Carl and Eileen Lepisto stepped off a Saudia Arabian Airlines flight from New York last Friday, leaving behind their comfortable, four-bedroom home of 28 years in Colorado to begin a new life in a housing compound here. For friends and relatives of the Lepistos back in Grand Junction, watching the aftermath of the deadly attacks that wreaked havoc at three similar compounds just days earlier, what the couple really seemed to have left was their senses. A friend was among the first to react. “She thought we were insane in the first place, and she said, `You’re not still going after these bombings!’ ” Mrs. Lepisto said over a dinner of chicken kebab and hummus on Sunday at the home of a new American neighbor. “But it really didn’t deter us at all.” Following any terrorist attack, expatriates and their loved ones elsewhere invariably question what draws them to Saudi Arabia. For many, the answer is straightforward: money. A few years in Saudi Arabia help people climb out of debt and start building a nest egg. For others, the reasons are more textured. Some relish the challenge of working in a still-developing nation. Some chase the exotic. Full Story
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