The weekdays here run from Saturday through Wednesday, and the weekend i
s Thursday and Friday. The Islamic holy day is Friday, as opposed to the Christian holy day of Sunday. So, the beginning of the school week/ work week is Saturday. And, of course, the end of the week is Wednesday. When I go to the gym three days/week, I aim for Saturday, Monday and Wednesday. Instead of activities being on Tuesday and Thursday, it's Sunday and Tuesday. It doesn't sound difficult, but I just can't seem to wrap my mind around it.
It doesn't help that one of my new friends is even worse than I am at deciphering what day it is. Here is an excerpt from a conversation in which we were trying to set up a playdate:
Friend: I think Friday works the best for me.
Lani: Pause. Do you mean Wednesday?
Friend: No, Wednesday we have a dental appointment. Can we do Friday?
Lani: Well...we usually try to do family things on Fridays.
Friend: Uhhhh...
Lani: Do you mean Friday, as in Wednesday? Or are you thinking of the weekend?
Friend: Uhhh...
Lani: Ok. Can you get to a calendar? What DATE works for a playdate?
I'm telling you, it's painful.
Steve made a calendar template for me in Word in which the week starts on Saturday, and Thursday and Friday are in gray at the end of the week. It's tremendously helped my capacity to even picture the week. Now, when asked when Back to School night is, I pause only briefly as I hesitantly say, "Sunday," instead of what I want to say, "Tuesday."
But then there's that metric thing! Curse the day I thought I didn't really have to learn it in 6th grade! It has come back to haunt me in a big way. Just a few examples...
Most of the products in the stores are not from the US, even the recognizable brands. A brick of Philadelphia cream cheese seems pretty stan
dard, no matter where it's from - right? But the plant here prints metric volumes (?) on the box. The salmon dip recipe calls for 16 oz of cream cheese, so you have to figure out many grams that is (it doesn't come in bricks either, it's a tub). The butter doesn't have tablespoon marks on the wrappers and it's a different shape, the milk comes in liters, gas is sold in liters, produce is sold by the kilo...I could go on and on. When cooking, I have to stop everything, go to the metric converter that is now a prominent bookmark in my web browser, and try to figure it out. I'm going to atone for the stupidity of my past by wising up and writing the converted amount in the margin of the recipe from now on. Thankfully my liquid measuring cup has some metric on it!
The speed limit signs are in metrics as well. All the limits are round numbers such as 40, 50, 65, 85, etc. Fortunately Honda took pity on us Americans and put the kilometers per hour on the dash in very tiny numbers. No tick marks though, and only the even numbers: 20, 40, 60, 80. A very common speed limit here is 65. Instead of guessing what 65 might be, I just drive 60 (which is 37.28). I know you are sitting there say, "Lani, give me a break. Just keep it between 60 and 70. You don't need tick marks." Yep. But seriously, the numbers are really small, and I'm scared to go 66 by mistake. There are Aramco Security cars, aka police, lurking with radar guns everywhere here. Word on the street is that they show absolutely no mercy. And if I get a speeding ticket, Steve will get into trouble at work, and may not get the yearly merit increase. Six percent a year doesn't sound like much, but if you do the math and carry it forward the five-to-ten years we'd like to stay...a $70 speeding ticket turns into tens of thousands of dollars. Ouch! You might say that's incentive to drive well under 37.28 mph.
It's a good thing whoever said, "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" was wrong. Just give me awhile and I'll get it these things down. In the meantime, you'll find me driving five miles (or is that five kilometers?) below the speed limit.
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