One Car Down

Well, we were finally able to purchase our first car last night. Like many other things here, buying a car is very different.

For starters, the dealership sells you your first year of insurance when you purchase your car. There are many accidents here, so we wanted to make sure we had “full coverage,” as much as we can get (given Michael’s track record…lol). So the dealer says yes, this is full coverage, and yes this covers everything. BUT, do you want additional coverage. We of course are like what do you mean, you said this is full coverage, why would we need anything extra? We go back and forth and he explains that the additional coverage is 50 Riyal for each passenger in the car. He says this will cover the people in your car and anyone that you might hit on the road. We of course go round and round about why we need this, won’t full coverage cover this?? Finally, he says this is coverage for “blood money.” I of course make a horrific expression and the dealer looks at me and I quickly explain that we don’t have that where we come from. BUT, YES WE WILL TAKE THAT COVERAGE. He explains that you either have this coverage or you don’t and in the event that you kill/disable someone this will cover the blood money that we will be expected to pay to the family ( I know many of you are wondering how much is blood money??? All we have heard is that it depends how important the person is! These are the times when you know you aren’t in Kansas anymore!!!). So we NOW have FULL COVERAGE!

So we pay for the car, get full insurance coverage and now we are ready to take the car. The dealership pulls the car up, puts the license plates on, and asks whether or not we want the plastic removed from the seats. We found it strange after arriving that a very large number of cars still have the plastic on the seats of their cars. Now I know you are thinking, they probably leave the plastic on to keep the seats clean from sand. Nope, they just want to give the appearance that they are driving a new car. Can you even imagine in the summer when it is 150 degrees, driving around while sitting on sweating plastic…no thank you! I know you are wondering, doesn’t the plastic rip off? Of course it does, there are actually places where they will replace the plastic on the seats! Regardless, we do NOT have the plastic on our seats though they asked us about 5 times to make sure they didn’t make a mistake!

One car down, one more to go. I am waiting on a shipment of Jeep Wranglers to see what I am going to be driving!