Sunday, June 20, 2010

Ushaiger Village

Last week I took a day trip with a friend of mine through the social club at the hospital. It was an all day excursion to a village about 2 and 1/2hrs from Riyadh. We got an early start, and left the hospital compound at 0730. The scenery was mainly desert (I'm sure you're super shocked by this), camels, and a few times we dipped into a valley and there were lush green villages from the underground water supply.

We arrived in Ushaiger Village mid-morning, and our 1st stop was the village museum. It was more an assortment of random displays including stuffed animals that were actually quite terrifying, and a peculiar display of pagers and cell phones. Sadly, my current phone could easily have been on display in this exhibit. I give it an A for effort.

We left the museum, and headed for a tour of the village. The village itself is quite small. The homes are made out of mud and possibly straw, so there were newer houses mixed with older crumbled ones. Even by mid morning the heat is near unbearable, not to mention that we are wearing our fashionable abayas, making things even more uncomfortable. We were able to tour the mosque, and a couple homes. The mosque itself was beautiful, and I took a bunch of photos while in this part of the village.

Around noon we settled down for a little siesta from the heat, and were served a traditional Saudi meal, on the floor as local people would eat. With our bellies full, the entire group napped again, and got back into the bus to head to the Red Sands Desert. The desert is the most unusual color, and we stopped the bus so some of the group could attempt to scale one of the massive sand dunes. It was enormous, and they were pretty exhausted by the time they came back down!!
We then headed back to Riyadh, but there was still one last surprise in store for us on the highway!!

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