I am on the final countdown, after 15 months of living in the sand-pit I’ve got 14 days to go.  My first adventure living overseas on my own.  I feel a little flat…….  Not sure why.  I don’t feel like I’ve seen enough, experienced enough or sucked enough out of this experience.  I think I cheated myself by not pushing myself to go and see and do……

I have often felt lonely, bored, restless and I blame that on the place I live….. it is difficult to explore in Saudi Arabia as a single women but I think I have also relied on that as an excuse to hide on compound and not explore.

I have made lots of mistakes in public.  I never quite mastered the art of not smiling politely to males and saying hello, I always forget to take a seat in a restaurant on the ‘family’ side rather then just grabbing a window seat were I could watch the world go past.  I have frequently been redirected to the female queue when I have inadvertently joined the male queue and then got cranky because no-one would serve me.

I still read the local newspaper and find myself giggling at the ‘comedy’ stories before having to remind myself that this is actually a true reflection of the national issues….. Brides really are left at the alter because they want to work after getting married.  There really is public debate over wether or not women walking in a park during the day should or should not be subject to verbal and physical sexual assault and should a law be made to stop the harassment….

On a personal level the questions that have been raised for me are more fundamental to my lifestyle and the way that I interact with the world.  I have questions within myself over world politics, living in the middle east gives a new dimension to the discussions in Western papers.  The conflicts between these countries will never be solved by Western bombing of one regime and the more you look at the patterns of Western involvement and the dynamics between countries like Saudi Arabia and the Western world the more I realise how much international wars are about money.  They are not about religious differences of opinion or in response to atrocities they are simply about money, if there is no money involved then there is no involvement by the Western world; Syria, Yugoslavia, Western Paupa, Rwanda genocides ignored until it was nearly to late because there was no threat to income.  I always knew this but living here has made it more real.

As I move onto my next adventure 10 months in Antarctica over winter with 14 men, I will remember to make the most of every opportunity even if it is cold and all I feel like doing is sitting around in my pjs inside.

I’ll start planning the next time I get to experience working and living some-were totally different, I’ll take France, London, Vietnam or Singapore really I’m not fussy….. any-one know who’s recruiting 🙂