Dhahran Flower Festival

 Every year there is a big flower festival in our town. The workers spend weeks getting ready for the weekend of festivities and the camp looks amazing with gorgeous flowers everywhere. One of the great benefits of living somewhere that doesn't freeze that the growing season is 9 months long so the flowers are stunning. The festival kicks off with a parade. It is a big parade with incredible, intricate flower floats.

 ALL of the workers from around camp get involved in the parade and learn dances and wear costumes. It was such an amazing thing to see.

Instead of throwing candy the workers passed out leis and fancy party hats. My girls were in heaven.

 The rest of the week hosts the flower exhibit on the main part of our compound. The workers put together incredible and elaborate flower displays. I should have taken more pictures of everything because it was amazing. There were huge fields of flowers in patterns.

 Different displays of famous movie characters for the kids. This is the Alice in Wonderland display:

The Aladdin display

I love this peacock with the flower feather tail!

We had such a great time at the festival that we went back a few times during the week to look again. I love that it is a big tradition here and that so many people get involved to make something beautiful in the community!

Moving...Again!

When we moved to Saudi this summer we were very surprised to find out that we would not be moving to the main camp but to a small camp about 10 miles away. We didn't know before we came and it was a huge shock to us to find out we weren't going to be living where we originally planned to be. There were some really great things about living in the other camp - everyone was brand new to the company and so there were lots of people looking to make friends (kids and adults). We found we had a strong group of friends really quickly. Everything was also in very close proximity since the camp was only 1 square mile. The homes were nice, newly remodeled and bigger than the homes on main camp. However, it was super inconvenient for everyone to deal with the commute. 10 miles may not seem like a long distance but the commute time with traffic was 25-40 minutes to get to main camp. Allen's job is on main camp as is the school and all extra curricular activities. It was a huge hassle to come over here for everything and it complicated our lives a lot since I can't drive off the camps (women are allowed to drive on the company camps).

When we moved here we were told to be prepared to live in the outlying camp for 2-5 years. We weren't thrilled but dug in and made friends and were generally pretty happy. During our time in the US we found out that some houses became available on the main camp for people from our camp. We were so blessed to get one of those homes on main camp! After we returned for our whirlwind trip to the US we had 2 weeks to get completely packed up and moved over to our new house. It was really, really fast. I was so worried coming home that it was going to be a disaster dealing with jetlag and moving and prayed really hard that we would not have bad jetlag. It turned out to be a miracle that none of us suffered from any jetlag coming back to Saudi. Considering that it took us 2 weeks to adjust when we got here I really believe we were blessed because of the circumstance.

I spent my days packing and Allen drove a load of our stuff to our house everyday after work and unpacked it. It worked out pretty well and I wasn't super overwhelmed on either end since we moved stuff a little bit at a time. The company did provide movers to move our furniture but we took most of the smaller items over ourselves. The day before the pros showed up a big group of guys came and filled up their SUVs with our stuff and it was so helpful!

The day we moved in was stressful but we felt so loved as neighbors and friends came to help and brought tons of food. We had 3 complete meals but several treats and loaves of bread dropped off. We had a couple other meals dropped off during the week and I didn't have to cook for about 10 days. It was great!

The house was a disaster but I'm happy with how quickly it has come together. Our current house is only about 2200 sq feet but has great storage and that makes a huge difference. I'm so glad we pared down so much before we moved here and truly only have items that we use and love. It's very refreshing. This was the girls room as we were unpacking. We were also weeding out outgrown clothes and I'm in the process of redecorating their room so I was also getting rid of lots of decor items. It was a huge mess. We're pretty well settled now and our house is being painted next week and I'm ready to hang curtains and wall decor so hopefully we'll have some house pictures soon.

The kids have been TROOPERS. This has been a big deal for us all. It has been so nice to be close to school and work. The kids come home for lunch every day and Allen comes home for lunch several times a week. They can be back and forth between school and work in about 5 minutes. Allen no longer has a commute and is home a few minutes after 4 each day (still the very best part of living here!!!!) The downside is that we all miss our friends from the other compound but hopefully everyone will be here soon. Addie and Emery spent countless hours playing in boxes while we unpacked.

So that is the story of our most recent move. We have quite a bit of work we'd like to do to the house including a kitchen overhaul, updated bathrooms and an extension on the back of our house but those things will take time and happen slowly. For now we are really content with being here and enjoying even more time together.

Day in the Desert

Last weekend we were invited by some friends to go to the desert to dig sand roses. It is a pretty popular thing to do but you have to know where to go to dig so we were excited to have someone show us. It was interesting that just driving for a few minutes we were out of the city and into some really desert countryside. We were all so excited on our drive when we started to pass hundreds of camels roaming around. We were even more excited when the camels walked right by the place where we were digging. The camel farmers were so friendly and brought their camels over to let us all take pictures with them. The camels were quite gentle and unafraid of us so we got lots of pictures and opportunities to interact with them. They are VERY stinky animals though and were very dirty so I tried to keep the kids from touching them too much.

 Allen and Carter even had the chance to ride a camel. By the time Allen had his ride the camel was pretty much done schlepping people around and would no kneel down for any more riders after that.

After playing with the camels Allen started to dig our hole for sand roses. To find the roses you have to dig down to the water level and then you begin to find them. Sand roses are unique to this area and for some reason the sand crystallizes and makes these beautiful flowers. 

Kiddos and friends in our hole:

This is just a small sampling of the roses we dug up. We let each of the kids choose one to bring home and now they are in our front flower beds. The roses are quite heavy and sharp but truly beautiful.

It was a fun and hot morning in the desert and we're excited to go out again soon!

Directionally Challenged

An interesting fact about Saudi Arabia is that there are NO addresses here. At all. Let me tell you, finding anything here is quite an adventure. We've been lost more times than you can imagine. People always give directions using landmarks. We recently went to a friends house for dinner. Here are the directions they gave Allen for us to get there:

1. Take the right exit off the rainbow roundabout
2. go left at the traffic light but stay on the access road, don't get on the highway
3. After an empty dirt lot turn on the street to the right (no street name)
4. When you pass the school on the left, turn right
5. When you get to the compound go through the left gate, then through 2 more gates.
6. Once inside the last gate take 2 lefts and 2 rights to our house

For real. These were the directions. (The compound has a name but for the sake of privacy I will not include it here.)  Using our GPS device is always pretty funny too. We've resorted to marking our frequent locations ourselves since there is no way for the GPS to find them without an address. If we're going some place we haven't been before we get directions and hope for the best. A few weeks ago we tried to find the fruit, flower and seafood markets and because of bad directions we had to give up. Unfortunately you can't really stop to ask for directions since most people don't speak English!

Every day we learn and experience something new here in Saudi!

A toilet story

To kick off my posts about living in Saudi Arabia I thought it would be fun to tell you guys a little story. We arrived in the KSA during the holy month of Ramadan. In Saudi this means that the local people fast during the daylight hours and then eat during the night. It is the holiest month in the Islamic faith and everyone takes the fasting very seriously. It also means that nothing is open during daylight hours - no stores or restaurants. It made for some interesting first few weeks in the country.

On our 3rd night here we were dying for some familiar food. The food here is VERY different and it has taken us a while to figure out what to eat. We knew there was a Chili's at one of the local malls so we decided to brave the crazy traffic and headed out to find some food. We enjoyed a great meal that tasted ALMOST exactly like it does in the states and left the restaurant full for the first time in days and very happy. And then Addie and Makenna announced that they needed to use the restroom.

I took all 3 of the girls into the restroom with me and then I realized that all the toilets are "eastern toilets." Meaning... a hole in the ground. Here's a picture of the toilet in the mall bathroom:

The other interesting thing about the bathrooms here is that the locals do not use toilet paper at all. See that hose to the left of the hole? That is a squirter like you would find on your kitchen sink. The Saudis turn the water on and squirt themselves off after they go potty. Yeah. Consequently, the floors in the bathrooms are ALWAYS soaking wet and I find it so disgusting.

So there I am with the 3 girls, hole-in-the-floor toilets, nasty wet floors and no toilet paper. It was just more than my poor jet-lagged, culture shocked self could handle. So I turned around and marched us all out of the bathroom and told the girls to hold it until we got home. Allen was not amused and could not understand why I would not let them go potty. I tried to explain to him that I had no idea how I would get everyone's clothes off to squat over the hole and not get everything wet in the process. A few days later we were at IKEA and I took the girls to the bathroom again. There were western toilets but still with the squirters and wet floors and so we walked out with very wet clothing. After that he began to understand my dilemma of taking the girls to the bathroom. 

After a few weeks here we now know to use the restroom before we leave home every single time. I've also learned to always carry my own toilet paper and hand sanitizer. And I've also learned where the western toilets are in most public places. We have yet to use an eastern toilet! Just one of many crazy experiences we have had in the last 5 weeks!