Things we love about Turkish Culture

   I wanted to start keeping just little posts about things that happen in our day. I am not a writer and I’m not creative so sorry if this is boring or grammatically wrong :) I want to focus on some of the redeeming qualities about this culture. Yes there are things that are hard and difficult about living here but I’m wanting to share the good things.   

   Today as I pushed our stroller down the road, we passed the bagel guy on the corner. About once a week we go there and grab a bagel on our way to drop Gracie off at school. Judson was looking at the bagels while I was telling him to come get in the stroller. I thought the bagel guy was thinking we wanted to buy a bagel so I was smiling and trying to say no thank you. Instead the guy smiled back and just gave Judson the bagel for free. It was a very sweet jester and very typical of this culture. I don't know how many free things my kids have received from strangers here. (To ease some minds :) we have a rule that if a stranger gives our kids things, our kids just ask us first)

   This same trip coming home with all the kids, I was stopped two times with people congratulating me for having three kids. Most families here have one child or if they do have two, they are at least four to five years apart. So we usually stand out and people stop us a lot, but this allows for more opportunities :) I also had a few people stop and say some "maşallah's" for the kids which means: May God preserve him/her from evil. Again, this is not out of the ordinary :) the people and culture here are so friendly, especially towards children. Last thing about our walk from school today - There was SO much traffic that we couldn’t cross the road to get to Gracie’s school. A motorcyclist swooped in and blocked on coming traffic and waved us on so we could finally pass. I don’t know if I just looked really desperate with my kids haha but either way, I love how people really watch out for others here.  

The last nine months

Beautiful of weather of Riyadh

So this just happened two days ago. Ahhhh the weather of beautiful Riyadh. It makes you want to take a nice deep breath and enjoy the winter breeze.

It's Official!

Spring 2011

Well we are finnished with one more year in Saudi! It has been a wonderful year and we have so many great times to look back on. Here are some of the highlights from the spring of 2011.



The end of spring means one thing for us: CALIFORNIA HERE WE COME! We are leaving today (6/28) and will land in the good ol' US of A at around 6 pm tonight! We will spend a few days in New York visiting family and will land finnally in California on July 2nd. Can't wait for the summer and to see you all soon!

Trip to Jeddah

Hello all! Well it's been awhile since we posted last but we've stayed really busy. One of the things we got to do was spend a weekend in Jeddah! It was our first time traveling inside Saudi and hopefully it won't be our last. We loved it! Here are some of the highlights

 We flew on Saudi Arlines and it was great. One interesting thing is that happened was that they read a prayer over the intercom that was intended for travelers. Never seen that before on a plane! The food on the plane was definitely Saudi too with kabobs, falafel, and humus!

We are not sure how many stars our hotel was but we are guessing it was on the lower end of the scale. However, they did have a very unique fountain in the lobby.

Next we had an amazing beach day with friends! First time to the Red Sea for us!

It was so nice going to the beach and realizing the water was warm! You can see how there was a really long shallow area and then it drops off about 40 feet. Right at the drop off there was the most amazing reef and fish! There were fish everywhere!

Here are some of the fish we saw when we were snorkeling! It was unbeleiveable how colorful the fish were and there were hundreds of them!

After we finished hanging out at the beach (and getting really sunburnt) we drove around exploring Jeddah a little bit. One thing that really stood out and that was differnt from Riyadh was there was so much art around the city. It seemed like almost every roundabout had some new sculpture or statue. We really liked this gaint camel one.

This is King Fahd Fountian and is a cool attraction in Jeddah. We were pretty far away, which shows how tall it is. The fountian shoots up 1024 feet in the air!

This was definatly a big highlight for us. Name that restaurant...

It was so nice having good Mexican food again! We ate way too much and left moving much slower.

This was another restaurant that we sort of discovered because every taxi driver we talked to said that we had to eat here. I guess "Al Baik" is one of the most famous food places in Jeddah.

They are most famous for their chicken so we had to give it a try. We really liked it!

Next we got to explore the old city of Jeddah. This was one of the old city gates that originally was built by the Ottoman Empire.

 

These were some of our favorite buildings in the old city of Jeddah.

Many of the buildins date back to 1800s. It's amazing that people are still living in them today.

We also learned that the white stones you see are actually made of coral bricks! I guess that is what you make your houses out of if you live in a desert next to the sea.

We absolutely loved our trip and hope to return again soon! Love you all and see you soon! July 2nd!!

Mud Brick Houses and the Attack of the Killer Horse

Charlie and I got to go out with some friends to a small town outside of Riyadh a few weekends back. We meet a Saudi man that was from this town and he wanted to show us around how Saudi living used to be. Hard to believe that as little as 50 years ago the even wealthy people lived in mud brick houses! The first part of the video was the tour of his house that he grew until he was about 10 years old.

The second part of the video shows the epic horse bite (go to about 10:00 min in). He took us out to a horse farm and as we found out, not all the horses were too friendly.

The last part is one of our favorite parts of being in Saudi - desert camping. We drove out to a quiet part of the desert, threw out the blankets and BBQ, and had some amazing kabobs, humus, fresh dates, Arabic coffee, and tea. It was a great night and is one more thing we have to to love about Saudi!

Also if you have not seen our other video with Saad, here is our dune bashing adventure