(This post is brought to you by the other American teacher here who let me use his power adapter. Without it, I would have little to do other than actually learn the language of the country I'm in----which I'm trying to do anyway...just much more holistically)
I don't know if it is ironic or entirely appropriate, but my first immediate need in this vast desert was water. I arrived at the airport at 1 AM. (Unlike my first time in South Korea, someone was there right in the front with a sign ready to take me to my living space.) When I asked the driver how I could purchase water, he gave me bottled water 25% the size of the Aquafinas we have in America. In Saudi Arabia, they have these water tanks instead of bottle with a dispenser in the apartment. I suppose it's the most efficient way to distribute "el agua" or in Arabic, al-ma ماء
But unexpectedly...or rather all too expectedly, my water tank turned out to have no water. While I was able to stay asleep for about 10 hours, I woke up to the heat with nothing to quench on. Eventually, after finding out that the apartment and the office of the guy who is kind of like our RA were two different places, I was able to get water. Someone was called to come up and deliver a tank, but it was the wrong kind of plastic and it smushed. Apparently, if you bring back an empty tank, they can refill it, which costs less than buying a new one. Expectedly, the name of the grocery store to do this is "Convenience Oasis" or something. But I'm not sure how much of an oasis it really is because I have heard they may not carry the kind of tank that the machine requires. Needless to say, I am still in the process of resolving this particular issue.
The second even more cumbersome issue was (as the title suggests) finding the right power adapter. It seems that instead of choosing one kind of socket, the country never made up its mind and put a few different kinds in each apartment with no apparent rhyme or reason. The only way I can describe it is that there are different sockets for two pronged and three pronged plugs, and some of compatable with multiple kinds of plugs and some aren't. Then you have power strips, which I haven't even begun to try to understand.
The one I bought back at Wal-Mart that said "for use in the Middle East" unexpectedly or perhaps all to expectedly didn't work for any of them (and I thought it fried my power cord, but fortunately it didn't). Fortunately, another teacher let me borrow their adapter (although he couldn't really explain the kind I needed), so I plan to buy him a new one tomorrow, so again still in the process of fully resolving this issue as well.
#ADeserterCantExpectAllOasis
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