The Farewell Parties of June

As I have mentioned before, June would be a month where many people leave to go on other projects around the world.  We have a couple of ladies going to The Netherlands, one going to Milan, Italy, another to Singapore, one to Thailand, one back to Australia, one back to Canada, one back to S Africa and then possibly back to the Middle East,  one to the US, one to Riyadh and probably others that I have missed in this list.  Supposedly, there are somewhere between 30-50 men leaving.  A big project that involves Exxon, Worley Parsons and KBR is over.  Also, we have several ladies leaving for the summer.  If this keeps up, it will be me and the gardeners here this summer.  :)

This week has been very strange seeing the moving trucks each day parked outside of friends' villas packing up their stuff.  A funny thing happens because  the ladies are frantically deciding what to bring with them and what to leave as it gets closer to their moving day.  They cannot bring food items.  So, they have given me an interesting assortment of groceries from around the world-Asian packaged mixes, tomato jelly, concentrated sugar cane natural vinegar, cans of strawberries, Louisiana shrimp and crab boil,  tons of spices, pasta, oregano olive oil, balsamic vinegar, pomegranate vinegar, Miracle grow, tortillas, fajita mixes, lots of interesting cheeses, etc. 

I have also gotten other things that I needed:  a vacuum cleaner (good timing because my old when just pooped out), a waste bin,  etc.  So, it is a little like Christmas getting all these presents. 

To acknowledge these ladies special contributions to our compound society while they were here, I had a party every week for four weeks honoring different ladies each party.  (Some ladies have slipped out of the Farewell party process by leaving when I wasn't here or when I was just getting back.   :(   )  Yesterday was the last one (until August).  So here is a description of the four parties.  It might take two blogs because of all the pictures.  :)

The first party was for two very young, very sweet girls.  The theme was flip flops and flowers.  We had an amazing assortment of foods.

 Here is the Ma Salama on the door:

The pictures that we signed for them:

One of the ladies here is from Germany.  When her daughter, who is in hotel management visited a few months ago, she taught us how to fold napkins.  And we have really used her info a lot lately.  Eileen has gotten very good at this.  Here are all the napkins that she folded:

Our centerpiece base is a South African Christmas tree base that a lady gave to me.  She and E helped decorate the tree with shells and flowers.

A place setting:

The celebrants:

And of course, the sweet young girls who we told goodbye:

 

The next party was for three ladies who play Mahjong.  So, of course, the theme was "Mahjonging in the Desert".

Ma Salama poster on the door:

Table settings, where you can see Eileen's napkin handiwork again:

Decorations:

Ladies of honor:

The beautiful cake that are compound restaurant made for the occasion:

I forgot to take a picture of the food!  :(

Party #3, Theme:  Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

Here are a couple of ladies (British and Belgian) cutting out all the letters:

The two ladies of honor are just the sweetest and most kind ladies, making the theme very easy.
Here is the Ma Salama poster on the door:

 The theme:

On the cut out letters, I glued M&M's using regular Elmer's glue.  Well, unfortunately, I noticed that the glue melted some of the M&M's.  I was very afraid that the M&M's would start dropping, leaving a chocolate mess.  I kept the air conditioner, just below the sign, on all night to keep the M&M's in tact.  :)

 

Decorations (candies and cookies)

Table setting with a new style of napkin folded by Eileen:

Another beautiful cake by the compound restaurant:

 

The last party was yesterday.   K is a fun person who is always ready to help out or participate in an activity.  She is inclusive.  She invited me to engagement parties and to Jeddah, Zumba classes, etc.  Also, K is a very adventurous lady-loves snorkeling for shells and hiking in China.  I thought that the theme should be "Karla, the Adventuress" and have exotic or jungle decorations.  I asked a friend who speaks Arabic if she could tell me the Arabic word for "Adventuress".  She said that it would be difficult, but she would try.  After a couple of months, she emailed me that it was "ilmughara".   I made a big poster board displaying the theme:

 

 But when one of the guests, who is from Lebanon, looked at it and asked me about it, I explained about the theme, Karla, the explorer.  She said, "That is not actually what it says."  I asked what it said and she said, Karla of the Cave.  So, it was pretty funny!

The Ma Salama poster on the door:

Magic carpet of pictures:

Table settings:

 

Decorations:

 

For one of the centerpieces, I picked up tree branches during my farm visit, painted them bronze, and hung apples on it that had peoples memories of Karla on them.  Three friends decorated it with rushed fabric, butterflies, lizards and insects.

 

These were the centerpieces on the other tables:

 

 

Some of the food.  A rice dish made by a Serbian lady, in which she cut tomatoes to look like flowers:

My Belgian friend made this dish of fresh tuna stuffed in peaches on top of pineapple.

 By special request, an Italian friend made her famous Pavlova with fresh berries.

 The Ma Salama cake and the guest of honor (the lady from the cave)

I asked everybody to wear animal prints, if they could.  Unfortunately, I did not get a lot of pictures of the 25 people that were there. 

 

 

 

I was very lucky to meet and become friends with all these very lovely ladies.  I hope that we can meet up again in the future. 

 

I was invited to a wedding!!!

I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time and I was invited to a Saudi wedding.  I was with a few friends and they were talking about going to a wedding the next week.  One of the ladies looked at me and asked me if I would like to go to a wedding.  I said "YES!!". She said that she would check with the mother of the bride and see if I could come.  I thought that there was probably little chance because she had already invited two other Westerners.  It was five days before I heard from her.  After that amount of time, I thought for sure it would be a no, but she said yes.  I have to say that Saudis are very generous with letting lots of people that they don't know, especially Westerners, come to their weddings and engagement parties.  This is the third wedding event that I have attended where I did not know the bride or the groom or anyone in their families.

I asked the ladies if they would be wearing evening dresses.  I have still not purchased one here.  (I am sure that as soon as I do, I will never be invited to anything again.  :)  )  My friends said that they would be wearing short (knee length dresses).  I had brought a couple of nice dresses, so I was set!

An interesting thing about the wedding is that the mother of the bride was from Mexico and the father Saudi and the mother of the son was Latina (I can't remember which country) and the father was Saudi.  There were a significant number of westerners at the wedding. 

The invitation said that the wedding would start at 9:30 pm.  So I was picked up around 8:30 pm by a lady who had a driver.  We went over to the other compound to pick up the lady who invited me/us.  It turns out that there were two Venezuelan ladies from that compound who had been invited also.  When they had called a driving service to bring them and pick them up from the wedding (probably after 4 am), they were told it would be 700 Saudi riyals (which is $186).  It was ridiculous!  So my friend asked them if they wanted to go with us.  These ladies were so much fun.  

The wedding was up the Red Sea coast, about 45 minutes away.  We got there around 10 pm and as we walked up to the main entrance, we began to realize that we may be the first guests there.  You had to check your abayas and cell phones.  They put all of our cell phones in a pretty burgundy glassine bag and gave my friend the number.  It was "# 1".  We asked, "Are we the first guests here????".  They smiled and nodded yes.  As we walked into the ballroom that would eventually hold 350 guests, they were still setting up, putting flowers on all the tables.  So, since there were no guests there yet, my friend asked if we could take pictures.  At the wedding itself, we would not be able to take pictures.  So, we got our phones back and took some pictures. 
This is walking up to the entrance:

 

 Inside the foyer where we checked our abayas and cell phones:

Here we are:

Then we went inside the ballroom:

Here is the grand staircase.  The groom came down from the top left and the bride came down from the top right.

 

Here is the stage where everyone danced and the end of the bride and groom's walk:

After taking pictures, we sat at a table.  We were the only ones there for a good hour and a half.  We kept joking that we were number one!!
Eventually people began coming in and the music and the dancing started.  We all danced but not as often as the one of the Venezuelan ladies.  She just could not sit down.  If she couldn't get us up, she went to the surrounding tables and got the Saudi ladies to dance.  She is such a kick!
I think that it was around 2 am when the bride and groom appeared!  Of course, we had to get our abayas and scarves on.  They slowly made their way down opposite sides of the staircase, then walked down the main staircase, then down the runway to the stage.  She was very beautiful.  He was wearing a nice white thobe, shemagh (head covering) and robe.  They looked in love.  The story is that they knew each other as children.   As the photographer was taking pictures of them, the side doors of the ballroom opened and the buffet was ready.  It was incredible!  An entire table of salads.  A table of entrees including hashi (camel meat), a long, long table of desserts.  It was delicious!  When we came out of the buffet, the bride and groom were gone. 
Then after eating, it was basically time to go. 
I got home around 5:30 in the morning!  That has not happened in a LONG time.  :)

Everyone there was very welcoming to us.  It was a really interesting experience.

Trip to a Farm

I have been pretty busy lately.  I have hosted two Farewell parties that were a lot of fun.  We have two more this month.  I will do a blog about this when they are all done.

Last Saturday, a friend asked if I wanted to go to see a farm to see some animals.  The thought of MERS crossed my mind, but I decided that I would not touch or get very close to the animals.  The driver was the person who worked with my friend's husband.  He is knowledgeable about the area.  It was an hour away to Yanbu Al Nakhal.  As we were driving, I saw the walled enclosures of empty space that I have been wondering and blogging about.  I had thought that they might be cemeteries because I had read that graves were not marked,  and the cemeteries were enclosed by 6 ft walls.  But there are so many of them on the way to Yanbu Al Nakhal, some not far from others.  I began to think that they were something else.  On another trip, I had asked a driver who lived in this area about these enclosures and he didn't know.  Well, this driver knew!  He said that they WERE cemeteries.  When I asked him why there were so many of them, often near each other, he said that each one was for a DIFFERENT Bedouin tribe.  Members of different tribes cannot be buried in the same cemetery.  Mystery finally solved! 
 
We have been having very hot days, 115 degrees F and very windy and sandy.  The sand seems to hang in the air so that it looks brown in the distance.  The workers all wear masks or wrap a scarf around their face covering their nose and mouth.  When we got to the turnoff road for the farm, the mountains almost looked like a mirage.  You have to really look for them in the background of this picture:

We drove down a dusty road to the farm and first came to the ostriches.  The driver said that raising ostriches is very easy because they are low maintenance.  Also, their meat is highly prized.

Then, they had a cute animal, I can't remember what it was-maybe a gazelle?
They had others but sold them off.  This little guy was not in demand because something was wrong with his leg.  People were afraid that because it had a problem with its leg, its meat might be diseased. So, he was saved.

Of course, no trip in Saudi Arabia is complete without seeing camels.

There were four kinds of sheep:

 And a few guinea fowl:

Then, we went up to the tent.  This was the prettiest tent inside that I have seen so far.  It had small chandelier light fixtures.

 

 

 Two lovely friends:

View of the valley from the tent:

 

The outer layer of the tent is made from woven camel hair:

On the way back home, we stopped at a small market and I bought another dallah.  It was a pretty nice morning!

The guide to Yanbu, Living in Yanbu is finished!!!

The first edition of "Living in Yanbu"  has been completed!!!

I am attaching it in my blog hoping to reach those who might be moving to Yanbu in the future.  It is very hard to find what you need here.  This guide would have been invaluable to me when I first moved here.  Actually, it is still invaluable, because there are many places listed in it, that I did not know were here.

Also, to family and friends, this will show you what I have been up to lately.  :)

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_9Ue7GOySbXeW1ITWxIS29SYXc/edit?usp=sharing


Hopefully the link works.  :)