The Nelson Family

On Friday the 19th we received news that we had received our visas and therefore fulfilled our last contingency! We are really going to Saudi Arabia. The plans are still to head out on the 30th. The movers arrived today to pack things up. They will finish tomorrow. At that point we will begin living out of our suitcases.

Our home phone will probably be disconnected here shortly, as the Vonage service begins. But, you can still call us on our cell phone.

Instead of starting on a frustrated note, let me say how much smoother this process has been because of the help of Saudi Aramco. Jen and I are convinced that if we had to go through this without help it would have taken three times as long. We are currently on a listserve of expatriates that are living in Saudi Arabia or are planning on going soon. Most of the people are working with much smaller Saudi companies. I read their stories, for instance, of how visas take three to four months, and two to three tries, and I am grateful that we have only been waiting two to three weeks.

Here is what we know:

• The boys have been accepted into the schools in Dhahran.
• On Dec. 12th we pulled the boys out of school here.
• On Dec. 15th we will be moving up to Blair and Delora’s while we tear apart the house in Nibley; we will be traveling back and forth each day to continue packing, sorting, tossing, and storing.
• On Dec. 20th we will have a cleaning party at our house to clean walls, windows, baseboards, etc. (we will save the carpet cleaning til later). It will be an all day event. If you can make it, you are welcome to come at any time after 10:00 am.
• On Dec. 22-23 the shipping company will come to pack up our shipments for the air shipment and the sea shipment.
• On Dec. 25 we will have Christmas at Blair and Delora’s.
• On Dec. 30 we will get on the plane to fly from SLC to Minneapolis to Amsterdam to Dhahran. That is approximately 18 hours of flying time!

What we are still waiting for:

• We are still waiting to hear about visas; although that should be here very soon.

Although we are still waiting on visas, we have been given the go ahead to start making the big changes: Sell cars, get property management company to rent the house, ship furniture, etc.

Vonage

I will be setting up an Internet phone account with Vonage. For those who aren’t familiar with how Vonage works, let me simply say, you will be able to call our Logan phone number and get us in Dhahran. The cost is the same as if you were calling us in Logan. My understanding is that we will be able to keep our current phone number. I will let you all know when that is finalized. Oh the wonders of the Internet. As soon as we get to Dhahran I will be scrambling to get high-speed Internet set up so that the Vonage service will work. There may be a week or two down time on the phone service until I can get it set up.

Email addresses

In between the time we leave and the time I get high-speed Internet set up in the house, we will still be able to get email. We will have dial-up at the house and there is an Internet cafe in Dhahran. Our current email addresses will still work. Those won’t change. Those will be our primary form of communication for the first few days.

Time Zones

My understanding is that the time difference between Dhahran and Mountain time is 9 hours. It is 10 hours between Dhahran and Pacific time.

Time to play with the boys

For those of you in Nibley/Logan that want to play with the boys before they go, please call us so that we can arrange play times. For the cousins in Idaho, hopefully they will be around enough that there will be plenty of play time during the Christmas break.

Christmas presents

We hope that you will understand if we don’t send out any Christmas presents until well into January (or maybe February). Please understand that we haven’t forgotten you. We are just not in too good of a position to adequately deal with Christmas right now. As for your gifts to us (and please don’t take this as a solicitation the smaller the better for us since it will have to be packed. Sorry it has taken so long to let you know, we didn’t even know we would be stateside for Christmas until today. We do know that there is a JCPenny’s and a Toys R Us near Dhahran. We assume that gift cards will work there just fine. And, honestly, if it is too much of an inconvenience and too short notice, please don’t worry about it this year.

Jen and I both knew that at some point we would be moving away. However, I think we have shocked even ourselves this time.  On Monday (Sept. 22nd), I interviewed, was offered and accepted a job in Saudi Arabia. The company is an oil company called Saudi Aramco. We are planning on a December(ish) start date–anywhere from Thanksgiving to Christmas. This is actually something we have been researching and fasting and praying about for a couple of months.
In July some of our friends, Heather and Todd, who live and work in Dhahran now were back in the States visiting and stopped to visit us. They “planted the seed” then and it is now bearing fruit. The job should be a great career move for me and I will be able to continue working on my dissertation from there.

Clearly, it is not all about me. The entire family is very excited for the adventure. We will be living in the city of Dhahran.  It is a city of about 12,000—6000 Americans and 6000 from other countries around the world.  It is an English-speaking westernized “camp”.

For those who are wondering about Muslim clothing, Jen does NOT have to wear the abaya but, in some ways it helps to not stand out. She also do NOT have to wear a hijab and most expatriates don’t. Also, the clothing restrictions that she does have only apply when leaving the compound. They do not apply while in the compound. Outside of the camp Jen just has to wear a longer shirt that comes about mid-thigh and goes past her elbows. One of the biggest limitations is that Jen cannot drive outside of the camp. But from the sounds of it, doing that is pretty risky anyway—there are some pretty crazy drivers!

We will not be living in tents.  We will probably move into a 3-bedroom, 2 ½ bath, 1-car garage, two-story house. It will be about 2,000-2,200 sq ft.

Within the camp there are lots of activities for the family including:  tennis, swimming (year round), soccer, baseball, horseback riding, racquetball, bowling, a movie theater, biking, scouts, and lots of other activities that arise as the people who live there create their own groups according to their skills and hobbies.  Travel generally is top on the list of activities that people are involved in.

There are actually about 85 LDS people and they have their own ward. They meet in the school and have fully functioning auxiliaries.

Schools are challenging with a low student/teacher ratio. Trips to other countries are available as part of the curriculum. As you do some reading on the Internet and look at the links on the right, you will probably read about boarding school. Fortunately, in the last few years they have started a high school at the American Consulate which is about 10 minutes outside of camp.

We are all excited about this opportunity.  The boys are really looking forward to it.  We know there will be hard times and hard things to overcome.  But we will have each other, the Lord, and lots of emails and phone calls to family!

As much as I hate to say it, things are never for sure until, as they say, the fat lady sings. We will continue to keep you informed as things progress and we will let you know when the fat lady sings. We just needed to let everyone know what is up.