Saudi Summary

If you'd like to find all the posts about our Saudi trip without reading backwards (or out of order!) start here.

The reason we went - Epic Adventure
Getting there - We Survived
Jet lag and the Welcome Dinner - What Time Is It?
First day of touring (with camels!) - Desert Tour
More sightseeing - Busy Arabia
Visiting an orphanage - Girl's Day
A day at the beach - Arabian Gulf
The real desert and an oil facility - Shaybah
The Farewell Dinner - Saudi Style
An Evening of Style - Saudi Fashion Show
Lunch with old friends - Saudi Colleagues

One last excitement - Overseas Medical Adventures
Church on Friday? - The Final Day
The trip home - And...

And here are some of the other things that I noticed while we were there...

Driving: Only men may drive there and they drive like crazy! On the highway if you are in their way they will pass you on the shoulder, either side! They don't really use their signals and the stop lights in town are right above the first driver so when it turns green he can't see it and the guys behind him must honk to let him know it's green. Makes for a lot of honking and I just thought they were all impatient until Paul showed me where the lights were.

All public buses are like tour buses. They are nice and some even have toilets in them. The school buses there are for worker transport only.

People: The people are called Saudis there and the language is Arabic. They are extremely hospitable. For example, the welcome dinner was put on by the reunion committee and the chairman is Saudi. There was more food there than 3 times the people would eat.

Everywhere we go there are always snacks and they are trying to feed you. I gained 5 pounds in 2 weeks, but at least Brian gained more!

They especially love children so Cory was our pass for a lot of things! He was especially helpful to me if I was carrying him everyone finds a chair for me or lets me go to the front of the line.

Money: They use the Riyal, abbreviated SR (for Saudi Riyal) and it is tied to the dollar so there really is no inflation. It also means that stuff isn't that much cheaper there than here. Some things are, but not generally. The exchange rate is 3.75 riyals for one dollar and for some reason that was really hard for me to get used to. I kept wanting to multiply the wrong way and was thinking things were way cheaper than they were.

There are many other small custom notes in amongst my picture posts!

Leaving... on a jet plane

Well, we are down to our last day in Saudi. It's a Friday, but their weekend is Thursday/Friday so we went to church in the morning. I went out early in the morning before church to try and get some pictures in good light...

Here's one of the palm trees in front of Paul and Jackie's house. I seriously love palm trees!

Our lovely hosts, Paul and Jackie Carr.

This is their awesome house! Notice there are very few windows... that would be to help keep the inside of the house cool during the day.


The lovely Jackie in her fabulous kitchen. I can only dream of having a kitchen this big... I think you could fit half our apartment in it! Oh, and Cory thought the doors up in the ceiling were where the cat lived!



Off we went to church. This was all the people staying in their house for 2 weeks... plus one other guy. Good thing it's a big house!


They call their church "fellowship" since technically you're not really supposed to do any Christian activities in Saudi. But I guess as long as they keep it low key and inside the camp they are okay! They meet in the school gym.

After church, Brian, Cory, and I were invited to a family's house for lunch who had some small children. (We'd actually been borrowing a car seat from them for Cory). We only wish we could have gotten together with them sooner so Cory could have had some playmates! They were very fun to talk to as well!


This is the front of their house. You can see, most of the houses look the same... and they are all the same color. Boring!

Our plane left at 1am Saturday morning so we didn't go to bed at all... Cory got a short nap, but he was wide awake at the airport. He was so tired though that he was running circles around this huge marble pillar.

I already wrote about our insane trip home so I won't bore you with that again. But now I have a couple pictures to share. This is the French countryside heading into Paris. I loved the way none of the fields were square, but followed the contours of the hills and all the little hamlets had roads fanning out from them like spokes on a wagon wheel.




As we flew in to Paris I was hoping to see the Eiffel Tower. I mean it's pretty tall, right? Well, it was early in the morning and quite hazy... and we didn't fly very close to it. So you'll have to try and pick it out in this picture. I tried to help you out with the arrow. This is my one and only glimpse of the Eiffel Tower!

When we made it home Saturday evening Cory had been sleeping in the car for about 3 hours. I brought him in and set him on the couch thinking he would wake up and want to run around a bit... when I came back in with more stuff from the car this is what I found!

Poor child had just rolled over and gone back to sleep!

Oh the memories we have!

Saudi Colleagues

Thursday before we're leaving...

Brian's dad was finally able to connect with some of the colleagues he had worked with in the 90's. They wanted to take us out for "lunch". Keep that in mind!

They arrived at 1pm - ish to get us. First we went to Hussein's house to get him and his wife and son. We re-arranged cars because the one that Cory and I were in had no air conditioning. And it happened to be the hottest day we were there. Still not hot compared to summer, but when we came from snow, 85 degrees is hot!

We went to a restaurant called Chinese Tandoori. This is what we saw along the way...

Burger King

McDonald's

And this is the typical bus there. School buses to us are worker transport buses only there.

Lunch was quite the affair, but very good. There were 10 of us I believe and the food was very good. We shared our main dishes on a lazy susan in the middle of the table and there was plenty to go around!

Of course Cory had a poopy diaper while there and they had no baby changing area. When we told the waiter what we needed they just offered us another table and put up screens so no one could see! WEIRD!
When he had a second poopy diaper we went in the bathroom and just changed him on the counter. I wonder if the native people just don't take their children out in public until they're toilet trained?

Lath, Hussein, Derald, Brian, Cory, and Ali
(Lath is Hussein's son and trying to get to the US for college, his sister is already here)
Hussein and Ali's wives were there for lunch as well, but taking pictures of women is not okay in their culture.

After lunch we went back to Ali's house for dessert. Along the way we drove through one of the ritziest districts of Khobar. (yes, this is the town where the Khobar Towers bombings took place)

Look carefully at this house... then notice the size compared to the car driving by in front!
also compare below

Once we got to Ali's house the women had dessert for us and then Cory had another poopy diaper (can we say traveling finally had caught up with him?). I was out of diapers so we needed to go. They were very nice and offered to go to the corner market and buy us some diapers, but it was also about 4:30 in the afternoon and the little guy just needed a nap. Not to mention that I had a splitting headache since I had a sinus infection (which I already wrote about before we left as my Overseas Medical Adventure).

Hussein said he would take us home and Cory really wanted to ride in the "yellow car" which belonged to Lath. We tried to put his car seat in the back, but as you can imagine it didn't fit. So I just sat in the front seat and held him on my lap. At first I was like, wait, this isn't legal. Then I remembered, oh, yeah, it actually is! We were only going a short distance at low speeds so it wasn't too bad.


Cory went right to sleep and I proceeded to take care of my nose with the neti pot... Paul came home (with antibiotics for me) and went to have a bowl of cereal and when he poured milk in it little bugs came floating to the surface! So we then had a cereal dumping party since every box in the cupboard that was open had bugs in it! Jackie and I had been finding them randomly all week, but couldn't figure out where they were coming from! Now we knew and we got them all!

Oh, and remember how I said this was a "lunch" invitation? The rest of the crew didn't get home until 10:30! I was really glad Cory and I had gone home earlier because, although they had some fascinating conversations with other people who came, we would have been miserable!


Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

Saudi Fashion Show

We're up to Wednesday now of our 2nd week in Saudi.

Brian and I went on the "Local Exhibits Tour" which meant we took a tour of the Saudi Aramco Oil Exhibit - basically their science museum about oil. It was fairly interesting, but I couldn't hear/understand the guide very well so just took off on my own and read the descriptions of things. It's a very educational exhibit with a lot of hand's on items. I was impressed!


They also had this really cool looking wall that was made out of tile. With their perspective on the globe!


After visiting the museum we quickly stopped by Well #7, which is now known as Prosperity Well since it's the first well that they hit oil in back in the late 40's I believe. It's no longer in use.

There was a nice park, but for some reason, even though we were on a tour, it was locked up that day. Oh well! You can also see some modern oil storage facilities in the background.

That evening we went to the Fashion Show...
Originally this was just supposed to be for women and when it was opened to men as well I assumed that meant the women would be totally covered and it wouldn't be as interesting. Wrong!


My mother-in-law and I went and didn't get great seats, but the room wasn't that big so we could see much better than these photos show.

I did learn some interesting facts along the way...

There were 5 regions, each represented with a traditional dance, then women showing the traditional costumes of the area, then a wedding dress/ceremony at the end.

This girl was walking very slowly on a pair of wooden stools that her attendants were placing in front of her one at a time.

The dress that you see from pictures of Saudi with the men in long white robes and the red and white checked head covering is actually the traditional dress only of the central area of the country, where the capital, Riyadh, is.

But this is actually the traditional dress for the Eastern Province, where we were. It's kind of a white t-shirt and then a long "kilt" for lack of a better word. But it's more like of a piece of plaid flannel wrapped around like a skirt.

These boys were hilarious, by the way. They totally stole the show with their exuberance!

This is the women's dress from the Eastern Province. The abayas are brightly colored (many others were black with beading) and the design is down the front center only.


I believe these were fancier dresses from the Eastern Province.


This was the wedding dress from the Eastern Province and they then did a pre-wedding ceremony where the bride sat on the ground and was painted with henna (they didn't actually do this part) while the attendants waved a cloth over her head and pronounced blessings.


The lady in the center of this picture is Munira Al Ashgar. All the costumes for the fashion show (which lasted 2 hours!) were from her private collection. The fashion show was a fundraiser for a school for handicapped children. This lady is a serious philanthropist and quite a fun person to be around as well! (she was the tour guide for our orphanage visit)


At the end all the models got up on stage, here are just the guys, but I think there were close to a hundred. The models were all students from a local high school or women from the community women's group (inside the camp) who helped put the show on as a fundraiser.

And... This is one of my favorite things that I saw there, Coke in Arabic!

Two days left in our trip!

Farewell Saudi Style

After our long day trip to Shaybah we then went out for the Farewell Dinner. This was not the end of our trip, but more like the end of the reunion activities for the most part.

I thought it most ironic that they had Krispy Kreme doughnuts there...


as well as banners on all the streetlight posts advertising TRESemme shampoo. The kind that I happen to be using at the moment! And this wasn't just in Khobar, but also in Hofuf where we had been on the day we saw the camels.


The dinner was put on by 10 businessmen who wanted the publicity. Their names were at the entrance to the hall where the dinner was held. The place was called SEEF and it's not like anything we have here. Imagine the reception portion of a hotel. Large open ballrooms with high ceilinged lobbies in between them. That was the whole building.

We went into one large ballroom for the reception portion of the evening. There were white couches around the walls and nothing in the center. The room was maybe half full and I would say most of the 500+ reunion attendees were there! Imagine the size of that room!

There were waiters walking around with more dates and Arab coffee. I ate plenty of dates and sat on one of the couches with our friend Molly just people watching. It was quite interesting for sure and I was too tired to do anything else!

Finally after we'd been there over an hour we were motioned to dinner.

Across the lobby... into a room at least twice as large as the one we'd just been in!


I'm not sure these pictures really even do it justice. Beyond the stage, which you see just beyond the long white table and along the left wall is another half of the room.

Just like at the Welcome Dinner there were multiple food tables set up with at least 10 main dishes as well as salads and appetizers.

This is kabsa. It's a whole lamb. It's really really good!


After eating way more than necessary (are you seeing a trend in their hospitality yet?) I found the fruit "mountain" and dessert table.

This is a watermelon.

Seriously crazy works of art on the fruit!

Besides this they also had delicious fruit tarts and various cheesecakes (those are Brian's favorites)
We finally made it home about 10:30 and just crashed.

And in case you're wondering... yes, I gained about 5 pounds on this trip and Brian gained 12!

Shaybah - The Empty Quarter

Tuesday morning we got up at 5am-ish to meet the bus at 6. We ate breakfast (first mistake) and headed up to the Reunion House to meet the bus to take us to our plane.

Arabian Sunrise

The sky was actually much prettier than this, but this is what my camera sees...

There is a "Royal Terminal" at the airport. This is the view of it from the plane while we were taxiing from the Aramco Company terminal. This pictures looks straight out of the 70's to me!

The reason eating breakfast was a mistake is because we then were served doughnuts in the airport (but not until all the women had to go through a special screening). Then we got breakfast on the plane - a 1 and a half hour plane ride!

Moon over the horizon

It was really interesting to see the landscape become the desert I had expected all along.

If you click on this picture you can see the road running from the bottom right up through the middle of the picture (south). This road is something like 1200 kilometers long all through sand dunes. There is nothing else out here. This is why it's called the "Empty Quarter" or Rub Al Khali.

The "dents" between the dunes are called Subhas. They are flat spaces where the sand doesn't collect. Amazingly enough they don't change their locations so all of the facilities that were built in this area are built in the Subhas. Apparently the sand blows one direction in one season and then the opposite direction in the off season, leaving a net change of just a few inches a year. They studied this before building anything by comparing satellite images from the early 70's to ones from 2000.

The black lines in the sand are the oil pipelines (underground) with oil poured on the surface to keep the sand from totally burying them. These lines are running into a GOSP (Gas Oil Separation Plant).

There are 3 of these GOSPs in operation currently and a 4th one under construction - hopefully to open this summer I think. GOSP-2 is the main operation and the other ones are all controlled from a central control room there. There are a couple of people on-site in case anything goes wrong though since they are separated by about 20 kilometers each.

This is a photo from still in the plane. The building is the airport at Shaybah and behind it is one dune. I think they are about 900 feet tall on average.

We drove up on top of the dune in the previous picture and this is looking back down on the living camp. You can see the (blue) tail of the plane right in the center of the picture to the back of all the buildings. There is space for 1,000 men to live here and the whole thing is self-sustaining. They can be locked in from planes due to sand storms and like I mentioned earlier it is 1200 kilometers (or about 12 hours) driving time through nothing to get here!

At the top of the dune there is a "tent", which is more like a permanent structure to look like a tent, where they served us a "snack" and gave us a short presentation on Shaybah and all the logistics it took to create it.

Shaybah is relatively new, having started construction in the early 2000's and obviously still under contstruction with GOSP-4 opening soon. Here they use horizontal wells, drilling down to the level of the oil reservoir (which is kind of like a spongy rock with oil trapped in it) and then drilling horizontally with branches off the main pipe to make the most of the level where the oil is.

We got to take a guided tour with one of the top engineers/supervisors here and since Brian and I were sitting in the front... we asked a lot of geeky questions! Come to find out later that the people in the back of the bus (thanks father-in-law) could hear us talking as well!

These are the pipes bringing the oil in from all the wells to the separation plant. There are over 200 wells total in the area of Shaybah.

These are the pipes that send the natural gas back down into the reservoir to help keep the pressure up. They will eventually use the natural gas as well, but for now they don't have a plant to process it and it helps the crude oil pump better if the pressure is high. Because really you don't "pump" oil out of the ground. It's kind of like a 2 liter bottle of soda that you have shaken. When you crack the seal the pressure starts to release. Putting a well down into the reservoir is like cracking the seal and the oil wants to come out because it is under so much pressure underground.

This is GOSP-4, the one under construction.

After our tour we went back up to the "tent" on top of the dune where they served us lunch at low tables! Totally fun, but we weren't that hungry due to all the food they had for us all the time!

Then we had a very short amount of time to actually go and climb the bit of dune behind the tent.

Cory riding on Uncle Joel

Due to the fact that we were climbing the dune at noon... the sand was really hot! And unfortunately I was wearing sandals that didn't keep the sand out so it was too hot between the bottom of my feet and the sandals. So I ended up taking them off, sprinting until I couldn't stand it and then burying my feet in the sand to cool them off a bit. I made it to the top and back, but my feet were pretty sore. Thank goodness for the water bottles that they gave us on the way back that I rested my feet on on the plane all the way home!

You can't really tell, but we are actually standing on the top of the dune. It drops off behind us and then rises again to the ridge behind us.

And yes, the sand really is this amazing red color. We collected a bottle of it as well as a bottle from Ras Tanura the day before and this one is red to the other's white (with sea shells!).

On the way back we got... yet another "lunch" on the plane!

This is Cory's favorite game. He's holding his foot up and asking me to "smell-o toes". When I react with the face below and "pe-ew stinky" he thinks it's hilarious. It's an amusing game that keeps him occupied for as long as we're willing to play it!


The other cool part about this trip was that Brian and Allison got to see a guy that they grew up with. His name is Ian (pronounced like yawn) and he's from Goa. Now he lives in New Jersey.


We got back from this day at about 3 in the afternoon... and still had a "Farewell Dinner" to attend that night! But I'll leave that for next time.

Any questions?