Bye, Bye Jeddah!

We moved to Baku, Azerbaijan about 2 months ago and I feel bad that we never really posted much about our 2 years in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia!
Life is busy and since having William, it seems even more difficult to sit down and write a post.
But I didn't want to start blogging about Baku without having finished our old chapter.

During our home leave in the US this summer, we had a lot of time to ponder about our past 2 years.
In general, we are happy to move on. Towards the end of our time in Saudi Arabia, we were kind of done with this place. I don't know if it had actually much to do with Jeddah as a place, or if we were just really excited to move on to a new chapter in life and live in a new, much nicer city. Probably a little bit of both.
Some expats really, really like their life in Jeddah, but for us and many other expats, it was not always that easy to deal with the traditions, the strict rules and limitations, the weather, and other inconveniences.

To review our time there, I would like to share some things that we think we are going to miss and some things that we are gladly leaving behind.


1. Our compound
Although I'm not a huge fan of living on a compound (I prefer more privacy and anonymity - so German!), there are definitely some advantages to living on a compound.
Besides being allowed to behave like Westerners (wear "revealing" clothing without an abaya on top, PDA, convenience store not closed during prayer times), you never really feel alone. There was always somebody in the neighborhood to hang out with at home, at the playground or at the pool. The compound also regularly hosted events like a Halloween party, or a Welcome Back party after summer break.

At the compound's Halloween Party last year 

We're also going to miss being able to host big parties on our compound.
We hosted a big Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's and William's 1st birthday party with about 25-30 people, and we absolutely loved it. On our compound, we were able to request tables, chairs and a fridge for keeping drinks cold for free. That made hosting bigger parties pretty easy. I will miss organizing these events. I find much joy in putting together the guest list, thinking about the decoration, menu, music, and activities.

Last year's Christmas Party that we hosted for our friends and colleagues  

We now live in an apartment in Baku, Azerbaijan, which means no more bigger parties for us. We will still host parties, but definitely with a much smaller group.

Valentine's Day Party

William's 1st Birthday Party

We will also miss the pools. One was only about 10 meters away from our backyard and there were three more pools on the compound. We never really used them as much as we thought we would (so typical!), but it was still nice to look outside while doing the dishes and looking at the nice blue pool and the green plants and palm trees surrounding it.

The main pool on the compound

2. The people
When I asked people, who left before us, what they were going to miss the most about Jeddah, the most popular answer was "the people", and we totally agree.
It was very easy to make friends on the compound and at the consulate. There were always some bbqs, casual pool parties and other events going on.
Having William with us definitely complicates things and makes it difficult to get out together in the evening. But our friends have been so flexible and understanding. We feel like we really lucked out with our friends and neighbors.

Mike and Krista, our friends who were even gutsy enough to go on a Germany trip with us

Our awesome Korean neighbors - the best neighbors we could have ever asked for

                             

More friends, food and fun

3. Mocktails
Since alcohol is forbidden in the Kingdom, many restaurants offer a wide range of mocktails. As a member of the LDS church, that's pretty convenient. I never have to double check with waiters to get me the virgin version of drinks.

4. Availibility of groceries and foreign restaurants
Since there is a very large expat community in Saudi Arabia from Western countries, Africa and Asia, the grocery stores offer a wide variety of vegetables, fruit, herbs, American products, Asian, Indian and of course Middle Eastern ingredients. I like to cook internationally, so this was pretty awesome to have available. There was also a decent fish market right next to the Red Sea where we sometimes bought some delicious fresh sea food.

Saudis love American food, so we were lucky to have many American chains like the Cheesecake Factory, Shake Shack, P.F. Chang's, Papa John's, Texas Roadhouse and many more.
We felt especially lucky to have one cheaper and one more upscale Korean restaurant in town. We looooove Korean food and went there quite often.

5. English
Again because of the large expat community, most people can speak English, which made life there a lot easier. Street signs are oftentimes in both English in Arabic, the same with menus at restaurants and product labels at grocery stores.
Here in Baku, we have to guess a lot more about what we are buying since most product labels are in either Russian or Azerbaijani, which we both don't speak.



3 Things we're not going to miss:

1. Lack of entertainment
We didn't feel it too much during the 1st year of being there, but after that we kind of got bored of seeing the sames things. The "highlights" of Jeddah are the old downtown area "Al Balad", which was about 30-40 minutes away from where we lived. Al Balad consists of many old, not too well maintained buildings, some more interesting to look at than others, some old city gates, and many stores with cheaply made products. There are some cool looking spice stores and some gold and silver jewelry shops, but we were never really interested in buying anything there. We mainly went to the downtown area to buy larger quantities of nuts.

Many old buildings that are falling apart

A typical spice shop

The other "highlight" in Jeddah is the "Corniche", a boardwalk that runs along the Red Sea. Before coming to Jeddah, I imagined Anthon and me walking along the beach, putting our feet in the water, playing a little bit with the waves and collecting some seashells, kind of like you do in California. But sadly, the Corniche is not that beautiful. There is not really a beach where you can walk along the water, but instead there are huge rocks that were put there to protect the shore, so you are several meters away from the water. We have something similar here in Baku now, but it is done sooooo much nicer with a little park along the shore, very nice paths to walk, various plants and trees, cafes,....

So after walking along the Corniche for several times, I had no desire to go there anymore. Especially because I, like all other women, had to wear an abaya, a long dark dress that you wear on top of your clothing. Since Jeddah is right at the Red Sea, it was very humid and hot most of the time and wearing an abaya on top of your clothes never made walking around outside sound like a great idea (unless it was December, January or February).
So then the next "entertainment" was going to malls, of which I got tired very quickly, too. I never bought anything there, except my graduation dress, but besides that the prices were never that great.
We mainly went there to get some food at the food court.
So yeah, entertainment options were kind of limited there, but luckily we had some good friends and neighbors that kept us entertained :-)
So, since there is not too much to do there, people eat out a lot with friends.

2. Prayer times
Definitely not gonna miss those! In Islam, you are supposed to pray 5x a day. Since Saudi Arabia is a very strict Muslim country, all stores must close during the prayers. Although the prayers only take about 10 minutes, stores usually close for about 30-45 minutes. So we always had to kind of schedule trips, grocery shopping, and date nights around those times.
It was especially difficult when William was a baby and took naps throughout the day and had to be nursed every couple of hours. Another problem was that we weren't allowed to take normal taxis and had to call the embassy's drivers preferably at least 3+ hours before your trip. I just didn't like not being able to be spontaneous and leave the house whenever I wanted and whenever I could with William.
Some stores didn't even open until the evening, so you never really knew if all the effort it took to get out would be even worth it.

3. Bad Internet
Ugh... the internet there was so slow! We tried several internet providers, paid quite a bit, but they all sucked. We could never really skype or factetime with family.



Our highlight during the 2 years was probably our trip to Mada-in-Saleh, which is about 7 hours away from Jeddah. The archaeological site is also called "Saudi Arabia's Petra" because it was built by the Nabateans who also built Petra in Jordan.
Since there was not too much to do in and outside of Jeddah, it felt really refreshing to see something totally different. I don't think we would have gone there by ourselves with our very limited Arabic knowledge, but luckily we had great friends who invited us to go with them.

I couldn't decide on one picture - it was so beautiful and interesting there that I took sooo many pictures. 

I think I was about 22 weeks pregnant with William then

Elefant Rock near Mada'in Saleh and Al-Ula

Archeological remnants of a very old city called Al-'Ula

                                                 




Some other highlights were having family and friends in town 💓

Last Christmas, Anthon's parents visited us for a week

Friends in town - the Kellys

My mom and sister came to visit us, too

We're excited to tell everybody more about our new post. It's a place that people usually don't know much about, but it's pretty nice here, so we hope we can convince more people to come and visit us :-)

Saying our goodbyes before leaving Jeddah - these people made life there so much more enjoyable and fun!!!!