The King's Visit

Last week, our company hit a milestone anniversary, and because of this, we were honored by a visit from the king. The last time a king came to visit us was 50 years ago, so this was a really big deal. For this event, a director and production crew were flown in from France to produce a community show for the king.

I don't know how they were selected, but Sarah & Jack were invited to be one of the "King's Stage Kids", which meant they would be sitting on the patio with the king during our community performance. (yikes!)

There was a week of rehearsals (yes, even my kids who didn't have a speaking part or dancing part had to practice sitting for hours!:) We traveled back and forth for 5 days preparing for the visit. The selected children were asked to wear their national dress. Sarah wore a Vietnamese Ou Di to represent our Asian background and Jack wore a Red & White striped Golf shirt to represent our American background.

Security was tight for obvious reasons and on the day of the visit we waited in our designated area for hours and then after that, waited in the performance area for over an hour. We joked, "Who does he think he is, the king? :)" This picture is of the National Guard and royal body guards:

Jack walking in:

Sarah waiting patiently for the king:

As tired as we were from our week of traveling and rehearsing, when he came in - you could feel the energy level go up immediately. Everybody perked up and cameras were going the whole time. King Abdullah looks great for his 85 years!

Our kids were sitting about 20 feet from the king - you can see him on the left under the Saudi emblem and the kids sitting on the patio on the right:

The program we had for the king included a welcome speech, a poetry reading from a young boy, and a couple of dances from the children. The program also included expats who were children the last time a king visited our community back in 1947! This is a picture of one of the "children" giving a speech. I bet they never thought they'd be back in Saudi, let alone meeting another king!

The whole performance was finished with a sword dance (rumored to be one of the king's favorites) performed by both western expats and arabs.

Here's a picture of all the expats in the dance:

Here's a picture of the dance as it was going on - the drums were awesome!

The king surprised us all by joining in the sword dance - everyone was so excited and pleased - we were all cheering!

What a great experience! I hope it's something the kids will never forget. I know I won't!