Happy Thancsgiving!

Happy Thancsgiving to all you Canadians out there!  Go light on the traditional Thanksgiving back bacon, maple syrup, and Nanaimo bars, eh?

Hey!  What’s up in our neck of the woods?  Well, you can blame the stock market meltdown on us.  Pretty much anytime I’ve invested in stocks, they go nowhere, so I figure someone somewhere heard that I had bought a few in the last year…  Actually, it’s probably not something to joke about, is it?  But, if you can’t laugh at your own misfortune, whatya gonna do?

On the bright side, the price of gas is going down…wait a minute, our gas prices haven’t budged from 12cents a litre for the whole time I’ve been here!  Shoots down that ray of sunshine.

In other news…

I have been breathlessly keeping abreast of the contest to replace (sacrelige!) the old, irreplaceable Hockey Night in Canada theme song.  My online vote ended up supporting the winner. LISTEN I think it’s a decent theme song, but it’s never going to replace the old version.

In other Canadian news, I am somewhat interested to see how Tuesday’s election turns out.  Although when it comes right down to which election is going to affect my life living in the Middle East, the American vote wins hands down.  Unless, of course, you consider that an NDP win would probably usher in new tax laws that would eliminate non-resident status in order to sock it to those doggone educated, risk taking Canadian expatriate workers raking in the tax free dough overseas!!!

We did manage to go on a desert excursion this past Friday (our Sunday).  It was a good time of 4X4ing on some pretty rugged roads. I didn’t drive this time and instead, we tagged along with our Peter Reimann and the rest of the German gang.

The Toyota Prado (it sells as a Lexus in North America) is one of the top desert 4X4’s and really proved to be the best vehicle out there on Friday compared to a Chevy Trail Blazer and a Mercedes Benz.

The white truck in this picture is really an iconic image of Saudi Arabia. They were given to the Bedouin for free during the oil boom of the late seventies, early eighties and the Bedouin manage to keep them running forever. These trucks are symbolic of the shift into modernity that Saudi Arabia has experienced over the last 25 years.

Another iconic figure?

The Middle East’s version of the Matterhorn?

A Day in the Life

What’s new in our little slice of paradise?  Well, Jakob has finally said “dada”.  I’m so honoured.  I’m only superceded in importance by ball, bird, mama, brrrmm brrmmm, book, and cheese…  Yesterday evening Elisha made wet burritos (thank you forever Laura Jo!) and invited our new German friends and their 2 boys, as well as Peter, our Jakob’s German “onkel” that we spent time with on treks last year.  It was a great evening of eating great food, and good company.  At one point, with all the noise of the boys playing it almost felt like a family gathering!  I guess when you’re far from family, you learn to enjoy good moments when they come.

Here’s another video that I put together that shows what life is like for Jakob at school.  It’s about 2 minutes long, and I hope you enjoy it.

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Our visit to the Munsons was a nice time to visit, relax and see the traditional souq (market) in old Riyadh.

The Market Stall at the Souq.  It only opened at 8:30pm and we stayed there till close to 12 midnight, after which a quick run to McDonald’s sure hit the spot!

We spent a lot of time on our holidays at the pool and it was soooo nice to have kids for Jakob to romp around with.

Trip to Riyadh…Take Two!

So, we were all set to fly to visit the Munson’s in Riyadh yesterday and got to the airport with time to spare.  At 10pm, we noticed that people were starting to file onto the airplane we could see from our waiting area.  The only problem was that this flight was headed to Jeddah, and, we found out our flight to Riyadh was delayed till 12 midnight.  Great.  What to do?  We decided to just cancel our flight, get the refund and go home for a good sleep.  Needless to say, we were pretty disappointed.  So, we decided to get tickets for today’s flight and hope that everything goes smoothly and we can enjoy our time in the company of our friends from Korea.  Elisha and I are both feeling the need to get off the compound and visit with people that aren’t connected to our rather limited lives here in Yanbu!

We feel pretty blessed to have a new family on the compound that have 2 active boys, aged 5 and 7.  They are German and are very nice to Jakob when we play in the pool together. Despite the big age gap, we really appreciate them because Jakob totally comes alive while watching them jump, splash, race around and be goofy.  And the other bonus is that he may pick up some words from the mother tongue!

Davide, Oscar and Jakob playing in Jakob’s brand new sandbox.  It’s pretty sweet.  I got it built and it gives Jakob just one more thing he can do out of the house!  Having holidays has certainly revealed to both me and Elisha how much effort it takes to fill a toddler’s day!  It’s exhausting and sometimes frustrating when his big ol’ molars are pushing out and causing pain and nothing satisfies him.

Well, that’s about all.

Go Blue!

I’m back on the bandwagon again!  Hey.  Admit it, you had given up hope too after that Banjo Bowl debacle…unless you’re not from Winnipeg…or could care less about some two-bit football league in Canada…

Whew! Finally a Holiday…

Well, tomorrow’s the last day of school before we take a 10 day break for Eid, which is the end of Ramadan.  It’s kind of nice to get a break from work, even though summer vacation only ended just under 2 months ago!  I really can’t complain about my life, can I?  Well, since it’s been so long since summer ended, even though the perfect 35C temps these days hardly makes it feel like summer went anywhere, I thought I’d share a video that I created with footage from our time in Canada this past August.   Enjoy!

**Is anyone having trouble opening this video???  It seems that there’s a new version of the Flash player required to play this video.  If you don’t have it, you’ll have to get it and download it from  HERE.

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