Thursday, July 16, 2009

Our Upcoming Trip

So, yes, we are driving to Jordan.  And, for those of you who are a bit rusty in geography, that will involve driving through Saudi Arabia.

My mother is freaking out.  (Stop reading now, Mom!)

The Saudi border is about 2 hours or less from Doha.  We are hoping that we won't be held up long at the border since we will be arriving in early afternoon in the middle of the week.  Shouldn't be a busy time.  

Once we draw near to the Saudi border, Emily and I will have to don abayas, those long, loose black robes you see on many photos of Middle Eastern women.  Hubby says he's been told we don't need to wear headcoverings, but should wear scarves at our neck.  That's much preferable to wearing headcoverings, which I thought we would need.

We are planning on hanging towels in the windows so that we can have a bit more privacy and freedom as we drive through.  We don't want to wear the abayas the whole time, so hopefully those towels will allow us to have the freedom to wear our normal clothes while we are driving and just slip the abayas on when we have to get out of the car.

We'll spend one full day and two partial-days in Saudi, so it will be interesting.  Well, that might be a stretch.  With the exception of the one big city (Dammam) we'll drive through, we will pretty much be in the middle of nowhere.  And poor Hubby will have to do ALL the driving, as it is illegal for women to drive in Saudi Arabia.  

It should definitely be an experience.  But I think we will be happy we did it.  For one thing, it will save us big bucks on airline tickets.  For another, we will have our car at our disposal while in Jordan.  But the 2 1/2 day drive?  Well, here's what we have planned to keep everyone happy.

Both kids have iTouch's so they are each getting a small allowance to download things from iTunes.   They can choose applications, music, tv shows or movies to watch.  I'm also downloading for each of them a book that they've been wanting to read to keep them occupied.   We've also picked up a few movies to watch in the car.  (Boy am I glad we bought the car with a dvd player!)  We got Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Night at the Museum II, Mall Cop, Bride Wars, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and Mousetrap.  

We'll pack a cooler with snacks and drinks and load up the car with pillows and away we'll go!

5 comments:

Leeann said...

Sounds like a plan! Hope it goes very well for all of you. I have a 16 hour drive planned today and I thought *that* was bad!

Anonymous said...

Lori, I just dont like it!!

Anonymous said...

u drive untill we get to the boarder, and once we get out of saudi

Erica said...

Wow! I can't imagine driving all that way. I hope the scenery in Saudi is better than Qatar, but I doubt it!

As far as the headcoverings, I think I would go ahead and do the whole thing, just in case you get a cranky inspector.

Good luck! Can't wait to hear how it goes.

Nancy M. said...

It sounds like you've got it all worked out! I hope it will be a good trip for everyone!

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