6000 in 10 Days
The kids were recently here in Saudi Arabia. I have learned that tourists were allowed to visit until 2002 and then it became difficult to get any tourist visas. I thought that the millions who come to Mecca put such a strain on the system that it was well enough to not have tourists. That benefits me in keeping the Red Sea and diving to myself. Ha! The downside is that it was hell to arrange the papers for their visit.
I have been told not to mention my daughter in blog or name any more. Why? Her students have been looking her up and being directed to my blog. She finds this very weird. How? They look up her name and it shows up as my last and her first name, since I only mention her first name. But it’s easy to do the connection.
Activities – packed, memories… priceless. David complained that he saw some things only through the lens of a camera because I had recruited him to shoot while I was driving. It wasn’t that bad? He shot 200 (driving, probably more than 500) (iPhone unknown number), Julia shot 500 and I shot the rest. So do the math. Really! I shot up a whole lot of images. The kids were really pretty good sports about the whole thing. I did the math and it turns out that more than 33% of the images included the kids. I had two USB drives filled with all the images we shot and with a very quick pass edit of 700 images to present to them when they left. Thinking back on the film era this would have been impossible and even very costly to do.
When my daughter (remember, delete her name) was here last, I realized that there two types of shots. First there are the images of interest, like diving. And then there are the family memories. I made sure I shot more images of the kids diving, and touring. In the end these are the important images of life and legacy. I hope they will have had good memories of the times we spent together and that the images I took will help remind them of how much I cared. Meanwhile they spent a lot of time admonishing me for my eating habits and scary driving. While my wife was not here, it was as though she was watching with disapproval through the kids nagging. So I promise to be good for all concerned.
photobackstory 