I've been back in Riyadh for what feels like weeks, when in reality it's only been a few days..2 days to be exact. *sigh* depression, resentment, anger, sadness, and all those other great emotions have come rushing back to me and its almost like the amazing week in Sri Lanka never happened. I don't feel refreshed and ready to conquer the world...I feel even more miserable. *sigh*

This isn't right...this is no way for people to live. Then I feel stupid because I am constantly being told what a great compound I live on, how awesome it is to have a golf course, bowling alley, etc., etc. but you know what?? all those people that keep telling me that can have all these great things. I will gladly trade places with them. Its like giving a hamster a running wheel and telling him now you can run!

Yes I have amazing amenities on the compound, and a lot of people would kill for that. But it doesn't make me any less trapped. It doesn't take away the fact that I can't leave. I am stuck on this compound seeing the same faces day in and day out, with no hope of leaving when I feel like it. If I do want to leave I have to schedule in a driver...schedules are hopeless with kids. Or I can wait for my husband who sometimes doesn't feel like leaving the house after coming home from work. So if I tell you how miserable I am do not judge me and tell me I have such amazing things available to me. I am entitled to my feelings and currently I am miserable...even with two swimming pools.

In other news, my sons have become obsessed with Dinosaur Train which is a really cool show that teaches them about dinosaaurs (duh!). Theres one dinosaur who's catch phrase is "I have a hypothesis",  and now my two year old and four year old are walking around telling me they have a hypothesis...which i find absolutely adorable! Especially since they pronounce it correctly AND use it correctly.

In crazy mommyland news, my youngest has been especially busy. The day after we got back to Riyadh he decided the best place to use the potty would be his bedroom closet. He took off his underpants in the kitchen, walked upstairs and sqautted in his closet. And then we were wonderfully surprised with a disgusting puddle of diarrhea. Yes, diarrhea...THANK GOD we have tile floors! Can you imagine that mess on carpeting! I think I would have cried.

Second story, he handed me his brothers toy airplane, dripping water, and proudly told me he washed it. Then I, being distracted and slightly confused thanked him. Until I realized he has no idea how to turn on the water so I quickly asked him how he washed the plane; silently praying he didn't use the toilet. He very very excitedly and proudly yelled out: "fish tank!" And I thought greeeaaaaat!!! nasty fish water. but my dad helped put things in perspective, because when I was telling him the story his guess was that my son peed on the plane and honestly that would have been a lot worse than dipping it in the fish tank.

Our poor fish though have been through so much because of this little boy. Last night i found a ball of cotton floating around their tank. and a few months ago play dough and the play dough can.

Our Week Vacation in Sri Lanka Part III

Day 7: Bentota, Sri Lanka & Columbo, Sri Lanka

We woke up to rain, and were so sad to think that we might miss out on a little more beach fun. :( We had breakfast and luckily the rain subsided and we were able to enjoy the pool and then the beach and then the pool again. It was still overcast but I actually prefer it to be cloudy when I'm at the beach so its not tooo hot. After getting our fill of beach and swimming we headed back to the turtle hatchery so my sons could hold the turtles one last time. They did not want to leave, but eventually we headed to Columbo. We took a driving tour around the city, and my husband stopped inside the biggest buddhist temple in Columbo. Once we had seen enough of the city we headed to our hotel room which had a view of the ocean and the parliament building. It was a very pretty view and was a nice hotel room to end our trip in. Not the prettiest of rooms but comfortable and clean.

Day 8: Columbo, Sri Lanka

Woke up super early, headed to the buffet and ate some breakfast and headed to the airport to catch our plane back to Riyadh. The end.

Some of the fruits we tried because I cannot for the life of me remember which day and when and where in the story it fits were mangosteen, jack fruit, dorian fruit, red bananas, lemon bananas, pineapple. The mangosteen was sooooooooo sweet! I loved it..reminded me a little of lychee fruit. Jack fruit I was not a fan of..apparently it is a fruit that grows to be over 20 kg or something like that...when it is smaller and "young" they use it as a vegetable in their curries and when it is big and ripe they eat it as a fruit. It had a weird texture and not an appealing flavor at all to me. My husband didn't mind it though. Red bananas tasted like normal bananas so I was disappointed, apparently red bananas are more rare there and are only used for special occasions. Lemon bananas were also just bananas to me...they had a stronger flavor I guess...maybe slightly tangy. But both were very good bananas and very flavorful. Pineapples were amaaaaaaazing!!! so so soooo good! Did not make my tongue itch at all...and pineapple nearly always makes my tongue itch. The last fruit...dorian fruit....was the most disgusting fruit I have ever had the displeasure of eating. First off the smell was absolutely rancid! It smelled like rotting, decomping, garbage filled with really old baby diapers...it was nasty! I don't know what compelled the sri lankans to even try eating something that smelled so awful even before cutting into the peel. I mean my motto is smells like trash not going into my mouth. Anyways...cutting into the peel to get the fruit lets out an even stronger even more horrible smell. I don't know why I ate it...probably because our tour guide swore that it smells horrible but tastes very good and sweet. Let me tell you...it did not taste good! It has a thin plasticy layer that gives it a slight bite...once you pop through that the inside is a creamy, custardy, cheesy texture. Taste-wise, first bite you think hmm okay...then as it sits in your mouth and you feel the texture of the first kind of crunchy bit mixed with the creamy weird texture of the inside fruit...its just plain nasty. My husband said it tasted like onion to him...I could kind of see how he would think that...but I can even find words to describe just how disgusting this fruit tasted. Everything about it was horrible...taste, smell, texture...EVERYTHING! And my tour guide bought a whole bag to take home too...so it sat in the car with us for a day. And our noses could not get used to the smell which led my husband to believe that the fruit is constantly giving off smell because otherwise our noses would have adjusted and we wouldn't even realize the fruit was in the car. And once the fruit was removed from the car there was still an after smell. It was probably the worst thing I have ever put into my mouth...right up there with ear wax...and I know everyone has tasted ear wax when they were little (it was an accident okay!)

As for foods I did like and eat nearly everyday I was there... string hoppers, coconut sambal, king coconut juice, dhal curry, and beef curry. YUUUUUUUM! My breakfast was string hoppers and coconut sambal nearly every day, sooo yummy! I need to learn how to make them!

But yes that is the end of our trip...and now I'm back in depressing Riyadh and hit full force with the depressing feelings, resentment, and anger at being a woman in Saudi Arabia.   

(I decided to break up this post into three parts since it looked like a college essay when I posted it all together)

Our Week Vacation in Sri Lanka Part II

Day 4: Kandy, Sri Lanka & Nuwar Eliya, Sri Lanka

This day was a tour Kandy day, and we just walked around a mall, and then walked the streets to see the little shops. Before the shopping though, our tour guide took us to a lookout point or whatever you want to call it where you could see all of Kandy. It was a breathtaking view of the city with a lot of focus on the lake. The street shopping reminded me a lot of the souks in Saudi Arabia, so aside from the slight difference in merchandise it wasn't too amazing. Still fun to walk around and be part of the city. When we tired of shopping our tour guide brought us to his home to meet his wife and kids. He had a 16 year old boy, a 12 year old boy, a four year old boy and a 3 1/2 year old girl. They were all very sweet, and the wife had made some food, and they had fruit (fruit is like very popular there), and they had fancy fizzy juice. It was sweet of them to host us. After the visit, we started our drive up the mountain to Nuwar Eliya. Along the way, we stopped for lunch at a hotel built practically right next to the waterfall. It was a humid yet gorgeous lunch, none of the restaurants we went to had air conditioning even in the hotels. They all seemed to think that sweating while eating spicy food was a great idea. NOT A GREAT IDEA! But after lunch we stopped by a waterfall and my boys and husband and tour guide all waded into the water. I chose not to because I did not want to be helped by the group of men standing there. However, after my husband, sons, and tour guide were in the water I realized staying by myself with the group of guys probably not the best idea. They kept saying things in Singalese (or Tamil not sure which language they were speaking), looking and me and laughing. They gave off a really sleazy vibe, and they kept getting closer and closer to me...as a group. They started talking to me and I did my best not to smile or be friendly at all because they were really really creeping me out. One guy took out his phone and asked if he could take a picture with me...I wanted to cry but emotionlessly said no. He asked again..one pic and I refused him a second time. Luckily my husband also felt uncomfortable as did the tour guide and the shortened their little wading adventure for me. Then off we went up the mountain passing the tea plantations. It was stunningly beautiful. Next stop was a tea factory. The building and everything inside was over 100 years old, and the same stuff used by the British who built it. The guy said they even used the same techniques and methods the British did to make their tea today...which I found pretty awesome. I'm a huge tea fan so this was just my cup of tea :P :P After buying 6000 rupees worth of tea we continued on up towards the hotel. When we arrived we were greeted with BEAUTIFUL, GORGEOUS weather...I was sooooo thankful not to feel the humidity although I had gotten used to it. Before arriving at the hotel we stopped so my oldest son could ride a horse/pony/wild horse then continued on to our hotel. When walked to our hotel room I was pleasantly surprised to see it was our own personal little cabin...walk inside and it was a bed and a loft with another bed. It was soooo cute and the view was amazing..looking straight onto the lake. We got settled then walked around the lake for a little bit and rented a peddle boat. It was dark though and my husband and sons were a little scared to be on the lake in the dark so we made it a short boat ride and headed back for dinner.

Day 5: Nuwar Eliya, Sri Lanka & Bentota, Sri Lanka

We decided that we wanted to spend a little bit longer in Nuwar Eliya instead of waking up and starting our ride to Bentota early, since the weather was gorgeous and we did not get to fully appreciate the city the day before. So we woke up, and enjoyed breakfast outside with our wonderful lake view. We even met a really nice couple with children close in age to our kids (though the parents looked at least 40). We walked down the entire pathway surrounding the walkable side of the lake, and then decided to have a family horse ride. I took the youngest with me on a horse and my husband to the oldest. I didn't actually ride the horse...I don't know how...a guy walked the horse while we sat on them...but it was still very fun, and made me want to learn to ride a horse even more. I think it would be amazing exercise. When the horse ride ended, we started put 6 hr drive to Bentota. We took one little break for bathroom and snacks near some river that was apparently in some british film that won a lot of awards call river something..and I just googled it. It was called: The Bridge on the River Kwai. Apparently it won a whole bunch of awards and our tour guide was like really proud that this river in Sri Lanka was part of the movie. The river was beautiful but I wasn't really interested in the fact that it had been featured in a movie. We were also supposed to go white water rafting down that river, but since we had the boys that was not an option and also part of the reason we chose to stay longer in Nuwar Eliya. We continued the drive and didn't arrive to Bentota until really late...8 pm. (thats really late in Sri Lanka). When we finally got up to our room...we were realllly disappointed. It was an oddly shaped tiny room with two twin beds. :| Also it was on the third floor at the end of a REALLY long hallway. To get to the beach or pool would be a nightmare with two little dawdling boys. So we called and asked if they had anything better...and they did have a room available on the ground floor that looked out at the pool, and had a walkout to the pool and beach. PERFECT! We changed rooms and to our relief this room had a king bed...a much better fit when its four in a bed. Also we could walk straight to the pool, and then from there to the beach without having to walk down an endless hallway, wait for an elevator, walk down another two hallways and out to the pool. AAAND we could easily get back to the room to change the boys into dry clothes. Much better fit for us. We ordered dinner and went to bed.

Day 6: Bentota, Sri Lanka

We woke up and spent the morning on the beach, and then the pool, and then had some lunch. The beach was sooo pretty, and the water was so clear and shallow for a good distance out which was great because it made it safer for the boys. The sand was so soft too...no shells in the water to hurt your feet. After lunch and a quick nap for the boys we headed to a turtle hatchery. There the boys got to hold turtle eggs, and baby sea turtles. They loved it and I have to say I really loved holding the turtles too! We also saw a few handicapped turtles they saved and Albino turtles which are apparently very rare the guy told us that from every 500,000 eggs, 1 or 2 will be an albino turtle. They keep the albinos and never release them because they are not safe (obviously) because they cannot blend in. When my son finally agreed to leave the turtles we went on a river safari. We saw a tiny little monkey which we were offered to hold, but decided against it. Next stop on the safari was the "fish market" Basically a little dock with large open sqaures holding HUUUGE doctor fish, and we were offered a foot massage by the fish. It cost us 200 Sri Lankan rupees each to sit and soak our feet with the fish...thats about $1.59!!! In the states to sit and have the tiny tiny fish nibble at your feet it cost waaaaaaay more than quadruple that amount! So I got a nice pedicure..too bad the fish can't polish my nails too. :( While soaking our feet my sons and husband held a baby crocodile..very brave little boys! Then we continued and my oldest son, 4 years old, drove the speed boat...almost crashing us into a mangrove! We safely arrived at a tiny island in the river that was home to a small Buddhist temple. We had a tour of the temple and at the end I asked the monk if he could read from their religious book. He looked very excited, i gues no one asks to hear a passage from the book, and read a little bit explaining what he had read. Then he proceeded to ask me if I had facebook and told me he had seen someone who looked just like me on facebook. Completely weirded out I backed out and headed back down to the boat. We drove through a mangrove and headed back to the dock to be taken back to our hotel. We had a horrible buffet dinner with RUUUUUDE russians/swiss people who had no concept of a line and went to bed.

Our Week Vacation in Sri Lanka

I figure a 7 day trip in a country I've never been to, and rarely heard of deserves a blog post with all (or as many as I can remember) the details. I mean how often does one go to Sri Lanka?? Well apparently for Saudis, very frequently; but not for me although I do hope to go back there one day.

So lets just jump in, shall we?

Day 1: Habarna, Sri Lanka

We land in or near Columbo, Sri Lanka, I think the airport is outside of Columbo but not by that much. Anywhoo...we land and collect our luggage and look for the guy who is supposed to be carrying a sign with our names or at least my husband's name on it. There is no one...but this one guy carrying a sign saying "Husain and family" keeps staring at us. I pray that's not him...we call the guy we set up the tour with and he tells us he'll call the guy who will be our guide for the next 7 days. The man holding the Husain sign answers his phone the next second and I think, "Crap, he's our guide." We walk to a kiosk selling phone cards and buy Sri Lankan sim cards so we don't have outrageous bills when we get back to Saudi Arabia. Then we leave the airport, and are greeted by a rush of humidity and heat. YUCK! I feel like I want to cry, humid stickiness is not the vacation I was envisioning. But I decide to ignore and make the best of the sweat I suddenly feel dripping down my back and neck. Thankfully the A/C in the car is amazing, and in no time we are enjoying a ride to our first hotel. Along the way we pick up some coconuts, king coconuts to be exact and drink the coconut water straight from the coconut. Then we buy some lemon bananas. Next we drive through a little town famous for their cashews so of course we buy some cashews from the side of the road. Delicious! We then stop by a wooded area where we see some rubber trees and learn that they actually get rubber from these trees to make shoes and tires and stuff. And here I was thinking rubber tree was just a name! We stop for lunch which wasn't anything amazing or really all that interesting. Get back on the road and drive drive drive...passing by coconut trees, banana trees, pineapple plantations and rice paddies. I already knew this but for those who don't each pineapple plant produces one pineapple, and pineapples do not grow on trees or bushes. Pineapples grow under ground like a root with their leaves popping above the ground. When we think we've finally arrived at the hotel we realize our driver has brought us to a place where we can ride elephants..inside I'm terrified, but I play it cool and act like theres nothing too it. Until of course nearly crying when I actually climb onto the elephant and sit on the little bar/box/death trap thingy on top waiting for my sons and husband to climb in too. Our ride starts through a jungle where residents living there try to sell us bags of bananas (we end up buying two bags) to feed the elephant along the way. You yell "Kumari banana" and all of the sudden the elephants trunk is flung up nearly into the death trap thingy waiting for you to hand her a banana. So you feed her bananas as you ride through the jungle (not a dense jungle but its still called a jungle). Then we start walking towards a little lake/pond/some kind of body of water and the elephant walk in until our feet are practically in the water too. She walks through the water as you observe the water lilies and other plant/animal life as well as the floating mounds of elephant poop :D. Its peaceful and beautiful and you kind of forget how freaking huge the elephant is and how freaking scary it would be if you fell off and were crushed by its ginormous feet. And then she leaves the water and they ask if you want to move onto the elephants neck. My husband and sons all took turns...I chickened out. After the majestic elephant ride we head to the hotel in Habarna and are pleasantly surprised with a really beautiful hotel room with an amazing pool that has water soo warm you'll think an elephant must have peed in it. The boys and I take a swim at night, i love night swimming, and then our day ends with some dinner in the room.

Day 2: Habarna, Sri Lanka

We woke up bright and early the next morning and headed to a jeep for a safari through the jungle. Now mind you, when I first heard Sri Lanka is a jungle...I envisioned dark green everywhere..kind of like Tarzan or something. Its not that dark...or dense. and Tarzan is a cartoon so I probably should not have been comparing real life to a disney movie. :/ oh well. It was still breathtakingly beautiful. Anyways...we start our ride and see a few birds, a peacock..and then the best part wild elephants!!! Be prepared this trip is all about the elephants. :D Its a beautiful ride, so peaceful and not too hot yet since its still pretty early in the morning. You can hear the sounds of the jungle fowl and other jungle animals. We drove past a little creek, and then we stopped at a rock/mountain/hill and got out to climb up. The view? SPECTACULAR! The sounds? Better than any relaxation cd! It was stunning....green everywhere and the sounds of actual nature no car engines to mar the beauty of it all. And on top of this rock there was a kind of hut on stilts that we were able to climb up and get an even higher view of everything. I fell in love, even though I am scared to death of bugs and getting dirty I absolutely love nature. When the safari ended we met our tour guide back at the hotel and he took us for one more elephant ride on Kumari. Then we started our ride towards Kandy but not before stopping for a "Village Tour" which consisted of a bull cart ride to a tuk tuk, a tuk tuk ride to a canoe-type boat, a canoe-type boat ride around a lake, and then a stop in an actual village persons kitchen to see how they do everyday tasks. We watched her clean rice (basically like husking corn), watched how they separated the husk thingies from the rice, watched her grind millet in her house, by hand (everything was done by hand), saw how she opened a coconut in her back yard- basically there is a stick stuck in the ground with a blade on it, and then she smashes the coconut against it to peel it so that she can take it inside to open it. They cover the blade with an old coconut shell "for safety" as she said. Next they take the coconut into the house and grab a knife to split it in half. They pour the water into old coconut shells and drink it (we got to drink it I felt soo awesome lol). Then the break the coconut and start grating out the meat. They eat the meat alone and they also have other uses for the meat. They mix it with water to make coconut milk. Or they use the grated coconut as part of the ingredients for roti (their bread). She made roti for us out of the ground millet, grated coconut, and coconut milk, and a little salt. Then she made something called coconut sambal which was grated coconut, onions, chili, salt, lemon and water. It was sooooooooooo delicious! She also made us a spice tea for after lunch with some fresh fruits. It was amazing to see how far the coconut could go! I mean it served as refreshment, side dish, and main dish, and it was also used as their cups! Resourceful!!!! The last stop of the day was a spice garden where we bought a whole bunch of natural medicinal stuff, and got to see the plants of a lot of spices. It was a beautiful garden and an exhausting yet amazing day! We were very very happy to get to our hotel in Kandy and head to bed to prepare for the next two days there.

Day 3: Kandy, Sri Lanka

We woke up early, again, theres a theme of early rising this entire week because Sri Lanka is a country where everyone goes to bed by 8 pm, and all shops are closed by 7 pm. :| This day we headed to the Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage to see the elephants!! http://www.elephant.se/location2.php?location_id=43 in case you'd like to see pics. So we get there and are able to see the baby elephants being bottle-fed, unfortunately we were not there early enough to actually give them any milk but we were able to feed the bigger elephants some fruit. After watching the milk feeding, and feeding the baby elephants some jack fruit tree leaves, we walked over to the bigger elephants and bought two plates of fruits to feed to the elephants. It was pretty amazing being that close to a huge elephant. Its trunk up in the air and its mouth open ready for the fruit. It just stood there mouth wide and its tongue would push the fruit down its throat. Its mouth didn't close at all...I accidentally touched its tongue which freaked me out..haha but since I did feel it I might as well describe it. it was soooooo smooth and very wet. Not sticky at all as I would have thought. Just very very smooth, soft, and wet. Once we were done with feeding them we watched them roam on the grassland with a beautiful jungle backdrop. I say backdrop because it looked sooo surreal! It didn't seem real...it was so incredibly beautiful! After watching them walk around freely, no glass or bars separating us from them they started their walk to the river for their two hour bath. We walked behind them, able to reach out our hands and touch them, to the river and the watched them bathing, and splashing and drinking the water. Afterwards we walked to a few shops and saw a factory where they take the elephant dung and turn it into paper, natural color and a bunch of other colors. Pretttyyy coool stuff, but definitely not a try it at home kind of thing..unless of course your diet consists of leaves, fruits, and tree trunks. lol Our next stop of the day was a botanical garden...which was beautiful but considering the heat and the fact that there are botanical gardens in the States too I wasn't all that impressed and was really just ready to head back to the hotel and rest! We rested for a couple hours then headed back out to watch a traditional dance which lasted an hour because it was a few different dances plus some fire tricks and fire walking. When that was done we headed back to the Tooth Relic Buddhist Temple and were driving past a lake...over the lake the sky was filled with bats flying over. Now I am definitely scared of a bat flying near me, but it was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. They were so graceful! It was more beautiful than watching birds...maybe because its more rare to see the sky so full of bats (for me anyways). We visited the Tooth relic Buddhist Temple which was very ...loud. They were in the middle of a ceremony or something which is basically loudly beating two or three maybe four drums. I don't know how that can help meditation but there were people meditating. I probably would have yelled for them to shut the hell up! Then after another exhausting day headed back to the hotel in Kandy.