I have been asked if I like it here and what I do all day. A friend here said that a man once told her that if he believed in reincarnation he wanted to come back as an Aramcon Wife. Well here is a sample of what I did this past week, maybe that is why.
Saturday-cleaned house; took nap; sewed; took nap; chorus practice for singing the Messiah
Sunday-Khobar shopping with friends; took nap; Arabic class with Mike
Monday-cleaned house; sewed on quiet books; Quilt Guild Meeting; took nap
Tuesday-sewed Block of the Month for Quilt Guild; went to lunch with friends; took nap; cut out drapes for living room; Arabic class with Mike
Wednesday-went to private (garage/yard) sale with friend; sewed; read; took nap; line dancing with Mike
As you can see I manage to stay busy. The best part is I do what I want when I want. Oh, I did manage to cook dinner a couple of times and clean house a bit and do some laundry. You know the mundane housewife chores.
You tell me what there is not to love about living here.
The above picture is a workshop I took at Quilt Guild. I am really proud of them.
This has become Mike's latest hobby. He spent last Thursday (our Saturday) buying plants and planting this cactus garden. Of course his "hobby" is still the yard even though we have a gardener to take care of it on a regular basis for us. For Mike the best part is the planning and planting anyway.
Today he is off to see the row of nurseries along the road north toward Ras Tunura (a sister compound). I elected to stay home so he had "more room for plants".
This ship the "Saudi Diriyah" is the cargo vessel carrying our shipment here. Yesterday we discovered the name of the ship and I have been doing some tracking. On Oct 7, 2009 the ship was in the port of Said, Egypt. It is due to dock in Dammam, Saudi Arabia on about 24 Oct. Customs can take up to two weeks.
So we should get out things in about 3 weeks from now. Yea!!!!!!!!!!!
Tonight Mike and I are going to play Rook with some friends. I thought I would take some cookies along as a snack. This first picture is of the Baking Soda and Vanilla that I use here. Yes the vanilla is powder. Here is a picture of my "cookie sheet". Yes it is the bottom of my cake pan. This is another example of invention. The cookies taste great, wish I could share them with you. They are Chiara's recipe.
Our first couple of weeks here I was reminded how inventive and creative we can be when required. Aramco furnishes the house and kitchen with the basic things you need until your shipment comes. That usually takes about 3 months.
So in my kitchen we were given 1 sm sauce pan with lid, 1 medium sauce pan with lid, 1 large skillet and large stock pot with shared lid. Also we were given the basic set of untility items, spatula, large spoon, large slotted spoon, ladle, meat for, and potato masher. And then there is the basic dishes, 8 each of teaspoons and forks, 4 each of table spoons and butter knives. Then they include a set of 5 knives of various sizes from paring to carving and bread size. Lastly there is a 4 place setting of dinner plates, salad plates, cup/saucers, and bowls; and then 6 SMALL juice glasses for dinking.
About the second night here I decided to make spaghetti for dinner. We had purchesed a can of spaghetti sauce. I took the large pot and began to boil the noodles, no problem here. Then I took out the medium sauce pan to heat up the sauce. That is where the problems began.
We didn't have a can opener. Now what do we do. Well this is where the inventive part comes in. I had a very small pocket knife and samll scissors in my luggage. I used the scissors to puncture a hole in the can then proceded to cut it open. Not the greatest but worked fine.
We knew there were a few things we would need from the store. So we took the bus to the mall the next day and purchased a can opener, while there I thought why not buy a 9x13 cake pan, just in case we needed one. Also we picked up a cheese grater. With these items we thought we were set for the next 3 months. WRONG!!!
I thought I would make a list of a few meals we would like to make and get the ingredients next time we went grocery shopping. One dish I wanted to make was "Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole" (thinks Chiara, we really love that dish).
We get to the store and I am telling Mike what we need to pick up. When I tell him that we need ham he just gives me a funny look and says, "Really, ham in Saudi Arabia?" Thats when I remembered that there is no pork here. Well not to be out done we went to the deli counter and found some smoked turkey and bought that. This worked perfectly, you can't even tell the difference.
The recipe also calls for instant rice, couldn't find that either so we bought regular rice and decided to substitute there also. Then on home(see Grocery Shopping in Khobar).
When I began to make dinner I realized that I didn't have any mixing bowls. No problem, I would just use the pot I boiled the chicken. Worked great. For the rice I cooked it for only about 5 minutes then added it to the casserole, that worked great also.
Now came time to put the dish in the pan. I had made only a half recipe as we didn't need a so much for just two people. So I only needed an 8x8 pan. Well, we don't have one. Once again the old brain begins to work on how to solve this problem.
No problem, I had aluminum foil. I lined half of the cake pan to make into as smaller size. This also worked great. We had our dinner and loved it. It has become a favorite of ours.
Sorry I didn't take any pictures, that part of my brain was not working that night.
Since then the RS Pres gave me access to a couple of tubs of things that had been left by people who had left and didn't want to take them home. I have added a few extra things to make the kitchen a little easier to work in. But the adventure still continues and we love it all the time.
Yesterday the SAEA (Saudi Aramco Employees Association) had what they call the "Fall Mall". This was held in one of the main buildings on camp and various shops from the area were invited to come display their wares for people to shop.
Mike and I decided to go check it out. We had a good time, we kept running into people that we know. There were some people from camp that set up their own booths, we purchased baked goods from a couple of them.
The one thing we did do was spend a great deal of our time there looking at and talking to the owner of the display with carpets. We have wanted to purchase a couple of carpets for the house. You can get much better carpets here than at home at a better price.
We found about 3 or 4 that we liked but couldn't feel good about the price, or were not completely sold. Then the owner started bringing out other carpets for us to see. About the 3rd one that he showed us I fell in love with.
It is a silk carpet with a cotton base. It feels so wonderful under foot. We ended up purchasing this one. It is about 6 feet by 4 feet in size. We currently have it in the entrance to the living room.
We will decide where we want to put it after our shipment comes and arrange our furniture. Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of our newest addition to our home.
The reason for the difference in color is the direction the carpet is viewed from. Also from one angle there is more light shining then from the other.
Our first week here we decided to adventure into Khobar and go to the grocery store. The camp has a bus that goes to downtown Khobar with a stop at Tamimi (Safeway) at the end. I got a ride from a friend to the dining hall where I met Mike. We ate dinner then went to catch the shoppers bus into town.
We liked the store better than the commisary on camp. It was a bit cheaper and had better meat choices. We finished our shopping and went to catch the bus back to camp.
Since we didn't have a car we had to carry all our purchases in our hands. I had taken a large canvas beach bag to help carry things. We put about half of the groceries into this bag and I carried it while Mike carried about 3 or 4 other bags. They use a much thicker plastic here so all the bags are very sturdy.
When we got back to camp we realized that neither one of us had brought the numbers for the taxi service on camp. So Mike decided that we would just walk home. Nothing on camp is really very far so under good conditions this could be a very pleasant walk.
Of course this night was not pleasant conditions. First it was still hot, I wasn't wearing shoes for a long walk, we were not completely sure of the way home, and to make matters even more interesting I had to go to the bathroom really really really bad the whole way.
We started out fine but the farther we walked the heavier my bag seemed to get. I didn't understand why since we had divided the bags up evenly at the store.
Just before we got home, I looked closer at the bags Mike was carrying. His bags had, crackers, cereal, bread, a couple of cans of good, some pasta, and chocolate chips, etc.
My bag had all the meat, all the canned goods. So it ended up with me carrying most of the heavy good and Mike with most of the lighter ones. What an experience.
Needless to say we learned a lot that evening. After we got home, Mike got out the map and realized that we had missed a turn and taken the extra long route to get home. At least we had groceries for a while.
I have been asked if I like it here and what I do all day. A friend here said that a man once told her that if he believed in reincarnation he wanted to come back as an Aramcon Wife. Well here is a sample of what I did this past week, maybe that is why. 
