Summer's Best Eight Weeks

Sons Coleman and Chris attended a great summer camp one year -- it's title was SB2W, or Summer's Best 2 Weeks. They agreed with the title, and still talk about some of the good times and people there. So it is with our just-ended summer holiday visiting friends and family around the U.S.: An organized family reunion of Barb's maternal relatives, on the Oregon coast. Our planned reunion with families from two different countries who happened to have connections in Duluth. Our 40th high-school reunion in Beavercreek Ohio -- noting that neither Barb nor I actually graduated from there, but we attended those schools for many years and still have dear friends among our classmates [link to photos]. We attended the church that Barb's father founded in Beavercreek, now preparing their own 50th anniversary celebration.
We enjoyed time with son Christopher, more physically fit and mature than ever, working two jobs to gain Texas state residency [link to photos].
Texas is dry dry dry, with drought restrictions clearly evident. We are used to the dry climate, as we are living in Saudi Arabia. But we were continually stunned by the lush greenery in the rest of the U.S., and the profligate use of water (carefully and expensively-treated for drinking, but mostly used for washing and irrigating). We finished up our time with a restful weekend at the cabin [link to photos].

We also took the consumer pulse, in the eight large cities we visited: the house-for-sale signs are not quite as numerous as last year, but people's attitudes about a future economy are bleaker -- few jobs, little hope for improvement, and concern about political polarization. That said, the municipal infrastructure is in better shape than I have ever seen it. Your comments?

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Where we are working now

ISG Jubail School is the Anglo-American school for this area: Jubail is one of two planned industrial cities in Saudi Arabia, given a special royal commission for development and planning. Our district, the seven schools of International Schools Group, runs the school in the other industrial city -- Yanbu -- as well. Jubail is on the east coast, between Dhahran and Kuwait. Our nearby "big city" is the tri-city metropolis of Dhahran-Khobar-Dammam, where all the big shopping malls and quaint old markets are, along with the central 3 schools of our district, where Coleman attends high school. ISG Jubail has 410 students -- an average of 2 homerooms for each grade, K-10. Class size varies, up to 22. I have 12 in my required course "Computers & Information Management"; Barb has 12 students in her first-grade class. Most of the teaching staff come from the U.S., some from the Commonwealth. Several teachers are wives of engineers an...

Riding the Bus often

From 201010 Saudi scenes It is ironic that this land of cheap gasoline has so much group transport -- buses. From 201010 Saudi scenes Our housing compound has a Toyota-Coaster bus that takes some to/from school (we usually go earlier and return later, on a similar bus that the school provides). Driver Yahya takes residents on the 90-minute trip down to the Big City shopping every Thursday morning. The above picture shows our group one Thursday, usually going to Ikea or the new Lulu's Hypermarket , or the Dhahran Mall. Coleman rides a different bus every day to and from school -- usually 100 minutes there, 80 minutes back. His bus is evidently an old tourist bus, usually comfortable but a bit dusty. The air-conditioning usually works too well. I've ridden it with him several times, to attend business meetings at the district office. From 201010 Saudi scenes There he is, at 5:45am every morning, at the start of the bus run. Fortunately only about 20 stu...

Reservoir of European Youth, Parliament

A few days ago I walked to the nearby Pasteleira Park, planning to visit the city museum at the Reservoir. Walking through the park I noticed a large group of young people gathered in a circle, engaged in team-building activities. My days in education attuned me to the spectacle and piqued my interest, so I sat on a nearby bench and watched as a succession of enthusiastic students ran to the center and started an activity, which all the others joined enthusiastically. What sort of group would this be? A typical high school class would include a portion of disinterested teens, and others only half-heartedly participating. This crowd was unanimous in their excitement. I also noted that the leaders were speaking in English, though the breeze muffled the words. I walked around, found a couple of older participants on the side, with official-looking lanyards, and asked: this was an activity of European Youth Parliament , simil...

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