To Market To Market, but no fat hogs!

Last weekend several friends got together to explore the local market in a typical Saudi town about 45 minutes from where we live. I can share the photos with you, but not the full affect of shopping in the morning temperatures of about 45 degrees celsius (translation - 113 degrees fahrenheit)!

Lynne & Michelle shopping for baskets

Produce for sale

Pam buying a basket

I guess the umbrella prevents sunburn???

Drinking plenty of water prevents dehydration - and heatstroke. I could suggest a few other precautions, but then this isn't my culture.

We thought we'd discovered the garden of eden at the covered produce market. The small grocery store on our compound is sadly lacking in variety of fresh produce.

The watermelon was delicious, but not seedless.

We bargained hard (part of the fun with the local culture) and loaded up our wheelbarrow of fresh produce - no loonies required for this shopping cart.

Brian & Doug - basket lids make great shade hats.

Beach Parties

One of the things we like to do here is to go to the beach. The Aramco private beach at Half Moon Bay is on the Arabian Gulf, about a half hour drive from our house. Typically a group gets together to barbeque our own meat and combine efforts on salads and desserts. !

Kent (our bishop), Brian & Dave

Brian - still loving to build fires - and teach kids how!

This evening we had gathered to say farewell to our friends Dave & Sue who retired after living here for 20 years.

Ironically, for us Canadians, we don't go to the beach in the summer months - it's just too hot! But speaking of hot - how do you like the local beach attire?

We always enjoy a beautiful sunset at Half Moon Bay.

Desert Schmall

Last weekend we had arranged to take some friends out to the desert to dig for sand roses because Hardmans have her Mom visiting and Bests have their son visiting. (See my Blog post of Nov 8, 2008 for a description of sand roses). The idea was to dig for sand roses, hopefully see the camels wander by, and have a picnic.

Well.....it was so windy that our shade tarp and umbrella wouldn't stay up. That should have been our clue of what was coming!!! Then the wind picked up even more and of course started blowing sand, which really hurt on the legs, faces, under the contacts, etc. Compare the sky in the first photo (when it was blowing a bit) to the sky in the second photo below. Desert storms are called schmalls and we were in one.

It was almost a 'white out' - desert style, when we did see the camels on the horizon so some of us ran over to feed them cookies and photograph them and the camel herder. You'll notice from the photo that the desert dwellers are much better dressed for the desert storms than we are - as the sand continued to fill in our pockets and shoes, not to mention our ears, noses, eyes and throats. The men kept digging, but finally we gave in to the forces of nature.

Driving in the sand requires a 4-wheel drive, but still can be tricky, not unlike icy winter conditions. On the way out, Doug got stuck and we had to get out the shovels and our sand ladders to dig them out. We always carry the ladders, which are used to give traction and a base to get above the sand to drive out on.

We had the picnic back on our patio. The day wasn't what we had planned yet nobody was upset or too disappointed. One great thing is about this group of friends is that we enjoy new adventures together. The feeling is that we just had a different adventure than the one we had planned on. I like that attitude!!!

Trip to Tunisia

I just returned from a trip to Tunisia with 4 friends from Saudi Arabia. We're all Canadians with roots in Calgary, except for one Texan, who is now an honourary Canadian, since we always responded 'Canada' when asked where we're from.

Tunisia is a small Muslim country in north Africa, sandwiched between Libya and Algeria. At one time it was a French colony so the languages are Arabic and French (somehow we managed with our smattering of recollections of high school French). However, it has a flavour all its own, neither African, nor European, nor Arabic - truly its own style with a lot of diversity in landscape and culture. Tunis - the capital city

The Fez is the typical hat worn by older men. This man is a milliner (hat maker) who I convinced to have his photo taken because I loved his mustache. Then he gave us a demonstration.

These are my traveling friends - me, Michelle, Lynne, Cathy and Therese. Notice the door - very typical in style and colour here.

The ruins of Carthage, the 3rd most important centre of the Roman Empire. From here, Hannibal set out to conquer Rome with his famous elephants in tow.

Sidi Bou Said is a quaint village, very picturesque with its white buildings and blue doors and windows; blue doors were everywhere in Tunisia. Here we wandered the streets, had lunch and in our typical style, found great shopping opportunities.

It wasn't quite warm enough to be tourist season for Europeans yet, and North Americans haven't really discovered Tunisia yet (except for those from Quebec who come because of the language connection). We did wander along the Mediterranean several times though.

Fishing is the second most important industry, after tourism. Unfortunately 14% of the population is unemployed. We couldn't interpret a word at the fish auction, but the transactions and process were clearly understood.

I was in heaven with all of the pottery for sale. We each came home with several pieces and miraculously it all arrived without damage. The vendors were quite agressive in their sales approach, but we were hard bargainers. More than one salesman said, "Canadians - hard women", but it was all part of the fun.

Since all of our husbands are employed by Aramco, we had to take some photos of the petrol for sale - imported (smuggled?) into Tunisia from neighbouring oil-rich Libya.

In many ways Tunisia seems caught in a time-warp. We visited some local berber homes, caves cut into the mountain sides. This demonstration of an oil press inside a cave, gave us an appreciation for the centuries-old process of making olive oil. We read that Tunisia has more olive trees than any other in the world, and it seemed true from the miles and miles of neat and orderly orchards we passed.

One highlight was the time we spent at Ksar Ghilane, on the edge of the Sahara Desert. We slept in luxury tents (with modern plumbing).

Me on a camel in the Sahara Desert at sunset. (We all bought headscarves).

The Sahara Desert at sunrise.

Quite a few scenes from the Star Wars movies were filmed in Tunisia and we visited several of the sites. None of us are great Star Wars fans, but it was fun to say we were there. It was apparent why the area was chosen as 'another planet' for the movies.

El Jem has the 2nd largest and best preserved coliseum of the Roman empire. We also visited a coliseum at Carthage. It was eery to think about the gladiators, Christians and lions in these places.

Bizerte is a fishing village along the northern coast, along the Mediterrean Sea. The canals are reminiscent of Venice.

These early morning fisherman, only found one small fish in their large net.

It was a great trip - lots of diverse and beautiful scenery, historical sites to investigate with interesting people to photograph and places to explore. Sharing friendship and laughter is always a bonus to any trip! Thanks to my terrific 'Canadian' exploring buddies - here or away.

I just changed my favourite saying (above). Then I realized how well it fits with this blog post...all about my family - the best gift of life.

On New Years Eve I flew to North America for 5 weeks with our family. After 14 flights and 3 countries later (not counting starting and ending in Saudi, via Bahrain and London airports), here are a few memories.

We celebrated a late Christmas on New Years Day. Here is David with Mari opening his gift.

Mom bought a new camera - the 7th Cybershot like mine that I've recommended. I think I derserve a bonus from Sony. We enjoyed a walk in the snow to learn some settings.
From Calgary I headed to Utah for a week with Jennifer & Jared.

Jennifer is continuing the Ames tradition of making lasagne for special occassions - I guess my visit, their first house guest, was the special occassion.

From Utah it was on to Texas. Erin had changed a lot since we last saw her in May. She is now walking everywhere and talking a lot too. Notice the shoes - she loves shoes. I wonder where she gets that from?!

Elaina and I spent hours playing Candyland. Sometimes she won and sometimes I won, but she was just as excited either way.

Erin is also learning to share.

This is one of the best grandparenting moments. We read this same 'Spot' book over and over, even though they have a bookshelf full of books. Finally I insisted on different ones sometimes.

Several times we went for walks around the neighbourhood with the girls in their red wagon. Our kids had the same wagon - but in those days they didn't come equipped with pop-up seats and cup holders.

Here is Elaina on her tricycle. But since my visit, she's graduated to a bicycle with training wheels. Before I know it she'll be driving a car!

Yellow is Elaina's favourite colour. It was a great day at pre-school when the paint easle was set up with only yellow for each child to create a sun as part of the craft.

This is the Gallery Wall in the girls' playroom, mostly Elaina's pre-school creations. The yellow sun above was the latest addition, but Elaina told me that the pumpkin was her favourite craft. Erin loves dolls and here she is putting her babies to bed in the cradles Grandpa Derry made for each of them.

A backyard swingset...the universal, timeless, childhood toy. Bikes and swing sets - who needs anything more? It was cool out that afternoon and I don't know which we enjoyed more, the backyard play time, or the hot chocolate afterwards, with marshmellows of course.

What a good helper!

Trousdale family portrait. They didn't actually ride like this of course. But I did have a ride with Mike one evening - he took me home from a restaurant on the back of his bike.

After time in Texas, I headed even further south to spend a few days in our new home in Mexico. Dad & Deanna joined me there and stayed on for a few weeks. Now I have a clear image of retirement - breakfast on the patio. Sounds enticing!

From Mexico, it was back to Calgary. Heather & I drove to the temple in Cardston and had a good time together. If you've looked at the previous blog post you'll notice Heather's change in hair colour. Yup - blonde in January, Brunette in February - and I like them both!

This last photo is Mom & Eldon opening a gift. It's a calender that Allison made with photos of all the children and grandchildren. She learned digital scrapbooking and did a fantastic job.

It was a whirlwind trip...but a great time with everyone!