Let's start with Tara's class's dinner. It was quite the big undertaking. There were 75 confirmed guests to prep for and about 60 people showed up. She planned and shopped for the dinner and supervised 16 kids in the kitchen on Wednesday from 2:30pm until the last ones left at around 9pm. The students came up with a menu of chicken parmesan, garlic bread, and caesar salad. For desert, the students served ice cream sundaes and brownie chocolate chip cheesecake. The whole thing was a big hit and the kids all did a really nice job.
The next morning at 6am we took off for the two hour ride to Abqaiq, an Aramco compound that is setup like a separate city. During the trip, we saw cool looking sand dunes and a ton of camels. To start with, the compound was amazing. They had a sand golf course, track, school, tons of space and houses, and a huge commissary. On our compound you can see a wall no matter where you are, but on this compound I didn't even realize there were walls. As for the cross country meet, we are not coaching, but went along to the meet to cheer on the kids. The Timms, who have been here for 26 years, do the coaching. The race was a mile and half (quite a bit shorter than meets we are used to). Our kids ran well, but it's not real serious for them. There isn't really a team, some kids to workouts during the week, but others just show up on race day. Our best runner came in fourth in the 8th grade race. It was a really nice day and a lot of fun. We even were able to pick up some Spray n Wash laundry spray at the commissary! We haven't been able to find anything else like that anywhere else.
Another interesting observation we made was of the Aramco kids from Dhahran. We shared a big tent with them and before we left the host coach asked everyone to clean up their areas. Our kids did and are usually pretty good about that kind of thing. We saw the Aramco kids leaving and told them to pick up their space because they weren't and their coach wasn't around. They just looked at us. I said, "you know, pick up, clean up." I even did hand motions showing how to pick up. They looked at us with a look on their face that made me wonder if they understood English (of course they do). The Timms said those kids all have servants at home who do that kind of thing for them. They wouldn't even think about having to clean up. They said people can become very soft growing up in that kind of environment. It was an interesting lesson and to cap it all off, after they left, an Indian grounds crew guy came over and picked up all their stuff.
I hope you all enjoy the few pictures.
Until next time.
Jamie
One of our runners coming around the corner. Notice the Saudi's in the background who just happened to park there and get out of their car so they could be in my picture.
The track and field. It was real grass!
Serving up dinner!
Me trying to be a good husband and help out with the dinner prep work.
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