Hospital, Shoe Shopping, Philipeno Food, and the Grocery Store...

Hey,
Last Night I had the opportunity, (after getting an improved grade on both my Greek and Latin, and Science assessments) to go off the compound with my mom, dad, and sister Tatum. We went first to the hospital to get my eyes checked.(I had mistakenly thought my prescription had gotten worse.) I had to get the Saudi German's "green card" which took a lifetime and a little bit. Saudis have zero respect for lines and my mom and I, being women, were cut about 5 times before getting a turn. After our adventure at the Saudi German we headed to Center Point-the Kohl's of Arabia. We shopped for shoes for about an hour. In this country, I am either the biggest shoe size in the store, or they don't have any shoes big enough for me. However, Saudis do have cute shoes. I mostly just liked the older shoes rather than the new arrivals and of course they no longer had any of the older pairs in my size. My mom, Tatum and I walked away with only 1 pair each after being rushed due to salah. We will need more shoes for Italy...At Center Point, I also purchased myself a new pair of sunglasses, and my mom and dad bought Tadhg a stroller for Italy. After Center Point we went to our favorite Filipino restaurant and had dinner. After dinner, there was ice cream and we strolled down to the grocery store for our weekly load up. We had to get extra food this week because Ramadan starts on Wednesday... This will defiantly be a special experience. Once again, our shopping was cut short by the second and last evening salah. The only other interesting part of our shopping trip was the bag boys dropping our water melon and splitting it in half.
That's all for now, Keenan (By the way...only 32 more days until we leave for Italy and with all of our traveling to Italy, Switzerland and Egypt, it will be Christmas before we know it!!!)

June 23, 2010

The other day mom and dad bought us a trampoline which we promptly set up the next day... The next morning we found the foam poles that attach the netting to the trampoline looking like swiss cheese! Guess who..... The kittens had decided it was a wonderful toy while we were still asleep! Now we all have pulled stomach muscles from jumping too much and spray bottles for disciplining kittens...

More Pictures.....

Camels Crossing






Kittens on
March 5th one day old (they are 100 times cuter now)


Tatum's interpretation on me in an abaya...






Baboons on the side of the road!


More baboons...

June 8th, 2010

This week we took our mid-week day off on Tuesday. I may have mentioned that my dad broke his ankle about two weeks ago playing basketball. He had an appointment, I needed a vaccination, we were all going to get our teeth cleaned (the dentist is located at the hospital), and my mom wanted to get some moles my siblings and I had checked out. We arrived and immediately marched into the dermatologists office. The dermatologist told my mom it was not necessary to remove any of the moles but mom decided to "play it safe." Great!!!! I had to go first. They laid me down on an hospital bed in a stark white operation room. The gave me an extremely painful numbing shot and began the "surgery". First they took a little tiny saw and cut the mole out of my neck. Then they zapped it with purple fire, and then they took a corer and cored it out. They repeated the process about 7 times (for one mole) and finally it was over! They treated the wound and put a big band aid on it. Next was Will who sat through the whole operation completely alone (except for the doctors and nurses). After Will was Cam and then Tatum. During both of their operations you could hear them screaming bloody murder all the way down the hall. Cam held onto the door and refused to come in. My mom had to drag him into the room... Cam and Tatum each had multiple moles. cam had two on his stomach and one on the back of his neck and Tatum had two right next to each other on the side of her neck. We each have a bag of medication for everything from pain to antibiotic. Wow what an experience...

More Pictures

Some more Pictures of the compound including another picture of our house(still not updated), a Saudi stop sign, and pictures of the baby and big pool...

June 6th, 2010

Last night Tatum and I had the opportunity to go shopping with my mom and dad. Our first stop of the evening was the grocery store. Apparently Tatum is a big hit in Saudi. The man at the deli gave Tatum two trays of turkey to snack on while we shopped the man at the bakery gave Tatum some Saudi chocolate treats, and at the checkout the clerk gave Tatum a pack of gum... I guess I am not as cute as a little blond girl in a pink polka dotted sweatshirt! Our next stop was the Philipeno restaurant inside of the crappiest hotel in Saudi Arabia. After a good Philippine dinner we went across the street to get some ice cream. We stopped at the Home Center were we got some reusable water bottles, memory foam pillows and two black and white canvases of Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower for my room. On the way home we once again noticed how uneconomically strategic Saudi salesmen can be. They put all the chandelier stores right next to one another so that there are literally about 50 chandelier stores right in a row. Now it is not like you can patronize any one chandelier store because one only buys a chandelier about every 20 years if that. Wow Saudi is definitely different!

Our House (NOT AN UPDATED PICTURE) I will have to send an updated pic