Short Trip to Brussels

So I had a bit of training and a little vacation time in Brussels.  Unfortunately the girls couldn't make it along, so I took one for the team and went alone :(

Training went really well, lots of good information and some good networking.  The best part of the trip was a chance to see an old friend and army buddy.  We were stationed at Ft. Bragg, NC, Ft. Polk, LA and did a tour in Bosnia together.  He and his wife are the ones that taught us how to play bridge and it's bee about 12 years since we've last seen each other.  I wish I had more time to catch up with them.  But hopefully they can make it out to Paris when we go on R&R.

So of course this usually tends to be a photo blog so here are some of the pictures. The full set can be found HERE.

 Of course I had to go to some local brew houses.

Cheers Brian!












So you did scroll all the way down to see what was next.  Congratulations your the 3 individual to do so. Not really... you're probably the first...

Anyway so when I get into the airport back in Jeddah, I call Jolene and she says she's at the Marine house for a going away party and that I should come over to the consulate to partake.  So being one to always want to support our Marines I do the right thing and go to the party... Yeah I know how that sounds. Anyways it turned into a very long day since I was up at 4am to get ready and catch my flight which landed at 7:30 pm.  I finally made it home around 1:30 am.  And we had a great time.  Though we didn't get up and dance on the bar, others did.

And to finish off our weekend one of our British friends had a birthday so we went over to their place and had a small get together and an excellent cheese cake.

So now I'm home fat and happy (literally to both :\ )  Tomorrow is the first day of the work week and after being gone for a week I'm sure I'll have plenty to do.

Until next time...

Boat Snorkel Trip

Well we finally have our HHE shipment.  We've spent several days unpacking and it is really nice to have our stuff again.  Even though my computer was dead, I was able to recover the hard drive and get all my data back, woohoo!

Okay back to the water.  On Columbus day holiday we went with about 20 other people from work on a boat trip about 17 miles off the coast to a couple of different reefs.  Here are a few shots heading out on our day of fun in the sun.

 Heading out the inlet there are several yachts, this was one of the smaller ones.

 Looking back toward shore

This was one of the reefs we snorkeled around

The first on was called Chicken Wreck, this is because a boat sunk there carrying frozen chicken bound for Jeddah.  The boat is in about 45 feet of water, since I was just snorkeling couldn't get close up pictures, but here is a shot as far down as I could get.

The reefs were absolutely awesome the water was so clear you could easily see 50 feet underwater.  There were so many fish and I saw a giant moray eel.  It was just cruising along below me, it was too quick for me to get a decent picture.

We have scheduled to start our dive training and we are all looking forward to getting certified so we can go deeper and see more.  On this trip about half of the group was diving and they always came up saying how cool it was and one guy was telling us about an octopus that played tug of war with him.

But I digress, so I have to say my new underwater camera does pretty good.  Still working on fine tuning the settings but here are a few of my favorite shots, and you can see the whole album here. SNORKEL PICS

These guys almost glow they are so bright.

I've only seen these little green fish in coral like this

 Boo diving down for a closer look.

 One of several highway like areas where fish seemed to follow a specific path

 There were several tunnel areas like this were you could swim through.

 And the colorful fish were all over.

 These fish were 18" - 24" inches long and were in water about a foot or two deep on top of the reef.

More little green fish in the coral

One of the bigger ones hiding out.

Well that's our update.  We are in the middle of a week long Hajj holiday.  Next week it's back to work, but in the mean time we are going to have some of the Marines over for dinner tonight.  With such a small American community, we try to do as much with others as we can, it makes this place just that much better.

Cheers!

Not Much Going On...

But I'm trying to stay on top of posting.  When things are slow, it makes it harder to get on here and post anything.  We aren't doing anything really exciting but we are making friends and getting out a bit.  About every other week the local employee association at the consulate puts on a party evening last day of the work week.  This past week was "Steak Night".  Medium done steak, real mashed potatoes and veggies with a garlic parmesan cheese topping; really good stuff.  Then after the dinner we went to the after party at the Marine's House.  We brought along some friends I met about a month ago, a few pilots that fly on contract bringing Hajj's (pilgrims) to visit Mecca.  There was two Americans and one Aussie that joined us for the evening.  This was the first time two of them had a chance to interact with Americans at the consulate, and drink.  Needless to say everyone had a great time.  As most of you know, pork products are illegal here so needless to say like alcohol the only way we can get it is through the Consulate commissary.   So yesterday we invited a couple of the pilots over for a ham dinner.  They were in heaven, ham, potatoes, green beans and beer.  It's nice to be able to help bring a little American culture to those here working far from home.

Still working on lining up SCUBA lessons, looking at the end of the month.  We are going out on a dive/scuba boat during the upcoming holiday.  From what I hear it's an all day thing and great for diving and snorkeling.  The boat anchors near the reef which is about 3' deep at some parts then drops off so the divers have their place to go too.  So I'll hopefully get some good pictures, it will be nice to get off shore and out into the open waters.

Well gonna run,
Ciao!