Always Growing

It's hard to believe, but it's been nearly a year since we've come to Saudi Arabia. In the life of a child, a year is a long time - so much growing happens in just one spin of the earth. Misha has the same desire for learning that we've always seen, and his recent obsessions are Harry Potter and chess. He has high hopes of playing a real game with Grandpa this summer!


And Sebby just keeps getting cuter and more communicative. He always makes us laugh, whether he's climbing up onto the little coffee table to dance on his "stage" or trying to copy Misha's sommersaults by scooting around with his forehead to the floor and his bottom in the air. His vocabulary has mushroomed since his first expressions of "ju" and "uh oh" last summer. Now he knows several phrases, including "Where'd it go?", "There it is!", "Whatzat?" "I want that," "I want eat," and "I want shoes." He loves the water and at the slightest suggestion of bath-time, he demands, "I want bath!" while running to the bathroom and trying to take his shirt off. He knows a plethora of words related to his daily routine - up, down, all gone, look!, wadi (for water), turday (for turtle), no, yesh (for yes), come, book, car, poop, baby, and again. His most recent word is "shirt" - but as he cannot pronounce the 'r', the results are very amusing!

If Dad steps out of the apartment for a bit, Sebby nods and affirms, "Coming," knowing that he'll be back soon. When he rides his car down the compound sidewalk and finally sees the park ahead, he shouts, "Yay... whoo hoo!" He can go down every slide by himself and is now learning to appreciate the baby swing. When he finds something of wonder (which happens several times a day), he exclaims "WOW!" And he calls his big brother "Sha."


Josh and I have been learning, rather ironically, to salsa dance during our time here in Riyadh. We get together with a few other friends and have fun, informal lessons plus food. The kids join us, of course, and they love the music too!


Misha has been doing great at school. He is proud of how much Arabic he has learned, and his teachers coo over his excellent accent. He teaches me phrases he has learned at school -- "Mommy, do you know how to say 'Don't hit?'" says Misha before teaching me. He also knows how to say "bad boy" ("ghalad!") and "close your mouth" - of course, he says these are not directed at him. ;) He often comments on the rowdiness of the other kids. Boys especially tend to be quite aggressive. Besides those classroom management words, he knows lots of other vocab (for family, food, the home) but his specialty is singing Arabic songs.

One day after I picked him up from kindergarten and we sat outside the building where I teach, a little girl about his age (the daughter of a security lady) crept ever closer to Misha until she was right next to him. "Ya walad! Kaif hal? Esh ismik?" she asked. (Hey boy! How are you? What's your name?" Misha, focused on eating his treat, mumbled back, "Misha." Eventually a couple of the security ladies joined us on the benches and we had a brief Arabic conversation about his school. I said that Misha knew a lot of songs, and the security woman started to sing a popular kids' song, which Misha joined in singing immediately. She was thrilled. She sang another and Misha sang along. She belted out a third, with the same results. She must have sung 10 songs and Misha knew every one! She was duly impressed - "Mashala!" she kept saying - and so was I. I have recorded Misha's songs onto my iPod, and when I play them for my students (who are always asking about my kids), they exclaim that he sounds just like their little brothers.


Occasionally, Misha even gets homework - he has now moved on to writing not just single letters but actual Arabic words. This page shows his efforts writing the letter "ba" (on the right) and the word "beit" (meaning house, using the three letters ba, ya and ta from right to left). He is always eager to finish his homework for the next day.

Often at home, Misha will say things to Sebby in Arabic. Little things, like "Shuf, shuf! La, hinna!" (Look, look! No, here!)

Sebby is quite used to waving to faces inside the computer. I swear I even heard him say "Grampa" yesterday. Here he is saying "hi" to Grandma and Grandpa in SD, and he likes to chat with Grandma Kate in NM too.

Peekaboo! He is at that cute age where he can hardly contain himself when we ask "Where did Sebby go?"

This is another one of those classic mall haircuts several weeks ago. The red dye took weeks to come out!


Prayer time at the mall means all the men disappear into mosques within the mall and all the women sit around on benches and squeal at how adorable our children are while they wait for the stores to open again.


Panarama Mall has the best indoor play place I have ever seen. All four of us are allowed to enter and prowl through the tunnels, climb up the stairs and go flying down the huge slide. Six levels of entertainment!

An interesting photo: Just another day at the mall. When it's not crowded, we take Misha's scooter with us and he enjoys cruising through the smooth hallways. Many children rollerblade in malls as well.


Like Misha, Sebby has a fondness for drawing and now for painting.

However, painting on paper quickly turns into .... face-painting.


Bubbles for brothers

After a busy day, it's bedtime at last!

Kindergarten in a Second Language

Ever since leaving Kyrgyzstan four years ago, Josh and I have held onto the hope that we could travel again in time for Misha to be able to go to kindergarten in a different language. And somehow, it happened!

Misha proudly shows me his classroom during welcome week.

Before we left Riyadh for the summer, I jumped through all the hoops to get Misha enrolled in the kindergarten for children of students and staff on campus where I teach. It's perfect for many reasons. First, it's one building away from where I teach. Misha jumps in my taxi every morning, I drop him off at his school, and I walk into my department. I hate losing my precious time to traffic congestion, so not having to make an extra trip to take him to school is great. When I get off work, Misha's ready and waiting for me to take him home. Second, since it's a local school, it's far cheaper than an international school. British and American international schools here run over a thousand dollars a month in tuition, but all I have to pay for this local school is a small fee for their computer classes plus afternoon day care fees. And most importantly, this kindergarten is in Arabic.

Lunchtime! Or, as Misha has learned, "wejba!"

Our main goals for Misha's kindergarten experience are for him to learn Arabic and to have socialization with children. We are not worried about him academically, since we work with him at home and he can already read easy books. By going to an Arabic kindergarten, Misha has access to the real language and culture of Saudi Arabia - something that Josh and I are mostly isolated from. I have to admit I'm quite jealous that Misha gets to have fun and learn Arabic all day long! From working at Hillcrest Elementary School back in Brookings, I have seen Spanish-speaking kindergarteners start school without a word of English, and by the end of the year they can speak and understand basic English. We are so excited to give Misha the opportunity of experiencing another language in kindergarten. How much he learns and whether or not he retains it is not the issue - we are just happy he can have the chance to use his brain in new ways, to experience the thrill of understanding foreign speech, and to have his curiosity piqued to learn new languages and cultures.

Carpet time, a classic part of kindergarten.

Of course, we were expecting it to be difficult for him, but Misha has adapted amazingly well and he's excited to go to school every morning (though not so exicted to wake up at 6 a.m. to get ready). During registration week, children were invited for optional half-days, one of which Misha attended. I had to leave him there by himself while I went to teach. He was reluctant to leave me, but he gave me a hug and kiss and said goodbye. When I came back that afternoon, he ran over to me shouting, "Mommy! They gave me PRESENTS!" He showed me stickers, balloons, name tags, and even a remote-control tractor that he had received. (All the boys got tractors, and all the girls got Barbies!) They really know how to make kids like school. Then Misha had to show me all around his school - his classroom with all its play areas, the cubbies, the outdoor covered playground, and even the mini toilets.

As Misha showed me around, I was thrilled with what I saw. It looked like what every parent would want in a kindergarten - blocks, trucks, counting toys, magnifying glasses, plastic animals, puzzles, an art station, a reading station, a kitchen play area, etc. The walls were covered with pictures, Arabic and English ABCs, the classic 100-chart with Arabic numerals, a weather chart with days of the week in Arabic, and posters of all the colors.

The winner! Misha wins a prize.

Misha loves his teachers. He gives them hugs goodbye when I come to take him home. Saudi women, from everything I have seen, adore children and love to spoil them with gifts and affection. Being pale and red-headed, Misha stands out and gets even more attention. Some of the teachers speak a little English, so they are able to help him. After six weeks, Misha knows numbers, body parts, animals, family members, colors, and handfuls of words from songs, games, and exercises they do in class. He comes home singing entire songs in Arabic to us! His teachers have told me that he is learning quickly and that they are impressed with his Arabic accent. His main classroom teacher was kind enough to take photos of him at school and burn them to CD for me so I could see him interacting and having fun. Thanks to her, you're looking at those pictures right now.

Building a block pyramid, with the number chart in the background.

Recess: the playground is full of slides and climbing gyms, all shaded from the sun.

"This is where the girls play," Misha told me as we looked through his pictures. He was so excited to bring home the photo CDs - he couldn't wait to show them to me.

Sorting by color.

Creating a zoo.

Showing off the class pets.

Exploring his world with tools from the discovery station.

Workbook time! Sometimes he brings home some homework, writing Arabic letters and numbers. He finishes quickly and asks me, "Why didn't they give me any more homework?"

Ready for morning exercises!

Every morning, school begins with songs and exercises. Children count and move, following the teacher's directions. I think it's a brilliant way to begin the day! They also play a lot of action games. One of Misha's favorites is "Shejara, Namla," which means "tree, ant." When the teacher says "shejara," the kids have to stand up tall like a tree, but for "namla," they crouch like an ant. The teacher tries to trick the students a bit like Simon Says. Another game they play involves running around until a teachers says freeze. Then the teachers fan out into the mass of frozen students with the intent to make the kids laugh by making funny faces at them. If you laugh, you're out! Another is similar to Duck, Duck, Goose, called Tag, Tag, Tagia. (A tagia is the white Muslim skull cap.)

Since we will probably be in Saudi Arabia for just this one year, it has worked out amazingly well for Misha to attend kindergarten here. In fact, he will probably gain the most out of all us this year culturally and linguistically! After kindergarten, children are segregated by sex and taught only by teachers of the same sex, so this year is the most normal experience Misha could have. We are not sure if Misha would even be allowed to attend a public first grade school. But judging by how happy Misha seems this year, he is getting exactly the attention and confidence he needs at his kindergarten.

Athlete's Foot ... and other signs

This post is dedicated to signs I've seen in Riyadh - some amusing, some interesting, and some puzzling. My favorite is this shoe store. I can only assume that the owner is blissfully unaware that "athlete's foot" has a different connotation in America.

I like to notice how the Arabic transcriptions closely match the original style of writing with regard to font, color, etc. I thought this Baskin Robins sign was a good example of that. (If you zoom in, perhaps you can see that little striped-shirted body in the window -- Misha getting a cone.)

Another store sign with the same feel in both alphabets:

Perhaps you can recognize this restaurant from the logo? It's Fuddruckers. Arabic omits vowels (except in books for children learning how to read) so the sign actually only uses the sounds for /f/, /d/, /r/, /k/, /r/, and /z/.

The American restaurant Church's Chicken had to be renamed here in Saudi Arabia, due to the word "church" in the name. Voila, it becomes Texas Chicken.

Walking through the mall, I was shocked when I saw this sign. Not by the words, mind you, but simply by the fact that such a sign was in a window display in a Saudi mall. Perhaps the censors didn't know what the word "cleavage" meant?

I even found a store named for me:

My Arabic name in lights:

It is also very interesting to see how businesses deal with the human form in their advertisements. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the women on boxes of swim toys were blacked out with marker. However, women are not the only issue. Islam, especially under certain interpretations like in Saudi Arabia, is often very uncomfortable with the representation of living things, particularly the human form, because it's seen as idolatry. This idea crashes head-first into the modern consumer-centered world of marketing, where visuals are everything. The two very opposing viewpoints have resulted in a multitude of ways to censor or tone down the human form. This applies to men, women, and children. Sometimes, a poster of a human model will be unaltered; other times, the skin (even on a man) will be pixelated or blurred, showing only the clothes in focus.

These photos offer some examples. This rather eerie poster has children with their faces blurred out.

In some cases, pixelating the eyes seems to enough. From afar the photo looks normal. Up close, you realize that the "something strange about this photo" is in the eyes.

In more disturbing cases, the eyes are blurred out entirely.

These posters I am discussing are not wallet-sized inserts in a brochure either. To give you an idea of the massive size of these poster children, take a look at me below, with one of our friends who works with Josh.

If I was the store-owner with a choice of having no photo or this one, the choice would be obvious. I'm not sure how an image like this would draw people into the store.

And if all else fails ...

one can always tape a piece of paper over a sign, like this poster for anti-bacterial soap!

Do you know your Eastern numbers?

This elevator sign shows the two sets of written numbers used here. In this photo, the numbers mirror each other, with the two sixes in the middle, the fives one step outside, then onto the fours, and so on. Though both sets originated in India, they are now more often called "Arabic" numbers, for it was the Arabs who spread them. The two types have many different names, but to keep things simple, I'll call the set commonly used in the Middle East (the first line below) Eastern Arabic numerals, and the set we are familiar with (the second line) simply Arabic numerals.

٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

To really get around here, you need to know how to read both sets of numbers. Many things, such as price tags, are written both ways. Some things, such as speed limits and addresses on buildings, are only in Eastern numerals, while others - often phone numbers - are written "normally" for us as Westerners.

Numbers are written as we are accustomed to - that is, from left to right. Thus, the above address "2000" is written in Eastern Arabic numerals the same way, with the two coming first followed by the three zeros.

Words and sentences, in contrast, are written from right to left, or "backwards" from our point of view. This entails more than just reading right to left on a page. Books, newspapers, fliers, magazines, and menus open from the "back." We recently felt quite foolish at a restaurant when we couldn't find the appetizers on the menu and the waiter kindly directed us to what we had assumed was the back of the menu. When students write essays in their notebooks, they turn the pages "backwards" to continue writing. When they compile a project into a binder, the binder also opens from the "back." When they sheath a paper in a protector, they put it in "backwards." I use quotes for the word "backwards" because, of course, the direction we write is arbitrary, as any parent can see when their young child accidentally writes his or her name as if it were in a mirror.

It takes a bit of "translating" of sorts to read numbers in a different system. This building's address is 758.

Many license plates, like this one, have the numbers written both ways, though many have only the Eastern style numbers.

Knowing numbers becomes a little more important when driving. We recently discovered that the numbers on the left of this sign tell us how many km. until the respective exits. One km. to King Abdullah Road, and three km. to Imam Saud. Only the main roads in the center are labeled in English and Arabic. Once we venture beyond downtown, the road signs become a sea of very long Arabic street names. We can pick out the word for "king" (malik) and the names Saud, Faisal, and Abdul Aziz - and that actually covers a lot!

Saudi Riyals have Eastern Arabic numerals on the front, and regular Arabic numbers on the back. But, if you have any dignity, the last thing you want to do while paying for something is flip your money over to check the number! The bills from top to bottom are: 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, and 500. One dollar is 3.75 Riyals. They also have coins for half-Riyals and quarter-Riyals, but they are rarely used. Cents are called "hallallas." Items in the store may be tagged a certain amount of Riyals with some hallallas after the decimal; at the check-out, the hallallas are usually rounded to the nearest Riyal, or sometimes the cashier will throw in a pack of gum to call it even.

Now for your quiz. Say you're driving down a road in Saudi Arabia. How fast (in km.) would you be wise to drive as you pass each sign? (Keep in mind that getting pulled over is a frustrating and time-consuming process, which could result in being jailed for a few hours if some of your documents are amiss.)

1.

2.

3.

4.

Answers:

1. 60

2. 120

3. 40

4. 50