A lot of things you see while walking around in Riyadh feel pretty familiar -- the seemingly limitless number of fast food joints and shopping malls to name a few. There are a few things you'd be a lot less likely to see on a street in the States but which still aren't all together shocking -- a woman fully veiled comes to mind. But by far, the most striking thing I've seen, as far as the one thing that when I turned my head up and noticed it, I had to sit back and say to myself, "Whoa. For real? That's nuts," was the moon. Never having traveled much outside of my familiar range of latitude, I had no idea that the angle of the shadow as it waxes and wanes across the moon's face changes depending upon where you are on earth. The orientation of the crescent the closer you are to the equator-- instead of moving across the moon diagonally-- goes vertically. It ends up looking like a perfect Cheshire smile and the half moon is bisected by a perfectly horizontal line. I gotta say that freaked me out a little.
Some other things in Saudi take some getting used to-- the workweek being chief among these. You see, Friday is the holiest day in Islam and unlike other Islamic countries where they've assigned Friday and Saturday as the weekend to be more in line with most of the rest of the world, here in Saudi the weekend is Thursday and Friday. We work Saturday through Wednesday. The result of this is that it's not very easy to conduct business with the outside world. If you are going to get much done it generally means that someone is going to have to work on one of their days off or you'll probably just have to wait a few days longer than would be ideal to get word back. I've also found that so far, without fail, I will always refer to the first day of the week as Monday, the one in the middle as Wednesday, the last as Friday and the weekend as Saturday and Sunday. It's a habit that I hope to break but for now it seems rather hopeless. Some mindsets are ingrained and hard to change. I also refuse to say that I have a case of the "Saturdays" and "TGIW" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Another system of measuring time that by no means resembles the one to which I am used is the calender year. The Islamic, or Hijri, calender is entirely different from our own. It consists of 12 lunar months and only 355 days. Therefore it does not coincide with the solar year or the seasons and in relation to the ours, the Gregorian calender, takes about 33 years to cycle back. The first year of the Hijri marks the year when the Prophet Muhammad emigrated from Mecca to Medina and we are currently in year 1432. It is used by Muslims everywhere to determine holy days but for practical purposes such as agriculture and administration it can cause more than a few problems. For this reason most Islamic countries (other than Saudi) still operate for the most part using the Gregorian. Also, the beginning of each year -- and month for that matter -- is not necessarily set and is open to interpretation. It starts when the first crescent becomes visible and while there are specialists in the field of astronomy and astrology whose job it is to determine this, sometimes, seemingly arbitrarily, naked-eye observations by less qualified observers can be used to mark the beginning of holy months and holidays. The Saudi's also have a lot of say in determining when these take place since Mecca and Medina, the two holiest cities in Islam, are here and it is only by way of them that the yearly pilgrimage there, or Hajj, can be undertaken. Saudis are perfectly aware of the system most of the rest of the world uses to mark its days and months, and while they are perfectly willing to reference it when necessary, I think they rather enjoy being a little different.
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