February 17, 2012 - Visiting the Al Rashaid Village compound

Friday (Desert Sunday), February 17
After church today, we followed another family to their compound to have lunch at their house.  Here are pictures of the drive.  This is Doha, one of the nicer towns near our compound.

There are always pictures of the king wherever you go.

Lots of road blocks and security as well -- makes traveling slow.

We are entering the compound.

We couldn't believe how beautiful this compound was compared to ours!  It's much smaller than ours, and everyone walks or rides their bikes to get from one place to another.  They don't have a commissary, but they have a mini market and many other nice features!

For instance, here is a picture of a townhouse here...

And here is a picture of our house (a typical townhouse in our compound.)

Here is a picture of some other houses on our compound.

Even the carports have arched openings... and flowers everywhere... it was so beautiful.

This is the cul-de-sac where they live.

This is the entrance to their front door.

Here is their kitchen...

And here is our kitchen.

We had a wonderful day  eating, swimming, visiting with other homeschoolers, and touring the compound.

Here are their pet bunnies.

 Here is the school room (which I always love).

Playing with hula hoops in the back yard.

This is the walkway between houses.  Straight ahead to the left is the mini market.

This is the entrance to the pool.

Here is a picture of our pool (we do have nice big slides.)

But here is their pool--we felt like we were at a resort.  Of course it made us so jealous!  But Cene' says it's so small that she doesn't get to drive, and there aren't any parks like we have.  I think I would prefer the resort!  And actually, I'm not allowed to take pictures at our pool (because it might offend a woman) or wear a two-piece bathing suit (not that I'd want to); but at this pool, you can take pictures and wear a two-piece.

Inside their club house, a man was selling hand woven rugs.  It took a long time, but he finally convinced me to buy one.  We really did need a rug, I just didn't need a hand-woven rug!  But it's beautiful.

Here is the restaurant next to the club house.

The gym.

The tennis courts.

Everything here was tiled instead of concrete.

This is a picture of the concrete sidewalk in our compound.  We have lots of space, but it's not quite as pretty.

The bowling alley.

The game room.

The playground.

After lunch, the kids all had a blast decorating a T-shirt with fabric markers and alcohol.

Stephen is making fancy coffee drinks.

Here are the kids' finished t-shirts.

Then the kids went swimming.

And the adults talked some more.

Here's the rug we bought.

We all had such a good time that we stayed until dinner time and ordered pizza from the restaurant.

These are Cene's famous brownies and cookies from lunch time.

Then we roasted marshmallows around the fire pit.

Yikes... that one got a little burnt!

Here is our living room before we put our new rug down.

Here it is with our new rug -- doesn't it look great!?

We had a wonderful day, but better get to bed... school (& work) tomorrow!

- Pattie -