Tuesday Ten From Saudi-Charities and Rain

What a busy week it's been! I really don't understand how the time flies like this. I thought I just posted the previous Tuesday Ten yesterday! I didn't even manage to post this on time but better late than never..
Mom is leaving in a few days and we've been running around Riyadh trying to get as many things done as possible. Looking for souvenirs all over Riyadh and we went to Diira souq to find the best ones. It seems to be almost impossible to find nice post cards from Saudi-Arabia. The hotels do have some but many look out dated and the places pictured are not even that nice. I guess people just don't send postcards anymore.

Last Wednesday we went to Intercontinental hotel for lunch by the pool, the weather was perfect! The pool rules say "women are not allowed to sit around the pool". Pretty annoying, why not even allowed to sit?  What is the harm of women sitting around the pool enjoying the nice weather and having coffee. It's an international hotel environment and this should be perfectly fine. Only men are allowed to enjoy  swimming, of course. Notice the UFO hat landed in the background which his the ministry of Interior building.

The SHOP&DROP winter campaign is ongoing at Harvey Nichols until Dec 4th. You can donate winter clothes and they distribute them to the needy families around Riyadh. Our clothes were put in the container by some really sweet volunteering Saudi girls. And yes there are that poor people in Saudi so if you're in Riyadh or Jeddah go participate! The campaign is run by Sawa'ed Atheeb check their site here: http://www.atheebsd.org/english/biography.php?p=4&f=_3

This is actually the old baby swing from my childhood. My daughter loved it so much last the summer, we brought it to Saudi because they don't sell anything like this here. The kitten enjoys it too!

We went to Ha'ir and Riyadh river area to walk around.  Such lovely green scenery and flowers everywhere.  The date palms had new dates in them. Listening to the Birds singing and just the sound of the water flowing and the wind softly blowing in the trees makes my mind at peace.

The Riyadh river flows through Wadi Hanifa which is a very long lush valley full of agriculture and date farms in particular. There's even fish in the river and many expats go there fishing on the weekends.

Lots of pink stuff on sale at the Walk For Cure breast cancer awareness event. I got the hair clips and a small bracelet, mom bought a medicine box and some ribbons for her sisters, who have been diagnosed recently with breast cancer.

We had an amazing Thanksgiving dinner at our friends house!

Mom is trying to purchase all her souvenirs this week. Here we are testing out some bokhoor. It's pieces of special kind of dried wood that smell really good when you burn it slowly on a special kind of burner. This particular piece cost around 1500 SAR!

An evening walk around the neighborhood, we found some villas for sale open for people to walk in for viewing. Mom's thoughts were it being as living in a jail with those high walls, bars on windows and such a small harsh yard.

We found this flower on sale at IKEA in Finnish it's called a Christmas Star! The vase is from a trip to Jordan.

And finally this Tuesday, schools in Saudi were closed because it rained. From this picture you can maybe guess why.