Snorkeling

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

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

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

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.