iowamike21@hotmail.com or mikekielkopf@hotmail.com
AFTER TWO interesting years in Venezuela, Mary and I have moved on to Saudi Arabia and the American International School of Riyadh (K-12 student body of about 1,000). Mary is teaching 4th grade and I'm teaching 10th and 11th grade English. We arrived in Riyadh on Aug. 6, and our shipment caught up with us two weeks later.
So far we've been really busy getting acclimated at school and learning to find our way around Riyadh. We've driven in Cairo, Bangkok, Abu Dhabi, Bombay, Athens and many other places around the world, but we're finding Riyadh's wild drivers and maze-like road system a worthy challenge. (I say "we," but of course, Mary -- like the rest of the women in Saudi Arabia -- is not allowed to drive here.)
Still, we've managed to find excellent supermarkets, electronics shops and malls. Products from the U.S. are everywhere and are reasonably priced. We left the world's cheapest gasoline in Venezuela (15 cents per gallon) for the world's second cheapest gasoline here: 40 cents per gallon.
We have a 10-day Ramadan-Eid holiday from Sept. 23 through Oct. 3, then our winter break begins early, on Dec. 4. We should be back in Iowa for a holiday visit in time for supper on Dec. 5. So keep the meat loaf and cornbread warm...
Things are going well in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia so far. We'll keep you updated...
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THE SUMMER of 2008 saw Mary and me drive from Waterloo, Iowa, to Mount Rushmore, then on to Jackson, Wyoming, where we spent a week on a wagon train adventure in the Teton National Forest. From there we drove to Los Angeles where we visited Matt for a week. He moved recently from the UCLA-Westwood area of LA to Hollywood where he now works for an Academy-Award winning sound production studio. It was a busy but exciting summer...
Meanwhile, my sixth book -- KINNICK-the novel -- is still on sale at Iowa Book in Iowa City (among other bookstores), and online at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, lulu.com, and most other online booksellers. You can preview the book here: http://iowamike21.typepad.com/kinnickthenovel/
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