Saudi Arabia

I just added my first blog to follow, "Is My English Strange?" and it reminded me of home. I grew up, an expatriate American, in a large American compound, in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. My family was there almost constantly from 1980 to 1995. Dhahran is home to me, although it's been 13 years since I smelled the oily dustiness of its hot air. I'll probably never be able to go back (the cost of a plane ticket is prohibitive), but my memories are something I work hard to keep alive.

I'm what you call a Third Culture Kid, someone raised in a foreign culture who has combined elements of their two "home" cultures. So I totally admire this blogger for learning another language and learning more about Western culture. My language in high school (a fancy-schmancy New England boarding school that I hated, thank you very much) was Russian. No, I've never been there, and, no, I never really intended to. It was just a beautiful language. You knew what they say, though, about losing it if you don't use it. So most of it is gone, despite the five years of painstaking study. Sadly, I recall very little Arabic as well.

Maybe it's all the drugs I did in high school....