Scuba in the Red Sea

Thats right, we've finally started our open water dives; we completed the first two this past weekend.  But Friday night Jolene was the control officer at a party so we knew it was going to be a late night and didn't want to get up early on Saturday, next weekend is out because the girls think they have to leave the country and visit Dubai so we will finish up in a couple of weeks.

On these dives we went down to about 40-45 feet, visability was okay, definiatley better out further from the coast.  I'm already lining up a dive about 3 hours north of Jeddah off the coast of Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, to visit an WW I Turkish troop transport wreck.  There are a half dozen of us from the consulate planning on diving the wreck.  So here are a few pictures from our dive.

Here is Crystal and the student dive master Christian.

And a selfie of me

Some coral, have to work out good settings on the camera for deeper water than snorkeling.

 




Christian again

And me

Crystal and her flowing red hair

Our Finish instructor Anu. She's been awesome!

And Jolene sporting the Shortie wet suit.











And yes we will be spending a few days in Dubai.  We are looking forward to getting away for a bit and it will be really nice for the girls since they can dress like Westerners there and can forget the abaya for a while. We'll post pics and tell you all about it when we get back.

Cheers!

Rainy Season

For the first time since we've been here it is now actually raining.  We did get sprinkled on our first day here but the ground never really got wet.  Now schools are closing, people are worried and traffic will be 10 fold worse than usual.  We are enterning the rainy season here in Jeddah and on average it falls 25....  mm for the month of November, but that number climbs all the way up to 30 mm for December.  The problem is, it rains here so in frequently, that storm sewers were never put into place so there were areas that flooded.  One in particular was an underpass that in 2010 flooded and several people drowned in their cars.

When we moved here a lot of the roads were tore up and storm sewers were/are being installed.  But in the mean time it was very nice to go outside and feel the rain on my skin, hear the thunder rolling across the sky and listen to all the sirens off in the distance.

Not much else to report for now so I'll leave you with this picture, it's not much anywhere else, but amazing for this place.

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...