MARCO....POLO!

Marco Polo left Venice in 1271 to take a little trip with his father and uncle. Upon leaving the city quite literally on a mission from God they were not heard from again...for 24 years. Can you imagine? Everyone in Venice took them for dead. Their insurance policies were collected upon. Marco's family divided up his vast collection of pool toys for we all know that is his true claim to fame. However after over 24 years on the road touring the likes of China and Southeast Asia they came riding into town (or boating I guess - it was Venice) like nothing out of the ordinary happened. I'm guessing his family was overjoyed at first and then just really ticked off that he did not write. He of course blamed everything on the Great Khan of China but his mom wasn't buying it and...well I digress.

You see we have been missing things for a long time as well. We have been in Saudi for no where near 24 years. In fact we have been here just over 2 months. However things that we were quite accustomed to back home up and disappeared on us as well. If you go back to the blog I wrote on moving day you will see pictures of all of our stuff being loaded onto a large truck and hauled away. That was on the 15th of August. We haven't seen our stuff since. Over two months now. Rumor has it we may actually get it back sometime next month. That being said something did come back to us yesterday. It may seem trivial to you but to us it was a big deal. In fact it made the entire family run outside - with a camera. What could be soooooo exciting? Well it has been exactly 63 days since we have seen a cloud. Not one. One of the perks of living and working for Aramco is that everyone in the family gets to come home for lunch each day for an hour. This inlcudes the school kids. It is great. Yesterday as we left to go back to school we walked out front and sure enough there it was. A big old cumulus cloud. We were so excited we took a picture. Ok, I was so excited I took a picture. Sarah thought I was just wierd. Deep down I am a weather dork. I love big thunderstorms and snow storms. Needless to say I have been quite literally high and dry as far as weather is concerned. But it is changing! The temperature is dropping everyday and it is actually quite tolerable now. I can't wait for winter. Highs in the 70's and nice cool evenings. As for old Marco Polo he was grounded from the pool for a month. He would sneak out and swim with his friends anyway. His mom would scream his first name from inside the house - MARCO! And his friends would all reply - POLO! Of course the rest is history. Ba dumt dumt.