Allow me first to tell you about one of my favourite things upon returning to Great Britain (whatever people may say, it is great. No quibbling). Motorway service stations. They're just incredible. They provide a service of inestimable value - a safe place where you can go to warm up, get some food, find out the news, use a clean bathroom, have a rest from your journey, get a new book, buy a present for someone you're on your way to see, if you have forgotten to do so. They're clean, safe, and don't charge entry. Seriously, there aren't many other countries which offer a similar service. Whenever I come back home from a spell abroad, the journey from the airport can of course be tedious (although it is always nice to see the English countryside from the car window) as I am impatient to get home, but stopping at a service station is more than just a welcome break (see what I did there?) to the journey, it is a reminder of how lucky I am to have been born a citizen of a country which looks after its citizens pretty damn well. Say what you will about corrupt British politics, the NHS, our school system - I will tell you to stop whinging because WE HAVE IT PRETTY DAMN GOOD. And motorway service stations are generally one of the first reminders I get of that when I arrive home.

I will now stop being poetic and tell you about the days I jump out of the window at work. Lorie and I sometimes like to run in the car park behind the college - which, incidentally, is always empty because … well, it's a female college, and women can't drive in Saudi, so who is going to park there? Maybe they were planning for the future, when women can drive themselves to college. However, we're not really supposed to be outside without our abayas, or doing any more than walking sedately, so going the obvious way around the front of the college and past the security guards isn't really an option. So we climb out of the window in our lycra, then the guards don't see us, and in theory neither do the students. One day, someone is going to walk into the office unannounced just as one of us is half way out of the window, and we'll have some explaining to do.

My birthday was a couple of weeks ago, and it was fun. It fell on a Saturday, which here is the first day of the week, so I planned to celebrate the previous Wednesday evening (Saudi Friday). I went with a group of my closest friends to an excellent Chinese restaurant, where the food was delicious and so were my friends. I was given a gorgeous bunch of flowers and a big box of Levantine sweets, which I consumed rather faster than a healthy person should have done, but my logic was that once they were gone, I couldn't eat them again, so I was hastening the arrival of a healthier way of being, by eating them quickly. They were mightily good for my soul. I was also given a recipe book by my Monkey Boys (Rob and Carlin) - this is either to show gratitude for the multitude of occasions on which I have cooked them, or to give me further ideas so I continue to use them as guinea pigs, or maybe a genuine gift to feed my culinary habit and encourage the eventual arrival of my very own restaurant. This is a genuine plan.

On the day itself there were 2 rugby matches, and I knew I had no chance of competing (for attention on the night, I mean, rather than in the matches themselves) so I joined the pilgrimage to a compound which had a bar / restaurant and was showing the games, and fun was had by all. Well, I can't speak for all. Fun was certainly had by most, I hope all.

At the start of this semester, so about 6 weeks ago now I think (although I lose all track of time here), our erstwhile colleague Mary did a runner. She ran away. Poof. Disappointing lack of puff of smoke though. She'd applied for an exit visa to go to Abu Dhabi for the weekend, and just never came back. A few days later the company received an email from her, saying she was back in the States and staying there. We were then in a bit of a pickle as we were one teacher down the day before classes were supposed to start, and given the students' timetable and the size of the classrooms, there was no way Lorie and I could take on the extra 70 students in any way. So those poor girls have had a bit of a messy start to the semester, and this week I will find out how well they managed the exam which they took last week. We do now have a replacement teacher, but she only came a week ago.

This time next week I will be in India (hurrah!) but it hasn't been plain sailing getting it organised. Some time ago the college confirmed that I would be able to take a week off that week, but the problem came when we discovered that the Indian Embassy wanted to see a copy of my exit/re-entry visa before they would process my Indian visa. As you may remember me mentioning before, the company are a little difficult over producing exit visas, they tend to like to give them to you and the last possible moment before you get on your flight. So I had to explain to my rather idiotic project manager why I needed mine so long before I planned to travel. However, with Mary having done her disappearing trick so recently, they were understandably suspicious of what my motives might be, so Lorie had to go to the Dean of the college and swear to him that I really did have every intention of returning after a week. However, my project manager then decided to be even more of an idiot than usual, and not only not read an important email I'd sent him about paying for my exit visa ,and thereby delay the process by several days, thus endangering my holiday as my Indian visa might not be ready in time, but also try to make out I'd never sent this email. I knew I definitely had, and that he'd received it and even opened it, because he himself told me he had forwarded the attachment to the HR department. We had a shouting match, I thoroughly emasculated him, and won. I got my exit visa in time, and I now have my Indian visa in my possession. It should all be plain sailing now. Fingers crossed!

Who watched the documentary I mentioned last time? The one with a Saudi Prince who was the Governor of Hail? Well anyway. Last weekend I went to Hail, with three other girls, to visit our friend Christina, who is teaching at the university there. It was a nice relaxing weekend, with a good trip out into the desert one evening with a group of teachers from the compound, where we had an excellent barbecue laid on for us. I got a bit of rock climbing in (Hail is in the mountains), and we had a sing along, complete with guitars and tambourine, around the fire. It was nice to do nothing for a weekend, and to have a change of scene and meet some new people, but essentially I came back to Riyadh reassured that I had made the right decision when I told the company I'd quit if they sent me to Hail.

This week there was a fire at Princess Noura University. A few of my friends work there, and at least one works on the campus where the fire was. Accounts differ as to whether the fire was caused by an electrical fault or by arson, but those who were there on the day reckon it was arson. They had a maths exam that day. Reason enough, here. Of course, there are no fire detectors anywhere on campus, and all "normal" fire regulations were either ignored or never in place to start with. My friend's supervisor attempted to notify her of the fire by mobile, but of course her phone was on silent while she was teaching, so someone had to come to her classroom to tell her. This was happening with dozens of classrooms full of students - some students were told to "run for their lives", others were sent back into the building to collect their abayas before they were allowed to leave. Mayhem. Anyone remember the fire in the girls' school in Jeddah a few years ago, where several girls died because the muttawa wouldn't let them out without their abayas? Well it wasn't quite as bad as that, but people were injured here, and there are rumours that someone died.

In other news that is either not being reported by the Saudi press or is being misreported: 7 Saudi men were executed this week, for an armed robbery which they committed several years ago, while they were (according to Amnesty International) still minors under Saudi law, and therefore should not have been executed (believe it or not, armed robbery is an executable offence). Most executions in Saudi are carried out by beheading with a sword, but due to an apparent shortage of swordsmen, these men were executed by firing squad (which apparently is ok within Sharia law but used very rarely or never because … I'm not entirely sure … something about respect and dignity I think). Personally if I were to be executed, I think I would prefer firing squad to beheading or indeed anything else, but that may well be only me. It was rumoured before the executions that the body of the ringleader would then be crucified for 3 days, but I'm not sure if that is happening or not. As you may have guessed, I can't find any mention of any of this on Saudi news sites, only foreign ones. According to my friends who teach at the male section of Imam University, the students there knew all about it, or at least some of them did. My girls not only claimed to know nothing of it, but also insisted that a) firing squads were never ever used in Saudi, b) bodies are never ever crucified in Saudi because it's against Sharia law, and c) people are never ever executed if they were minors at the time of offence. I didn't want to risk my job by pushing it, so I left it at telling them I hoped they were right. Not even slightly convinced though. I trust Amnesty International over my students, who tell me with no shame that they never read the news.

The day after my students' exam, I decided to do a lesson on designer babies and euthanasia, rather than continuing straight away with the next unit in the textbook. They have to study medical ethics, I saw their exam in it a couple of weeks ago as I had to monitor it. I wasn't too impressed. These girls are going to be Saudi's next generation of doctors, in theory, I kind of feel I have a responsibility to get them thinking about stuff a bit more. I studied more medical ethics in my A-level Theology course than they appear to be getting. So we had designer babies and euthanasia. On designer babies, they mostly seemed to have pretty similar views to my own, in that it's only ok to pick genes for your baby for medical reasons, rather than aesthetic or social reasons. With euthanasia, we held pretty opposing views. Most of them said that only God has the right to take away life, and even in the most heart-wrenching situations, where you have an option to end someone's suffering, you should let God do the deciding about death. One or two of them did admit that under certain circumstances they would prefer a kind death, either for themselves or for someone they cared about. Hopefully none of their parents will have complained to the college that I've been teaching them terrible haram things - it would be untrue if they did, I pretty much kept my opinion to myself, didn't "tell" them anything other than vocabulary, but you know, this is Saudi. I'd probably know by now.

I'll finish with a phrase which I came across recently, which perfectly describes the feeling of trying to understand Saudi, at the times when it is being particularly Saudi. The times when you can't even begin to find the beginning of the logic train to work out how someone did something / said something / thought something / didn't do what you expected / etc. It is like "trying to smell the colour 9."