So it only took 38 hours...

...but we made it back to Bahrain!

Magic Trick

Ta da! Elena made a giant zucchini appear out of thin air!

The Kingdom

Yesterday Jeff and I saw The Kingdom, the movie starring Jamie Foxx. It was good. It was set in Riyadh, in the aftermath of a compound bombing and the ensuing search for the evil Abu Hamza, the Saudi mastermind behind the plot. It was your basic action movie but pretty entertaining so that's all it takes to get a thumbs-up from me.

Jeff and I exchanged glances all through the movie because they got a lot of the details RIGHT! Can you believe it. But they also got a lot of details WRONG. Here's are my thoughts:

RIGHT:

• Saudis want to get in your way of doing things efficiently
• Saudis do a lot for show, when in reality nothing is happening behind-the-scenes
• Saudis do not have the right equipment (ie. water pump) for the job, thereby forcing you to complete the job in the least efficient way possible
• Saudis command you to do something, or go somewhere, or show them your passport, all without telling you why
• American old lady at the compound said Saudis wouldn't be doing the gardener's job because they feel it is beneath them
• All the barbed wire and security at the compound
• You really do see convoys of big, black, shiny SUVs

WRONG:

• Saudis would never, ever be the workers cleaning up after the explosion. The clean-up workers would never be speaking Arabic; they most likely would be Pakistani or Bangladeshi.
• The movie played off the crazy driving and flipped over cars as being a result of a high-speed car chase; in reality, that is an average Tuesday commute
• Al Rammah compound (or whatever it was called) looked too shoddy to be a target of that severe of an attack; most likely an attack would be at those luxurious compounds that are nicer than the Ritz.
• There are no more Americans in Saudi, least of all the Texan-twang kind like the one Tim McGraw played (who looked really bloated, BTW)

OK, so these are major generalizations, but as with these things, there is a grain of truth to them.

Also, I was excited that I understood some of the Arabic words. Just the simple phrases like greetings and such, but still it was exciting!

We really wanted to see this movie before we went back to Bahrain because it would never play over there. Every movie is censored- I think only Mr. Bean's Holiday was not. I didn't know that at first, until after I went to a few movies and was like, why is every movie less than an hour and a half? Why are there messy splices / abrupt scene changes? But it's the best we can get. Movie theatres do not exist in Saudi, so the only place we can watch movies is an actual movie theatre is in Bahrain.

Summer's end

Our time in Seattle is quickly coming to an end. Jeff's visit came and went; he just departed for Bahrain today.

It's been amazing to be back home. Coming back here after a stint in the Middle East has taught me not to take my home for granted. What do they call it? Perspective.