ACID Braden

So, for those of you that are unaware of how things work here, or perhaps are even headed here this is an example of how a simple trip to the doctor, dinner and a quick stop at the jewelry store can take over six hours. Now, I know that sounds like a lot to do, but the hospital (all hospitals have clinics so that is where you most commonly visit your doctor), dinner at the Steak House and the jeweler are all within about two miles of each other.  So here is how the evening goes: You leave the compound an hour before the appointment because traffic on the highway will be bad, and it was. After arrival at the hospital, where you run into at least three people you know, so you stop to say hello, you check in and find out that because your appointment is the first one of the day…at 5:30pm(!)…the doctor will be late.  When you get in to see the doctor it is around six pm. The appointment goes well, he is a bit chatty and want to describe how all the problems  in Saudi are due to African immigrants, though this makes you uncomfortable, he is Saudi himself so you politely listen and assure him that things are not that bad.  Privately you are thinking that perhaps the root of the problem is the government not taking care of many problems that you run into every day…see the up coming post on finger printing, for example. So, after a half and hour consultation you head out to pay. We are now done and can go to dinner, but wait, it is now 6:30pm and time for prayer. This means that everything is closed for half an hour. Now it isn’t too bad because we used the time to drive to the restaurant, but we were still forced to wait until the end of prayer.

Dinner was good, we were joined by some friends from school, and were having a lovely dinner when the waiter came over to tell us that the next prayer was in fifteen minutes and if we wanted to be able to pay and leave we would have to do so before prayer. Now sometimes restaurants will let you leave during prayer but this one has had problems lately with the religious police (Mutawa) and so we had to rush the end of dinner and leave.

From there we drove down to the jewelry store. Of course because they are removing all the traffic lights from the main roads and replacing them intersections that force you to drive past the street you want, do a u-turn and come back it took us twenty minutes to get a mile, as the crow flies. Once we finally made it to the jeweler we had to wait ten more minutes as the jeweler decided to take an extra long prayer…or so we thought.  As it turned out when he finally opened up he had been helping an Indian couple inside the whole time. After Charmagne looks over her new rings and decides they are okay (this was the fourth trip as one ring in particular was not being done well) we try to pay using our debit card. Of course, this being Saudi, the card reader will not connect to the bank so I have to get in the car, drive down the street a ways to find an ATM and get cash. It was actually pretty close, but on the other side of the very busy street (no cross walks) and it was still over 100F, though by now it is 9pm. Finally we head for home, but between the aforementioned construction zones and terrible traffic we do not make it home until 10pm.

What a day!

Well, it has been a while so I thought I would just put in a few random photos and thoughts.  We have about a month left to go before we fly out for the summer. We are taking a new BA flight that leaves at 7:40am, which is way better than the old departure time of 1am! BA has only been operating for a couple of weeks out of Riyadh, so hopefully by June they will have the kinks worked out.

School has been pretty tense this year, I suppose that is what happens when there is high turnover. In the five years we have been here this year ties for the most number of teachers leaving the high school. The students weather it pretty well, and are a delight as always. It is funny, but every time we start to get a little peevish about other things we just remember what neat students we have and get on with our day in a much improved mood.

Our kids are doing really well. Isabel has been having a few growing pains at school. While she can do the work, recently she has been refusing to do all of it, or do it as well as she can. When pushed at home, usually with the threat of no friends until you are finished, than she does nice work. We are unsure if she is bored at school (she has mentioned this, but who knows if she heard it somewhere), feeling inadequate as she is the smallest and youngest, or if she is just testing the waters. However, there is one thing we have noticed, she is easily distracted and it seems to take her quite a while to finish things. We’ll just have to see if this continues, is a side effect of her medication or just a five year old thing.  Dante is doing quite well, is the delight of his class and the darling of almost anyone who encounters him. He is outgoing and friendly (almost to a fault) and has a ready smile for everyone. Okay, that is in public, now at home…actually it is pretty close. Though he does have an annoying tendency to switch from happy to instant temper tantrum when told “no”. This too shall pass. And there is the crux of the matter; with Dante is is charted territory, with Isabel it is all new…we have never had a five year old before.

Our summer looks plum full of visits, trips and working in a little home improvements here and there. We are really looking forward to the summer, and are very jealous of our fried Bryan and Jen whom are alos teachers, but their district in Denver finishes this week. They’ll get to enjoy those wonderful Colorado spring days and cool nights. Ah well, we’ll be there pretty soon.

So, with out further ado, here are some random photos of the kids:

The other day Isabel’s class had a presentations about future careers. Actually it was just an excuse to get the kids up on stage and sing a few songs. The impressive part was that it lasted for half an hour and they were all focused and right with the program. Isabel, by the way, was a Scientist (it is on her shirt).

Enjoy the photos.

Today, being the fourth day of Spring Break, seemed to merit a trip into the desert. After searching our guide book for an interesting trip we chose to visit lake Karrarah which is roughly an hour away, with good traffic, but alas it was two hours away today.
And yes, Saudi does have lakes, small, dry most of the time, but lakes none the less.
We drove out with our neighbors Crystal, Jaison and Aidan. When we first got there we saw the lake bed, then further on there was a dry waterfall area. It took some driving to find the waterfall, but we managed.  And let me tell you, it is a really good thing that our facilities manager pushed to get 4×4’s a few years ago. In a couple places the sand got pretty deep, and though the rpm’s were at 4000 or more we were just barely getting through the deep sand.  We had a really nice picnic lunch at the dry waterfall while Jaison, an avid fossil hunter, uncovered some neat samples and a few scorpions. There were some small waterholes at the dry waterfall and the kids had a great time throwing rocks into them, not to mention exploring, checking out bright orange spiders and then relaxing in the shade.  Since we have had so much water over the past few weeks the flowers in the desert were beautiful and we saw varieties that we had never seen before. By 11:00am, we were beat, especially as it was HOT in the desert.  Over the last two days it has been 80F in the shade, so imagine what the temperature was where we were…and it isn’t even mid-April!
So, without further ado here are a few photos. (click to enlarge):

As you might have heard there was quite a sandstorm here today. In fact, in the five years we have been here this one “blows” the other ones away.  Charmagne literally got to watch it roll in, and as some of the pictures we received show, it is literally a wall of sand.We ended up cutting classes a little short and running an evacuation drill just to make sure all the kids went home to the right place, with the right folks at the right time (all after school activities were canceled).  I am sure within a few hours the internet will be as clogged with photos of the storm as our lungs are with the sand, but I hope these give you an idea what it was like.

(Please note, none of these pictures were taken from school, but the color is exactly how it looked)

Clicking the picture once will open it in its own page, clicking it again will enlarge it.

And a video:

So, the other day a friend and colleague at school was walking across campus when he came across Isabel walking along all by herself.  Here is the conversation as he related it.

Jason: Hi Isabel!

Isabel: Hi

Jason: Where are you going?

Isabel: Nurse

Jason: Is everything all right?  Are you okay?

Isabel: Yea

And off she went to the nurse.

Later that evening when we asked her about it I mentioned how proud I was that a five and a half year old could walk herself all the way to the nurses office (it is two buildings away from her classroom). To which she responded, one hand upturned and finger pointing with each word to emphasize her point, “Well Dad, we have lived here for five years you know!”

Well, it is hard to believe, but Dante is already three.  Once again Charmagne made an awesome pinata, based on the theme of the Disney movie “Cars” - Dante’s favorite.   The best part was the big smile on his face when we wheeled out his new bike. He has had to share with either his friend next door or Isabel, but no more!  Free-to-roam Dante is now a regular in our little dead end street.

As you’ll see in the video a good time was had by all and Isabel was especially proud of the fact that she was the one that finally busted the pinata wide open.  Enjoy the show!

ACID

Wow, it has been a long time sense the last update.  I was looking around at some other friends blogs and noticed the same trend.  I am guessing it is a post-holiday let down.  We have all been so busy that the last thing on our minds was updating blogs.  Well, here I am with an update and new photos below.

Our return from holiday was about two weeks of jet-lag hell.  Mostly it was the kids who had a hard time adapting, but as a consequence we did too.  In fact it was bad enough that we have decided to try a new tactic on the way back.  We are going to take about five days in London (our layover point) and get a flat, relax, sight see, get out an walk around, see the sights, eat the food (no choice there, gotta’ eat!) and hopefully all of that will allow us a quicker recovery from the time change.  We have already rented a flat in Pimlico (a neighborhood about 3/4 mile from Parliament, Big Ben, etc.) and we are splitting the cost with some friends from school.  The Lefavere family have two boys (see picture below) that are great friends with Isabel and Dante and their parents are good friends of ours.  It should be a fun time, though I suspect a bit trying as we’ll all be jet lagged, tired and on the come-down from summer.  However, with all the activities planned above it should be a lot of fun and Char and I are really looking forward to the company as well as the sight seeing.

Our summer plans are in a bit of a bind as we booked a new flight route that was supposed to open up this month but has been postponed until May 31.  We are hoping that they will indeed open it up then as our flight is the 18th of June.  The great thing about the flight is that it leaves at 7:45am as opposed to 1am like all the others.  It would be so great to let the kids, and ourselves, get a full nights sleep before leaving.

The kids are doing well, this Tuesday is Disney Day for the KG-1 to First grade classes.  Needles to say Isabel is excited and though I won’t get to go Char has no class at that time so she will get to test out our new camera in a situation for which it was purchased.  Disney Day is in the big gym so we are hoping that between the big lense and the big flash (am I compensating for something?!?) we’ll get some good pictures.  Dante’s class will not get to go as they are too little for the event.  Personally I think it is a Disney conspiracy because Isabel is now talking about going to Disneyland on a vacation…hmmm.  Marketing at work.

Speaking of work, there is nothing really to report here.  Mostly the school is in a holding pattern waiting for next year to see what the change in leadership will bring.  We are in that same boat.  Once again there are a lot of teachers leaving, and though some people don’t want to see the trends in who is leaving, it is pretty lop-sidded.  Well, that is their choice, and though some of those leaving will be sorely missed we hope they are going on to better positions.

That pretty much brings us up to this point in time.  The only other thing we have been working on is getting a trip together to Mexico City with my folks and Isabel’s godparents.  We think we have found a great little hotel in our old neighborhood which is where we really wanted to be.  The hard part is coordinating three families! We are all excited about the trip and look forward to going.  Hmmm…this may be a busy summer after all!  Oh, one other thing, I am starting an online class, that should I complete the program of six classes, would give me a certificate as a trained online course instructor.  I am not sure what I would do with it, but as more and more universities are going to this model, and it allows you to work from anywhere it could allow us a little more flexability when job hunting.  By way of example, one of the instructors for the course (offered by the University of Wisconsin) lives in Dubai.  The class starts tomorrow.  I am hopefull that this class will be better than the last one.  In theory as it is about online learning the instructors should know what they are doing, unlike the last one which was an education course (always the worst to begin with) taught by a professor who made no distinction between how you learn online and how you learn in a class room.

Okay, enough ranting and time for pictures.  Enjoy and drop us a line or post a response and let us know how you are.  All the best,

ACID

Christmas Photo

Whew, what a deal!  For the first time, in a long time, we were able to be home for the holidays.  It was so nice to be home with friends and family, and thanks to the Muslim holiday of Eid al Adha happening right before Christmas, we had enough time off from school to be able to come home.  After all one does not undertake 30 hours of travel time for a weekend getaway.

The view from our front yard

Anyway, we arrived, in Colorado, on the 7th of December, healthy, happy, with all of our luggage and just a bit tired.  Mom and Dad Braden had the house warmed up, primed with basics for dinner and breakfast, and a few house warming gifts (thanks Kershaws!) nicely displayed on our counter top.  After a short hello session, they left us to catch up on some sleep. The house had been just fine for the few months we had been gone and we were very thankful for that, let me tell you.  Leaving our new (to us) house was really hard last summer and coming home to it was such a joy. Over the next few days we set up Christmas decorations - to which Grandma Braden continued to contribute right up to the day we left - enjoyed settling in and had lots of visits with friends and family.

One of the best parts was when, after a few days, it snowed 8″ and then the temp dropped to -16F.  For our kids, who have never seen snow, much less arctic temperatures, it was a whole new world.  Perhaps this slide show will tell the story better than I can: first-snow

After an exciting 30 minutes outside, the kids opted for some warmer temperatures and a snack.  They really did love the snow, despite the fact that playing on the playground is just not as much fun in wet boots - go figure!  Aside from playing in the snow, some of the highlights of our stay in Loveland included: the obligatory visit to Santa, seeing our friend Joel’s youth group perform a nativity play (ala Grinch, that they wrote themselves), Char taking Isabel to see her first ballet (the Nutcracker, of course), a nice open house party for friends and family, and even though we didn’t get to see him, welcoming our new nephew (Ajani) to the world.

Dumas Family

Kershaw Family

So then it was on to the big day, Christmas morning had arrived! However, in our case this meant opening presents, packing them up, closing the house and getting on an airplane bound for Chicago to see the Baier family.  What is this fascination we have with planes, anyway?!?!

Opening Extravaganza

Once we got our luggage (it came on the next flight and only required a two hour wait) we arrived in Crystal Lake and had, yep you guessed it, another Christmas!

Extravaganza, Part Two

This was fine for the kids, but boy were we exhausted! Our stay there would not slow down any from there either.  The next day Charmagne was off to 1776 (a restaurant in Crystal Lake) for a bridal shower (that she and the other bridesmaids hosted) while the rest of us attended a Christmas dinner at some friend’s house (who happen to be the owners of 1776 - small world).  The day after that Charmagne’s cousin got married and while we could not attend, we babysat the kids, along with our niece, Julia.  Then the next day, Charmagne’s friend Vicki married a really nice guy named Jeff, and this wedding we were all able to attend.  The next day was one of rest - i.e. shopping and packing for our return to Saudi which happened two days later.

So, that is our Christmas in a very small nutshell.  There was so much more that we did, people we saw and fun times by all that there is no way to fit it all in to one post that anyone in their right mind would read.  So, if we have forgotten anything, or anyone, please forgive, no offence was intended…but we did have a great time! 

Yesterday a few of the families that have not already left for the holidays had a little gift exchange and brunch. It was a lot of fun and the kids had a great time.

Enjoy the photos.

ACID