have stopped amazing me, so I thought I should make a note before the incredulity totally fades. It's expensive here! Well I should say there is an expensive version of everything here, and as a newcomer you sometimes can't find the inexpensive version. For instance, two loads of laundry at John's $600 per night hotel cost $150. (The newspaper paid for the room, but not the laundry). Our neighborhood launderer does it for $7, including ironing. (That still seemed expensive to me, at first, considering how much it LOOKED like a Lucknowi laundering operation). Food is basically the same as the US, sometimes a bit more, sometimes less. Used furniture is also expensive; I was quoted a price of $750 for an old rickety wooden patio set: chairs, table, umbrella, etc. A taxi is really the only thing that's a whole bunch cheaper, but... I've still come around to wanting to buy a car, because waiting in the hot sun for 45 minutes while no taxis or buses appear on the horizon... is frustrating. It makes me not want to go anywhere.
I've been reading a lot: Wilfred Thesiger's Arabian Sands, a biography of Gertrude Bell called Daughter of the Desert, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (which made me feel guilty for feeling sorry for myself, whining about being "imprisoned" by the heat and lack of tools).
There are jewels that I can love: swimming in the gulf at night (if only it weren't so hard to get a taxi home), drinking fresh watermelon juice, going to the cultural foundation. It's not transparent, though. There's a lot of hidden knowledge. The streets each of three names, but only two are written on the signs, and the third is the one everyone knows. I'm learning them...