Mom

There are some guys from Saudi Arabia in my art class, and one of them got to talking.  The past few days have been beautiful here--in the 50's and 60's.  He says weather like that would be considered freezing back home.  He said that American's ideas of Saudi Arabia are completely wrong.  Also, his notions of America were way off.  He feels at home in Utah because family is valued and so is religion.  Though not religious himself he understands this sort of culture.

When I asked him what he missed the most he said his Mom.  Good guy! He says he literally grew up in the kitchen and maybe that's why he likes to cook.

Dry!

Wow.  I knew Saudi Arabia was in a desert, but I didn't know that there were NO lakes or permanent rivers in the whole country! The populated places have to keep vigilant about "desertification"--the desert sands drifting in and swallowing up the towns and cities.  Perversely, this makes me want to go camping.  I've never experienced anything like this.  I want to ride off on a camel (and some very good guides) to the middle of nowhere and see what that kind of heat looks and feels like.  I imagine the desert nights are spectacular with millions of stars just inches away.

No Valentines

Catherine just read that Valentine's day was banned in Saudi Arabia--it's pagan holiday and all.  I wonder how the people feel about that? It's never been my favorite holiday (we never seem to have the time or money to enjoy it on the 14th), but as a blue blooded American, this sort of thing would make me furious.  Do the Saudi's care? Do the majority, being good Islam's, approve? Or is this just one more very minor blip on a huge roster of restrictions?

Unromantic Saudi

Welcome--sort of--to Saudi Arabia!! 

I'm sure I'll discover all kinds of wonderful things, but the first thing I found without even looking was that Saudi Arabia had made the aol's list of top ten most unromantic places on earth.  Seems reasonable--major segregation over there.  There is a picture of a man and a woman standing at a McDonald's with a partition between them.  Also, my co-worker, Candy's parents taught there for a few years.  They loved it, but if anyone dared to walk around holding hands people would spit on them.  So--maybe not the place to go for Valentine's day.

Zywiec

2015 Poland Trip.

Several years after our visit to virtual Poland, we got to see the real thing! Even better, the conference that Dave attended (which was the reason we got to go), was located in Wroclaw, which used to be called Bresslau. That's where my mother is from!! We had a wonderful time. To see the record of our adventures there, take a look under the Study Abroad Link. The Polish part of the trip was from June 18 through June 27.  The reason this Polish trip is under Study Abroad is that Catherine spent the summer going all over Europe and I kept a record of her adventures. She joined us for this leg of the trip and it seemed to make sense to keep posting under the Study Abroad link. 

Zywiec is a little town in Poland that has a brewery.  But what's really cool about it is that it is the very last entry in the 2002 version of the Encyclopedia Brittanica.  I know this weird bit of trivia because I've been reading the book The Know it All by A.J. Jacobs.  Highly recommend the book!  AJ reads the encyclopedia from A-Z--a mammoth undertaking not without problems!  The book is arranged in alphabetical order and is hilarious reading.  It's a nifty little coincidence that I finished his book which ended in Poland just as I finished my virtual journey there.

Food Food Food Food

We had a lovely polish dinner on Sunday, but I feel like I cheated.  Looking through the cookbooks, I remembered many of the recipes by the things my grandparents used to eat.  Herring is big in Poland--I actually ate herring sandwiches when I was little-- beets served in all kinds of ways are popular too. I realize that lots of people love beets, but shudder--I'd rather eat the herring. Probably the most repulsive traditional food--at least to Western pallets was my grandparents beloved golat.  Take pigs feet or some other unacceptable joint and boil them--save the water and chop up the meat, add some spices and return the meat and spices to the water (or a portion of it. Refrigerate until solidified, then dig in.

We chickened out and had a good dinner instead.  First up was a kielbalsa sausage--fried up and eaten with mustard. Then a "Toadstool" which is a hard boiled egg. Slice a bit off the top and bottom so it will stand up--top it with half a tomato so it looks like a toadstool and dot with mayo.  Quite fun.  Next was "nothing soup." Beat egg whites with sugar to make merengues--the soup itself is milk with vanilla and sugar, cook the merengues on top of the soup (that boiled over), the result----vanilla pudding soup.  Moving on---salad with sliced rutabaga (not bad), the the main dish of Pierogi--(stuffed dumpling things that are boiled then fried in butter)--I made two kinds--meat/onion and cheese/potato. Quite good especially when dipped in sour cream. Dessert was a poppy-seed cake.  Word to the casual cook---watch out on these foreign desserts--the cakes tend to turn out simply HUGE. I'm not sure if the general idea is to cook enough for the whole village, but that's about the scale of things.

Air Mattresses

According to one of the children's books currently in our bathroom, the Poles make great air mattressess.  In one demonstration they drove a semi-truck over 30 different kinds and not a single one was damaged.  What would that be like?  To use an air mattress with confidence? Boggles the mind.