After the January/February term, I was feeling a little burnt out. I realized that I was trying to do too much. I started to not like teaching, the culture, and to not have any motivation for anything. Shortly after we came back to my city from a relaxing weekend on the beach, some other of my friends decided to go back to the same place a month later. Since I didn't have the money and I didn't really have the energy, I wasn't going to go. They decided, though, that I really needed to get away again, and so they helped pay for another trip.
It was a blessing and a lot of fun to go with a different group of people. We got to hang out, eat lots of fish, and swim. One afternoon we were hanging out on the beach and we saw eighty teenage girls jump out of buses. After a while, we started feeling like animals in the zoo since they all kept walking by wanted to see the foreigners (who are very rare in the country). Luckily, we had some men with us and all they had to do was wave at them to scare them off. The separation of the sexes is a big thing here and so having any men talk to them can be a serious thing so they ran away as soon as any of our men said anything. Overall it was a nice trip, but since I'm not much of a beach person, I don't have any desire to go back soon...
This is pretty much the drive after making it out of the mountains, where my city is, the road is pretty flat and it's often quite HOT. When we drove back from our first trip down, the car thermometer read 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in February!
Well, our "hotel" wasn't much to look at...or stay in (literally - and in more ways than one). At least, though, we had a bed, bathroom, showers, air conditioning, and amazing food! Unfortunately, they turn off the electricity at 6:00am so the air conditioners would stop and then it would get hot and stuffy. Because electricity is precious (the COUNTRY'S power grid isn't strong enough for the whole country), in this area, they turn it on randomly during the day. It gave me great motivation to stay on the beach and hang out.
The beach is wonderful and the sunsets are also amazing - which makes it worth the stay in the hotel.
We had some real American Idol fans with us, so they asked the people working there if we could use the computer to watch American Idol in the main room. It's shown on an Arab TV station and only shown a day after the real showing in the States. I'm sure all of the workers and other guests got a kick out of the strange foreigners watching a strange American TV show...
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