Two Posts in the Same day....

I must be crazy
Welcome to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Yesterday was my first day here. Thankfully, we had the day off!! Which was great seeing as I was so tired from our two days of travel. Truthfully, we didn't do a whole heck of a lot. Friday's in Muslim countries is the Holy Day, much like that of our Sunday. The main difference is that most businesses, like stores, are closed until 3 or 4pm so that all workers can have the chance to go to Mosque.
Jason and I had a leisurely breakfast at the hotel restaurant. It was phenomenal. It had a wide variety of choices from our traditional create your own omlette station to some more traditional middle eastern dishes. We walked around outside for a bit and stumbled upon a super market! After seeing how expensive the hotel mini bar was, we bought some treats and bottled water for our rooms. I think that I spent maybe US$ 9, and I got a bag of chips, a pack of 6 twix (yes I needed a chocolate fix) and six-1 liter bottles of water. Not too shabby.
We decided to sit by the pool and relax! During this we heard the Adan, or prayer call. Our hotel is surrounded by at least two mosques. Each mosque has a person that sings the adan and the spiritual leader or Immam, leads the prayer. It was pretty unique to hear it. Unlike In the US, religion is a huge part of daily life in the KSA. Life stops several times a day for prayer. As I experience it more, I will be blogging about it.
I think that there isn't much to do here in the way of activities. I spent much of my alone time yesterday sitting in the hotel's Atrium Cafe drinking coffee, surfing the web or FaceTiming/texting and people watching. Jason and I are finding places that we want to explore and restaurants that we want to dine at. We plan on doing some pretty cool stuff. I told him that my 30th birthday is in May and I'd like to do something really special to celebrate. I tried to watch TV last night. That was a trip- none of the channels matched the guide. I think I'm either going to come back so well versed in European/Middle Eastern news or a sports fan (soccer and/or rugby). I think of the 40 stations we have 25 are news or sports and 10 are only in Arabic (no subtitles). I did find some channels in English. I didn't find them as censored as I thought. :-)
Today is Saturday. Saturday starts the work week for us. Today's agenda is a download with Josh about the teams in each store, store successes / opportunities and where he needs them to be. Then we will tour the four stores and create our game plan.
What are your Saturday plans? Please feel free to leave me comments or to email them directly to me at either of these emails: jayliffejessup@wsgc.com or jajessup@gmail.com.