Hi my name is Becky Dunn, I am seventeen years
old, and when I had just turned thirteen I moved to live abroad in Riyadh, the
capital of Saudi Arabia. I lived there
for just two years, and I can honestly say that it was a once in a life time
opportunity. I got the chance to experience a whole other culture and I learnt
things that I would usually of mist such as, the way the arabs pray five times
a day to there god Allah. They all have
to stop whatever their doing and go to a mosque to pray on a carpet, I was
never mad enough to experience this, however I did have Muslim friends who
prayed in front of me, so I was able to see how it was done.
I got the chance to meet
all sorts of different people with different nationalities; it was amazing to
see the way of others. I had American
friends, Australian, Indian, Philippine, Italian, Spanish and may more. I attended a British School but there was
hardly any British there, everyone who attended had to have a British passport
but they didn’t have to be British.
There was also a French School, an American School, a German School and
a multinational School. I got to meet
people from other schools too because of the limited compounds westerns could
live in. Riyadh is a small city;
therefore there weren’t many compounds to choose from to live in. My compound was called ‘Arizona Golf
Resort’, from the name you can tell that it was a golf resort. The facilities in the compound were
amazing! There was a supermarket, a cinema,
a bowling alley, two swimming pools, a restaurant, a basketball court, a
baseball pitch and a gym. There where
four hundred villas and our villa was number 136, it felt like being on a
holiday twenty-four seven. There were
Americans, British, Dutch and many more different nationalities that lived on
the compound, so I met even more people out of my school.
Muslim men were allowed four different wives, women weren’t
allowed to work and had to cover up at all times, using what’s called an abiar,
which is a long black shawl. Even I had
to wear one when I went outside the compounds, because Muslims are not allowed
to live in the compounds women didn’t have to cover up, so when going outside
where all the Muslims were women had to cover up, we had to show respect to
their culture. If you didn’t cover up
you got arrested by the Mutower, who were the Arab Police. The Muslim men weren’t allowed to wear
shorts in public, they had to wear long white robes and a headscarf called
turbans.
Saudi Arabia is a wealthy country, even though it didn’t look it,
because of all the oil supply. You
where able to buy amazing Arabic jewellery which the Arab women wore, for a
reasonable price! I visited the edge of
the world in Riyadh too, it’s an hours drive in the desert then you come to the
edge of a huge cliff, which was named the edge of the world. There where a lot of wild camels and
coyotes, which where seen everyday which was very surreal. Overall it was an amazing, once in a life
time experience, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to live there. The short two years experience seemed much
longer, I felt as though I had been living there for years.
So from reading my article would you like the change to live
abroad?
NAME: REBECCA DUNN
SCHOOL: BISHOP HEBER HIGH SCHOOL
MY EMAIL: bex_dunn@hotmail.com