Carolyn and I just bought our tickets to the country of Georgia for our fall trip.  There is a Muslim holiday in Saudi called Eid which falls in September this year.  So after an extended week-long in-service during which time teachers will be getting our rooms ready and learning about the priorities of our school and district (we have a new superintendent this year), school will shut down and Carolyn and I will be off to Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia.

Carolyn and I at the Oregon coast.  Windy as always.

In the meantime, we’re spending the summer in Portland, Oregon.  Only two more weeks, actually. It’s been really fun meeting up with old friends and hanging out with my family, but it’s been exhausting too.  Our lives seem to swing between a lot of scheduling with people we want to see followed by long periods of down time in which we are forced to notice that our current living situation, cool and comfortable as it is, is not really home and we are often at loose ends with our time.  Still, it is deeply comforting to be touching base and touching lives with all the people who mean the most to us.  

Sharing a tender moment

And it has been indescribably dear to have the time to visit and sing with my mom.  She shows very, very little emotion and cannot handle even the lightest burden of conversation.  But she genuinely seemed to recognize me at our first meeting since I’ve been back and we’ve had a couple of visits where she was at her very best and willing to sing some of the old hymns along with me.  When I first walked into her room I asked her if she remembered me and she said, “Sure.  You’re the crown prince.”

Gellato break in Budapest

Selfie time in Prague

On our way back from Saudi to the US, we met up with my sisters, Caroline, Janie, Cathy, and Jan in Budapest.  After a week there we boarded the train and rolled on to a second week in Prague.  Those were special days not only for the views and European experiences, but also for the laughter and card games and conversations with my sisters whom I hadn’t seen for a year.  It is such a gift to be good friends with siblings.  Here are a few pictures of our time in Europe.

Now to back up and post an entry I wrote but never got around to posting about our Spring Break trip to Thailand.  The people I’ve talked with ALL have loved their vacations in Thailand.  It was no different for Carolyn and I.  There is something about Thailand - perhaps the low-key ethos, perhaps the delicious food or the affordability that makes it a favorite.  I found the people to be uniformly friendly and easy to talk with but feisty at the same time and no-nonsense when needed.

We spent our first of two weeks in Bangkok, a sprawling city with a semi-developed public transportation system but plenty

We visited a Bug and Reptile museum.

The employees were incredibly informed.
This is NOT one of the employees!

of alternate ways to get around.  The most colorful of these ways is a three-wheeled motorized taxi called a tuk-tuk.  No seat belts, no doors, no AC but plenty of personality and charisma.  

Not sure if this is to protect the tourists or arrest them.

We explored a few of the sights inside the city - mainly the endlessly fun open air stalls.  One of the more exciting moments came when a sudden downpour descended on one such market while we were shopping.  The stall owners were most certainly NOT caught unawares but activated a system of plastic sheets that acted as rain gutters which calmly shunted the torrent into the drainage system.  Watching that was even better than shopping!

After Bangkok we caught the night train to Chiangmai.  Around 8:00 PM a officious and incredibly efficient train employee came around and transformed each seating area into an upper and lower bunk.  With our devices plugged in and the train lulling us to sleep we woke up not long before pulling into Chiangmai in time for breakfast at a quaint coffee shop right there in the station.

At a park on a lake.  Lunch was served.

Helmets were included in the scooter rental.
Large selection. These...were the best they had.

Our highlight in Chiangmai...well, really there were two.  On our last day there we found ourselves in the midst of the Thai New Year celebration which involved a bigger water fight than you’ve ever seen.  It’s the perfect holiday...if you’re 8 years old.  More on that later.  The other highlight was renting a scooter and going on not one, but two excursions outside the city into national parks.  Both times we decided to turn both trips into two-day events because we read that there was lodging with terrific views all along the route.  Check out the photos of our trips since...as I’ve heard, they are worth a thousand words each.

Chiangmai's city wide New Years water "fight".

But back to the New Year’s celebration in Chiangmai - surprising puts it mildly.  The whole city is invaded by squirt gun and bucket sellers a day or two prior to the actual holiday.  Then, with one day to go...since, who can resist the temptation to start a water fight even if it is a day early, everyone on the street is a target.  The idea is that you are being well-wished by others who are helping you be cleansed for the coming year.  Yeah right.  In less than a block you are drenched along with anyone riding a scooter or a tuk-tuk.  The people we saw were taking it in stride with the notable exception of an extremely grouchy old man on a scooter who just wasn’t in the spirit.  

Since the temperatures were bordering on scalding, a wet shirt was certainly not the worst of all outcomes.  But you will find that walking around with wet underwear is ultimately a less than comfortable reality and that evening we found our way to supper on the side streets  and took to scuttling quickly past the buckets and squirt guns as soon as the ambushers were distracted.

We departed for the airport around 8:00 in the morning and we questioned our tuk-tuk driver as to the possibilities that we would arrive for our flight drenched. We implored him to find avenues least likely to involve large quantities of water which he did. We were ever so grateful...and sorry to leave Thailand but happy to be departing dry.

Hey there, Friends and Family,

Thanks for checking up on my progress here in Saudi Arabia.  And yes...it has been an incredibly long time since I wrote up my thoughts here in my blog.  I could probably fill up this entire page exploring why it has been hard to keep up with it...which I won't do.  But it probably is worth a few words since it has, in fact, been a part of my life that it has been very difficult to be a writer on this leg of my life's journey.

One of my most persistent struggles here in the desert has been a sense of isolation.  We do not live around anyone with whom we work, and our only source of connection and friendship is with our working colleagues.  Carolyn and I crave our alone time - time away from conversation and interaction by virtue of the fact we're both introverts.  And so our separation from friends at the end of the working day hasn't been all bad.  It gives us time to do things we love like read, exercise, and play music.  But the balance hasn't been right.  It is too much alone time even for us.

I think it is no coincidence that I'm writing this from a workshop in Bahrain - a nearby island nation with a much more inclusive and relaxed life style from Saudi Arabia.  These professional workshops give me, in addition to great information on how to improve my classroom practices, a chance to hang out with my teacher friends in a way that fills some of that void.  Somehow it makes it easier for me to write out into the world from a place of connection.

But enough about that.  Let me move on to more interesting aspects of my life here in Saudi.  Actually, the most interesting parts have been my travel opportunities OUTSIDE of Saudi.  Life here in the kingdom is fairly routine in a good way.  Driving feels natural and easy after the first shock over how aggressive some drivers are.  But now I just stay out of the way of the yahoos bombing down the left hand shoulder and keep an eye on my own safety and sense of courtesy and mutual accommodation with other drivers on the road.  That said, I just paid my third speeding ticket since arriving.  Speeding tickets are a result of machines that take your photo.  Unfortunately speed limit signs are few and far between and I've been paying the price...literally...for not being more vigilant.  How the unrepentant, habitual and reckless speeders deal with this problem is beyond me.  Anyhow, the ticket is relayed directly to your bank account where it shows up with all the other bills and you just pay your fine by clicking on the button and viola, out goes your money and poof goes your fine.

I recently returned from a conference in Mumbai that I absolutely loved!  It was a conference on Responsive Classrooms - a program whose philosophy can be summed up by saying that a student's sense of community, safety, and a feeling of being accepted and well-liked in the classroom is essential to their growth as a learner.  If any of you teachers get the chance to go to a Responsive Classroom workshop, I highly recommend it.  I implemented aspects of it the day I returned to my classroom.  But Mumbai itself was a trip!  Loud, vibrant, dirty, colorful, daunting, and welcoming all in equal measure.  Mainly, thought, I traveled with some folks from school that turned out to be a LOT of fun.  The highlight was a trip to Elephant Island by ferry under which are rock caves that were carved into places of inspiration and divinity by ancient peoples.  It reminded me of the rock churches in Lalibela, Ethiopia.  But without the sense of reverence and worship that Lalibela embodies.

Carolyn and I also traveled to Oman where we relaxed on the sandy beach and looked for interesting shells that, in the end, overwhelmed us with it's plentitude.  I've never seen so many shells in one place.  That was so much fun!

And, hard to believe, I never wrote about our Christmas trip to Italy and Spain where we met up with two of our three kids - Erin and Jacob.  Barcelona was initially overwhelming with its sprawl and busy-ness.  In the end we caught on to a few of the modes of transportation and got a good sense of that fascinating city.  But by far the best part was hanging out with Erin and Jacob.  As far as the actual travel experience, Rome was my favorite.  It was a constant source of enjoyment to see the ancient sites and imagine life as it was.  They were on the cutting edge of technological advancement in their time, and yet lived so different from how we get on with our rapidly changing technology and devices.

Looking ahead, for Spring Break Carolyn and I will be going to Thailand where we hope to hop on a motorcycle and tour around some countryside in the north where traffic is relatively light and easy to negotiate.  More about that when the time comes.

Keep in touch, everyone.  I can't wait to see you all come summertime.  I miss Portland and the blooming cherry trees, the coffee shop, and yes, even the rain!

October News

Dear Friends and Family,

It was a rough couple of weeks for us in early October.  Carolyn hadn’t been herself, in a health sense, since shortly after we arrived.  What initially looked like a persistent and pernicious UTI for which she ended up spending a few days in the hospital getting some hard core antibiotics, eventually resulted in a gall bladder ectomy after a large stone was discovered.

Even after surgery, she needed time to recover including a lot of rest since she was sore and tired - a lingering effect from the anesthesia.  But that next weekend, we were relaxing in a very nice hotel room in Bahrain where I attended a math conference and Carolyn went along for the change of scenery.  She spent most of her time lounging by the pool...even though she isn’t usually much of a pool lounger.  After my first day of learning math methods and curriculum, she was feeling better and we took a couple a walk together.  

In Bahrain you can imbibe in an alcoholic drink, order a pork chop, or watch a movie - all things that are unavailable or forbidden in Saudi Arabia.  (Man, you can really tell the people from Saudi because they TOTALLY over-do it!) The shopping experience was also somewhat expanded but Carolyn was unable to find the low carb tortillas she was promised were there.  I guess people just don’t really know what low carb tortillas really are.  We find that many people think that gluten free or sugar free is the same as low carb.

But to just back up a bit, Carolyn’s surgery went well.  We liked her surgeon, a friendly, fatherly sort of guy with a matter-of-fact approach to his practice.  All indications are that it went as planned with one startling surprise thrown in at the end.  I had to give Carolyn a series of four injections of anti-coagulant.  My nurse friends in the US all tell me that is unheard of in the states, but regular practice...at least at our hospital.  It turned out not to be a big deal - pretty easy since the disposable syringes come pre-loaded in idiot proof systems.

Most of the reading I do is for school since everything feels so new and unfamiliar.  But I feel as if I might be getting closer to actually reading a book in the near future.  

Add to my new enthusiasm for teaching math, the newly found freedom gained from finally getting our many-layered paperwork finished so that we can finally make use of our new-to-us car.  It feels quite different to have wheels and the ability to go wherever we want whenever we want.  The intoxication of this freedom led to a terrible choice on our maiden voyage.  Driving in Saudi Arabia is quite a different experience from driving in the US.  And Carolyn and I somehow chose a night to go out and test our wheels that everyone KNOWS you should NEVER go out.  Friday is the holy day in Saudi Arabia and afterwards, the entire city, it seems, goes for a drive.  That is when Carolyn and I decided to venture out.  (When I say ‘Carolyn and I’ please remember that in Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to drive - the only country in the world with such a law.)

Our new car - a Hyundai Santa Fe for those who care.

It was so bad.  First of all, we didn’t realize that you simply cannot turn around on the freeways here.  There are no exit ramps that lead you back on the same freeway back the way you came.  In fact, there are precious few exit ramps that allow you to cross over to the side opposite from the side you are traveling on.  There are ways to get around this but they are labyrinthine and signless.  So we drove and drove down this incredibly busy, hectic highway getting further and further from landmarks we recognised.  

Finally we managed to get on a different road leading to what we hoped was home.  But first we had to navigate a round-a-bout that was not going ‘round.  The traffic from one direction was so thick - as in five lanes wide going “around” the round-a-bout that we simply couldn’t get through.  Trust me, I tried.  You wouldn’t believe the horns and irate people who couldn’t fathom a person trying to get through...and I wasn’t the only one...just the first to give up.   So after several near accidents I finally joined the current going the wrong way...once again.

At this point it got very, very quiet inside the cabin of our new car.  Neither of us knew what to say or do.  I can’t even remember how we managed to get back home.  The following day, we went out for a cathartic, emotionally corrective morning drive hoping to wipe away the memory of our perilous journey the night before.  Gradually we began to feel more comfortable and since then we’ve been driving to work regularly.

Carolyn tells me that after one week behind the wheel, I have already adopted a Saudi driving style.  I don’t think she means this as a compliment.  

Hard Times

Dear Friends and Family,

Upon admittance

It has been a tough week here in Al Khobar, my hometown.  My thoughts have been overtaken by concern for Carolyn who continues to struggle with her health.  Since last I wrote, Carolyn has spent three days in the hospital getting antibiotics and fluid through an IV.  Hospitals in Saudi Arabia are much like US hospitals with occasional differences that crop up and startle.  Of course no one speaks English as a native speaker, but everyone...well, almost everyone speaks it well enough that you can finally be understood.  But she had all the tests and precautions you would expect in a modern hospital including a CT scan that revealed a large (2cm) stone in her gallbladder.  She was finally cleared to leave the hospital after three days.  What ensued was more sickness.  Carolyn just hasn’t been herself.  Nothing tastes good and she sleeps or rests almost all the time.

A new moniker - The name above her bed

This last week, as a follow up to the CT scan we went back to the hospital to see the latest doctor.  Her gallbladder doctor - soon to be her surgeon - opened with the emphatic recommendation that she have her entire gallbladder removed.  The stone is so large it has already rendered her gallbladder ineffective and a source of infection.

Next, we await a conference with a cardiologist who will evaluate her heart in advance of surgery, and her anesthesiologist.  But the main thing we are waiting for is for her routine dosage of aspirin to dissipate from her system.  Aspirin acts as a blood thinner and makes surgery impossible.  Oh yeah, and we’re waiting for our insurance to be recognized by the hospital.

Starting to feel better

By this time next week, I hope that Carolyn will be back to her old self minus a small piece.  But in the meantime, she feels just awful.  It is unclear what is making her sick.  It could be the antibiotics that she is taking from the kidney infection she is getting over.  Or, it could be her gallbladder which the doctor said will give her some discomfort until it is removed.  

I intended that this blog would be my observations from living in a very different and interesting country.  Instead, I’m writing about sickness and the inside of a hospital.  It is what life has handed us for the moment.  

Best to all.

Getting her third IV site installed

The view from her room

Ready to leave

Dear Friends and Family,

I had a definite low point of my time here in Saudi Arabia so far, last week.  I was grouchy and out of sorts all week long.  Every day things rubbed me the wrong way. Naturally I assumed I was suddenly and inexplicably surrounded by idiots! Well, Carolyn chilled me out, informed me it probably wasn't them, rather it was me, and now I can only surmise that I was having a bout of culture shock.  On September 13 it will have been exactly one month that we’ve been in a completely new and often surprising, sometimes disconcerting environment and I think it just caught up with me.

That said, I feel like I’m on the other side now.  We are one day into our weeklong vacation to mark the Muslim celebration of Eid.  Here are a few things that cheered me up:

• Carolyn and I managed to obtain our mobile phone plan yesterday - an event made possible because I finally received my iqama (pronounced Ee-Kama) - otherwise known as your resident papers for Saudi Arabia.  A great number of things depend on having this document including your ability to re-enter the country upon leaving it, get a driver’s license, register a car, open up a bank account, and the aforementioned cell phone number.
• Time off from school (even though my class is delightful)
• New friends (more about this later)
• I finalized my gym membership

Myself with a good friend of mine - Steph Curry.  Maybe you've heard of him?
His and Labron's jersey are the only ones available here in the Kingdom.
Sorry Blazers!

Our biggest decision was putting down a deposit on a car.  Someone on the compound here was selling his SUV and I jumped on the chance to pick it up.  For those interested, it is a Hyundai Santa Fe with 4WD for driving in the sand. Carolyn and I are hoping to do some desert camping at some point here in Saudi as soon as we can find knowledgeable people to throw in with.  Also, we were advised to get a bigger car as a way of mitigating some of the...shall we say unfamiliar driving habits in Saudi Arabia.  

But to come back to my previous point about new friends...I made a connection on the compound with a woman while on one of the shopping busses (our compound provides bus rides free of charge every day) who is Ethiopian.  Last night Sunni invited Carolyn and I out to celebrate Ethiopian New Year with her family and friends.  

At the center of it all...Ethiopian coffee.

It was a lot of fun with the added bonus of delicious coffee, Ethiopian music, a chance to brush off my Amharic, warm hospitality, Ethiopian dancing (which I declined to the relief of all concerned) and...you guessed it, Ethiopian food.  

OK, so the spelling is off.  Delicious anyhow.  And Hppay New Year to everyone!

Carolyn and I stumbled home four hours later having destroyed our diets and laden with even more Ethiopian food for the following day.  It was mind-bendingly fun to land on a little island of Ethiopian-ness amid the sea of British-ness and Saudi-ness on Sara Village.  

Me with my new friends.

Carolyn and I will probably spend the entire week here in Al Khobar (our fair city) this vacation week simply because 1. Travel is super expensive this time of year  2. My iqama isn’t actually completely in hand - that is to say, I have my iqama number and my exit/re-entry visa but not my actual iqama card which has not yet been printed and 3) Carolyn has been under the weather fighting a bug and has low energy.

On one final note, the gym here on Sara Village is extensive and I now have the ability to make full use of it having completed the orientation and safety session.  The guy who runs the fitness center is very warm and a fount of information so he started me out on a fitness regimen for wimps which almost killed me.  In any event, upon finishing up this blog entry I need to drag my sore muscles and sorry self back up to what seemed at first like a castle of fun and play and now seems like a dungeon of dread to continue with day two of my training.  

August 20, 2016

Welcome to my blog.  I'm Chris Kurtz, a third grade teacher in a school called DEMS in Saudi Arabia. I have never taught at an international school before although I lived overseas as a child.

A blog is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, and now that I’m living in a place people are curious about, the time has arrived.  I feel a sense of urgency in getting started since I want to strike while all of my senses are still a little raw and my point of view hasn’t settled into normalcy.  I know that is a necessary evolution in my psyche for the sake of comfort and stability, but this off-balance feeling can be an interesting time as well.

It is just one day short of a week since we arrived as I write this first entry.  Carolyn and I were hired in December to teach at DEMS. It was a long arduous wait with lots of packing and moving chores that seemed to never end. Here is us on the plane. But we're here now.

Boarded and ready to fly into the unknown.

Just after landing, we were met on the sky bridge and whisked out of a side door into a luxurious black sedan, across the tarmac and then into a special VIP room where we waited for our bags to clear customs.  It is the only time we will be met in such pomp and circumstance but it was lovely to walk into the air conditioned room and see our school principal waiting for us with a big hug and comfortable chairs.  

Still smiling at our destination. Lots of gold trim in the VIP area of the airport.  Carolyn trying out her new abaya.

Let me just take a moment to say that the short walk down the stairs of the jetway to the aforementioned luxurious black sedan was taken through the sort of heat you feel you need to swim through.  Our glasses instantaneously fogged up and the air we were forced to breathe felt as if it might be doing damage to our lungs.  You know how you hold your breath as you open the oven door to check on a pie or the tray of roast vegetables?  It was like that...only you can’t hold your breath that long.  

But more on the heat later.  It is certainly the most in-your-face aspect of living here in Saudi Arabia, but it hardly gets mentioned in regular conversation because...why?  There just isn’t any point to talking about it.  But the heat definitely shapes and narrows your life here in a number of ways, the biggest of which is that it keeps everyone indoors and hidden from everyone else.

The view from our apartment out the living room window.

The humidity increases the sense of heat dramatically.  It is regularly above 110 F and 70+ percent humidity. 

Which brings me to the point that is topmost on my mind every day - how to make a community here for ourselves.  We live on a compound with hundreds of other people, but no one who works in our school.  Reaching out to others with ease and being outgoing and gregarious just doesn’t come natural for Carolyn and I, so these leopards are going to have to grow some new spots.  But you know how friends often seem to fall randomly into your life?  That happened to us on the first day when we went to get our Saudi physical.  The two couples who were thrown into the same process also live on our campus, also are experiencing everything new, also are teachers (although not at our school) and are super friendly.   So that has given us a jump start on the friendship front and hope for the future.

School and a solid, steadying routine is just a few days hence.  I’m sure that will change our feelings and our experiences in the near future, so stay tuned.  In the meantime, I would REALLY like to hear your thoughts and reactions to this blog so that I can get the feeling that I’m connecting with those of you who are reading.  Please keep in touch.