Our school arranged for a government agent to meet us at our gate to take us through customs quickly. They had all the new teachers on the same flight from Amsterdam so we had a group of nearly 20 people. After several hours of waiting for the group to clear customs and get our luggage we loaded busses and headed for our new home on the An Nassim compound.
The school provides a completely furnished 4 bedroom 3 1/2 bath villa with nearly 3,000 sq feet of space. They stocked our kitchen with some basics and provided us with all our linens, dishes, kitchen ware, and furniture. It's not all exactly what we would choose but it's all free. I've created a little tour of our compound and villa with pictures and as you will see, it looks a little outdated like we time traveled back to the 80's. The Arabs seem to love pale colors on the walls and lots of gold and bling.
This is a picture of the front of our villa. We live in #113. The villas are all three stories and connected like town homes. We plan to add some plants and little touches to our porch to make it seem more welcoming.
When you walk into the villa you enter this sitting/parlor area. I have a huge Chinese banquet table coming from China that will look perfect in this room. This will be my Chinese room with our relics and things from China.
Just right off the sitting/parlor area is a living room. Right now it looks a little bare but again once our shipment comes from China we can add our own little touches. I can't wait to get all our Thai decor and Vietnam things out and on the walls.
This is the formal dining area which will never get used as a dining room. Notice the very 80's light wood furniture...this is par to the villas. Everyone here has this same dining room set.
Next is the kitchen. The exciting part of this room are all the American sized appliances including a dishwasher. That is something we haven't had for three years in China. Love having some of those conveniences back.
This is another view of the kitchen where we have a little eating area and door that goes out to our backyard.
The backyard needs some work. They say that we have a gardener that takes care of it but it doesn't look like they have done much lately. The trees and bushes are overgrown and desperately need trimming. We are so exciting to have a yard though because we promised the kids we would get a dog. Quite a few of our neighbors, which are all teachers at our school, have dogs so we are on the hunt for a friendly addition to our family.
Upstairs on the second floor is a loft area where the TV is currently. Once we get a better and bigger TV, we will move things around downstairs and make the formal dining room into a TV room. The dining room table will be moved in the living room which will become more of a music/sitting room. This room will then become a game room with the x-box and kid stuff.
On the second floor are three of the four bedrooms and two baths. This is the kids bathroom. Again notice the American toilet along with the "butt washer".
This is Vika's room. She has two beds in her room but they only gave us bedding for one of them. We will eventually take the kids to pick out their own bedding and will get extras for the other bed which Rachel will probably use when she comes to visit. The gold lamps really need to go. Like I said it's a time travel back to the 80's, plus the Arabs seem to love gold.
Each or the kids rooms have a huge closet and desk. This house had so much storage and space. More than we know what to do with.
This is Nicole's closet and desk in her room.
Nicole's room has a double bed and plenty of room for a teenager.
The Master bedroom has a huge King size bed, which looks small in this picture because the room is so large. It is called a "super" king which is about the size of a California King. We love huge beds because we need our space. The beds are pretty comfortable, way more comfortable than then beds in China. We have some memory foam bed toppers coming in our shipment so once those get here, it will be perfect. The ceilings in this house are all very tall so it creates a very open feeling.
The master bathroom...
equipped with our American toilet and the European "butt washer".
Upstairs is our laundry area. Again, notice the American sized washer and dryer. No more tiny crappy Chinese size that only fits two pairs of pants and takes two hours to dry clothes.
Jonny's room is on the third floor along with his own bathroom. He also has two beds in his room but only one had bedding.
Part of the third floor is a roof area. We can hang clothes out if we want. It's so hot that they dry way faster than the dryer. Right now it is too hot to enjoy this area but maybe we can find some good use of it. We had a large roof area at our house in China but never did anything with it. Had lots of ideas but it was way too hot. They say in about a month it will start cooling off and will be really nice outside.
This is the view of our compound from our roof. The center area is a circular driveway around the compound with parking in the center and in front of our villas.
Another view of the compound looking towards the guarded gate.
The compound has a club house with a large recreation room. Their are quite a number of kids on the compound and they like to come down here to watch movies. It's a great place for kids to hang out.
The compound has two tennis courts but one is used for basketball,
air hockey and fusball,
ping pong table and pool table,
squash court,
tennis court (but it's a little too hot right now for this),
weight room,
and a swimming pool. The pool has been a favorite spot for us. We come down here just about everyday for a few hours in the evening. We thought the water would be too warm but it actually is just the perfect temperature. The pool is open until late November and then closes for a few months because it gets too cold. Can't imagine that but they say it does get a little chilly in the winter. It will be a lot like Arizona weather which really isn't that cold at all.
This is a picture of the front of our villa. We live in #113. The villas are all three stories and connected like town homes. We plan to add some plants and little touches to our porch to make it seem more welcoming.
When you walk into the villa you enter this sitting/parlor area. I have a huge Chinese banquet table coming from China that will look perfect in this room. This will be my Chinese room with our relics and things from China.
Just right off the sitting/parlor area is a living room. Right now it looks a little bare but again once our shipment comes from China we can add our own little touches. I can't wait to get all our Thai decor and Vietnam things out and on the walls.
This is the formal dining area which will never get used as a dining room. Notice the very 80's light wood furniture...this is par to the villas. Everyone here has this same dining room set.
Next is the kitchen. The exciting part of this room are all the American sized appliances including a dishwasher. That is something we haven't had for three years in China. Love having some of those conveniences back.
This is another view of the kitchen where we have a little eating area and door that goes out to our backyard.
The backyard needs some work. They say that we have a gardener that takes care of it but it doesn't look like they have done much lately. The trees and bushes are overgrown and desperately need trimming. We are so exciting to have a yard though because we promised the kids we would get a dog. Quite a few of our neighbors, which are all teachers at our school, have dogs so we are on the hunt for a friendly addition to our family.
Upstairs on the second floor is a loft area where the TV is currently. Once we get a better and bigger TV, we will move things around downstairs and make the formal dining room into a TV room. The dining room table will be moved in the living room which will become more of a music/sitting room. This room will then become a game room with the x-box and kid stuff.
On the second floor are three of the four bedrooms and two baths. This is the kids bathroom. Again notice the American toilet along with the "butt washer". 
This is Vika's room. She has two beds in her room but they only gave us bedding for one of them. We will eventually take the kids to pick out their own bedding and will get extras for the other bed which Rachel will probably use when she comes to visit. The gold lamps really need to go. Like I said it's a time travel back to the 80's, plus the Arabs seem to love gold.
Each or the kids rooms have a huge closet and desk. This house had so much storage and space. More than we know what to do with.
This is Nicole's closet and desk in her room.
Nicole's room has a double bed and plenty of room for a teenager.
The Master bedroom has a huge King size bed, which looks small in this picture because the room is so large. It is called a "super" king which is about the size of a California King. We love huge beds because we need our space. The beds are pretty comfortable, way more comfortable than then beds in China. We have some memory foam bed toppers coming in our shipment so once those get here, it will be perfect. The ceilings in this house are all very tall so it creates a very open feeling.
The master bathroom...
equipped with our American toilet and the European "butt washer".
Upstairs is our laundry area. Again, notice the American sized washer and dryer. No more tiny crappy Chinese size that only fits two pairs of pants and takes two hours to dry clothes.
Jonny's room is on the third floor along with his own bathroom. He also has two beds in his room but only one had bedding. 
Part of the third floor is a roof area. We can hang clothes out if we want. It's so hot that they dry way faster than the dryer. Right now it is too hot to enjoy this area but maybe we can find some good use of it. We had a large roof area at our house in China but never did anything with it. Had lots of ideas but it was way too hot. They say in about a month it will start cooling off and will be really nice outside.
This is the view of our compound from our roof. The center area is a circular driveway around the compound with parking in the center and in front of our villas.
Another view of the compound looking towards the guarded gate.
The compound has a club house with a large recreation room. Their are quite a number of kids on the compound and they like to come down here to watch movies. It's a great place for kids to hang out.
The compound has two tennis courts but one is used for basketball,
air hockey and fusball,
ping pong table and pool table,
squash court,
tennis court (but it's a little too hot right now for this),
weight room,
and a swimming pool. The pool has been a favorite spot for us. We come down here just about everyday for a few hours in the evening. We thought the water would be too warm but it actually is just the perfect temperature. The pool is open until late November and then closes for a few months because it gets too cold. Can't imagine that but they say it does get a little chilly in the winter. It will be a lot like Arizona weather which really isn't that cold at all.So far we love the compound life. Many of the teachers from our school live here and there are kids all ages here. Jonny, Nicole, and Vika have all made some great friends. We don't have to worry about them because they all just hang out in the compound and have found plenty to do together. They go shoot pool, play ping pong, watch movies, swim, and just have fun.
We don't have a car yet because we have to wait until we get our Iqama's (green card) which should come in a few weeks but we can always find a way to get where we need to go. The school provides a bus from our compound to school each day and back. The compound has a van that will take us anywhere we want to go on certain days and Tamimi's (Safeway) provides a van to transport us twice a week to their store. We are walking distance to a little mall that has a huge grocery store called Hyper Panda with some other shops and a food court that has KFC, Quizmo's, Popeye's Chicken, Starbucks, Baskin Robbins, and some other food chain's. We are about a 10 minute drive to IKEA and another mall that has just about everything in it. We have been very impressed with the availability of products and stores here. It is like living in America but in Saudi Arabia. Things are very Westernized here.
We plan to do some decorating and painting of our villa so we will post pictures as those things happen.
This has been a great move for our family. We heard how much people love living here and now we know why.
5 comments:
It all looks so good and you should be very happy there. Wish that we could enjoy it with you. Keep your blog posted for us. OK???
ENJOY SEEING YOUR LIFE IN SA. GARY
Hey , i am not sure if you still read this. I am planning on moving to Saudi, any recommendations for a single male early thirties?
any advice is much appreciated
Sam
Wow... just wanted to say, thanks so much for posting this. It brings back a lot of memories from my early childhood, when I went to school at DEMS and then Aramco. I had a hard time finding pictures of the place but this is awesome. So thanks!
I lived here in the mid to late 90s…it’s amazing that most of the furniture is EXACTLY THE SAME!! Seeing these pictures brings back so many memories. How long did you stay on the compound?? Thank you!
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