First impressions of Saudi... and our new home!

We've been here for three days now. The jet lag fog is finally starting to lift and it's nice to feel almost human again. We are so impressed at how well Lucy has handled it--she has slept great and we've had to wake her up each morning and from naps to make sure she doesn't sleep too much! It's taken Travis and I a bit longer to get on schedule but finally last night we slept through and woke at a normal time (Thank you Ambien!)

Our new house is beautiful. It is significantly more spacious than the townhome we've been living in for the last 5 years and it has a YARD! I'm so excited for the girls to be able to run outside and play without needing to plan for a walk to a park. Our yard looks out to a beautiful view of the Persian Gulf.

View from our yard!

The first morning a kind neighbor invited me to go along with her to the grocery store. So nice to have someone to show me the ropes! I must say I was extremely impressed with the selection and size of the store. It will be significantly easier to plan meals here than it was when we lived in Prague! Another pleasant surprise is the milk is good.

Our second morning another neighbor invited us to hang out on the beach for awhile. Even though it is hot here, I think it actually feels better outside than it does in Houston! We have a nice breeze blowing off the gulf and in the shade it can actually be almost pleasant. So cool to be able to walk out the back door and be on the beach :)

Lucy and Daddy walking home from lunch

Today and tomorrow we are enjoying family time before Travis goes back to work on Sunday. Despite the craziness of preparing for a move across the world, it has been so nice to have a three week break with him after he worked 12+ hour days for 5 weeks in turnaround non-stop.

Other first impressions:

• Overall it feels like our life here will be a lot more 'normal' and 'western' than I was expecting. The grocery store (Tamimi--Safeway owned) and 'hardware' store (Saco--Ace owned) have a much larger selection of products than I was prepared for. 
• So far it does not feel hotter than Houston. It has been seriously windy though and I'm sure when the winds die down it won't be as comfortable. 
• Our villa has 4 A/C units and they all run A LOT. Unfortunately we didn't discover this until day 2 and I kept turning up the unit in our bedroom the first night thinking that would make Lucy's room a little warmer. She continued to get colder while we kicked off all the covers. 
• The highway and cars look so "American". I've never been to a foreign country where there are just as many large cars and nice highways as we have back home!
• It will be pretty easy to get used to living on the compound within walking distance of all of our friends, a beach, a restaurant, and a gym. Can't say I miss my car at all yet.
• Jet lag was terrible. I hope we figure out a better way to deal with that next time we travel! That said, Lucy has slept awesome each night so far and doesn't seem to be nearly as affected by it as we were!
• Wearing the abaya for the few shopping trips I've been on has not been a big deal at all. I sort of forget I'm wearing it. I sort of appreciated it yesterday when I was in the depths of jet lag fog and didn't feel like getting dressed up :)
• Lucy is taking to the change a lot better than we expected. She calls this "new home" and enjoys the same perks about it that we do. She does miss her Houston friends and talks about them a lot.

Here's a couple more pictures of the front and back of our house. We'll post some inside pictures once we get more settled!

Front of house--we live in an end unit that goes to the third window on the right

Back view of our house. 

Lucy enjoying the shade on our back patio