expected. For gymnastics I may have not kept those skills that I wanted to, but what I learned from gymnastics was to be a hard worker, and to not give up until it is finished. The words in the song can be applied in our life as well. We need to be determined in order to get things done. We are determined to keep a job that pays well. We are determined to give our children the best life possible. In real-life there aren't substitutions. We can't ask for a substitute when we are going through trials because then we wouldn't learn from them. We have to live through our OWN life. During our life we may and probably have retaliated against someone. We may have retaliated against our parents, or against God. There probably have been many times when we have wanted to just walk out of any trials that we are going through and say, "I'm done". But because of determination and that self-realization that we have to push through these things ourselves in order to grow from them helps us to not retaliate....or at least not retaliate as much. So hopefully you take this to heart because I have been trying :)) And I hope that you enjoy the video :)

Keep Going

Hello again,

Sorry I haven't been updating my blog as much as I should be. So I will just give a quick update on everything that has been happening. Classes have been going good. I am passing them which is always a good thing. I still got a job and have been getting paid enough to survive :) I also sent off my visa application to go and see my parents in Saudi Arabia. Hopefully it will come in a couple weeks because I sent it off two weeks ago.

Sadly I have only been on like four dates this semester. And I am actually happy about that because I don't want to be worrying about drama with different guys and serious relationships and all that stuff. I am going to focus on school mainly this first semester. If a guy wants me ask me out on a date, then good for him! But I am not gonna be stressing about whether a guy will ask me out this week because I got other things that I can be doing. Don't get me wrong there are PLENTY of cute guys here that I would like to go on a date with. But I prefer the guy asking me on a date, and not the girl chasing after him. So yeah thats my opinion on love right now. It is pretty weird because now there are couples EVERYWHERE!! Wherever I look there is some couple holding hands and doing all that lovey-dovey stuff. haha and its weird to think that these people could possibly get married O.o Cause in high school you think when you're in a relationship it will only last until high school. But here when your in a relationship there is a possibility that you will get married. That's another thing that I am not looking forward to. I don't want to be talking about getting married and all that stuff now because first, I AM 18!!! I should be having fun and love being single! Not being attached to a man. And I am planning on going on a mission, so I shouldn't be worrying about getting married because I got to go and do the Lord's work. So yeah that is what has been happening here.

There is a song that I have been listening to lately that has been helping me get through my tough times in college. It is called "Can't Go Back Now" by: The Weepies. This song is about pushing through and walking on because you can't change the past. You always have to look forward and you can get through this. So I listen to this when I get stressed out and wonder whether I can get through this. This song helps me keep that perspective that this will help me get a good job and that this is all beneficial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JscAwVu2QI&ob=av2e

So this is a link to see the song and the music video. I am not entirely sure why the artists are muppets. But it's the lyrics of the song that are the most important thing. :) So enjoy!!!

My Apartment

This is our kitchen. It's actually pretty nice because we have a stove, microwave, and a fridge. And there is enough room to fit all of our food in. There isn't anything to fancy about it, but hey, its still a kitchen that we can use.
So this is our little bathroom. The funny part about this bathroom is that one of the doors doesn't slide open. So the side that the doors are on right now, is the side that they stay on. So me and my roomate, Annie, have to turn the shower on and try to get into the shower where the toilet is right now. It's interesting trying to go in and come out of that shower. Hopefully the maintenance crew can fix that for us.
This is my side of the bathroom. My bestest roomate ever!! has the other side of the bathroom. So yeah I have a sink and a couple of drawers. I don't like to use the drawers because they look a little dirty, and I don't have enough stuff to fill my bathroom drawers with. So yeah everything out on the counter is basically what I have.
So this is my room. Yeah as you can see I am a little messy, but hey I had a lot of homework today!! So yeah this is my room and its a little smaller than my room in China, but it can still fit a bed and a desk so thats good. I live on the first floor so my view out the window is a cement sidewalk. It's not the best but I still get sunlight. um....yeah thats basically it about my room.

So this isn't my dorm, but this is what I get to see every day when I walk to my classes. It's a really beautiful temple and hopefully I can go inside sometime. I got my temple recommend, so me and my friend are planning on visiting the temple at least once a month.