RT Steve

Houston - July 2007

RT Steve — Mon, 12 May 2008 02:52:00 -0700

Marie and I returned to Houston for the second time in so many months late last week. Houston is the home of Aramco Services Company. This is a subsidiery of Saudi Aramco. They handle all of the hiring in the states. The first time we went was for the interview. This time they literally flew the two of down for a 25 minute meeting to take blood and a chest x-ray for our Visa clearances. That ended up giving us two days of R & R in Houston. We stayed in an area called the Galleria district - named for the massive mall and shopping area that reside there. It is a really upitty and clean part of town. We stayed at a Doubletree Suites and basically ate, drank, shopped and slept for two full days. The shopping was great and the food was better. I found this awesome Indian restaurant online before we went and we ate dinner there. The name of the place was Kiran's . Not that anyone gets to Houston but if you ever do and you like Indian food give it a try. Of course the chance of finding someone from the Philly area that is: a.) going to Houston and b.) likes indian food is the equivalent of finding a needle in hay stack.

In the end the big news out of Houston is we are not leaving on August 5th as we had orignially thought. There is a hold up in Anna's medical clearance and we are now looking at mid August. This is a have your cake and eat it too situation. Months ago we had rented a house in the Outerbanks with our closest friends Matt and Paula R. for the first week in August. Once we found out we were going to Saudi we had to cancel. Well now we can go again. Yes! We have been going to the Outer Banks of North Carolina since way back when we got married. We love it down there.

The other upside is we had purchased tickets to see Micheal Buble' at the Mann Music Center. As many of you know I am a huge Frank Sinatra fan and Buble' is the closest thing you can get in this day and age. We are going with our good friends Joe and Sandra M. in a limo and it should be a blast. So there you have it. Mid to late August (In šaʾ Allāh) and a lot of fun between now and then.

Badges? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges.

RT Steve — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 01:50:00 -0700

Well things are becoming much more official. We have been assigned a "relocation advisor" to help us along from this point. More importantly, I have been given a badge number. This doesn't sound like much but in the world of Aramco it is a big deal. This means I am officially a somebody in the company. WE ARE GOING! Sort of. There are still two more hurdles to jump but basically this is looking like a done deal. This number came in a FedEx package that arrrived today with all sorts of boring stuff - W4, Do you understand Saudi Arab Laws, Payroll deduction/Direct Deposit, etc. The last item in this packet is something that refers back to an earlier blog entry. We have been given an inch thick packet of sheets we must use to inventory the entire house. I don't know about you but that sounds like women's work to me!

We put the house up for sale on Sunday and have had a walk through everyday this week - with one scheduled tomorrow. Today is an off day thank God. I am so sick of cleaning this house for showings it is not even funny. Anyone out there with little ones that have sold a house can feel my pain. No sooner do you think you have the house ready to go then Anna holds down the water dispenser on the refrigerator for 5 MINUTES. That is a lot of water on the floor. Then Jack comes back into the house tracking mud all over the place or Sarah decides to do a craft that involves glitter. Ugh. I love this house but I can't wait until it sells.

Sand Days - June 2007

RT Steve — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 02:52:00 -0700

This process has been all talk from the beginning. Now things are becoming much more real. For example - I pulled up in front of my house yesterday to see a "ForSale" sign on the lawn. It's easy to talk about selling your house but when that sign acutally goes up it kind of punches you in the gut. I can defintely say that I am really going to miss this house. Of course talk to me in December when I am still wearing shorts. I thought about it the other day - it will be awhile until I have to shovel snow again. The winter lows at Ras Tanura are about 60 on a cold day. Nope. No snow there. I guess there are no snow days for the school either. Hmmm. They do have sand storms. Sand days??

I hate venison!! - June 2007

RT Steve — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 21:02:00 -0700

This time last night I was sitting at The Tavern On the Green in Central Park NYC enjoying a great glass of red wine among hundreds of hanging lanterns while at a beautiful wedding. I thought I was hot stuff. 24 hours later and I feel like I am in a twisted episode of CSI. On the ride home from the wedding today Marie and I discussed the idea of putting the house on the market this week. This is a big deal. When we walked in the door to the house I commented to Marie that it smelled like someone had hidden one of Anna's dirty diapers somewhere in the house. I noticed it last week. I looked but found nothing. I looked again today and found nothing either. But the smell was definitely there. Now that I think about it I have killed a few flies in the house over the past couple of weeks. So we are home about two or three hours when I go to the garage to see if there is something in our chest freezer that we could have for dinner. Can anyone see where this is headed yet? Good God! The freezer has been turned off for at least 2 weeks and I just walked into the worst smelling scene you can imagine. There is chicken curry from Marie's mom. Some funky Vietnamese dish from Marie's mom. And about 20 to 30 pounds of deer meat we have been watching for Marie's dad. All of it is thawed and very ripe. To make matters worse it is floating in about 8 inches of bloody water. Yes it was about here I walked out front and let my lunch fly! I DON'T EVEN LIKE DEER!! I panicked and started to fill trash bags with the bad meat. Bad idea. I should have just plugged it back in and waited for everything to freeze again. Now I've got dead deer juice all over the floor of the gargage and the smell is now making its way into the house. Yes the house we are putting up for sale this week. Nice!! Did I mention that I hate venison?

Posted by The Ras Tanura 5 at 21:06 | Permanent Link | Comments (3) |

Get busy living or get busy dying...June 2007

RT Steve — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 03:52:00 -0700

Today was the end of the year party for my work in HH School District. I don't think it has sunk in yet that teaching here in the states is coming to an end. Very strange. My students have not taken this as well as I thought they would. They have been signing my board all week and a lot of them have been leaving messages like, "It's ok you are leaving us. We will miss you. It's ok if you want to leave us." Very sad.

Today I received my official paperwork from Aramco. As I sat here signing the contracts, I was thinking how long will it be until they hand these back to me - Five years? Ten Years? Twenty years? I realize that many of you think we are out of our minds for giving up all we have to do this. Understandable. But please realize that we have a much broader perspective than most when it comes to this and we can't wait to go. People are concerned for our safety. That is great. And we totally appreciate your concern. I can guarantee you that this is totally safe and that when they hand us back that contract in five, ten or twenty years we will be there to actually take it back. I promise.

One of my favorite movies is The Shawshank Redemption. There are so many good quotes that have come out of that movie. I love the end when Red is finally out of jail and is going to the tropical beach to see Andy Dufresne and says "I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope." Yeah that about sums it up. "Get busy living or get busy dying." Red was always one of my favorite movie charaters. This is going to be so cool.

1 fork, 2 fork, 3 fork... June 2007

RT Steve — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:30:00 -0700

While we are still here in Collegeville I suppose the posts will be fairly frequent. To start off with we will be moving to a town called Ras Tanura in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. This is a beach community with blue water, palm trees and sand beaches. It's not the caribbean but it will do for now. We are at the point now where we need to take a trip to Houston for a medical exam and then start inventorying the house for when they come to pack us up for the move. When we get to Saudi we will be a month or two without our stuff as it tries to catch up with us coming accross the ocean. Quite a task. Imagine having to make a list of EVERYTHING in your house......

A New Direction - June 2007

RT Steve — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:23:00 -0700

For the past month we have been awaiting word on a decsion that would change the life of this family completely. Would we or would we not be picking up our entire exisitence and moving half way around the planet to Saudi Arabia? We quickly found out that quickly is not a common word used in the Middle East. A decision we thought would take a week - two weeks max - ended up not coming for almost four long, nerve racking weeks. But this past Sunday it became vebally official. The gang from Collegeville Pa. would soon become the gang from Ras Tanura Saudi Arabia. I have accepted a teaching position with Saudi Aramco. This is the oil company that Marie's father worked for for 26 years and where Marie spent a large chunk of her childhood.

So, I will start our adventure here in good old Collegeville. Right now life is quiet and simple. As I look around the house nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. This promises to change in the next few weeks as we prepare to sell the house, cars, loads of stuff we have kept but have no need for, and maybe one or two of the kids. So keep checking back. I expect that from late June until mid-September our lives will be turned completely upside down. Our tentative move date is August 5th. The count down begins. The butterflies flutter. And in the end Jack keeps asking why we are moving to Vietnam!? This - is going to be interesting.

Hello from RT!!

RT Steve — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 02:58:00 -0700

My name is Steve and I am a new employee to Aramco. I live in RT with my wife and three children ages 2 through 9. We have been in Saudi for just over 4 and a half months and it has been quite an adventure. I have been blogging on our major life change since about 6 weeks before we left Philadelphia to start our new life here in Saudi. I have been asked to share our story with you and I am going to do that by going back to the beginning and posting a blog entry each week starting with my very first. Enjoy the ride. I have so far!!