Our big night out

In a country without movie theaters or pubs and that's too hot to spend much time outdoors (during the day anyway), you might wonder what the locals here do for fun. So did we. Last night we found out when we took a "Friday" evening excursion to the Red Sea Mall to celebrate finishing up our workshop. All of Jeddah seemed to be there: young, old, male, female, families, singles. Even one of our colleagues from Dar Al-Hekma stopped by with her adorable 3-year old son to say hi.

Here we are, excited for our first Jeddah mall experience. By the way, my pitiful Arabic is just good enough to read the sign, which is a transliteration of the English words "Red Sea Mall". There's a lot of that here...so my 4-year old reading ability comes in handy sometimes.

And here, we're hanging out in the "bizarre" themed section.

Turns out the malls here are a lot like the ones at home...

You've got your food courts (which also had a McDonalds, Starbucks and KFC)...

And your shops (including H&M, Sephora, Adidas).

But there are few notable differences. For example, all of the shops must close down at prayer time and the TVs around the mall play live streaming of the prayer in Mecca...

There's also a huge arcade with carnival games (my personal favorite as you can see. Note the concerned child in the background)...

And shops where only ladies can enter...

Not to be confused with the lingerie, make-up or abaya stores, which were staffed entirely by men (a requirement of the country's anti-mixing laws). The Sephora, for example, looked exactly like every other Sephora I've ever seen, except for the men standing around in the store's signature all-black dress code staring back at me. And I must say I'm impressed that anyone here owns a bra, because I felt awkward wandering around the "Women's Secret" store with a salesMAN following me around offering to help find a size.

All in all, it was fun to see how Saudis spend their weekends. Hopefully, we'll soon get to experience another popular activity: hanging out at the beach.