memories down the lane part 2

It was near to Ramadan ((rämädän´, răm´´ dän´) , in Islam, the ninth month of the Muslim year, during which all Muslims must fast during the daylight hours. Indulgence of any sort is forbidden during the fast. There are only a few who are exempt, e.g., soldiers, the sick, and the young. Because of the purely lunar calendar, Ramadan falls in different seasons. The final day of Ramadan, Id al-Fitr, is celebrated by a day of feasting. The first revelation of the Qur'an is commemorated in this month)when I arrived in Riyadh for the first time. It was 5th of December and the temperature was 12 °C. During summer it goes up til 50°C that your nose will get bleed if you are not used to it. During Ramadan they start their prayer in temples with loud speakers at around 4 and 5 am. I am a sensitive sleeper so, I usually get up at the same time and do something else like reading. When we have moved to our new accomodation that I jogged and exercised in the big common living room or sometimes around the compound of the hospital(not going out of the gates) or in the tennis lawn. Our working days are from Saturday til Thursday morning. The rest of thursday and friday was free. We had parties too in our accomodation when someone was celebrating her birthday, or during valentines day, christmas and new year or anytime we felt like getting together. We are all ladies of course. We get to attend some parties in other places if the invitation comes from a couple. But that is not included in our bus trips so we had to take the taxi(never take a taxi alone especially in the evening because there is the risk that the driver will take you to the vast desert rape and kill you....). But to tell you the truth, I took the taxi alone thrice but during the day. One of the favorite sports over there is tennis. There are lots of tennis tournaments- competing with other players from other hospitals. The men have a separate tournament from the women but at least, we were allowed to watch each other's tournament. Sometimes, the finals were held in the Embassies and that was more fun. During my free time and when it was so quiet that, I get to practice my drawing or play bowling with my friends and some of the doctors-who usually sponsored or rather invited us to use the facilities in their accomodation. We were provided cable tv’s and we were updated of what’s happening back home because we had “the filipino channel”. One of the things that I missed doing was going to cinema(....there is no theater) eventhough we had dvd movies we borrowed or swapped with friends. The cut drawings on the cabinet are some of my pastel fruit drawings I have displayed in our kitchen in Riyadh. I regret I had to cut it out but it turned out okay, anyway. I will stop here and you can kindly watch out for the next memory down the lane. You can also click the title to see the pictures in my other blog. thanks!