No, really. I kid too much.
Today CMU held its orientation session for families, at the Four Seasons hotel downtown. Downtown Doha is really a wild place, especially the city center, although not in the sense above. Here we have the bustling metropolis you might expect from a rather wealthy city of nearly a million people, but the surprising thing is that all the major buildings are less than five years old, and the existing structures are outnumbered by those currently under construction.
The pictures below are of the Corniche, a park and boulevard that runs along the beach - that's the Persian Gulf for those of you who are joining us late - from the old city to the City Center.
And below you can see the Sheraton Hotel, which J and C like because it looks like a pyramid,
and Ori the Oryx, the official mascot of the 2006 Asian Games.
Doha is big on monumental sized things, from Ori the Oryx to the giant ceremonial coffee pot sculpture/fountain to the giant shopping cart in the mall parking lot. I haven't decided whether these monuments indicate a Qatari sense of whimsy... or not.
The orientation was very helpful though, even beyond the sightseeing tour. All the new CMU-Q employees and their families came, so we had a chance to meet a bunch of our neighbors in the compound who don't spend all their time at the pool, and to introduce the kids to some of their future classmates. We heard a lecture on Qatari culture and another on culture shock. It would appear that I am in the "Fascination" phase, with occasional forays into "Frustration," which should really present itself within the next few weeks. I expect I will finally hit "Acclimation" about a week before we leave, and everything gets turned back on its head.
