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!

Random KSA Observations

It's hot.  Like, really hot.  Every single day.  But at least it's not humid?  Instead, it's like being in an oven.  August is supposed to be the worst, so hopefully it will start cooling off sometime soon.

Chance of rain?  Never.

When shopping for a pool float, I came across all sorts of sharpied up women on boxes.  This was hilarious to me.

I don't want to be accidentally turned on by a girl on a box!

My favorite kind of salad is definitely French fries.

Can I eat all of the salad, please?

Dates come from trees.  Who knew?

This date palm is right outside my villa.  The only rain we get are the falling dates.

There are no postal addresses for anything here.  If you look up a restaurant, you'll find the street it's on and a general location, so we usually just end up driving down the street looking for it (with occasional success).  That was how we found the restaurant we ate at last night, Quick Bites, which was delicious!

When it's prayer time, everything gets shut down.  While eating last night, the employees turned off most of the lights, locked the doors, and all of them went in the back to pray.  It was just Brian and I in a completely empty restaurant... kinda cool!

Quick Bites in Khobar during prayer time

We can find most everything we need here, except for pork and alcohol, both of which are illegal.  Don't worry, there are alternatives!

Pork bacon is far superior to turkey bacon

Fancy restaurants with their fancy mocktails

Getting There is Half the Fun???

So the road to Saudi Arabia was not the smoothest.  When I got to New Orleans, I was told that the third leg of my journey, from Amman, Jordan to Dammam, Saudi Arabia, did not exist.  I called Orbitz and was basically told, "oh well, we sent you an email six days ago, figure it out."  Ummm I definitely wouldn’t be standing here trying to figure out how to not be stuck in Jordan if that was the case!  No call from Orbitz… no email… nothing in the spam folder, even.  Royal Jordanian Airlines was more than accommodating, however, and assured me that I could stay in a hotel in Amman overnight, and there would be a shuttle to take me back to the airport the next day.  

 

With that assurance, I hopped a short flight to Chicago, and then settled in for the 12.5 hour journey from Chicago to Amman.  Even with a middle seat, the flight wasn’t bad.  The movie selection wasn’t the best, but at least they had individual televisions.  I slept a good bit and read The Farm by Tom Rob Smith.  It was an interesting story that kept my attention, though the mystery/psychological thriller genre is not usually my favorite. 

Once we landed in Amman, I had to find the Transit desk and figure out how to get to the hotel.  A girl from Atlanta studying in Sudan, a boy from Wyoming going to visit his family in Iraq, and I found ourselves standing around looking confused.  Apparently being American and standing around looking confused is the fastest way to get where you’re going.  A very nice Jordanian man who looked an awful lot like Bob Barker took us under his wing and helped us fill out the necessary paperwork and get to our bus.  He spoke only a little English, but he knew everyone working in the airport and was able to get us where we needed to be by sweet talking everyone with his million watt smile.  We even went through the Jordanian nationals line to get our passports checked.  Without him, we might still be standing around the airport trying to figure out where to go.

The guy at the airport who helped us had a nice suit, orange-ish skin, and stark white hair.  He was basically the Middle Eastern Bob Barker.

We left Bob at the airport, and once we got to the Amman Airport Hotel, the three of us were back to standing around looking confused.  Eventually we were given our rooms, but not before a hotel employee opened two different rooms that were already occupied.  One of them had guests sleeping in it!   With a “Sorry, Sir!” we were quickly ushered back down to the lobby to get actual empty rooms.

I got free dinner and breakfast at the hotel (buffet style), and was able to watch two stations on the television.  The dinner was pretty good actually, but the breakfast wasn’t the best.  The “sausages” tasted like greasy Vienna Sausage from a can, and they had some kind of beans in a brownish red sauce that were still a little crunchy.  They did have hummus and pita on the breakfast buffet, which I will never complain about!  

Because I did not get a Jordanian visa upon arrival, I was forbidden to leave the hotel.  This was all I could really see of Jordan.  But I liked what I saw!

I caught the shuttle back to the airport and got on my flight to Dammam, Saudi Arabia.  It was about a two hour flight.  When I got there, after 41 hours of traveling, I was greeted by my awesome husband with some beautiful flowers and a can of Diet Coke.  Best. Welcome. Ever.