A cool, rainy day!

Yesterday I was writing about the vegetation, and now I've been able to get a batch of photos off my travel camera. Dana bought me a nice little Sony point and shoot to bring, because I really didn't want to bring one of my big cameras. If I had, I'd have needed all kinds of support gear to make it worth bringing - lenses, flash, memory cards, chargers, etc.  I didn't relish carrying all the weight, nor did I have the room in my bag for that much more stuff.

But my nice little Sony has done well for a throw it in the bag and bring along lightweight camera! Here are a couple of tree pix I took the other day. Apparently the large trees here are in the Acacia family - they get big and some of them have massive, complex trunk structures. The leaves are very small, I guess that is more efficient in this heat and with so little moisture to work with.

Another common tree is the Sawda tree, which looks a lot like a cedar - slow growing, gnarled rough trunk, but the green part is different.

It didn't occur to me til this morning to wonder about the birds. All the trees and plants have been imported to a desert over the past 80 years or so. When did the birds show up? Did they migrate in from the coast? There are doves, wrens, sparrows, and I'm told there are parakeets around here every once in a while. Wherever they came from, there are lots of busy, noisy little birds here. Love it!

Today I walked to work in a drizzle, and it was 68 degrees. Quite a surprise, but a nice one. it drizzled most of the day, and occasionally broke out into a genuine hard rain, and the high was 77 - lovely! The forecast for tomorrow is 80% chance of thunderstorms and rain, so can't wait to see what shows up with that! I don't have an umbrella, so I may be wet by the time I get to work! Here's a look at the forecast for Dhahran, Saudi Arabia:

I'll enjoy the rain, as do all the plants which by this afternoon were greener and/or more colorful. All the flowers perked up with all that wet! But it looks like a warming trend is on the way, upper 90s just around the corner!

What Grows Here?

I’ve been doing some walking since I moved on camp last week and have noticed a few things. There are lots of plants, and there are lots of birds, which makes me think about a comment made by a co-worker earlier today. He mentioned that there is nothing green here that is indigenous to here.  Hmmmm.

There is foliage everywhere! There are manicured lawns, beautifully planned and maintained flower beds, medians with planters and palm trees, and several kinds of tree, some of them that must be many decades old to reach their size.

When they found serious oil here 80 years ago, this place was sand and rock and that’s about it. As the oil flowed, the camp grew. As more people came, of course, they had to be taken care of and made to feel as comfortable as possible. Amenities like trees and green growing things were brought in. 

Here’s the thing. There’s no dirt here. Sand and rock, remember? Turns out you can grow just about anything you want in the desert if you pour enough water on it. So now we have some amazing greenery all over the camp, along the highways, and in upper-end developed areas, but it is all growing in sand. Walking on grass grown in sand is like walking on a damp sponge – soft and squishy, but if you get enough water on it, lush! Here are some cell phone shots on camp:

 a sideways view of a very pretty flower bed (darned iPhone pix!!)

 sideways view of blooming flowers in sand, with soccer field behind it

 palm tree and grass in sand - the tree seems appropriate!

Have you seen pictures of crop circles in the U.S? Big circles of green where they use the traveling irrigation arms? I saw a satellite image of Saudi Arabia and there a green patch in the middle of the country, near a town at a crossroads. Zooming in showed dozens of big irrigated crop circles – I don’t know what they grow there or where they’re getting the water, but that must be some kinda deep well. The only other green spaces are on the coasts where there are cities, and there aren’t many.

So I will enjoy the green here while I walk around – there are only 87 varieties of tree in Saudi Arabia, and there are a handful of those represented here. The big ones are in the acacia family, and they have some amazing shapes. I have some neat shots on my good camera, but right now my laptop doesn’t want to talk to the memory card, so those will have to wait for another post!

Internet in my Pocket!

As I mentioned before, getting online is a little different than at home, where wifi and the internet are nearly everywhere in a city, or at least readily available! Here you have to work at it a little more.

I bought a personal mobile hotspot on Amazon before I left, as I'd read from a co-worker to be that I would need such a device. Rather than wait to get here, Mr. In Control had to get a good one! Well, it may or may not be, but when I got it out of the box and inserted the SIM card that allows it to connect to the 3G internet signal of my carrier, it didn't work. Of course I hate it when things don't work like they should, and it is a bit aggravating to be able to read directions, understand them, set the thing up as directed, and it still wouldn't work!

After two days of this, and spending way too many hours on the effort, I went to the phone company office on camp and asked for help. The Arab gentleman helping me was just as determined to get it to work as I was, and even more so.  After an hour and a half I was ready to throw the thing in the trash and move on, but he wouldn't let me. 5 minutes later he found a setting neither of us had seen before, and in a few minutes I was up and running!

Now wherever I am I can turn this guy on and skype, text, check the web or my emails. Very helpful! And tomorrow I'm moving from the hotel to the dorm (not really, but that's how I think of it so far) on camp, where there is no wifi, so it's perfect timing to get this working!

<It's now Friday morning, three days after I wrote the above, and I just discovered that this post didn't publish. There was more that I'd written but I can't remember what it was, so will send it now as is!!>

A little trip to the Mall of Dhahran

Today seemed like a good day to go to the mall for some shoe laces. My good office shoes have a brand new pair of laces waiting for them on the shelf in my closet at home, which doesn’t do me any good here when the old ones break. You’d think that was a pretty simple thing to come up with no matter where you are – we all wear shoes, right? Maybe that’s not always true, cause I’ve had a tough time finding some. Got some at a different mall last weekend, but they are boot laces and are about 15 inches too long.

My company, Saudi Aramco (Aramco for short) goes to great lengths to take care of the people it brings in from around the world to help them. One nice thing they do is keep a fleet of new, gleaming, spotless Mercedes Benz buses. Think Greyhound buses on steroids. These buses run a regular schedule from Dhahran to other Aramco facilities in the area, to four different malls, to a hospital, etc. 

Today my target was the Mall of Dhahran, less than 10 minutes away. First stop, though, was the massive Ikea store across the street from the mall – maybe I’ll see it next weekend!  The bus then pulled around to the southernmost entry to the Mall of Dhahran, gate 6. This mall was unlike any I’d ever seen, and actually pretty cool. It’s essentially a big hollow donut. There are a dozen “gates” facing outward all around this thing, so you could park close to your destination, wherever it was, and come in near your store. In the center of the mall is a kids amusement park – this seems to be a popular feature around here, but I didn’t explore it any closer. I did get a look around, though, as I walked the entire circumference.

What an amazing variety of shops and stores! Some signs were only in Arabic – beautifully ornate calligraphy that so far means nothing to me. There were at least a dozen coffee shops, some simple stands, some entire sit down cafes.  There are dress shops that most of you ladies would swoon at because they were, essentially, ball gown shops. I’m talking off the shoulder, plunging neckline, low back affairs covered in glitter and sparkles and belts and sashes, etc. Some very sexy, intriguing numbers that would look right at home at a big, formal, high society event at home. 

I don’t mean to go on about this, but now picture who was in the mall. Mostly men in thobes (long white robe and Arab head dress) with their wives and children. The children are like kids anywhere – run, play, duck, ignore their parents, etc. The women are all in abiyah (long black all-covering robe) and head scarf, many of them veiled as well, with nothing but their eyes visible. Sometimes there were clusters of 5-10 women, all covered head to toe.

Who wears these extravagant gowns, and when? One must wonder!

There were shops with leather handbags. There were dozens of shoe stores, with high heels and wedges in every shape and color – these are not shoes for the desert, folks. These are ball gown shoes. I saw a candy store the size of a Circuit City store.  Lots of jewelry shops, many of them very specialized. One place was only men’s Swiss watches, one was only earrings. One was Swarovski Crystal! Many many many clothing stores, but one was only belts, another was all scarves.

Here are some of the recognizable name brands I saw and jotted down in my iPhone; this is not even close to a complete list, but you’ll get the idea: Pottery Barn, Clark’s,, Timberland, Guess, Cinnabon, Sony, Gap, Hushpuppy, Aldo, Sephora, Godiva, Pizza Hut, Tony Roma’s, Outback, Olive Garden, Versace, Carolina Herrera. There were shops with “of London” and “from New York” in the names.  Pretty eye catching assembly of snappy stores, really. And full of people going in all directions. It made for an interesting navigation job to figure out where I was, where I was going, power walk as I went, make notes in my phone, see the shops without looking at anyone, and above all don’t touch anyone! This is a very non-contact society.

Quite an interesting excursion, all in all. FYI, in my circuit around this giant donut I saw only one store selling thobes for men. And I found my shoe laces, exactly what I needed and hadn’t found in 8 other stores, in the first 10 minutes I was there, and the Ecco shoe store. I’ll have to go back, because they were very nice, had what I wanted, and had some great looking shoes I wouldn’t mind trying!  BTW, this is the low-end mall around here.  Can’t wait to get a good look at some others!!

TAIW!

The Saudi workweek is Saturday through Wednesday, which makes Monday hump day, and today was casual day and TAIW!! You know, Thank Allah It's Wednesday!

This morning I moved out of the hotel and moved on camp. They have a hotel for short-term visitors named Steineke Hall, named after the guy who found the first major oil strike in Saudi Arabia. It's not bad really, for a short visit.  More or less a normal, tidy hotel room. Not really designed for long-term stays like mine, but it will work fine - I just have to be clever about where to put all my clothes!

Someone asked about the food, and I've waited to report on that until I've had a chance to test the waters a bit. The hotel had a morning buffet that was, let's say, eclectic by American standards. Every day the buffet included baked beans and fried fish - no, I didn't try baked beans for breakfast, thank you. Other choices, which tended to rotate, were chicken and beef sausage (no pork here, remember) but they were both rather flavorless. Beef bacon, which I know is bringing puzzled looks to your face! They slice some cut of beef very thin, and do their best to imitate bacon with it, but essentially it is a tough, stringy piece of steak. Most days featured a very tasty chicken with onion and red pepper stir fry which I enjoyed often.

Some days there were fried eggs, some day scrambled with onion and peppers - very tasty but always runny, but maybe juicy would be a better term. Several days there were grilled chicken cutlets, and some days were essentially small steaks and they were very good! Nice little medium rare steak for breakfast - not bad.

There was always a large bread buffet with toast, rolls, croissant, and a variety of pastries. I've been working to cut down on my bad habit of eating loads of stuff that's bad for me, so every day I had a light serving a variety of the things above, and maybe a roll or piece of french toast, and added a nice plate of fruit - usually watermelon, pineapple, and orange slices.

Lunch has some great choices here. An adjacent building has a big cafeteria with a multi-cultural buffet. There is always Arabian food, and another line will have a wide variety of dishes, and there is always a salad bar with a huge array of options. Today I had sauteed vegetables which are actually perfectly done, not cooked into a mush, and two grilled fish filets which may have been the best I've ever had - perfectly seasoned, wonderful flavor and light flaky texture.  Oh my, so good! I cheated today and had the first dessert of the trip - a small serving of a local version of bread pudding with raisins, dates, and sliced almonds - very tasty! Add a bottle of water and my lunch cost about $8 (32 Saudi Riyals).

There's a dining hall across the street from Steineke. Some of the consultants have complained loudly about it, but I'm finding it to be all to good. At least three different buffet lines, with at least 10 entree choices. I've been there a few times for lunch so far, but have enjoyed every meal I've had. Maybe I'm just weird, but I'm not hobbled by the expectation of traveling to a wildly foreign place and expecting it all to be just like home. Just because a pastry doesn't include 2 cups of sugar per serving doesn't make it awful, just different! It actually makes it more like the rest of the world has things. I think the American national diet of sugar/salt/preservatives proves that just because we do it doesn't make it right!

Tomorrow I'll test the dining hall for breakfast, and may visit a local mall and find lunch there. You may notice I didn't mention dinner. In fact I've stopped eating a big evening meal, opting for fruit instead - lovely apples and oranges and kiwi and bananas! In fact when I got back to my room tonight they'd left a very nice fruit plate for me, and it's just about time I went and enjoyed some! More soon.

Bits & Pieces

Hello all! I know it's been a few days, and I have a lot of things to write about, but it's been kind of an off balance week, so today I've got a few short topics to touch on, more tomorrow!  These are pretty mundane, but hopefully they'll still be of interest.

Birds. I know, not what you expect to hear about on a blog like this, but I'm pretty fond of birds, and as a pilot I really appreciate their marvelous skill in the air. I'm familiar with many species at home, but there are lots of new ones here. There's some kind of swift - long, slim, quick and maneuverable as they flash about after bugs in the twilight. There's one with a raucous voice that at first I thought was a big mockingbird, but the pattern is a bit different and these guys are way too big. There are large birds that soar, and I'm sure they are related to the ones I know, but I still can't identify them for certain, and there are loads of sparrow-like little guys that flit here and there, and hop around in the grass outside the dining hall hoping for tidbits!The one that is probably sure to be found around the globe is here too - the dove. And they are loud!

Green! I can see the desert from the top floor of my building - it fairly startling, actually, because there's stuff and buildings and roads and then - nothing! It all just stops and sand begins. This will take some getting used to. All around the camp, though, are nicely kept green spaces that are most pleasant to the eye and senses! Here are a few I've snapped with my eye phone!

 above is a courtyard outside the dining hall.

 a flower near the commissary (sideways, I know, tired of fighting to make it upright!!)

 a garden area above the dining patio where I had lunch today! (also sideways - sorry!)

one of many greenspaces created inside a highway access loop

Networking. Folks, we don't know how good we have it in the west, for so many reasons! One of them is the ability to get online. In my not-too-big hometown you can go into most grocery stores, malls, restaurants, coffee shops, etc. and get free wifi. And at home, while it isn't blistering fast (we live a little way out from town!), we still have reliable high speed internet access and a 24/7 wireless modem so we can connect, for the most part, anywhere and anytime. This place is different! There's wireless internet access in my hotel, which has been a blessing since I've been here. My work was the subject of a cyber attack two years ago, so there is no wifi on camp, part of the protect-the-system response. Internet access is not, in general, available. So if you want it you have to carry it around with you. I bought a mobile hotspot on Amazon before I left home, which is a darling little pocket-size device to create my own little wifi zone. I had to buy a SIM card from a local wireless carrier, and as soon as I can convince the SIM card to talk to the internet I'll have access whenever I need it, which will be helpful when I move on camp in a few days. Oh, the joys of travel!

Weather. I know what you're thinking, the desert is horrible! It's HOT! True, but so far the weather has been delightful and I've tried to walk or do something outside every day. Last week we had a high of 99, but with ultra-low humidity it still felt very comfortable. Today the high was 87 and it felt cool! One of the buildings near mine has a cafeteria with an outdoor patio and a group of us had lunch outside today - so nice! The mild weather is in the forecast for the next week or so, but we are apparently overdue for a change. I'm told that last year by this time it was already consistently in the 100s, and there was a series of dust storms in April. I will enjoy this while I can!!

Communication - a lifetime of change

When my parents were little, their households had telephones. If you wanted to call someone you picked up the phone, talked to the operator to tell them who you wanted to talk to, and the operator used a switchboard to connect the parties.

When I was a boy, we had a telephone. Since we lived in town it wasn't a party line, which is when everyone on a line shared that line and if someone else was using the line you just had to wait your turn. No ours was a single party line. We dialed (and that's the round thing in the old phones that had finger holes and rotated!) 5 digits and could reach anyone in town. Long distance was just something they did in the movies.  We also had comics, and one of my favorites was Dick Tracy - a detective. Dick had a two-way wrist TV that he could use to call the chief - pretty cool stuff.

In the 1950s one of my favorite authors, Robert A. Heinlein, wrote about a teenage heroine who talked out loud to dictate a letter and a machine in the room printed out what she said in neat text! Another story described a character whose purse buzzed, she took out her folding phone, got the answer she'd been waiting for, snapped it shut and dropped it back in her purse! Wild imaginings!!

When I graduated from college most homes still had just one telephone per house, although the phone company was heavily adding extension lines within a home. Just one number, but you didn't have to race from one end of the house to answer the phone if you didn't happen to be there with it when someone called.

And the phone had a thing called a cord - the handpiece was tethered to the base unit so you had to stand right there with the phone to use it. So annoying. Later we got neat coiled cords that let you reach all the way across the room! Watch an old movie, you'll see what I mean.

When we lived in Anchorage in the 1980s I had to be in the Philippine's for a few weeks. Wanting to keep in touch I made many phone calls home - talk about long distance! I would speak, stop, and about 10 seconds later Dana would hear what I'd said. She's speak, stop, and about 15 seconds later I would hear what she said (never did figure out why the timing was different). It was amazing that we could talk to each other at all across the massive Pacific Ocean - it was even more amazing when we got a phone bill for hundreds of dollars the next month.

Today everyone has their own personal science fiction portable phone! And we have Siri to take dictation and record it for you. And here I am in Saudi Arabia, more or less two continents away from home, and I can use Skype or FaceTime on my iPhone to talk instantly, with no delay, with full-color video to my family. FOR FREE!! That's a lot of progress for a lifetime, don't you think?

So next time you are casually making a call, appreciate the history of it just a little bit. Not very long ago at all it wasn't cheap, it wasn't quick or simple or easy, and it wasn't clear. But it's always been important, so however you do it, stay in touch.

So Mark, what are the Arabs like?

I’ve always been a people person, and love to watch them and see what they do – we are fascinating! So this is an important question: what are the people like in Saudi Arabia?

First, they are not all Arabs. The people working and living here are from all over the globe. I’ve met people from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, Japan, Poland, Norway, Mexico, and of course one or two of us from the States.

The religious requirements in Saudi Arabia are explicit and strict for behavior between men and women. Two men can walk down the sidewalk holding hands, heads leaned in close for conversation, and give each other a hug and kiss when they part.  If a man and a woman were observed by the religious police doing this, they may be stoned to death. If they are married or related, they may only be beaten. No holding hands, no kissing, no contact in public. The Quran makes this all very clear, but I’m not sure why. I have it on my iPad, and will read it while I’m here (I’ve always wanted to, and a good traveler does his best to understand his host culture) but haven’t had leisure time to read anything yet!

Unrelated men and women do not interact, and women do not go out alone. Restaurants and other public areas have areas for men, and areas for families. The family area will accommodate men with families, or any single or unaccompanied women.

The Muslim culture seems to have a serious love/hate relationship with women. That may not be the right term for it, but it is what comes to mind. On one hand the women are honored, revered, and protected – I do believe that is the root motivation for this cultural behavior. On the other hand, this behavior makes the women totally, completely, absolutely subservient to men. They cannot drive, they cannot go out alone, they cannot be in the company of or spoken to by a man who is not family or husband, they must be covered when in public (some are veiled, some not, all wear an abiyah, a long black robe that covers them from shoulder to feet), and she shouldn’t make eye contact with a man not her family or husband.

Western women are free of many of these “protections,” but are regularly hassled by the religious police, the Mutaween, for not covering up properly or for being alone. I’ve met some women who have been here for up to 20 years and they love it, but I don’t think I would choose to tolerate such restrictions for very long. 

But I’ve gotten off track – I started to talk about people. I think the people here are pretty much exactly the same as the people at home, the ones in Europe, Asia, America, etc. This morning at breakfast (my hotel has a nice buffet) I saw a lovely Japanese couple at a nearby table. One of them always had a napkin in hand, and occasionally one would pass it to the other with a surreptitious glance and a quick squeeze of their fingertips. So clever and private, and so sweet.

A group of Arab boys came in for breakfast wearing jeans and shirts with sport logos and big bright graphics, chatting and playing and teasing and if it weren’t for the language it could be an American junior high school team dropping into Hardees for breakfast. There was the kid who was slimmer and smaller and quieter than the others, there was one who was nearly twice the size in height and weight of the others, there was one who was obviously the leader of the group, and then the rest were just average looking teenagers acting like any group of teenagers.

An Arab family came and went through the buffet. Two boys and two girls in western-style clothes, the little girls in pigtails (adorable!), the boys in shorts and t-shirts. The father in a thobe (the long white robe Arab men typically wear) and the mother in black abayah and face veil. The boys went tearing around to see what foods were there, the father ignoring the boys, and the mother gesturing and (apparently) directing the father in no uncertain terms to get those boys under control, the father grudgingly doing so and looking put out for his troubles. All so typical! I saw the boys pestering each other, poking and teasing and laughing, and saw the girls whispering about the boys, teasing them, and laughing. 

All totally normal human behavior wrapped up in a new environment. Just one more reminder that under the skin we are all the same. Wherever we live, however we dress, whatever our customs and our skin color, we are all brothers and sisters walking the same dirt and breathing the same air.

The people here are all sizes and shapes, just like anywhere else. If you have a stereotype of Arabs as tall and thin, you’d be wrong. They are that; they are also short and slight, tall and big and strong like a football player, short and stout and rotund, some just jumbo sized like me. Too much American influence on diet, probably! For the most part, just like at home, 6-foot-tall Mark is taller than most men here. The women vary in height, as you would expect, otherwise they are exactly the same: invisible sheathed in a shapeless black bag and veil.

Although I must point out that some of those robes are what one might term fashionable, if seen in a difference setting. You are not supposed to look at Saudi women, and absolutely shouldn’t make eye contact, and I’ve done pretty well at shorting out my lifelong habit of closely looking at everyone I see, male and female, to respect the culture here. But the other day as I was walking out of work my glance crossed what I would guess to be a woman in her early 30s (she wasn’t veiled, but otherwise was covered from head to foot).  

She was pretty, and her robe was beautiful! It was trimmed in some kind of lace or edging that was a lighter, kind of translucent shimmery material that was a lighter shade of black, and there were vertical rows, about six inches apart around her garment, of some kind of beading that sparkled when the sun hit it. It was less of a bag or cape and more of a fitted garment. Seriously, this looked like it should be on a red carpet somewhere. I should point out that I didn’t look or stare at her, just took this in at a glance as I looked across the crowd of people walking, and used my pilot/Jedi skills to replay it after. Everybody can do that, right? :)

Can’t go with a photo, so here are a couple of views of my hotel – as you can see it has age, glamour, and a few scratches.  It’s not bad, I’ve been in much worse, and it certainly has some advantages. I’ll probably be here another week, then move on camp.

A few words about this place

I left home a week ago today, and this afternoon I finished my first work week. A lot has happened in seven days – it’s hard to choose what to tell you about! But in honor of my first week on the job I may as well explain why I’m here and tell a bit about that.

Saudi Aramco is the largest producer of energy in the world, most of it in oil and gas. They are also on the way to becoming one of the giants in renewable wind and solar energy production. A few years ago they decided it was time to become the world leader in training for its upstream professionals – these are the guys who find the oil and figure out how to most effectively and efficiently get it from the ground. They created the Upstream Professional Development Center, as seen below! (I quickly grabbed these shots with my iPhone; I've been assured that if I stop to carefully line up shots and look like I'm taking pictures, security will show up and discuss things with me!!)

 The building and the program are only a few years old, and the curriculum is still in development, and that’s why I’m here. I’m part of a content development team as a technical writer, along with instructional designers, subject matter experts, and graphic designers. Between us the courses get designed, written, and illustrated. Another team takes over to teach the classes.

So I’ve spent the week onboarding, getting online and into the system, and getting oriented to the task, the team, and the place. All in all I’m impressed – the team is comprised of some very talented people under good leadership. The place has some state of the art and world-class technology, and the place will grow on me, I’m sure!

Today it was 100 degrees F but I’m not bothered so much by the hot as by the BRIGHT!  I cannot go out without my sunglasses; my eyes just (so far) refuse to adjust to the brilliance of the sky. With the dust load in the air helping to reflect and refract the light the sky just looks chrome for the past few days – I’ve never seen a sky like it. Time will tell if I get used to it, but for now I’m thankful I tucked my heavy-duty wrap around my head sunglasses into my bag!

The camp is very well laid out and nicely maintained. There are lovely trees and flowers and planting beds with all kinds of greenery. The sidewalks are lined with delicate little flowers which must be watered most of the night to survive the daytime onslaught of sun and heat.  The headquarters building is a beautiful piece of architecture, but I won’t take a picture of it as they are very sensitive here to cameras. Government buildings must not be photographed. It is an awful social error to take a picture of Saudis.  And people have been lynched for taking a picture of women – it just isn’t done. I will respect this, unhappily, but I also intend to go home intact and that is my higher priority! This shot kind of jumped out at me yesterday after work – beautiful feathery stalks backlit by the afternoon sun!

I’m on the top floor of my building, and it is enclosed in tinted glass which is mostly very dirty. They clean the windows every month or so, but it’s a losing battle against wind-borne sand, grit and dirt. Reportedly there was a thunderstorm last night, but I didn’t hear it. When it rains after a long drought, though, the rain may come down as mud, making just the kind of mess you can imagine on everything.

Off camp looks a lot like Tatooine in Star Wars. In fact, if memory serves those scenes were shot in this region of the world, so I suppose the resemblance is fair.  Dry, dirty, rocky, dry, dusty, rough, and forbidding. People have lived here for a long time, but there is nothing inviting about what I can see there.  I could survive if I had to – I’ve had appropriate training while in the military – but would just as soon not exercise that opportunity! Here’s a view from the top floor of my building – this is just down the street.

While I’m here I do want to say thanks to Darby, Bertha, and Lena for pitching in to fill my place with all the photography activities I’ve disrupted by being here!! But especially I want to thank Dana for taking on all my stuff and doing an amazing job with it! I love you Sweetheart!!  See you again soon on Skype!

It’s been a long week since I left Arkansas. Busy days, lots to take in, and not enough sleep do tend to finally catch up to me, so I’m off to bed. Thursday and Friday are the weekend here, so I have the next two days to explore on my own. For sure I’m going to the mall to find shoestrings! Sadly the new ones I intended to install in my black shoes before leaving are still safely on the closest shelf, awaiting my return!  Good night all.