Signs of life

Finally we are back! We? Yes, actually, since a week ago we are BOTH here in Saudi.

After endless back and forth, a lot of stress, thousands of emails and phone calls, it finally happened quite quickly.

Last Wednesday we finally received the feedback in the evening that the visa has finally been issued and on the next Sunday Felix' flight was already There was already Felix' flight.
The last week we were - at least when it comes to professional/organizational matters - forced to be unproductive. Because punctually at Felix' arrival the Eid holidays began (because last weekend was the feast of sacrifice, one of - if not THE - most important festival of the Muslims).
Most people here at the university were on vacation, the offices empty and the contact persons not available.
So we continued with setting up the apartment a bit:

..and above all we recovered a bit from the nerve-racking past few weeks.
But we were able to organize a few things as well. For example, we now have a mailing address - if you want that - just let me know. I don't know how well it works to send letters to Saudi, but if you like you can try it :-) I also dared to make the first online order attempt a few days ago and ordered something from Amazon US. Allegedly, it should work quite well, I'm curious.

Last Friday we finally went snorkeling again! Due to the holidays, all the regular trips were already fully booked very early. But you can also book a private trip here. We hadn't thought about that before, because we assumed it would be too expensive. To our surprise, a 4 hour outing on our own boat (with a maximum of 6 people) was about the same price as the 6 hour trip on the big excursion boat (with 35 people).
So Felix, I and 4 other new friends treated ourselves to the 'luxury' of a private snorkeling trip (including a light snack on board, it costs about 35€ p.p.).

The great thing was that, as we were on a smaller boat, we could also drive to a reef that was much further out to sea than all the others we had been to so far. The trip was particularly worthwhile because we could also see two whitetip reef sharks at the 'Rose Reef'! (Unfortunately, there is no photo evidence..)

Today, the new work week started. Now it's finally time to find out concretely how things can continue for both of us here. In terms of work, there have been some changes here in Saudi in the last 2-3 weeks. But that's all too complicated to write here. If you want to know how it looks currently and specifically, I/we prefer to tell you in person.
In the end, it remains the case that we can use all your crossed fingers!
But hopefully we will have more detailed information towards the end of this week.

Now enjoy the rest of the weekend and greetings to everyone!
Felix and Susann