New Home

We finally moved into our permanent housing!  This permanent housing was supposed to be ready in June, and is still only 20% occupied because the rest is under (major) construction... Construction that starts every morning at 6 am.  Oh well, hopefully we'll have more neighbors soon.  The compound should be full by the beginning of next year (or in Saudi time, maybe like April). 

Jubail Views, our new home for the foreseeable future.

This is what most of the compound still looks like.

So we moved to Jubail from Khobar, a much larger city, whose claim to fame is probably this enormous mall that every single Saudi (and their 4 children under the age of 6) goes to on the weekend.  Shopping is like the Saudi national pastime, I guess because it's air conditioned, so it's always PACKED.  That mall and the Ikea across the street have been the biggest source of stress in my life since we've been here, so I can't say I'm sad to leave them.

Notice the various children running amok.

Sidebar:  speaking of air conditioning, I spoke too soon in my last post about the heat and lack of humidity.  Since that post, the humidity has been around 75-85% every day.  It's like Louisiana...BUT WAY WORSE because it's still like 108+ each day.  Luckily we've been told that the humidity only lasts 3-4 weeks a year here. 

Anyway, Jubail is much smaller, and is the home to a private beach club at the Intercontinental Hotel that's pretty nice, and a stand-alone Dairy Queen...very important so that I don't have to brave the insanity at the mall to get a Blizzard!  The best part is that it is much closer to the plant, so Brian's commute is a lot shorter now.  More time for floating in the pool in the evenings!

Here are some pics of our new place:

Laundry

My bathroom

Living room

Master bedroom

Tiny kitchen

Dining room

Brian's bathroom

Balcony

Entrance to the compound

Spare bedroom/workout room/Brian's dressing room

View of Jubail from the stairwell in our building.  Yes, all of Saudi is pretty much tan.  Even the buildings and walls.

Huge parking lot, which is ironic in that very few people are allowed to drive here.

One of the pools.  The other is not finished yet (shocker!).

Finally, the appliances here take FOREVER to run a cycle, but at least when they're finished they sing a happy song!  Here's our Dryer Song from when we lived in Khobar.

When more of our recreation center is finished I'll take some pics in there, too.  We go for our mandatory cultural training tomorrow... looking forward to spending the day learning about Saudi culture!