Sea creatures for Tati

Hi Tatianna. I went back to the beach on Friday and went swimming in the ocean. You would love the ocean here. It's filled with all kinds of fish and coral and the water is so clear. At the edge of the beach is a coral reef filled with all kinds of creatures. I have pictures of just some of the fish I saw. There were lots more but I couldn't find pictures of them. My favorite was the octopus, I always wanted to see one in the wild. I thought he was a rock at first. Then his eye moved so I could tell something was watching me. When I got close to him he turned from a grey rock color to red. I guess he didn't like me getting so close to him. We watched each other for about 10 minutes before I swam away to see all the other fish. There were so many of them! It was like swimming in a fish tank.

I swam over the top of the reef and into the Red Sea. The bottom of the sea was about 70 feet below me but the water was so clear I could see all the way to the bottom. Fish were swimming in and out of the coral. I loved floating in the sea and looking at all the fish. Maybe someday you, Ullysses and Apollo can come here and go scuba diving and see all the fish for yourself.

Here's a picture of the octopus. He was pretty big . . .

Here's a picture of a clam. They are all over the reef. Some are small and others are pretty big

This is a daisy parrot fish. I watched a lot of these guys eating the coral. . .

These are coronet fish. They were about two feet long. They have long beaks with lots of teeth and when they swim the wiggle around like eels. They kept an eye on me and swam away when I got close to them. I didn't try to get too close because of all those teeth . . .

This is a picture of a surgeon fish. I saw more of these fish than almost any other kind. The picture doesn't really show how bright the blue and yellow colors are. They are very beautiful. You can swim right up to them and almost touch them.

Last but not least, here's a picture of one of the crabs that live on the rocks near the dive shop. They're about as big as a blue crab. I think they're very pretty . . .

A few pictures

The weather has been very nice here. It goes up to the 80's during the day and the place where we work has a nice breeze blowing through it. I took a few pictures at the main compound . . .

A Papaya tree . . . .

Some Papaya flowers . . .

Weaver bird nests. The birds are very pretty, they look like big yellow canaries but I haven't been able to get a picture of one yet . . .

Here's an interesting building we pass on the way to the beach. I'm not sure if it's a house or a business. Can you see all the cranes in the background?

The plan for today is to go to the beach. Tomorrow (Saturday) is a work day because we're a little behind schedule due to some technical difficulties. I'm going to try and get some pictures of the crabs for Tatianna.

My day off

Our normal work week runs from Sunday through Thursday because Friday is the Muslim holy day. I didn't do much today. Basically all we did was go to the Red Sea mall for groceries. You can check out their website at www.redseamall.com to get a sense of how huge the place is and the variety of stuff you can buy there. The mall has a huge grocery store (the Danube) that carries everything from water to refrigerators. I like it because the have some brick ovens and bake their own bread. I've been eating a lot of Syrian bread. It's kind of like pita but bigger and softer. You get four big pieces for less than . 40 cents and they last me for most of the week. I usually eat half a loaf with some honey for breakfast. It's really good. Here are some picture from the pastry section of Danube. The say a huge variety of delicious looking stuff so this is only a small sample . . .

Here are some glass sea creatures you can buy in the home goods section of the Danube . . .

I've mentioned before that there's a huge amount of construction going on in Jeddah. You see cranes everywhere. Here are a few pictures that give you a sense of the amount of new construction. The pictures don't do a good job of showing how nice these houses are. If you plopped them down in California they'd be worth a fortune . . .

There are traffic lights in Jeddah but the main form of traffic control is the round about. There are big ones and small ones and depending on the time of day they can be a nightmare to navigate. The big ones usually have some big piece of art to mark them. The round about near the Red Sea mall has an enormous globe at its center. You can't really see it in this picture but the globe is tiled and you can see each of the continents. It's a great landmark . . . .

Finally, Here's a picture I took of myself for my PADI card. I need this card to rent dive equipment. When I applied for the new card I found out the last dive I did was in 1988. I'm very rusty. I also haven't found a place to get a haircut around here so I'm going to probably use Dave's clippers to do the job myself. . .

Day at the beach

We had a good week at work. All the equipment is up and running and we're a day or so ahead of schedule. It doesn't get too warm during the day (mid 80's) and a nice breeze kicks up in the afternoon to cool things off. We spend a lot of time in the sun setting the equipment up, running big heavy cables from diesel gennerators to the equipment (I get to start the generators each morning) and generally getting hot and sweaty. It was a good week but it was a long week (we worfked six days) so we decided to go to the beach on our one day off. There are a lot of beach resorts north of Jeddah. The company has an arrangement with one of them that lets us use the facilities if we get a pass. Earlier this week John called one of his friends (he has friends everywhere) and got us passes for Saturday. I really wanted to go because this particular resort has a dive shop and I haven't been diving in years (maybe decades). Curt, little Chris, James, Chuck, Dave, John and I piled into two cars and headed north toward the beach. It should have been a short ride but the GPS we have in the cars doesn't work very well. There's also tons of construction going on here so streets that appear to be open on the GPS are sometimes blocked. We got all mixed up and wound up taking a tour of the city. We saw a brand new airport terminal being built especially for the millions of pilgrims that pass through here on the way to Mecca, a nice new sports complex that's just a huge stretch of desert filled with cranes and heavy equipment, the airport (once or twice) and many miles of brand new roads. Luckily, the traffic wasn't that bad and little Chris had a GPS app on his iPhone that worked pretty well. After about 45 minutes we made it to the beach. The club is very nice. Some very nice rooms overlook two pools, a volley ball court, a restaurant and lots of green "California" grass. Danika and I first saw this stuff when we lived in Huntington Beach. It's short, very green and doesn't seem to grow very much. We liked it when we first saw it in California and it looked very nice here as well. Although I'm a certified diver, I haven't been in the water for a long time. Little Chris, on the other hand, has been diving every weekend for over two years. He has all kinds of certifications and he's a great teacher. He brought his own gear but John and I rented all the equipment we needed at the club. You get into the water by walking down a short stairway that ends at the top of a reef on the Red Sea. As soon as John and I got into the water, we were being tossed and turned by the breakers. It was hard getting my fins on and once they were on it was hard to maintain my position in the water. Chris helped us through the breakers and got us to a point where we could do the dive. The dive was fantastic. I wanted to dive in a place like this all my life and it didn't disappoint. There were all kinds of colorful fish down there swimming in big schools. Big bright blue fish with shocking yellow fins were all around us. We saw two Moray eels (one was very big) as we swam along the coral wall. Jeddah is know for it's diving and I see why. Visibility was great, better than 50 feet and the coral was spectacular. I was afraid there would be a lot of trash in the water but this place was perfectly clean. Our dive lasted only about 20 minutes because John and I were so excited we were breathing too hard but it was well worth the price (130 SAR for me, roughly $50). We went down about 70 feet before it was time to surface. Chris coached on throughout the dive and only used about half a tank of air. I felt bad that this was more like work for him so I'll pay for his air. Luckily, he offered to take us diving next weekend so we didn't piss him off too much.

Me on the beach

Dave (on the left) and Chris (second fro left) talking to some divers

James meets a friend at the entrance to the resort. I had a long talk with the Macaw, made me miss Blue and Tekkla

A view of the dive shop

A view of the resort from the dive shop

John and James

Here are pictures of John and James during our tour of Jeddah last night. John grew up in Lowell, MA and says he hates the driving here. We all know he secretly loves it because it reminds him of home.

James is just trying to survive the ride.

It's a real challenge to drive over here. Some drivers are very aggressive and it's common to get tail gated and passed from every direction. People think nothing of cutting right in front of you. It's really bad trying to make a left hand turn when people drive around you and cut you off so they can make the turn first. Even pedestrians are a hazard. When we were coming home last night we merged onto a three lane highway (doing better than 50 mph) and nearly plowed through a guy standing in the middle of the rightmost lane smoking a butt. If he hadn't been wearing white robes he'd be a hood ornament now. What was he thinking?!!

The Kings Fountain

The king has a palace in Jeddah and his fountain is a local landmark. He turns it on just before sunset. The fountain is opposite one of the ritziest streets in Jeddah, the Corniche. I took this picture from a park that runs along the Corniche. It was filled with people waiting for the fountain to turn on. A lot of families where there grilling dinner (it smelled great), fishing and playing in the park. There were a few guys selling roasted corn out of a whell barrow. There are hot coals in the barrow and they roast the corn on top of the coals. It seemed very popular. The buildings along the Corniche are spectacular, I'll get some good pictures of them another day. Sometimes it's hard to see just how spectacular they are because of all the construction that's going on in the city. Everywhere you look whole blocks have been demolished and new buildings are going up. There are connstruction barriers everywhere. When things are finally finished Jeddah will be a city people can really be proud of. The one bad thing, though, is people throw trash everywhere. The streets have a lot of junk in them, there was litter all over the park, and there's all kinds of trash floating in the water. People just casually toss stuff to the ground without giving it a second thought.

Hi Ullysses

I miss you very much and think about you and Mommy and Boo every day. I go to work at 6 o'clock in the morning which is 10 o'clock at night for you. I get home at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon which is about 8 o'clock in the morning for you. It's been hard making calls home because I have to either get up very early in the morning or stay up very late at night. I think getting up early is better for me so I'll try and call home before you go to school. We have to start our push up contest. I've been going to the gym every day after work so I think I have a head start. I think I can do 10 push ups. Let me know how many you can do. Please keep up the good work at school. It's VERY important that you do well in math and science so please help Mommy by doing your homework and getting good grades. We want you to be the best. I think you would like Jeddah. There are very nice houses here and the people are very friendly. There is all kinds of candy every where you go. Last night at dinner I had a mint smoothie. It was so good. I told everyone how you like mint tea and that you would think the smoothie was delicious. I also told Josh that you thought that picture of him was very funny. He laughed when I told him that. I haven't been to the beach yet but it's supposed to be very nice. I can't wait to go diving in the Red Sea. Maybe we can do that together when you're older. I miss you!

The Kitchen

Everything in the apartment is pretty nice. We have a living room, two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. It gets into the 80's here during the day but the rooms stay surprisingly cool. We don't need to use the air conditioner yet. The kitchen may kill me. There's an electrical problem somewhere and I got shocked last night while using the stove. John got shocked too. He got shocked again this morning. We have a maintanance guy here now trying to figure out what the problem is. He doesn't speak much English so there's a bit of a communication problem.

The local Mosque

This is the minaret of the mosque behind our compound. The first call to prayer for the day is at about 4:30 AM and it usually wakes me up. It's broadcast over a loud speaker and it's pretty loud.

The back yard . . .

Here's a picture of the back of the compound. There are a number of other buildings on the compound. I think each one is rented by a different company. Our main compound (where most of our colleagues stay) is a few miles down the road. We're staying at the executive compound because there's no room for us on the main compound. Not the ideal situation but it works for now.

This is home for now

Here's a picture of the "executive compound" where I'll be staying for the next few months . . .

picture test

I tell myself everyday that a few months in the burning sands will make life better for these folks . . .

Getting there

I had a very nice flight from Philidelphia to Jeddah on Lufthansa. I left home around 10:30 am on Monday, January 20 and arrived in Franfurt at about 6am local time on Tuesday. The actual flight time was only about six hours. The plane left Philly at about 5pm and flew up the coast so I got to see New York and Cape Cod. It was getting dark around this time so the city was lit up like a Christmas tree. To the west everything was dark and I got more than a little sad thinking my little boys were out there in the dark and I wouldn't be able to see them again for months. The hardest thing about this trip is leaving my family behind. The plane arrived at one end of the airport and my connecting flight was all the way on the other side of the airport (gate C15). The flight attendent directed me to C15 but she didn't tell me the gate was about a mile away from where we landed. Seriously, it was about a mile away and I wasn't able to find a shuttle from one gate to the other. I got a blister on my right foot as I walked through the deserted airport. My new sneakers and Under Armour socks didn't cooperate. Because I was flying business class I was able to use the business class lounge while I waited 5 hours for my connecting flight to Jeddah. That was very nice. Big chairs to sit in and lots of free coffee and snacks. My friends started showing up almost as soon as I sat down so I had some good company while I waited for the next flight. A few of the guys appreciated the free beer that was available next to the coffee. We had a really nice flight to Jeddah. On the way over we crossed some mountains that I assume were the Alps. We crossed the Mediteranean but it was cloudy until we go close to the coast of Egypt. The flight map showed us flying over Cairo but it was too cloudy to see the pyrimids. The sun was also setting about this time so everything below us was very dark. The sunset was spectacular, a very deep red that lit up the clouds. Even though we were in the clouds, the sunset made even them look hot and dusty. I thought this was very appropriate. The clouds disappeared for the last hour of the flight as we flew over the Nile and the Red Sea. I saw the lights of some little towns on the Nile and I thought about how long people must have been living there. Jeddah is a very big city. About 3.5 million people live here. It's lit up like New York at night except there's a lot more neon. As we began our decent over the Red Sea and started the approach to the airport, I thought the city looked very nice. I did notice an insane amount of traffic on the roads below us. It was dark (again) when the plane landed, about 7pm local time. There's no jetway in Jeddah so we walked down some stairs and got onto a bus that took us to the terminal. 10 tired Americans that don't speak Arabic on a bus in Saudi Arabia. What could go wrong?