Jeddah and Cairo Make the News

I was going to post the next part in our Athens vacation recap, but instead I want to show you a bit more about what's going on near us.  So I'm going to talk about rain again.  It might seem strange that the only weather I talk about here is the rain, but it's because it has a huge impact on the people here in Saudi Arabia.

It rained again on Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning here.  It wasn't really worth updating about, because for us, it had little negative impact.  The leaks we had last week had been fixed, and held tight this time, so the only inconvenience was having to ride our bikes home in the rain.

Sadly this was much worse in Jeddah.  Here are two videos of the flooding.  I saw the first one on Facebook from another student on campus, and the second one was posted at Susie's Big Adventure.





As much as I wish I could say this was a one time weather catastrophe, it wasn't.  The same thing happened in November 2009 and left Jeddah in much the same state.  Promises were made to improve the infrastructure, but in Saudi fashion, 14 months later, little has been changed.  What makes this sting even worse is that as part of WEP, a Saudi businessman came to speak.  He talked about how Saudi Arabia has benefited by avoiding investing in foreign countries.  He expressed how much better off Saudi Arabia was because they kept their money working at home.  Clearly there is some disconnect when keeping Saudi Arabia's money in the country can't even provide a safe city for it's people to live in.

In other news, there have been huge riots in Cairo and throughout Egypt about the recent elections.  Considering that we were just there a few months ago, it was shocking to see places we recognized filled with angry protesters.




So that's what's going on in our little part of the world.  We'll be back tomorrow with more pictures from Athens!

Piglet Started Bailing or More Rain in Saudi

Well, it's been raining again.  Last time it rained, it did storm, but didn't really last more than a half hour or so.  This time, however, it's been raining off and on (mostly on) for hours now.  And it's been absolutely pouring for the last hour or more.

The street outside our apartment is flooded to the mid-calf, and a lot of the sidewalks are ankle deep or more.  The exterior stairs have become mini waterfalls, which look really cool! Unfortunately, there's also a lot of soil erosion from all the rain.

This would all be good fun and games, if the water decided to stay outside, like the last time, but nope, we've got three leaks so far!  We've got two upper windows leaking, the bottom of a window in our living room leaking, and a small leak over the stove.

Here's a couple pictures and videos of the rain in our apartment and outside.

Water dripping into our window sill, unfortunately they're too far off the ground to be able to reach.  We managed to toss a towel into one of them, but don't have enough towels to handle all of the water.

Water on the floor.  It's hard to see, but there's water on both of the tiles in front of the window.

While the damage to our stuff is non existant, and most of the damage to campus will be fixed in the next few days, Jeddah will unfortunately take a bigger hit with all of this rain.  Let's hope everyone there is safe.

Friday Rain

All of Thursday there was a 30-40% chance of rain, not really high enough to expect rain, but high enough to hope for some.  Sadly the day went by with only a few minor sprinkles around 7pm as we were riding the bus home from the grocery.  It had even thundered and lightninged, but basically no rain.

Now this morning at about 7 am we were awoke to gloriously loud thunder and, yes, rain!

Since video speaks better than words here's a little clip of our rainstorm.

Since the last time it rained here, they had significant flooding issues, we'll be watching for any signs of water on the inside.

Sand in the Desert

We've been getting more and more sandstorms around here lately.  I don't know if it's a seasonal thing or not, but it's unpleasant to have to ride to class and the winds actually get pretty high.  It also gets really dry when the sand blows.

Everything outside gets covered with a not so fine layer of sand.  We don't use our outdoor furniture much, but it does accumulate a lot of sand.

The weather seems to be cooling down lately.  It was in the 60s when I left the apartment this morning!