A 9-Day Hajj Holiday Activities and Reflections

At last, it is the start of a 9-day no-work day! It is my hope that it would be filled with exciting activities and productivity, creativity and inner-searching.

I have some plans going in and out of Riyadh with people here, will practice photography and dare to collect as many pictures as possible and have it critiqued and selected for my plan of holding my own mini photo exhibit when I go home for a vacation next year.

Be creative and try to redo my room and finish some projects I already put on hold for quite sometime. Organize clutter in my room and in my mind!

Finish some books, hang out do movie marathons,  and the rest would be for sleeping and resting.

But I will try to find time to reflect about my life here in Saudi Arabia, up to this point I still don't know if I am a success or a failure here. I must admit four years is less time to evaluate, but I know myself, when I start to ask questions about my existence in a particular place and time, it is time to think, to weight things, the pros and cons.

To start with my reflections I will admit is that I failed tremendously in establishing friendships here. I think there is something wrong with me. Maybe I try to get too close and eventually got too comfortable and didn't think about the words I say and things I do offends. Maybe because I always see the bad first before the good, and no matter how I bring up the good, the bad always turns me off. Maybe sometimes I talk too much and too little. I really don't know, but I am left with almost nobody here. It is lonely.

I hope these holidays will bring some good in me, irregardless. Will let you know in these coming days.