Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone is having a fabulous Christmas.  We've been off of school for about a week and half now and not much is going on.  We're helping take care of some friends' animals while they are gone for break.  Other than that it's been a lot of relaxing, lounging, and visiting with the few friends who stayed here for break.

Our Christmas was not quite traditional, but enjoyable.  We had a Thai lunch with some friends which consisted of spring rolls, cashew chicken, sweet and sour chicken, fried rice, and a bit of duck.  It was scrumptious.

We leave in two days for Jordan and should have much more to talk about when we get back from that.  Here are a few pictures of what we've been doing the last week.

 I had our neighbor's kids over to make cookies and watch a Christmas movie. We had

a great time!

 

 Timmy stirring the batter while Brandon and Serah wait for their turn.

 

Jamie washing the car.  He has had lots of time for this

which he really enjoys.

A Wet Christmas

For those of you back in the Midwest, it seems to be a white Christmas.  Over here, it has been a wet Christmas.  It has rained five out of the last seven days on us.  Streets and walkways are covered in water.  It has been nice having a higher vehicle for driving through about five inches of water on one street downtown.  It really makes us appreciate the lengths that cities go to at home to set up water drainage.  In Saudi though, I'm not surprised the drainage is less than adequate for a heavy rain since it doesn't happen all that often.  It's like states in the south that don't deploy plows when it snows because it will melt quickly.

Keeping on the rainy theme, if you didn't already know, I (Jamie) like keeping my car clean.  It was getting a little dirty and when the rain hit I figured it would at least wash some of the dirt away.  I was quite surprised to see that it was making my car even dirtier!  It was turning black!  I was then informed that the rain over all the industry can be quite dirty.  All this junk sits up in the air (you've seen the burning torch picture) and then when it rains, it all comes crashing down.  How disappointed was I?  It is supposed to rain tomorrow, but I went ahead and washed the car today anyways because it wasn't raining and I could.  I'll keep my fingers crossed.

On a more normal note, we have a Christmas tree!  A real life fake Christmas tree!  You can't find them in Saudi and sometimes they will take them away from you at the Bahrain border if you are trying to bring one over, but we have one nonetheless.  We bought a used 7'10'' tree from someone selling one at work (they got a new one from Bahrain).  We were able to find lights downtown.   We even saw lights that played carols, but for our sanity we passed on those ones.  Our tree even has eight ornaments on it.  My mom sent a couple (without knowing we had a tree) and we were able to find some others at a very western, middle eastern, home decor store in Al-Khobar.  We saw our superintendent there and she bought us an ornament too when we told her we had a tree.  It was very nice of her and very much like her to do.

This is also our last week of school and then we have three weeks off.  We are finalizing our plans for our visit to Jordon at the end of the month this week.  At school, we are finishing up our secret santa gifts as well.  All in all, the Christmas season has been quite different over here, but there has been enough little pieces of normal (i.e. Christmas music in our home) that still make it feel a bit like Christmas.

Enjoy our tree picture!

Jamie

Oh Christmas Tree, oh Christmas Tree, how lovely are thy branches!

Bahrain Adventures

This was our week off for the Hajj Eid.  These Muslim holidays keep getting better and better.  Since we had a car this time we went off to Bahrain for a few days.  If you don't know, Bahrain is a little island country off the coast of Saudi and is only a two hour drive for us in Jubail.

We had a great time.  Some friends of ours (Laura and Brent) offered to have us use their apartment in Bahrain since they would be in Jordan for the break.  Laura teaches with us and Brent works for Chevron.  They are both as new as us into the kingdom and Chevron set them up with this apartment while Laura had visa issues.  They have it until the end of the month only, so it was nice to utilize while we could and very nice of them to offer to us because Bahrain is not cheap!

Tara enjoyed the freedom of wearing whatever she wanted and even driving!  However, she may have liked being free from the abaya a bit much because the same day we got back into Saudi she got out of the car twice without her abaya!  She says she felt a bit exposed without it.

We also had the chance to eat some Mexican and at Hard Rock Cafe, enjoy a beer and a cocktail for Tara, see the tree of life, and do a lot of walking around the shops and relaxing.

I'll leave most of the story to the pictures.

Have fun finishing up all the last minute Christmas shopping everyone!

Jamie

Us in front of the famous Tree of Life

I bought Tara some overpriced lilies which she loved.  This is also a good shot of the view off of our balcony (top floor!)

You can see where the name Tree of Life comes from.

These tent cities went on for miles in the middle of the island.   I think they must be housing for workers because many (not this one) had cars way to nice to belong to the homeless

Whoa!  Slow down!  Tara LOVED driving most of the time.  I felt carjacked, but it was nice to have a rest for a couple of days.

This is the customs port between Saudi and Bahrain.  Including the toll, we had six stops both times and I had to get out of the car and let them poke around a bit in case I was smuggling stuff (which I was not)