Saudi National Day and Ireland

Saudi National Day is celebrated on the 23rd of September each year to commemorate the date on which a proclamation was made by King Abdulaziz ibn Saud that renamed the Kingdom of Nejd and Hejaz as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932 by way of a royal decree.

Saudi National Day is a public holiday here and an opportunity for the Saudis to showcase their culture, customs and traditions. All across the site, the common shared areas were all decorated in the national colours of green and white and there were a few events during the week to celebrate culminating in one large event held down in the beachside community tent.

There was traditional music, food and other cultural activities along with other displays including falconry and basket weaving. I managed to eat my body weight in some incredible dates covered in crushed pistachios and filled with other nuts, which were unreal. I was less keen on the Arabic coffee I tried which was quite bitter and a light brown colour.

The other benefit of the public holiday being on a Monday was that our work also gave us the Sunday off (Friday and Saturday are the weekends here) so we had a 4 day long weekend. So after talking to Joan and Linda I booked some flights and headed back to Ireland to see the family and to help out with a few things around the place.

Landing back in Dublin to 14 degrees was a bit of a shock to the system after starting to get used to temperatures in the mid 30’s here. Managed to watch a couple of Enniskillen RFC games while I was back, heading over to Omagh to watch supercoach Shiner’s 4th XV play and then also got to watch the 3rd XV at Mullaghmeen on the Saturday and catch up with a few old friends over a couple of quiet pints of Guinness on the sideline. Also managed to get a few tidy up jobs done at their rental property, which was getting ready to go back on the market to find new tenants as well as help to draft up some template tenancy agreements for Linda to use going forward. Its not very often my work skillset is actually of practical use to people so it was nice to contribute something to the cause – ha ha.

The highlight of the trip though was a visit to the Nun’s Pool in Bundoran – a semi natural rockpool area where we took cold water plunge and swim on the Sunday morning – the pool was brutally cold to start with, but after a while was actually really enjoyable. Couldn’t stay in for too long but it certainly energized everyone that went along, especially Shiner and Louise’s awesome friend Katy, who loved it so much she decided to give birth that evening. Our trip to Bundoran was finished with the best coffee in months and the best sausage roll I’ve had in a long long time. We were also treated to a fantastic Sunday lunch with Louise’s family on our way home to round out easily my favourite day since I’ve been away.

The weekend went by so fast and the journey back to site was long but I am so glad I did it – always great to reconnect with family whenever possible.Baca selengkapnya