Eid Mubarek - That means Happy Eid

Haj is the time of year when Arabs make the pilgrimage to Mecca. It is a 4-day national holiday, one of the two Eid holidays of the year. Typically we travel during the Eid holidays, but Brian is on call this time, so we are here to see the celebrations. Last night we went with friends to the events on our compound.

Typical Saudi dancing - all men of course.

Holidays & Oman

While hanging the Christmas lights, Brian was missing the large spruce tree in our front yard in Calgary, the tall ladder required, & doing the job with big gloves on typically the coldest day of the season - NOT!!! What he was missing, was help from the kids.

For American Thanksgiving we had a progressive dinner with 4 couples - ironically we are all Canadian. This photo is our main course. We eneded at our house with pumpkin cheesecake for desert. I love cheesecake but had never made one before - it was a hit.

The following weekend we traveled to Muscat, the capital of the Sultanate of Oman, for church business. We went early on Thursday. We stayed with a family and they showed us around a bit. These photos are of the corniche - the yacht belongs to the sultan.

We went shopping at the best souk I've seen. We weren't there long... but long enough for me to make a few purchases.

You can never own too many pashminas. Next we found the jewelry store.

Watching the people is almost as interesting as the shopping.

Weekend in Bahrain & Abu Dhabi

With our new callings for Brian as a counselor in the Stake Presidency and me as Stake Young Women's President, we get to travel quite often to various places in the Middle East. This past weekend I combined it with a shopping day with friends to Bahrain on Wednesday and then we flew from there to Abu Dahbi early the next morning.

The purpose of our shopping trip was to do some Christmas shopping in Bahrain, which is far more liberal than Saudi Arabia and some stores actually sell Christmas items. I added a couple of Santas to my collection, but we bought lots of other stuff, enjoyed a nice lunch and had a great day together.

We were in Abu Dhabi on Thursday and Friday for church meetings. Since we've decided to hold our stake youth conference in February in Abu Dhabi, we spent Thursday checking out possible venues there, including a mosque tour, activities at the sand dunes and beach. Friday we participated in leadership meeting for the UAE wards and branches.

The new mosque in Abu Dhabi is the most beautiful mosque I've ever seen, and we've visited a few in various places in the Middle East. This one has just one less pillar than the Holiest of mosques in Mecca - one we'll never see.

Going local with the sunglasses!

We were given directions to a location among the sand dunes, just outside the city. One locator was to pass the forest on our right. We concluded this must be the desert version of 'Forest'. Since living in Saudi Arabia, I've discovered some similarities between sand and snow. They typically represent temperature extremes - hot & cold, both can be wind-blown and create wonderful ripples across the surfaces, boarding is a fun activity on both (snowboarding & sandboarding) and this weekend we saw a new similarity.

This is what a day at the beach looks like for an Arab family.

Digging for Sand Roses

This past weekend we went to the desert to dig for sand roses. They aren't the botanical kind of roses, but a desert formation. Here is the on-site geologist's explanation:

The coast of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia offers ideal conditions for the growth of sand roses. These artistic assemblages of bladed crystals, composed primarilly of gypsum (CaSO4 + 2 H2O) and quartz sand, can range in size from small rosettes a centimeter across to large clusters, more than one meter in diameter. Calcium sulfate brines from the Arabian Gulf seep underground into sabkhas; flat areas between dunes, where evaporation under the hot desert sun pumps the brines to the surface, concentrating the brine to more than three times that of normal sea water. At a depth of about 1 m below the surface, gypsum formation begins. As the water table rises and falls with seasons, the gypsum crystal grows in the pore space as precipitated gypsum which traps and shoulders aside the sand grains, creating beautiful prismatic crystals, none of which are ever identical.

Here is Brian displaying the literal interpretation of some popular sayings:



Digging yourself into a hole










Digging in deeper











Sticking your head in the sand - literally!



He stuck in his thumb, and pulled out a....sand rose? Pam with some of our collection.













It was a fun day with our friends Sue & Dave Alexander. They've lived in Saudi Arabia for 19 years so they are the experts. We enjoyed a picnic lunch and sights of Arabia.

We were all sitting on the desert - well some of us were sitting and some of us were digging, when I looked up...and there in front of us was a herd of about 100 camels crossing the desert.

The treasures from our hunting.