Showing posts with label Saudi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Saudi. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Last Beach Days
Our last couple of weeks on Murjan we tried to take full advantage of the beach. We realized that we will probably never live this close to a beach again. Plus, Jacob just loves playing in the sand and splashing in the water.
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Packing
Wow, packing for this move has seemed very stressful but for happy reasons. Not only am I having to prepare our house for movers to come and pack everything up, I'm also having to pack suitcases for a 2 week N. Europe cruise (slightly cold) and 5 weeks in the USA (very hot). So I have to make sure everything for this trip is left out of the house packing and that it fits into 2 suitcases. Well, I made it happen but it sure isn't pretty.
Preparing for the packers took up a lot of my mental capacity and was starting to drive me crazy so I was very excited when July 2 finally came and the movers were here to start packing up. Micah and I got up early to finish up some last minute things and then we sat and waited, and waited, and waited. Apparently they don't arrive until after 9:30am which seems pretty late but this is Saudi. First I had them pack up our air-shipment which fit a TON more stuff than what I expected. Micah and I had to keep running around the house to find more stuff. Then they started on the rest of the house. They left promptly at 4:30pm.
The next day I decided I could handle it alone so Micah went to work. This time they didn't arrive until 10am. No wonder they said they needed 3 days to pack up! Whats funny (insert sarcasm here) is that I had one room upstairs set up as my "to pack last room" and thats where they decided to start. I could have argued but I didn't feel like dealing with it so I just prayed everything would fit. The one benefit to their order of packing is that we were all able to sleep in our beds another night and have our couch.
When they left on day 2, they told me it would be 2 more days. Our estimated packing time was 2-3 so this would mean an extra day over the estimated time. Micah was not too thrilled with this since it would cut into his last weekend with us in Saudi. A polite email ended up lighting the fire and they showed up on day 3 determined to finish. Those guys worked 5x harder on day 3 than they did on the first 2 days combined.
Day 3 was a LONG day. As I said, they showed up with the goal of finishing. They worked until 8:30pm. It was amazing. Every time I would think to myself that they must be almost done, an hour later they would still be going. Micah was kind enough to let me leave him at home while Jacob and I went to our companies 4th of July dinner. Micah was sad to miss it but happy to have the packing done that night. At last, the trucks were loaded, our house was empty, and away they went. It was a very bittersweet moment.
Preparing for the packers took up a lot of my mental capacity and was starting to drive me crazy so I was very excited when July 2 finally came and the movers were here to start packing up. Micah and I got up early to finish up some last minute things and then we sat and waited, and waited, and waited. Apparently they don't arrive until after 9:30am which seems pretty late but this is Saudi. First I had them pack up our air-shipment which fit a TON more stuff than what I expected. Micah and I had to keep running around the house to find more stuff. Then they started on the rest of the house. They left promptly at 4:30pm.
The next day I decided I could handle it alone so Micah went to work. This time they didn't arrive until 10am. No wonder they said they needed 3 days to pack up! Whats funny (insert sarcasm here) is that I had one room upstairs set up as my "to pack last room" and thats where they decided to start. I could have argued but I didn't feel like dealing with it so I just prayed everything would fit. The one benefit to their order of packing is that we were all able to sleep in our beds another night and have our couch.
When they left on day 2, they told me it would be 2 more days. Our estimated packing time was 2-3 so this would mean an extra day over the estimated time. Micah was not too thrilled with this since it would cut into his last weekend with us in Saudi. A polite email ended up lighting the fire and they showed up on day 3 determined to finish. Those guys worked 5x harder on day 3 than they did on the first 2 days combined.
Day 3 was a LONG day. As I said, they showed up with the goal of finishing. They worked until 8:30pm. It was amazing. Every time I would think to myself that they must be almost done, an hour later they would still be going. Micah was kind enough to let me leave him at home while Jacob and I went to our companies 4th of July dinner. Micah was sad to miss it but happy to have the packing done that night. At last, the trucks were loaded, our house was empty, and away they went. It was a very bittersweet moment.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Murjan Goodbye
Living on Murjan Village the last 3 years is one thing that has made living in Saudi bearable, and actually even enjoyable. The ladies here have been such a wonderful expat family. We truly take care of each other and help each other out when it comes to living life in this strange land. On Monday, June 17, these wonderful ladies got together to throw me and two other ladies a going away lunch. It was so nice to get to sit, eat, talk, and relax with everyone that I have grown to love and cherish. Over the years together we have thrown parties, played cards, worked on the Bazaar, had baby showers and just tried to find ways to make Saudi life more interesting. I will miss the community that Murjan has provided. A typical parting includes a little gift from the ladies. I received this beautiful gold necklace with a camel, palm tree, and some Saudi sand. I LOVE it! Thanks so much ladies of Murjan. Hopefully see you all again soon.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Hofuf
After living in Saudi for 3 years, we still had not done much exploring. There are multiple reasons for this including: Micah working 6-7 days a week, not having a car to drive ourself, Saudi not really being an exploring type country, and our company restricts the places we can go. So when I realized our time in Saudi was coming to an end I decided we needed to do SOMETHING in Saudi besides eat and shop. Many people we know have gone to a city called Hofuf where they have some caves, and old fort, and interesting souqs so thats where we decided to go. In order to do this trip I had to get permission from our security advisor saying that it was safe to go and then permission from the higher ups to give our driver permission to drive us there. Hofuf is about a 2.5 hour drive from where we live and everyone I talked to talked about getting lost. For days I prepared Micah for the possibility of getting lost and that we just had to think of it as an adventure. We borrowed our friends GPS which made life a lot easier. At last everything was planned and we left at 6:00am headed for Hofuf.
On our drive, I was fascinated to see how the scenery changed. Typically on our drives all we see is really flat desert with lots of trash. Once we were south of dammam everything started to evolve. There were hills, sand dunes, and even occasional areas with a ton of trees from oasis'.
Our first stop was on old fort. There was no one there but a couple workers and a guy nice enough to go around and un-lock stuff for us. We were able to go inside a mosque which in Saudi is rare for a non-muslim much less a woman!! We also saw the armory, a underground room (maybe an old prison?), and the old barracks which housed a museum. They even still had the old toilet area to view or maybe use.
Up next we stopped at the souqs. This area in Hofuf recently burnt down and they rebuilt it to be much nicer but in the old style. A very nice man decided to stop and talk to us about the area. He informed us that many of the shops were not filled since the fire but they hoped to have them all filled very soon. These were the best looking souqs I've seen in Saudi.
After the souqs at about 10:30 we thought we were going to the Intercon for lunch but it turned out they didn't start serving lunch until 12:30. Instead of waisting that much time waiting, we called our driver back and drove to the mall and had a food court lunch. I was a little sad to not get a nicer sit down meal but it turned out the mall had a DQ and I was able to get a blizzard! Needless to say, I was no longer sad (well, I guess Jacob was still sad).
Once we were fully refreshed and fueled we headed out to the caves. This was a really fun experience for me since it was so different from anything we have ever done in Saudi. We hiked and climbed and explored. Let me just tell you this is not easy to do in an abaya.
Jacob hadn't napped all morning so about 5 minutes into our hike he was OUT. So out that I checked a couple times to make sure he was still breathing. He woke up for the very end.
Up until this point we hadn't really ever been lost but that changed as we tried to leave the city. All the roads the GPS wanted us to get on were under construction so we drove around for a while trying to figure out where to go. This gave us some time to get some random pictures of the city.
It was a great trip and I'm really happy we decided to do it!
On our drive, I was fascinated to see how the scenery changed. Typically on our drives all we see is really flat desert with lots of trash. Once we were south of dammam everything started to evolve. There were hills, sand dunes, and even occasional areas with a ton of trees from oasis'.
Our first stop was on old fort. There was no one there but a couple workers and a guy nice enough to go around and un-lock stuff for us. We were able to go inside a mosque which in Saudi is rare for a non-muslim much less a woman!! We also saw the armory, a underground room (maybe an old prison?), and the old barracks which housed a museum. They even still had the old toilet area to view or maybe use.
Up next we stopped at the souqs. This area in Hofuf recently burnt down and they rebuilt it to be much nicer but in the old style. A very nice man decided to stop and talk to us about the area. He informed us that many of the shops were not filled since the fire but they hoped to have them all filled very soon. These were the best looking souqs I've seen in Saudi.
After the souqs at about 10:30 we thought we were going to the Intercon for lunch but it turned out they didn't start serving lunch until 12:30. Instead of waisting that much time waiting, we called our driver back and drove to the mall and had a food court lunch. I was a little sad to not get a nicer sit down meal but it turned out the mall had a DQ and I was able to get a blizzard! Needless to say, I was no longer sad (well, I guess Jacob was still sad).
Once we were fully refreshed and fueled we headed out to the caves. This was a really fun experience for me since it was so different from anything we have ever done in Saudi. We hiked and climbed and explored. Let me just tell you this is not easy to do in an abaya.
Jacob hadn't napped all morning so about 5 minutes into our hike he was OUT. So out that I checked a couple times to make sure he was still breathing. He woke up for the very end.
Up until this point we hadn't really ever been lost but that changed as we tried to leave the city. All the roads the GPS wanted us to get on were under construction so we drove around for a while trying to figure out where to go. This gave us some time to get some random pictures of the city.
It was a great trip and I'm really happy we decided to do it!
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