Cultural Shock!

We left home more than 24 hours ago, we have experienced a few different things since then, in no particular order...

1.- As soon as we got to Dubai I felt FREE! and close to normal again.

2.- A nice lady in charge or coordinating the shuttles and passengers for the hotels made sure we were all set to go and David said " I feel like we should tip her" I guess we are amazed by people that actually do their jobs.

3.- There was no one at the hotel ready to pick up our luggage as soon as we entered it. What is UP WITH THAT??!!!

4.- No candy bars were given to the girls by anyone since we arrived. They are disappointed.

5.- Elena was crying at the airport and the policeman asked her if I was her mother.

6.- I walked around without an Abaya, no man stared, yelled, or blew me kisses!!! I must be loosing my touch ;-)

Maybe a new tradition? :-)

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

The black sheep

Well, if she were a sheep she would be the black one right now!Two days ago a little girl (no real names are use, to ensure the safety of the protagonist) was looking tired and asked to watch "a foofy" and the good innocent mother turn on the TV in her bedroom, and tucked the girl under the covers.
The mother was walking on clouds! dreaming as she went downstairs of all the things she could get done in the next 30 minutes. Humming her favorite Christmas tunes she approached the kitchen and started busying herself.
The "Elves" had left for lunch leaving the upstairs of the castle shinning!
The mom noticed the princess of the castle should be coming home any minute so she went by the BIG WOOD doors and waited for the Princess.
It was a lovely reunion, hugs kisses and "I didn't really like the lunch today" were exchanged when from the upstairs we hear a "HI NANI!!!!!"

Innocent mother felt cold, hot, sweaty and light headed at the sight of the little girl. Momma RAN up stairs faster than ever before to find the little magic "Clinique cream eyeliner" GONE! MAC paint pot, GONE! all brushes filled with a combination of the other two, the floor the chair and the bead spread were witnesses of the crime.

Somehow mother took a couple of pictures- to be presented as evidence later in court- and took the little one to the shower.
Scrubbing was more than enough punishment, the thing won't come off....but then.... the sparkly white tub was covered in black greasy stuff :-(

******The Elves were kind enough to clean AGAIN the upstairs bathroom, the King bought mom a new Paint pot, the Princess repeated over and over how she had never done something like that. The little girl?........... well, she came covered in marker later that day and the angel in a nativity set is gone, Oh and one of the legs of Baby Jesus bed is gone too. All in one day, in less then 4 hours***************

*******Mom was ............well, she was well and remembered that Daddy had told her before "I don't think the Nativity set will survive there"...........She should have listened*********

THE END.

Road Trip!

(David blogging here)

Last week was the Eid-al-Adha holiday in the Muslim world, meaning millions of people going through Jeddah to Mecca for the Hajj, and no school here at KAUST. We decided to take the opportunity to try our first real road trip here in Saudi. With a few million "tourists" (pilgrims) clogging the roads to the south, we decided to head north.

Our goal was a place called Madain Saleh. Around here everybody refers to it as a lesser-known version of Petra, but I'm sure most of our readers have no idea what that is, either. Well, you'll find out, but all in good time.

Here's an overview of the route we took:

View Trip to Madain Saleh in a larger map

If you open that up and zoom in, you'll notice that there is no road for part of the trip. In fact, I had to guess roughly where we went, because Google Maps is missing the roads that we drove on for about 200 km. More on that later...

We started heading north along the Red Sea coast, past the mega-project King Abdullah Economic City (not much to see, at least from the highway) and the large refineries at Rabigh. Along the way, we saw plenty of water left from the rains:

Fortunately, most of the signs here in Saudi are written in English as well as Arabic, like this one:

In some ways, Saudi Arabia is an ideal place for road trips:

-Gas is cheap

-The roads are very good

-There isn't much traffic

On the other hand, there are some unique challenges:

-No public bathrooms

-English names of places are inconsistent

-No public bathrooms

-Roads are not well labeled and maps aren't accurate

-No public bathrooms

So if you have a pregnant woman on-board, you can just forget it. Fortunately, we all have large bladders and we made it to the city of Yanbu, where we found the Dana mall (public bathrooms!)

Yanbu also presented the first navigational hazard, as we needed to find the highway toward the town of al Ula. When we input this destination into our new GPS unit, it gave the delightful response 'no route to destination'. As in, what you get if you try to navigate from Albuquerque to Paris. Except in this case, we knew there was a (non-ocean-crossing) way to get where we needed to go. So I used my infallible sense of direction and somehow ended up on the right road. We asked directions just to be sure, and when 2 out of three grey-haired toothless old men agreed with our proposed route, we decided that was good enough. We struck out into the desert.

The next few hundred kilometers took us through a half dozen tiny towns. We soon learned that every settlement in KSA, no matter how insignificant, has a mosque:

And every town big enough to have an intersection has a large sculpture at that intersection:

We saw plenty of interesting sights, like this school bus body mounted on top of two buildings:

We started scouting the road ahead on our GPS, and soon discovered that the road we were on abruptly ended at a little village called al Ayis (or Ais, Eis, Eeis, etc. depending on which sign you referred to). Unfortunately, that was more than 100 kilometers south of our intended destination. We pressed on in faith (or foolishness).

Sure enough, the road did NOT end in al Ayis. We continued on into the grey unknown, on a road that doesn't exist in Google maps or our GPS unit, yet a road that is better paved than 99% of Seattle streets. It was quite a relief when we first came to a sign indicating that we were on the right track:

To make a long story no longer than I have already made it, we arrived without getting lost, broken down, or wetting our pants.

Next time: the lowdown on Madain Saleh, al Ula, and the broken-hearted policeman.

When it rains it POURS!!

Yes, I am talking about actual rain in the Kingdom.

I was woken up today by Victoria some time before 8am. I realized that Elena was in bed with us and still pretty stuffy so I knew we didn't need to get up and get ready for school. David kind of gets up and says "did you hear the rain?" No, I hadn't so I had to go and see if there were any signs of it all.
This is what I found...

Rained on "rain boots"

Very dark skies.

And a lot of water in our backyard.
I was so surprised, we checked the house and we didn't find any 'indoor rain" there were messages in our emails telling us that school was canceled. We were one of the lucky ones without any water inside our home.
We decided to go outside and just look around, then David remembered he left his laptop at school, so we had an excuse to explore even more.

This is the street right in front of the house.

This is the closest intersection going north from our place. Look at that car and how high the water is there.
We were so blessed to be on the highest point of the Island.

This one is right across the soccer field in front of our place. Click on the picture and notice how high the water is on those bikes.
A broken down car on the road.

Checking the roofs at the KAUST INN where most of the students reside right now. There were all evacuated. Some ceilings fell down and the "indoor rains" were as strong as the outside ones.

We made it to school in one of the buses. Through those glass doors is the Cafeteria. Some people are still eating all their meals there so they are drying it as fast as they can.

David's office was without damage, some people are worried about Shaheen but I think she's alright.
Those two were having a blast though.

This is on our way back home. Do you see the big pipe? and the amount of water coming out of it?

The wind was blowing really hard. Not pictured, some palm trees completely off the ground.

This is a Villa, just some of the very important people live there. Like the minister of Oil. Even those got some damage, click on the picture and see the men trying to get water out of the entry way.

The line of 8 water pump dudes, Elena counted them. They were in line filling up their tummy's.

Some cute people in some very windy areas.

Please click on this one and notice the police car coming towards the camera. The water was so high in some areas.

After we went around offering our help, some friends wanted us to go to Jeddah with them. It was CRAZY getting out of there. At some point I was sure we were going to get stuck of just very wet inside our car.
We made it there safely though.

Look at the streets there! it was a lot of water for one morning.

Can you see the problem with this picture? All I can say is... it doesn't really surprise me anymore.

Here are some videos of this morning. You can see in the first one our journey from the house to campus.
The second and third one are of our way back. I took them from the bus, it was scary and sad to know how many were affected. I've been told the students and some families were moved to a hotel in Jeddah. We left at around 2:00p.m. and returned just after 9:00p.m. Most of the streets are dry now. The worse part was around the schools and we drove by them on our way home, I just hope and pray that there wasn't very much damage in the clasrooms.
They are predicting rain for the next two days....
...let's hope for a little less water.

10 pieces of chocolate!

Thank you so much for all the words of encouragement :-) I really needed them, as much as I needed those 3 Philippine guys that came and made my floor so shinny and smooth that the girls want to skate on them! Now I just need to hand out 10 pieces of chocolate :-)

In other news, last week I decided to not wait for David and put together this beauty, who is destined to be in my new "craft room"

He is called the Bonde and is pretty heavy, not of tha cheap furniture that doesn't weight a thing. He took FOREVER to put together (I had two helpers) and I was so good at following the instructions that I put it together over carpet. Well I had to go under two door frames to get it its place and the thing is taller than the frames so I hurt my back trying to get it where it belongs. Dad I need you!!!!!See all the stuff that needed a home?

That my dear friends is the maids bathroom, what? you can't see it? Don't push it, some day I will remove the mess there. I don't think I will be needing a bathroom right next to my sewing machine, unless I'm sick or something like that. And that is what I looked like after I made into the maid's room.

But then light came through the windows and I was feeling pretty lazy since the floors are shinny and it wasn't because of me,so I went ahead and try to finish my project.

Top and Bottom.

The whole enchilada.

That is where my table will go, with my sewing machine.

There is tons more to do in that room, including doing something with those boxes, which I could throw away but Robert made a cool barn out of some a couple of years ago and we want to be as cool as he is so we are hoping to make something. Robert...want to come to visit? :-)

One of the blessigns from being a mother.

A few days ago I spent all night sick in the bathroom. When David tried to wake me up I told him what happened and he got ready and took Elena to school.
When she came back she brought me this...

She asked her teacher for help, she wanted to make me a card to help me feel better.

Look at those lower case letters!!! I didn't know she could do them so well, since at home she refuses to make them.
In case you can't read it, it says "Dear Mommy I hope you feel better! (heart) Elena"

Ohh I'm still walking on clouds! I love being a Mom :-)

Answers and some good old ranting

I wanted to answer some of the questions regarding our car and say that the main reason I posted it was because it was one crazy ride getting to own a car, I wish I could tell you everything that was happened but I only have a few minutes before the "leg lickers" get to me.

-I believed (until yesterday) that there wasn't another option that to pay with cash for your car here. You could bring a check from the bank or use a checking card but you had to pay for it all up front. Now, David tells me that there are "other ways" did he say what they were? Nooo!
-We love, absolutely love our Pilot, he is a good boy and can hold 6 Cd's which means tons of music, which equals to Happy Belky
-I, and other woman can drive inside the compound only :-( Not that any sane woman would like to drive in the city. I am telling it is deadly!
- He is a "he" because... well... I can choose the gender of "this" baby and I wanted a boy! since a boy car won't pee on my face ;-)
-Cheryl I don't know if you really want him, he has horrible gas millage, here it doesn't affect us as much because gas is SO cheap! Other than that he has every safety feature a SUV can have and it is very spacious, it even has side airbags. (I'm telling you a tank would have been safer if it had the LATCH)
-He is a nice guy and part of our investment had to do with re-sale value and LATCH system, which is easier to get in the US.

Now, why am I explaining the birth of our last child?! I don't know, I believe I told anyone who wanted to hear about how our other babies got here :-)

These are just because I thought that it was a crazy colorful makeup but at the end I really liked! I even wore it out side. That is the beauty of living in KSA :-)
Now for the ranting...
How can one understand females? really .... HOW?!!!

I am here in a lovely but HUGE home, I have so many social events to attend and really fun friends, Elena is at school in the mornings and Victoria does a great job at playing by herself if I need to do something.
Then why? oh dear WHY?!!! am I having a hard time keeping this huge place clean? No matter where I start it is messy and dirty before I end, laundry is taking over the world and besides the awesome friends and the fun activities I feel like I have no time and sometimes I feel so fake at social gatherings.

Everyone here is nice but very different from my ward friends back at home. I guess "that" common interest is not there so other things take up that space and ,don't get me wrong they are wonderful people, but some days I just need to be alone and back to Seattle where I could have play dates with Jasmine without cleaning like crazy first, or call Jeannee and tell her how horrible the kids were to me that day or knock on Robert's door at 11:30pm and "borrow" some eggs... and stay talking to him and Camille for about an hour.

Here, I am trying but I think that I'm finally feeling home sick and tired.
David told me I should call the house keeping and have them come and clean once a week. You have no idea how cheap those services are here and how helpful it would be to have someone else clean these insane floors for me. There are a group of 3-5 guys that come and do amazing things to your house.
But you know what I did? I ignore his advice because "I am not a lazy woman that needs her nails done and to visit the spa once a month while the nanny takes care of the kids and the guys clean the house and do the dishes"
WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!!!!
I really don't think that woman that get the help are lazy, I think they are smart to take the opportunity to do it, plus the workers here really need the job and I would have so much more time to play with my amazing daughters.

So, now that I have vent, ranted and talked myself into it, I am going to go and call house keeping because... well... I really don't want to wash that swimming pool, and all that dust is going to make my asthma come back.

If you are still reading, please leave a comment I will buy you chocolate, I can't believe you read it all!

The new guy that makes us 5!

Can you see him?
No?!!
Man, you don't take new news that well!

How about here?

Here?

It is our brand new baby! Our Honda Pilot.
You have no idea what a experience/adventure, getting our new car was.
To start, we never dreamed of getting an SUV,
We never dreamed to buy a brand new car,
We never dreamed of getting a 2010 car, or 2009 I really can't remember,
We never dreamed of paying for it with cash ( and I mean, picture yourself carrying an envelope with a bunch of $1000.00 bills)
We never dreamed of filling up his tank for less than $8.00 TOTAL!

It was very hard, it is scary to spend a lot of money for us but there are no trusted used car dealers here, and we don't know the language. Also, the way they drive here is SO insane that we felt safer with a bigger car (ok maybe it was just me) I really wanted a Hummer or a real tank but those don't come with "latch system!"

That was the other story, most cars here don't have the LATCH system, and our girl's car seats kept tilting every time we went on a round about. There were more little things that happened during the " let's never own a car" (aka buying a car) period, people changed prizes on us, or they would only have the super duper high end model or the bank wouldn't open our new account. Those were really stressful times but now that we have our new baby
we are really happy with him!
I guess "pregnancy" will always be hard on me!

Expanding our musical talents.

At least Elena is playing with the Peruvian pipes my mom gave David some time ago. I guess my ancestors will be happy :-)

Did you guess the song?

p.s. don't you think David's pictures are amazing?! I love our new header :-)

While Kyle was here...

First of all, I need to ask you all a HUGE favor. How do you manage to post in under ten minutes? Because I take SO long and now I am so behind :-(
Kyle happened to be here for Elena's birthday and he was the only one that took a picture of her with her brand new bike!! It is SO perfect, it has a bell, a basket, and a little trunk, oh and best of all it is PINK! (for her that is)

We took Kyle to the Souk in Al-Balad, he was very impressed! he got a Thobe and a pretty dress for Kristin.

On Thursday, our Saturday, we took him to a restaurant where you choose your fish and then they cook it for you. This one I'll call "THE BEFORE"

"THE MIDDLE"

"THE AFTER"
Oh, it was such a happy ending!

We also took him to Silver Sands to do some snorkeling, Our very salty family.

This poor guy! I found him and he looked so pretty I washed him and was planning on taking him home (back when I thought he was only a pretty shinny shell) anyway I saw these black little things that looked just like sand, I tried to wash them off a couple of times. When I thought they were gone, they would just re-appear!! then Kyle told me he was ALIVE!!!
click on the picture and find his eyes, they are very clean now!