M I L E S T O N E S

Back from a relaxing R&R!

2014-04-26T06:31:00.000-05:00

With Facebook, it seems like I post on here less and less, but through this medium I can write a bit more and it's suitable. So here's an update on what we've been up to and a little more about our R&R. Before we went on R&R, work was just day to day thing. I for obvious reasons can't discuss work but needless to say it's work, nothing too exciting. Living in Jeddah is about the same. The girls struggle with it a bit, it's hard to live in such repressive place. I find myself thinking more ad more how screwed up this country is. The biggest thing is the driving for me, people can't stay in their lanes it's amazing. And now, they've resurfaced a lot of the main roads and have yet to paint any lines, so you can just imagine the chaos during rush hours. Let's see the weather is getting hotter and a lot more humid, pretty much sucks to be outside for any length of time during the day.

So what do you do when things start to wear on you? You get the hell out of Dodge! R&R is so nice, this time we took a trip to London and Paris. I'm sure some of you saw the pictures on Facebook and Picasa, but here I'll try to add some context and tell you a little bit about our trip.

We started out in London and after a short 5 1/2 hour flight we were picked up by our car that I scheduled. (Cheaper than a taxi, I'd recommend it) We made it to our hotel, I have to say the lady that checked us in at the Marriott there was extremely friendly and cheerful. Another change from our current country is the focus on customer service. Anyways, we've always like Marriott and are good customers, we were upgraded on our room and given access to the executive lounge, so breakfast was free and it's nice to be able to grab a drink or snack in the evening.

On through London, we did quite a bit while there, we started with a tour of the Warner Bros. studio where the Harry Potter films were made.

This was a very cool tour and took the better part of 3 hour to go through, and we didn't stop and read everything.

Here is the front of the Great Hall which was awesome, we learned that Hagrid had a body double that was some rugby player who was like 6'7" and he still had to wear stilts to get Hagrid to his half giant size.

Breakfast time setup in the great hall.

Entry to Dumbledore's office. It was very cool to see all the props used in the movies. Below is the actual owl that played Hedwig. It's real name is Elmer and he was used for all the sitting shots in the movie.

And a stroll down Diagon Alley. Since coming back we started watching the movies again and it's pretty cool to see the sets and have been to them. All the details and the effort that went into creating these movies is amazing.

And finally at the end of the tour, was the model used for all the shots on the castle. This was simply amazing and the size and detail was astounding. The rest of the tour pictures are here: HP Tour Pictures

It's funny sometimes what you miss when living in Saudi Arabia. Well grass was one of Crystal's...

We walked around London a bit and one of the next things we went to was the Sherlock Holmes museum. Though a fictional character, the address used for hime 221b Baker Street does exist and the place was at one time a turn of the century flat. Nonetheless, it was pretty neat to go and visit. On the second floor is a book of actual letters sent to Sherlock from actual people from around the world. I read one from a lady actually asking for help with finding missing items around her house.

Late that night we went on a walking tour around London where the Jack the Ripper murders happened. Our tour guide, Donald Rumbelow, was excellent and had actually published a book on the subject. Jolene bought herself a copy and got it signed. Here's a shot of the two.

The tour was very interesting and took us through the East Side of London. Back in the day it was the poorest section of London, and still is actually. The pictures from the Sherlock and Ripper tour are here: Holmes and Ripper Tour.

London was packed with things to do and we actually found it difficult to get in everything we wanted to do. When planning our activities, we didn't take into account how long it would take to get from point A to B and the lines. We did get the London Pass, which allowed us to skip some of the lines when purchasing tickets and it got us into a lot of stuff for free, well included in the cost of the pass.

One morning we made our way to Westminster Abbey and the London Pass was very helpful here. Another great church with so much history, royal weddings and coronations and the such. I also have to mention how great the weather was in London, cool and sunny the whole time...

We spent a pleasant afternoon at the Tower of London. A small castle in the center of London right on the Thames River. Plenty of executions and activities there if you remember your English History or watched The Tudors on HBO. On the way we had to see Parliament and Big Ben too!

Parliament and Big Ben

Tower of London from the Thames

The White Tower

The Tower of London had many exotic animals from time to time

Okay so the guy that wore this survived like 3 gun shots, but the canon shot won out!

For centuries, the White tower was an armament museum, many heads of state have been here to see this museum.

The line to see the crown jewels was way too long so we just took a picture of one of the guards.

Of course we had to the the torture devices used, Nice Rack!

And some more Grass Time!

And of course, lot's more pictures here: Westminster Abbey and Tower of London

And a trip to London isn't complete without a visit to the Eye. I think the "Wheel" would be a better name, but either way the view was spectacular and again great weather!

We had a nice tour out to Windsor Castle and the City of Bath, specifically the Roman Baths there. Windsor Castle was amazing, unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures on the inside, but it was very awesome, all the furniture, paintings, and just plain history! We did learn that most castles with a moat didn't actually have water in them. Now the Tower of London did because they were able to "tap the Thames". This made sure the water was flowing through and not sitting stagnate. This actually makes sense, the moat was actually dug to make it impossible to use battering rams against walls of the castle. You can see in the picture below, no one was getting a battering ram up that hill on the left.

Here's a shot of the Moat at Windsor

Flag is flying so the Queen was at home.

After Windsor it was about an hour bus ride through the country side to the city of Bath. We would have like to spent more time at Bath to explore the city itself a bit, but the Roman Baths were pretty cool. The green water in the bath well that's just plain pollution and we were told to make sure we don't touch the water.

Swimming Pool

This guy had great balance

Entrance to the Bathhouse

And plenty more pictures.... Eye, Windsor Castle, Bath

The tour guide for our trips this day was excellent, Oxford graduate former British officer and now working on his Doctorate. His experience made him very knowledgeable and able to make decisive decisions. Especially when he had to leave a woman at Bath when she didn't show up at the appointed time. She was a little late at Windsor Castle and a lot late in Bath. Apparently, she was to fall into another tour group, but turns out she was late for that departure as well and they left without her too. Sucks to be that lady!

So, after Bath we went to Stonehenge. I really enjoyed this visit, this was one of my bucket list locations to visit. There is just so much history with it and so much unknown. I think that is part of the draw for me. Again, we had some beautiful and I guess unusually nice weather.

Your typical Stonehenge picture. Nice to not have tourist in it.

In the middle of the picture you can see some writing below it are gouges made from a metal axe either copper or bronze. This signifies the end of the stone age.

This is an ancient post hole, in these holes they found cremated human remains. There about a hundred of these post holes identified.

Nothing related to Stonehenge,
just an old mile marker stating the distance to London

This large horse was dug into the hill side. The soil is chalk and when you dig down far enough you find this bright white chalk. This horse was carved between 1200 BC and 800 BC placing its creation in the Bronze Age, though to be made by Druids. Here are the rest of the Stonehenge pictures: Stonehenge.

That pretty much encompasses our tour of London. From here we took the train from London under the channel to Paris. I guess normally this is a pretty good trip, runs on time, nice smooth ride, etc. Well some time before we were to board, a train pulled into station somewhere in France and on the front of the engine was a bicyclist. There aren't sure when exactly he got hit and whether or not it was suicide but we did have like a four hour delay. Well we did finally get on the train and it was a nice trip to Paris. Once at the train station we hailed a cab and headed toward our hotel on the outskirts of the city. Well to top off our day of travel mishaps our cab driver couldn't find our hotel, we would up following a local guy to our hotel, the cab driver felt bad and knocked our fare down to 25 euro from 35. Can't complain about that!

In Paris we didn't have as many tours or scheduled visits, here we kind of picked things to do and went and did them. We spent a lot of time at the Louvre, then the girls went shopping a bit and I spent some more time at the Louvre and then walked to the Eiffel Tower.

The Louvre

Venus De Milo

The Mona Lisa

I'm guessing the first Viagra advertisement

At sunset

We took a morning and spent it at the Cathedral of Notre Dame and then went underground to see the archeological dig taking place.

Notre Dame Cathedral

One of the stain glassed windows

Some of the famed Gargoyles of Notre Dame

Charlemagne

And we took time to walk around the city. We took a private tour of chocolate shops in Paris. Our guide was very knowledgeable and we got to sample some excellent macaroons and other chocolates. Our guide was very interesting and she knew a lot about the city too. Our last full day in Paris we went to Disney Paris and then bounced around the city a bit. We wanted to do so much more in both London and Paris, we just ran out of time. So, I guess we will just have to go back and visit the other sites.

Well I'll leave you with one more picture and because I got lazy all of our Paris photos are in one online album so here you go... Paris Album.

Caio!

40 percent of Saudis ‘have no respect for law

2014-02-01T10:07:00.003-06:00

This was the title of an article in the Saudi Gazette a while back. This is truly evident in how they drive here. I thought the driving in Moscow was bad. In Moscow the infrastructure is no way able to keep up, so it was almost always congested. Accidents were usually fender benders or scrapes. People were always in a hurry and if you left to much space between your car and the one in front of you, someone would pull in and fill that space. They didn't do it to cut you off, just further their progression down the road. I would take hours to go only a few miles, but you were pretty safe.

Okay back to Jeddah and the piss poor driving here. Here they drive so carelessly it will drive you nuts. I find myself getting angrier and angrier each time I drive. And, I don't think I'm the only one. Last week when I was leaving work, I pulled out onto the main road, 3 lanes on my side, and in my rear view mirror I see this silver car in the middle lane ramming the car on the right, then he decided to go for the vehicle in the left lane a couple of times, then the back to the right. At that point, I was too far away to see how it ended. Granted that was one of the more extreme examples.

More of an every day occurrence is the drift lane change. Just imagine someone wearing a Keffiyeh, ( the checkered head scarf that the men wear) and driving a car. The keffiyeh comes forward so much that the wearer has zero peripheral vision and do not bother to turn their head and look over their shoulder. To change lanes the don't signal they just start to ease over the line and gradually get over. They believe that the space will open up so they just do glide on over. Now this in itself is mind boggling but a great many driver don't drive between the lines, they ride down the road with one side just over the line taking up two lanes. When I encounter this I do what any sane person would do, I lean on the horn as I move by them and encourage them to get back into their lane, all the time muttering explicatives under my breath.

So I stumbled upon a youtube video of one of these drivers, they display a lot of habits we see here. Based on the number of drivers, this looks to be filmed on a Friday morning so about a third of the traffic. It's about 17 minutes long but the first few minutes you can see how he drives on the lines.

Okay now that I've got that off my chest, things here are going well. The temperature is getting warmer and the humidity is climbing as well. Work is going good, and I've been getting in some diving whenever I can.

I know it's been a while since the last posting, but I don't want to bore you with the day to day things that don't change.

Cheers!

Wreck Dive in Yanbu

2013-12-23T01:35:00.001-06:00

This past weekend I went out with my dive instructor, her husband and five others from the consulate to Yanbu, a small town North of Jeddah. After a 4am meet up we hit the road, 3 hours and 1 speeding ticket later (damn speed cameras), we met up with our contact who got us up to the marina. The boat was much smaller than I anticipated, but we piled on board, stowed our gear and set off. it was a nice 45 minute ride out to the site. We did two dives on the wreck and then went to a different reef for our last dive. The dives were great, the lunch sucked, but oh well. Enough rambling, here are some of the pictures, the rest can be found here: YANBU DIVE PICS

Couple of Lion Fish

A look inside reveals 1000s of small fish

Cheers!

Thanksgiving in Dubai

2013-12-02T07:21:00.000-06:00

Okay so as you can see from the title we went to Dubai for Thanksgiving. Started out with a nice flight on Emirates airlines. I have to say they economy class seats were good size and plenty of leg room. Service was great and the flight was only 2.5 hours. So no problems there.

We rented a car but unfortunately the only drivers license I had with me was my Saudi license. Fortunately, Jolene had her US license so she put the car in her name. That was great for her since she can't drive in Saudi it was a chance for her to get behind the wheel for a few days, and a nice break for me. So we checked into our Marriott hotel and got upgraded to a 2 bedroom apartment.

We were told about a gold souk so of course, Jolene and Crystal wanted to go check it out. The gold was between 18 and 24 karat and this place is strongly regulated by the government for quality. Needless to say I'm done Christmas shopping for Jolene.

One of 3 enterances to the souk

Lots of large breast plate like designs

And a little silver shopping too..

All I have to say here is Merry Christmas!

A few 24k bracelets

oh! and some gold!!!

With a few diamonds

and other people shopping.

So needless to say there is shopping to be done in Dubai. After the souk and walking around all morning we went to a little desert dune riding in a Hummer and then a Bedouin meal. This part was just okay, but the dancers were really good.

This was the entrance to the desert area.

Crystal found an Aussie friend to hang with

No trip is complete without riding a camel

And that wrapped up a long day. From here it was like an hour and half ride back to the hotel for a nice night of sleep and sleeping in. After we got up and moving our first order of business was to find a Starbucks, Jolene and Boo need their Starbucks... and from there it was time to get wet at Wild Wadi.

And the view was pretty good from the high slides

The water park was really fun and it was nice just to run around and play in the water. They had some really good slide and one that the bottom dropped out from underneath you and free fall a good deal of the way... Good times!

So after the water park it was time to go to the movies since there are none in Saudi Arabia. We went to the Mall of the Emirates and saw Catching fire. That pretty much rounded out our Thanksgiving, no turkey no table to sit at, just a bit of time in another country where the girls could where what they want, I could have a beer at a restaurant in public and Jolene could drive. Kind of funny what you're thankful for when you can't have something you used to take for granted.

Cheers!

Scuba in the Red Sea

2013-11-25T05:07:00.000-06:00

Thats right, we've finally started our open water dives; we completed the first two this past weekend. But Friday night Jolene was the control officer at a party so we knew it was going to be a late night and didn't want to get up early on Saturday, next weekend is out because the girls think they have to leave the country and visit Dubai so we will finish up in a couple of weeks.

On these dives we went down to about 40-45 feet, visability was okay, definiatley better out further from the coast. I'm already lining up a dive about 3 hours north of Jeddah off the coast of Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, to visit an WW I Turkish troop transport wreck. There are a half dozen of us from the consulate planning on diving the wreck. So here are a few pictures from our dive.

Here is Crystal and the student dive master Christian.

And a selfie of me

Some coral, have to work out good settings on the camera for deeper water than snorkeling.

Christian again

And me

Crystal and her flowing red hair

Our Finish instructor Anu. She's been awesome!

And Jolene sporting the Shortie wet suit.

And yes we will be spending a few days in Dubai. We are looking forward to getting away for a bit and it will be really nice for the girls since they can dress like Westerners there and can forget the abaya for a while. We'll post pics and tell you all about it when we get back.

Cheers!

Rainy Season

2013-11-10T03:37:00.001-06:00

For the first time since we've been here it is now actually raining. We did get sprinkled on our first day here but the ground never really got wet. Now schools are closing, people are worried and traffic will be 10 fold worse than usual. We are enterning the rainy season here in Jeddah and on average it falls 25.... mm for the month of November, but that number climbs all the way up to 30 mm for December. The problem is, it rains here so in frequently, that storm sewers were never put into place so there were areas that flooded. One in particular was an underpass that in 2010 flooded and several people drowned in their cars.

When we moved here a lot of the roads were tore up and storm sewers were/are being installed. But in the mean time it was very nice to go outside and feel the rain on my skin, hear the thunder rolling across the sky and listen to all the sirens off in the distance.

Not much else to report for now so I'll leave you with this picture, it's not much anywhere else, but amazing for this place.

Short Trip to Brussels

2013-10-26T13:57:00.000-05:00

So I had a bit of training and a little vacation time in Brussels. Unfortunately the girls couldn't make it along, so I took one for the team and went alone :(

Training went really well, lots of good information and some good networking. The best part of the trip was a chance to see an old friend and army buddy. We were stationed at Ft. Bragg, NC, Ft. Polk, LA and did a tour in Bosnia together. He and his wife are the ones that taught us how to play bridge and it's bee about 12 years since we've last seen each other. I wish I had more time to catch up with them. But hopefully they can make it out to Paris when we go on R&R.

So of course this usually tends to be a photo blog so here are some of the pictures. The full set can be found HERE.

Of course I had to go to some local brew houses.

Cheers Brian!

So you did scroll all the way down to see what was next. Congratulations your the 3 individual to do so. Not really... you're probably the first...

Anyway so when I get into the airport back in Jeddah, I call Jolene and she says she's at the Marine house for a going away party and that I should come over to the consulate to partake. So being one to always want to support our Marines I do the right thing and go to the party... Yeah I know how that sounds. Anyways it turned into a very long day since I was up at 4am to get ready and catch my flight which landed at 7:30 pm. I finally made it home around 1:30 am. And we had a great time. Though we didn't get up and dance on the bar, others did.

And to finish off our weekend one of our British friends had a birthday so we went over to their place and had a small get together and an excellent cheese cake.

So now I'm home fat and happy (literally to both :\ ) Tomorrow is the first day of the work week and after being gone for a week I'm sure I'll have plenty to do.

Until next time...

Boat Snorkel Trip

2013-10-17T04:25:00.002-05:00

Well we finally have our HHE shipment. We've spent several days unpacking and it is really nice to have our stuff again. Even though my computer was dead, I was able to recover the hard drive and get all my data back, woohoo!

Okay back to the water. On Columbus day holiday we went with about 20 other people from work on a boat trip about 17 miles off the coast to a couple of different reefs. Here are a few shots heading out on our day of fun in the sun.

Heading out the inlet there are several yachts, this was one of the smaller ones.

Looking back toward shore

This was one of the reefs we snorkeled around

The first on was called Chicken Wreck, this is because a boat sunk there carrying frozen chicken bound for Jeddah. The boat is in about 45 feet of water, since I was just snorkeling couldn't get close up pictures, but here is a shot as far down as I could get.

The reefs were absolutely awesome the water was so clear you could easily see 50 feet underwater. There were so many fish and I saw a giant moray eel. It was just cruising along below me, it was too quick for me to get a decent picture.

We have scheduled to start our dive training and we are all looking forward to getting certified so we can go deeper and see more. On this trip about half of the group was diving and they always came up saying how cool it was and one guy was telling us about an octopus that played tug of war with him.

But I digress, so I have to say my new underwater camera does pretty good. Still working on fine tuning the settings but here are a few of my favorite shots, and you can see the whole album here. SNORKEL PICS

These guys almost glow they are so bright.

I've only seen these little green fish in coral like this

Boo diving down for a closer look.

One of several highway like areas where fish seemed to follow a specific path

There were several tunnel areas like this were you could swim through.

And the colorful fish were all over.

These fish were 18" - 24" inches long and were in water about a foot or two deep on top of the reef.

More little green fish in the coral

One of the bigger ones hiding out.

Well that's our update. We are in the middle of a week long Hajj holiday. Next week it's back to work, but in the mean time we are going to have some of the Marines over for dinner tonight. With such a small American community, we try to do as much with others as we can, it makes this place just that much better.

Cheers!

Not Much Going On...

2013-10-05T07:08:00.001-05:00

But I'm trying to stay on top of posting. When things are slow, it makes it harder to get on here and post anything. We aren't doing anything really exciting but we are making friends and getting out a bit. About every other week the local employee association at the consulate puts on a party evening last day of the work week. This past week was "Steak Night". Medium done steak, real mashed potatoes and veggies with a garlic parmesan cheese topping; really good stuff. Then after the dinner we went to the after party at the Marine's House. We brought along some friends I met about a month ago, a few pilots that fly on contract bringing Hajj's (pilgrims) to visit Mecca. There was two Americans and one Aussie that joined us for the evening. This was the first time two of them had a chance to interact with Americans at the consulate, and drink. Needless to say everyone had a great time. As most of you know, pork products are illegal here so needless to say like alcohol the only way we can get it is through the Consulate commissary. So yesterday we invited a couple of the pilots over for a ham dinner. They were in heaven, ham, potatoes, green beans and beer. It's nice to be able to help bring a little American culture to those here working far from home.

Still working on lining up SCUBA lessons, looking at the end of the month. We are going out on a dive/scuba boat during the upcoming holiday. From what I hear it's an all day thing and great for diving and snorkeling. The boat anchors near the reef which is about 3' deep at some parts then drops off so the divers have their place to go too. So I'll hopefully get some good pictures, it will be nice to get off shore and out into the open waters.

Well gonna run,
Ciao!

Snorkeling

2013-09-26T09:09:00.002-05:00

Okay the beaches are a really nice place to get away and reduce the effects of the heat and humidity here. The beaches we go to are private beaches that charge about $30 per person to get in. But you get do be a Westerner and dress as such. So the girls can wear their swimsuits and not be gawked at or harassed for the way the are dressed.

Any way, this last weekend we went back to the Silver Sands beach here and got in some snorkeling and I got to try out my new waterproof camera. There is some coral there, but it's not as good as it was at the La Plage but good time none the less. So here are a few shots from Silver Sands.

I think we are going to shoot for end of October for scuba lessons, after that I'm hopine we can get some good shots and maybe some video with the camera.

Cheers!

Our First Shipment

2013-09-16T13:32:00.001-05:00

Okay we finally received our UAB (Unaccompanied Air Baggage). This shipment is about 600 pounds of the things we wanted initially. So far we have one casualty. My computer :'( Because the shipment sat for about a month in the Saudi heat, the capacitors on the motherboard swelled and rendered the computer DOA. So my computer is dead...Hopefully when the others arrive, I will be able to recover the data and get my stuff back. And I hope the x-box is okay, I'll power that up later and check it out. Fingers crossed!

Okay enough of me venting, it's really nice to have some of our own dishes, utensils and things around. It's starting to feel like our home again. Jolene said it felt like Christmas, and we got five boxes from Amazon today to so "Bonus!". Lots of coffee for our Keurig and some new shoes for Jolene. Well time to get ready for tomorrow

Cheers

Off to the Souk

2013-09-07T12:48:00.003-05:00

So this week we went to one of the "souks" in town (pronounced like soup). This particular one had lots of furniture and rugs. We were fortunate enough to have a native Arabic speaker in the group and she helped us haggle down the prices. So we learned to haggle here you have to be extremely patient. If you don't get the price you want, and threaten to leave they will let you go and if you go back expecting to get a deal you already loss because they know you really want it and are less willing to come down on the price. You have to take time stay there and continue to stick to your guns. It's a good starting point to offer half of what they are asking and go from there. All in all it's pretty fun to see what kind of bargain you can get. So here are the three rugs we got.

The red one we got next to the bed, it's a nice little runner.

The blue and yellows in this one are awesome, I don't think the picture does it justice.

Crystal picked out this one to put in her room. I will match nicely with her bed spread.

Here are a few other pictures from the souk...

Lots of misc. house hold goods.

Had a little shawarma

Crystal trying out some of the furniture.

Crystal starts school tomorrow. She's got to go in a little early to exchange her skirts for her uniform. She's all set to start in the IB program. It looks like she has a good schedule and she is very excited to get started, it's been a long summer. At her orientation, she actually met another girl in her class and lives in the neighborhood. Crystal has also cornered the market on babysitting too, shes had a couple of jobs already and more lined up. Should be pretty profitable for her.

Well time to get ready for the week, I've got a lot of work to do this week.

Cheers!

Beach and Balls

2013-09-01T12:54:00.001-05:00

So today we made it out to the Silver Sands beach and it was just beautiful. Two thumbs up for me. Crystal said it was like paradise, a place where she could where her bikini. Jolene and I think the beach is "Travel Magazine Ready" Something like you will see in resort adds in travel magazine. No for those of you that know the Silver Sands in NY, yeah this is much better. Today is an American holiday, but not for the locals so it was a perfect time to go to the beach. We pretty much had the place to ourselves, me Jolene, Boo and one of the Marines, which I think we are adopting. Crystal will have another big brother.... I think we'll get one at each post to help keep an eye on her.

So here are the pictures that I took with my iPhone. I'm sure Jolene will be uploading some to Facebook too. We did swim out to the island and found a crab on the rocks. It was perfectly intact but dead and all red. Honestly it looks like it climbed out on the rock and cooked right there

So the other part of the title... Balls....I'm sure you're wondering where that is relevant. Well a friend of a friend came back from Turkey and brought some gum back with them. It is supposed to be extra sour, but I only thought it was fruity. It was kinda like Double Bubble in that it was good for about 30 seconds then you are ready to spit it out. So here is the gum...

I thought it was funny as hell. So what else, we are settling into work, Jolene is trying to update things in her job, I'm cruising along and Crystal is off for yet one more week, but we will make a trip into the school sometime this week to get her new school uniforms. Picture to be posted later.

We went to a dinner party with another consulate family and two families that live here, one from England and the other guy is from Chicago and his wife is from Iraq. She made authentic Iraqi cuisine and it was awesome. I don't even know the name of the dishes but they were great, and then she made this Turkish desert that was, well awesome too. No idea what it was called, I know it have pine nuts in it and ice cream and sugar and something else that had a grainy texture. No pictures of the dessert, but Jolene got pictures of the table before we ate so look for those on FB.

Cheers for now.

Time for another update from Jeddah

2013-08-23T13:10:00.002-05:00

Well I just completed my first full week of work and settling in nicely. Everyone at post is extremely friendly and have made us feel welcome. Jolene starts work this Sunday and is really looking forward to it. This week we went out with some others from work and had a sea food dinner Bedouin style... sitting on carpets and sharing several different plate. Here's the spread...

We had sea bass, parrot fish, shrimp, and calamari. Crystal and Jolene ate a little bit of everything. They actually like it. I handed Crystal one of the shrimp above and she said, "What do I do with it... It still has the head on it, Dad fix it for me...." So I pealed her shrimp for her. Needless to say everything tasted excellent. There was 15 of us for dinner and we had enough food for another 10 people. But we made good use of the leftovers, bringing them to the Marines on duty and the security guards.

So this is the beach we went to today, it's called the La Plage. For those of you that know French, yes the beach is called "The Beach". I know very original. There is another beach that we will eventually make it to called "Silver Sands" For you back in the USDA, I'll let you know how it compares to the Silver Sands in NY.

The water is quite warm, but a little cooler than the pool in our housing compound. As you get out about 5 feet or so it gets quite comfortable. The tent in the distance is where you can rent snorkel and dive equipment. There is a reef that drops off where the divers head out, but the reef is awesome with a snorkel. One of the Marines that was with us today, had an underwater camera, so if his pictures turn out I'll get them uploaded here. But until then, here's what it looked like...

Obviously we need to rush out and get our own fins and mask so we don't have to rent them, but we are really looking forward to learning how to dive and exploring further out. I hear there are several ship wrecks that are great diving places.

Well that's it for now ...

مع السلامة
Sounds like ... Ma’a salama
Translations... Good Bye

A Week in Jeddah

2013-08-11T13:07:00.002-05:00

Okay so we've been here a week today. Let's recap:
After an 18 hour trip to get here we zipped through customs thanks to our great expediter, our luggage arrived all in tact an the cat made it though he was a bit grumpy.

We were welcomed by many of our colleagues that work at the consulate and they have all been great in helping us get settled in. We've gone to one dinner party to meet consulate people that live on the compound that we live on and today we had our second pool party with a large number of the consulate staff. The first one was at the other compound that the consulate uses.... Quick side note, compound is just another word for a gated or in our case walled in community. There are many Saudis, Americans, and many other nationalities that live here.

So the consulate is closed for a few more days because of Eid holiday. The work/school week here is Sunday - Thursday so that will take a little getting used to.

Lets see what else,.... We've been out to a couple of malls and grocery shopping. The grocery store is like a super Wal-Mart or Target. Things are a bit pricier but not to bad.

Back to our house, we've got a nice 3 bedroom 3.5 bath town house. All tile floors so we will definitely be getting some rugs while we are here. we've got a small back porch area, and when we sit back there, we are surrounded by stray kitties. Yeah we were suckers and fed them...next thing we knew there were a dozen of them swarming us and meowing. But only a couple of them have been brave enough to come close and let us pet them. And yes we have started naming them. Here is a couple pictures.

This is "Schrödinger" Yeah I named her

We call this one "Oreo"

This little Siamese is called "Nutz" because well they are huge...

Crystal has been working on here dives. Here are a couple of action shots from one of her dives.

And she is straight with her toes pointed ... must be from the years of gymnastics training.

All in all it's been good week. We are figuring things out and getting accustomed to the new culture, the new currency (Riyals), meeting our neighbors and co-workers, and all the nice kitties in the neighborhood. (I'll gather them up for a group shot sometime... should be as easy as herding cats...)

Back on the Blog Again

2013-08-09T12:40:00.001-05:00

Okay so it's been a loooonnngg time since we've posted anything. So just a quick update to get things rolling again. After a short stint back in DC we are now settling into our new home in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It's a bit on the warmer side; well okay it's damn hot and humid, but we have a great house and a very nice pool to kind of cool off in. The water temperature in the pool is probably around 85° F. But here's a look at it anyway.

Well that's just a quick update for now, not much else going on. Things are quiet here but the consulate is still closed for a few more days. Jolene and I are both looking forward to getting going in work. We are also going to be taking scuba lessons, hopefully pretty soon.

Ciao for now.

Summer Time, Season of Change

2012-08-07T11:47:00.000-05:00

Well it is finally feeling like summer here in Moscow, daytime temps are upper 80s to low 90s. We've been grilling and going to bar-b-ques and enjoying this nice weather. But it is the season of change for the State Department, summer time is the main transfer season. People who's tour is up head off to their next adventure and new people are arriving to start their time here in Moscow. Lots of new faces wandering the halls. But it is fun to meet with them and learn about where they've been and share a little of our Moscow experiences with them.... BRB gotta check the shashlik ....

Now that was quick for you, took me about 10 minutes. Isn't technology great, but I digress. So, now we have some new neighbors next door and new families are moving in, mostly now in August. A lot of people like to try to get to post before school starts, well for obvious reasons. Now old faces are gone and new faces have taken their place. Hard to believe we have less than a year left here ourselves. This time next year I'll be in training back in D.C. before heading off to Jeddah.

So I bet your wondering how the shashlik is, well it was pretty good. I tried making a marinade, it was pretty good, but the beef we got was way to tough, though the chicken was just right!

Okay, I guess I really don't have to much of a point to this blog entry. Mostly, I wanted to share a bit of the changes we have going here and to let everyone know we're still doing pretty good. I'm biking into work 2-3 times a week which is really good exercise for me. It takes about 40 minutes or so a nice ride in the morning and then back home in the evening; taking advantage of the nice weather we've got right now.

Well, that's it for tonight.

Chow.

Survey Says!!!

2012-07-14T09:58:00.001-05:00

Yes, after a lot of anticipation and researching where we would like to go and checking out schools, we finally received our "unofficial" notice of where our next duty station will be. And I got to say we maintain an open invitation to any one that wants to come visit. Now that we have our assignment, we are looking closer at the school options for Crystal and the working opportunities for Jolene. This is a much smaller post than Moscow, that is one of the main things the assignment officer tries to do. If you were at a big post most likely, you next with be small and vice-verse. Though not always the case as we have one friend that is going from a small post in Chengdu, China to a small embassy in Suva. Suva you ask? Fiji islands in the middle of the Pacific. I think he's willing to take in visitors too. (We might have to go visit him there.)

Hard to believe that this time next year we'll probably already be back in the States on home leave and a few short weeks after that in training in DC then off to. . . Wow I guess I have said where we are going yet. I know some of my colleagues already know. You know I'm not sure who's taking my slot here, though I don't know who all the bidders are, some of us are keep each other up on our assignments through an online spreadsheet. Pretty handy actually, it was really interesting to see where people were wanting to go and what they were planning on bidding on.

Okay, I'm done rambling, back to our posting . . . Well here are some pictures, scroll down slowly and see if you can figure it out before you get to the bottom.

So a city by water

and a city by the desert

with some resorts

and some restrictions on

what women can wear

SCUBA

more SCUBA.

We all plan on getting certified to dive while here

Got it yet?

Long Time No See

2012-07-10T02:42:00.004-05:00

So about a year ago when I found out we were going to Moscow for our first assignment, I posted on Facebook that fact and put out an invitation for anyone to come visit. We had some half hearted interest by some, but one said she would definately be here. Well Connie was true to her word and came out last week.
We started with a bang on the 4th of July. After a bite to eat and a walk down the pedesterian Old Arbat Street. From there we met up with Jolene and wound up at an after party at some cafe and from there we took a cab to some other bar that was decorated in Red, White and Blue for our Independence day. Needless to say it was a VERY long day for Connie, but she hung in there. We also met another American visiting from Turkey (I think). He tagged along and came out with us.

We were up the next morning (not to early) site-seeing over the next couple of days, taking in all the touristy sites and some off the beating path. I took her to see the Changing of the Guard at the Eternal Flame, Red Square area, the Armoury and the GYM (pronounced GOOM) mall. We also made it out to Gorky Park and the nearby Statue Park. The embassy community had an Independence Day picnic and I think Connie had fun there too, as you can see.

Unfortunately the first couple of days, Jolene had to work, but on Friday night, she was able to head out with us. We made it to one of our favorite cafes SIM-SIM, for dinner.

All in all, I think Connie had a good time and it was nice to see her again after 21 years... yeah we hadn't seen each other since high school. It was nice to catch up and hear about everyone. And thanks again to Jolene for being such a good sport too!

So hopefully in the next week or two we will be finding out what our next posting will be and the offer will be out there again, anyone wanting to visit and see the country we are in, just let us know!

Vacation to Italy

2012-07-01T06:51:00.000-05:00

Finally a family vacation. It's been a while since we've gone so we tried to make the best of it. We took a trip to Italy. We started by flying to Venice, then trained to Florence, to a train over to Pisa for the day then back to wandering around Florence. From there we trained down to Rome. From Rome we took a day trip to Mt. Vesuvius and Pompeii, and we also toured the Vatican Museum and the four Basilicas in Rome, St. Peter's, St. Paul's, St. John's, and St. Mary Major. We had a great time and here are some of the pictures we took. You can find the full collection of our pictures on the the web album. (Click on the picture of St. Basil's in the upper right corner).

So starting off in Venice we wandered around the city...

Some of the alley ways were a bit narrow...

And we saw the levitating woman. Can you figure out how she does it? Post your thoughts in the comments section at the end.

We had snacks

We wandered with the masses.

We bought hats

While in Venice we took a tour to the islands of Murano and Burano. Murano is known for their glass blowing and Burano is known for their hand-made lace.

Burano also has a leaning tower, actually there are several in Venice just because of the high water table.

Burano is also a fishing village. They paint their houses bright colors that match their boats. When arriving back from see they can spot their houses from a long distance off.

Demonstrating the painstaking method of hand-making lace.

And of course since we were in Venice we had to take a Gondola ride down the canal.

And we passed Marco Polo's house (yes the explorer) and a bit further down we passed Casanova's home.

And that is the highlights from Venice. We only spent a couple of days here, but I think we saw most of what Venice has to offer. It is a very beautiful city and being a popular tourist destination, very expensive. From here we took a water taxi to the train station and were off to Florence... Here are the rest of our Venice Pictures

The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (St. Mary of the Flower) is the main church in Florence. We climbed to the top of the dome and got a great view of Florence and the surrounding area. A must do for anyone going to Florence.

The inside of the dome is painted with scenes of Hell and Heaven.

This was a private church built by the Medici family back in the 16th century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medici_Chapel

This is the view down

And that is were we were on the Dome.

While in Florence you have to see Michelangelo's David. Though they did not allow pictures of the original there are a couple of replicas out around the city. Here is one at the museum.

And here are some other sculptures from around the city...

And you gotta love a bit of modern art/graffiti.

While in Florence, we caught a train to Pisa to see the leaning tower and the Basilica there. We didn't get there early enough to get timely tickets to climb the tower, but it was hot enough and just being there was pretty cool. And our Florence Pictures

Of course we had to do the standard touristy poses...

Inside the Basilica it was huge, and filled with art work.

In the foreground is the Baptismal, then the Basilica, and finally the Leaning Tower

And the rest of the Pisa Pictures

After Pisa we spent one more night in Florence before taking the high speed train down to Rome. I have to say there's a lot of old stuff in Rome, go figure.... Even walking through we seems to be a modern part of the city, you stumble on an old wall or ruins. It's pretty cool to know you are walking on some of the same cobble stone streets that they used thousands of years ago.

In parts of Rome especially around the Forum area, they found ruins of older civilization dating back to over 700 BC. From Rome, we took an all day trip to Mount Vesuvius and the ruins of Pompeii. Here's a taste of that. We've got a ton of pictures on the web album at: Pompeii Pictures

At the bottom of this next picture you can see 3 large stones in the street. This was a crosswalk. Back in the day, the streets were the drainage system so you needed elevated crosswalks to keep your feet dry. You can also see grooves in the road, these are from the wagons. The wagons had a standard 4'6" axle length and the wooden wheels were covered with iron. After a lot of use, the wheels wore grooves into the stone.

It was a hot day, and fortunately there were many fountains around that we could use to fill up our water bottles.

And finally through the streets of Rome. In Rome we didn't get to see everything, we would need a full two weeks to take it all in. But we did see a lot of the touristy stuff... like the Colosseum

and fountains

and ruins at the Forum

and more ruins,

and Saint Peter's Basilica

and other basilicas

and obelisks

and we ate and drank.... we were merry too

and street perfomers

and dead Popes

and souvenir shops

and our last day in Rome well we didn't stay in Rome, we went to the beach!

Well that is our vacation is short, well kinda short. Here is the link to the hundreds of Rome Pictures. We had a great time. And now we are back in Moscow, enjoying the summer time and loonnnggg days. Though we've passed the summer solstice, the days are still 16+ hours long.

Out and about in Moscow

2012-06-14T13:10:00.004-05:00

These were taken out and around Moscow, the first few pictures where taken when I was out on a bike ride along the rive.

These next pictures were taken on a walk Jolene and I took in the Southern part of the city. First up: Tzar Alexei's Palace. This is a 700,000,000 Ruble (approx $2.2 million) reconstruction of what was once called the 8th wonder of the world. I have pictures of the inside on the online Picasa album.

Below is John the Baptist Church at Dyakovo and the surrounding grounds. This church was built in the mid 16th century, commissioned by Ivan the Terrible

Click on the picture... how many crosses do you see?

... and around the corner, down the path, then down a few stairs...

And then up a similar stairway...

To the Ascension Church, built in 1532 to mark the birth of Tzar Vasily III son, Ivan. Better known as Ivan the Terrible

You can't see it here but there is a throne on the balcony that allows for a view of the river and the country side.

Not far away is the blue-domed Church of Our Lady of Kazan

and a short jaunt through the woods will take you to Peter the Great's log cabin.

I should have offered to buy that painting right then...

Oh well maybe some other time...

Bidding Update

2012-06-12T07:12:00.001-05:00

What a pain...

So after Jolene, Crystal and I went off and did our own research and pretty much figured out how we wanted to rank the posts, something else popped up. Well lets see it was Saturday morning and I was browsing Facebook and saw a classmates posting on how he had to start his bidding process all over. I'm thinking HA HA Sucks to be him! when I realize that he has to start over because they pulled 11 posts from our list and added 9 new ones. Bummer, Sucks to be me! Well we are back at it, after a nice day out walking around the city (the next posting...). We are finalizing our list and getting ready to submit it later this week.

Time to Bid for Our Next Post

2012-05-31T11:13:00.000-05:00

Well it's hard to believe but it's time to start looking at where we will be going to next summer. I can't really get into our options, but we have 36 possible postings, some more likely than others. We have many choices in Europe, some in Asia, several in Africa and a few in Central/South America. We are taking a lot of variables into consideration, but we are looking closest at posts with good schools. We want to make sure Crystal has a good send off from high school. Another thing we are looking for is employment opportunities for Jolene. If Jolene is working then she'll be happy, ergo I'll be happy :). So right now medium to large posts will suit our needs. Although there is a large European capital that Stacey would love us to get posted at, but our chances of actually getting it are slim, and I'll explain why.

The bidding system works like this for us. There are 36 people in my bidding cycle so our assignments officer puts 36 posts on a list. For a time, this is a fluid list some post come on some go off, but there will only be 36 choices. We have to group our choices into one of 3 categories, High, Medium and Low. Then we have to write a justification of our rankings and we can provide actual numerical rankings with more details.

Well who gets to choose first? Glad you asked. Based on our current assignments you earn equity based on the hardship pay of the post and the danger pay. Both of these are a percentage of your base pay. That total percentage is your equity score. Of the 36 of us, one has a 50% equity and the range goes all the way down to 0%. We are at a 15% post so we're not first and not last, somewhere in the middle. No the first person doesn't automagically get their first choice. There are a few wild cards in there. If one of the bidders is married to another Foreign Service Officer then that can foul things up as assignment officers attempt to keep the couple near each other (note I didn't say at the same post...) But ultimately the assignment officer has to take into consideration the needs of the government, that pretty much trumps everything. Now we have a daughter needing a high school, so odds are we'll get a post with a high school, but not guaranteed. The State Department will pay tuition to send your child to a boarding school. They even pay to have them come home once or twice a year. But, it's been our limited experience that the assignment officers will work with you, they are not out to screw anyone over but try to match people to posts based on a flurry of variables.

So, when?!? Well I have to have my list submitted no later than July 2. But since we'll be on R&R during that time we'll have to submit our rankings before then. Final assignments should be given around the middle of July.

Wish Us Luck :)

Spring Is Here

2012-05-14T12:25:00.000-05:00

Okay it's official Spring is here and we are really enjoying it. Jolene and I took a walk down through Gorky Park and here are some pics from there...

This is one of the entrances to Gorky Park

Fountains

There were several places with hammocks or swings that people just kicked back and relaxed.

The Russian Shuttle that never went to space

Okay this is one of my favorites. To the left is the a bridge, and the blue sign on the side of the building is the street sign.... Lot of good it does there. This is how most of the street names are posted in Moscow. You have to look very closely at the buildings.

So after Gorky park, we walked across the street to the left, actually we walked under the street in one of the переход, pronounced "perihoot" (literal translation is "transition"). These are crosswalks, tunnels or bridges over roads. They are also the transfer points at train and metro stations. Anyway, this particular переход, was lined with art for sale. Some good some bad, and some really good, guess there was some really bad stuff to, but hey it's art so it's probably good to someone right?

So on the other side of the street we wound up in a sculpture garden/area. Lots of cool art here too...

There are many more pictures out on our online photo gallery click on the St Basil's Cathedral Picture on the top right of the blog.

So continuing on our walk around the city, we came on this big ship like statue thing... best way to describe it is to post the pic...

And finally after that we made our way to Christ the Savior Cathedral. Unfortunately we are not allowed to take pictures in churches here. I think I need to order a little spy cam pen or something so we can show everyone the beautiful art and architecture. But here's the outside.

and the side garden.

Well that concludes our little tour this time around. Good Night.

I know I know... Long time no write...

2012-04-24T11:44:00.000-05:00

Okay so yeah it's been about six weeks since my last posting. Work is picking up, days are getting longer, and all the snow is gone now! Wooo Hooo!

The neighborhood seems to have kids appear out of no where. They are EVERYWHERE!!! So I'm watching TV this weekend and the doorbell rings. I'm pretty engrossed in my show, but okay I'll go see who it is. We're not expecting any company but you never know. So I open the door and this little girl (8ish) is climbing the rock face by my front door and her foot accidentally rang the doorbell. You should have seen the shocked and scared look on her face when I opened the door. So priceless I didn't even have the heart to run her off... She left of her own accord apologizing profusely.

Lets see work is busy, lots of unexpected overtime. That's good and bad but hey someone has to do the work right? Crystal is trucking along in school, and Jolene is still love'n her job. Let's see back to my job, in about a month I will get my bid list for my next post. There should be about 35 postings on the list that I will have to rank and then justify my rankings. Believe it or not, we're hoping for Cairo. The school there is awesome and Crystal would have a chance to graduate on the Giza Plateau in front of the Pyramids and the Sphinx. I've spoken to individuals currently posted there and things are not bad on the ground, for the most part. Stay away from Tahrir Square on the weekends and apply some common sense when you are out and about and you'll be fine. But that still a ways off and we are excited to see what possibilities are on the list.

We have a French exchange student coming to stay with us next month. The same kid Crystal stayed with when she went to France. Should be an experience for all of us.

Well I'll leave you with this picture. Lots of cars have stickers for one reason or another, such as Student Driver, New Driver, Baby on Board, Studded Tires.... Well there is one for Women Drivers as well. This was on a car at the mall.