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)

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope everyone at home enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving!  Even though we are so far away from the States, that didn't stop us from celebrating.  About 20 people from our compound and school got together on Friday afternoon for a wonderful feast.  We had everything from the turkey and stuffing to sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie.  The really nice part was that everyone was together.  We had our get together at our principal's house and the weather was nice enough for people to be both inside and out (about 80F).  There were not only Americans, but also Brits, Canadians, and a Lebanese guy.  Quite different from what were are used to at home, but it made sense since they are our family here in Saudi.

It was also a celebration because this week is Hajj Eid, which means that we don't have school!  The reason we have off is this week is designated for the holy pilgrimage to Mecca.  Not all of our Muslim students are going, but quite a few are.  So far, the week has been great because we haven't done much at all.  Just some cleaning, napping, and Jamie took his first drive to Khobar, a city about an hour away where we go shopping.  He did a great job.  Tomorrow we are heading out to Bahrain for a few days.  Some friends of ours have an apartment there that they are letting us stay in while they are in Jordan.  We're excited to get out of the area for a bit and explore a new place.  Bahrain is considered the "Party Island of the Middle East", this is especially true for Saudi Arabia, because it is more westernized.  They have movie theaters, alcohol, and I don't have to wear my abaya!  How much more can you ask for?  Plus, if I want to I can drive, but I'm not sure that I want to.  We'll have to see how the drivers are.  Hopefully they are not as crazy as here in Saudi.

Here are some pictures, enjoy!

Tara

Sandra, Serah, and I checking out the table of goodies.

The feast!  It was wonderful!

Our neighbor, Steve, with his son Ariki.

Pictures of our Car

The time has finally come to post pictures of the vehicle I put money down on six weeks ago!  I didn't say anything about it at the time because I thought that if something happened and we ended up not getting the vehicle or had to wait a long time, like we did, you all would be wondering what had happened.

Let me tell you about the vehicle buying process.  It is not an easy process buying a used car like it is in the U.S., Canada, or probably many other places in the world.  I needed a blood test and a letter from my employer's Government Relations Office (GRO) to get a drivers license.  Then I had to wait for our very slow GRO to process the paperwork (another 4 1/2 weeks).  Finally, I received the license after some of us talked to our superintendent (who we really love) and she had a chat with GRO.  Last Monday, our principal took myself and another guy down to start the registration process of the vehicle.  We again had to bring in a letter from our GRO office.  The letter was missing a stamp it needed (of course it couldn't be perfect).  We paid the dealer a little money to get the stamps for us and the next day the letter with the correct stamp was mailed to us, which was then worthless.  Anyways, the dealer said they should be ready by Wednesday because they have to take them to a government office to process and that takes about two days.  They weren't ready on Wednesday (now I'm not surprised anymore).  I called again on Saturday and I got the O.K., but Dave, the other guy, is still waiting even though we did everything at exactly the same time, poor guy.  I went down with another guy looking for a newer car and another new teacher still looking for a car last night as Tara said.  When I got down there the dealer was going to get tires put on for me at his price, but my expense.  We get to the tire place and, you guessed it, they only had two in my size.  We left and the ride home was only slightly eventful, but I won't elaborate for my mom's sake.

So maybe it wasn't the fastest journey to getting a car, but it is just a car and we finally have it!  I hope you now get an idea of how Saudi Arabia can work.  But I must say that people in other companies have gotten drivers licenses in less than a week so we had a unique situation.

Before I show the pictures, I have to tell you that we haven't had the A/C on all week!  The weather is awesome!

O.K. now for the pictures and thanks for reading my rant.

Jamie

Tara is being rebellious on the compound!  She drove 10 feet into our parking space.

Here is the chauffeur in the 2006 Hyundai Tuscon 4x4.

It's finally here! (well, almost)

At the moment, I’m home alone, anxiously waiting for Jamie to come home WITH OUR CAR!! It has been a very long wait, but our time is finally here. The most exciting thing is that tomorrow we can take ourselves grocery shopping!

On to other things, we had a very busy week again. However, it ended well with us chaperoning homeless night. This was a fundraiser for the Habitat for Humanity trip that is going to Bangladesh in February. They were supposed to pretend to be homeless for a night, but it was more like a church lock-in. We did a few hours of community service, dinner at the “soup kitchen”, The Amazing Race competition, a bonfire, movie, and finally went to sleep about 1 am. Everyone slept outdoors and Jamie and I were lucky enough to be helping with the boys. They did a great job and actually slept for a while. It was exhausting, but a blast.

We pretty much did nothing the rest of the weekend. One nice thing that has happened is that the weather has cooled down. One day it was hot, and the next it was nice and cool. The highs are now only about 80 while it cools to about 60 at night. It’s kind of sad, but we’ve acclimated to the weather so quickly that 70s feels chilly. I even wore a sweater to school today and wasn’t hot!

We’ll post pictures of the car in the next few days so check back soon.

Tara

Students doing the spiderweb (look for the pink string)

My group of students washed all these dishes, organized them,
and then color coded them with paint.

Cooking in the kitchen with my students!

Follow Up

It's only been a few days since the last update so I will just follow up with what we were doing.

Parent teacher conferences went well for both of us. No one was yelled at or questioned whether or not we were doing a good job teaching their child. In fact, most conferences were quit pleasant and it was good to get to know the parents a little better.

Also, our superintendent made a visit to the school with a new HR person working on alumni activities. As always, when someone from the district office comes they treated us with Krispy Kreme donuts from Al-Khobar. The superintendent also talked with the new staff who are waiting on the drivers licenses and thanked us for waiting so patiently and being professional about our inquiries as to when they would be ready. She told us they would be ready on Monday and that the Government Relations office is expected to be better at communicating with us in the future. Our fingers are crossed that the licenses actually show up . . . this is Saudi Arabia we have to remember.

In other news, Tara and I have been playing tennis recently. We are borrowing one racquet from school and have bought another one. It is nice having the courts in the compound, but a pain when we hit a ball over the wall. Then we have to walk around (past the gate, four guard stations, and two Hummers with guns mounted on top) to get the ball. Is it weird that all this feels normal to me?

Tara is off cutting hair for our neighbor's boys right now. Word is getting around she can use a pair of clippers.

That's all for now. We'll let you know how things progress with the drivers license and acquiring a car next week.

Jamie