Just another week at shogul

So after all the excitement of last weekend, this weekend is more about naps and relaxing. Or at least today is, we're back on the one day weekend.

This past week at work (work=shogul, but I think it's more a verb/command than a noun judging byu how we use it with the Bedouin) was okay, but I was TIRED every day. Probably because of the heat, never quite being able to get enough/catch up on sleep and always finding something to distract me just before I crash out early.

Meh, whatever. I also think it might have something to do with the particularly mindless nature of my search for the road. There is no road as far as I'm concerned, at least not one we have found yet. The supposed road surface looks like a natural surface that stretches forever and one which I have exposed in repeated one metre wide, 6 metre long trenches all over the desert. Maybe an intersection? Maybe a parade square? Mumkin mumkin mumkin (mumkin=maybe). I shouldn't say just me, Swaylem and Ra'ad have been equally involved and are getting equally bored and frustrated. You wouldn't think being able to dust off some shitty brick would bring you joy or mental relief, but it's better than dusting off yet another arbitrary layer of hard packed soil before hacking through it another 10-15cm with the fas kabir (big pick).

It's alright.

I learned a cool Bedouin board game called seeja. I ;love how there are so many things you can do when all you have is a lot of sand and some different coloured pebbles. Without going to much into it, we're talking some ruiles similar to checkers but some real intense concentration required ... expecially when they set up the 7x7 board.

Also, I was told there's a car in Saudi called James. Really I said and Swaylem then proceeded to spell GMC in the sand. Lovely.

Lots continues to happen but it's the day to day kind of stuff and this time I have people to talk to about it so I don't tend to maintain my 'next blog' notes as extensively as in the past.

Soon I'll be hitting the road to Syria and Turkey and myabe Zoe will tell me to shut up...and if THAT happens there'll be blogs all over the place.

And don't forget (crass request for currency deleted).