There can be some confusion here over the hot and cold water. When I tried to take a shower Tuesday night and wash my hair, I couldn't get any hot water. I decided to just get a quick shower and wash my hair Wednesday morning. Same thing on Wednesday morning--no hot water. So I skipped washing my hair for a while and texted Moe about the hot water. While waiting for his reply, I decided to go out and sit by the pool. IT IS HOT IN SAUDI ARABIA!! I enjoyed sitting outside for about the first 15 minutes. It wouldn't have been too bad, but there was no breeze to help. I decided to try to push myself to stay out for 30 minutes. I would guess it had been about 25 minutes when I picked up my phone to check the time. On my phone was a big yellow triangle with an exclamation point in the middle of it. Below that it read, "Warning! Phone must cool down before attempting to use." I decided then to go ahead and go back inside! By then, I was so hot that I actually wanted a cold shower so I got my hair washed.
After I was done I got a text from Moe saying "Cold is hot and hot is cold." The explanation is that water is held in tanks on top of the homes. That water gets so hot that they use that for hot water. They turn their water heaters off. The water in the water heater will cool down since it is inside so that is your cold water! We sometimes run out of hot water at home. I guess they would sometimes run out of cold water here.
Lunch on Wednesday was provided by one of Reema's very good friends. And she provided a lot of very good food! There was a delicious hot (temperature) shrimp dish, wonderful stuffed onions, two types of pastry pockets that were beautiful and delicious, a really good salad, and a rice and lamb dish. I hope I am not forgetting anything. I later met this lady. She is very beautiful and a good cook!
Wednesday was the day for the Saudi Arabian wedding celebration so the rest of the day was getting ready. There were 2 hair ladies, a makeup artist and some ladies doing nails. They all came to the house. Very out of character for me, I had my hair fixed fancy and also had my nails done. (Sorry, still no makeup!) They started about 3:00. Pictures were to start at 7:00 when the photographer came to the house. We were running a little behind with them finishing up Katie's hair so Moe's family started taking pictures first. When Katie's hair was finished, we came upstairs to put her dress on. When we took it out of the dress bag, we found that they had sewn plastic all around the bottom ruffle either to keep it clean or to hold its shape or both. I asked for a pair of scissors and we had to cut the stitching about every 4 inches and the circumferance of her dress was quite large. When finally I had all the stitches cut, we discovered that the plastic was also sewn around the fabric on the inside of the ruffle too! We were a little late for pictures!
We met some new family that came for pictures. We had already met a nice cousin named Abdul Ramon at the first night poolside dinner. Also here was Reema's brother Hisham and 2 more of his sons. (Abdul is his son. I like his nickname which is Aboudy.) The other cousins were named Raad and Omar. They are all such polite and good looking boys! Hisham was very nice ane friendly and funny, too. There is one more cousin in that family but he is away studying in Dubai. Also here were Sarah and Faisal (Uncle Marv's children who we had already met), Reema's parents, and Moe's family. We took lots of pictures, just like in the U.S.
About 8:30, the ladies left for the hotel where the celebration was held.
I don't think that I have mentioned that women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. They have drivers who take them everywhere. They have to take the daughters everywhere they go, Reema everywhere she goes, and also the maids where they need to go. And then pick them up and bring them home! Moe's sister Sarah (there are a lot of Sarahs around here) mentioned that her friends in Boston where she attends college say that it must be nice to have a chauffeur. She said she would like to be able to just drive herself where she wants to go.
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