Daily archives: December 26, 2008

2 posts

Christmas in the Kingdom

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas. By the time you actually read this, it will of course be late on boxing day, but I have a good excuse for being a bit behind. I’m in the magical Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and have better things to be doing than blogging all the time. However, I can’t seem to help myself. When everyone else has gone to bed, or whenever I can steal a few minutes, I try to fire up the old computer machine and try to dash off a few lines, which brings me to this post. I wanted to get this fired up and online before we left for some internal trips for the next week. We’ll be away from Riyadh, and I’ll be unable to do any blogging while on the road. So this post will have to keep you entertained until we get back here to the Diplomatic Quarters. However, I can assure you that this will be a great little post, as we did some pretty unique things on Christmas day over here. Last year, I found myself at an all day cricket test in Auckland, NZ, and this year, I have a similar experience to share with you all, but you’ll have to read on to find out exactly what it is. You might also want to just check out the pictures on flickr that were put up from the day!

Christmas Eve Excitement

Another day, another series of little stories to share with you all. I’ll try not to get too long winded as if I do that, I’ll never actually get these posts done 🙂 At the end of my last tale, we had just wrapped up day 1 with a great view of Riyadh at night, and head headed off to slumber to get ready for another day of fun. Andrea had to work once again, but only for a half day, but it was long enough that we had a chance to head out for a little more exploration with Patrick and Helena in their SUV. The target of our exploration this time around was to be the Wadi , or creek-bed that lies around Riyadh and the DQ. This area only gets rain a few times in the year, but when it does, it causes flash flooding sometimes. This is the area where it would happen, but for most of the year, it is actually a roadway of sorts. Read on for a little bit about that as well as some other things I did on Christmas Eve. As usual, don’t forget to check out flickr for more great shots!