Celeste's Meltdown

Wow! Yup, I had a full blown meltdown about an hour after entering Saudi. Not the good kind where I was all sad from the nostalgia and the 18 years of yearning to go back finally coming to fruition, but the sheer terror kind. Ya.

We arrived at our hotel, the Al Gosaibi, and were shown to our room. I think that hotel has been the setting for more than a few of my nightmares. As we walked down the hall, I could swear we were in the Shining, only much mustier, older, and more decrepit.

We got in our room and it was just awful. Like the Shining combined with an Arab youth hostel. There was only one outlet in the room and the TV was plugged into it. I got a light shock trying to jiggle it.

I whipped around to my mom and said, "We can't stay here." She explained why we have to stay there and the room is prepaid so we won't recoup our money. I whipped into the fetal position and began sobbing uncontrollably. Totally paralyzed by the thought of staying there for 10 nights, and felt so unsafe. Bottom line is I made my mom move hotels and I'm paying for it. I soooooo don't care.... just had to get out of there. I heard today that an 86 year old woman traveling alone was there for a night and said her room was infested with fleas. Whoa. Reunion volunteers found her a place to stay on camp. Bless their hearts.

Sooooo, we checked into the Al Rashid apartments which are ontop of the Al Rashid Mall. It's like 5 stars, gotta use keycards to operate elevators, and multiple key card doors to go through before getting to the room.

We have 20 electrical outlets, 3 bathrooms, a full kitchen, a living room, a flatscreen TV, and a washer/dryer. My mom looked at me and said, "Are you happy now?" We had a good laugh but it was a pretty rough day for me.