Halloween

It's Halloween in Doha, too! At least at the American School it is. They pull out all the stops to make sure the kids get a Halloween; most neighborhoods here don't observe this rather Satanic / American holiday. So ASD had a Halloween Carnival party last weekend and celebrated today with a Kindergarten parade and parties in the classrooms. Here's C in a toga with his Kindergarten class.


One of the moms in our compound organized trick-or-treating and a potluck party too, so we got the whole experience. Now, our neighborhood in Pittsburgh has a lot more families participating in Halloween, but the folks here made it up with gusto. About 25 villas hung trick-or-treat signs, but J was amazed that his take was as good as he's accustomed to getting in Regent Square. J is all about the take on Halloween.

Here's C (a Roman), A (pumpkin princess), and J (ninja). Let's call this the "before" shot.


And click here to see the "after." You really are seeing (and hearing) two extra kids there; those are our dear friends and constant companions Dane and Lucas. I'd like to say I've never seen such a commotion in our home but I know you all would cry bull on that...

Back in Doha

Well, I said I'd write a bit about going home from Sri Lanka but at this point it's old news so I'll briefly summarize.

We got home eventually with only a few mishaps: after a week of eventless white-knuckle driving in Sri Lanka we arrived on the modern streets of Doha and our taxi driver promptly smashed the minivan. No injuries (although RTM's back is still creaky) but the irony was notable.

Also, with the help of the internet we diagnosed the kids' bug bites as bed bugs rather than mosquitoes. Fortunately, we haven't seen any evidence that we brought stowaways home.

It was kind of strange to come "home" from a foreign vacation and land in Doha. It actually felt almost like coming home. Almost. We were really glad to see our friends in the compound, and to eat plain old peanut butter.

I did get a fun break last weekend - I borrowed someone's bike and went out for a ride with a group from CMU. It was awesome, and hopefully I'll be able to ride with them again. It's really fun to ride with a group, especially when you can form a pace line and really hammer. Or just click along and watch the camels.

Now we're back in school and getting ready for Halloween. J will be a ninja (realizing a lifelong dream), C will be a Roman in a toga, and A will be a Pumpkin Princess. As an added bonus, Gigi and Grandpa Dave are here for a visit, so we have a busy week ahead!

Sri Lanka - Beach

'Round midnight we pulled up to The Fortress and the gates were closed.

These were like real fortress gates, the kind you'd expect to see in a castle just before the portcullis. Except bigger. Honestly, they were about 20 feet high with a giant wall around the entire resort and it took a couple of minutes to let the inner chambers know we were here and worthy of admittance.


Once we got in the door, it was wonderful. This was our splurge for the week, the fanciest hotel, and it was gorgeous. The pool was huge, the rooms likewise and packed with amenities (ipod! Bose DVD! espresso! plasma TV!) The best part was that, even with the super posh amenities we felt relaxed and welcome. There was no problem with letting the kids run around and explore and enjoy themselves. We took them to a CMU function at the Four Seasons in Doha and our nerves were shot trying to control their, ahem, exuberance, but no such stress here. The staff was friendly and genuine, and I felt like they were really looking out for us. We took a day to chill out before we could even think about doing any more touring around. The beach was pretty rocky in front of the hotel so we spent most of the time at the pool.



It wasn't a hardship.



It's a good thing we liked the hotel, because the following two days were solid rain. But it takes more than a warm drizzle to pen us up and there wasn't thunder so we stayed outside and swam and explored the beach.

That was where I started to get a better sense of the place. All beaches in Sri Lanka are public, so the moment C and I stepped down from the resort property to play in the sand we were targeted by the tuk-tuk drivers trying to sell a ride. We had been warned by Nandana and the hotel not to accept these offers - you just aren't sure enough of where you'll end up. I didn't get the sense there was a danger of abduction, but you could get shaken down or abandoned. So there was no way I was buying a ride. Once I was able to get that message across ("I'm not getting in a tuk-tuk, and there's no way I'm going to put my kids in a tuk-tuk. We can talk about America, we can talk about Sri Lanka, we can talk about the weather, I'm happy to talk. But I'm not buying a ride."), we were actually able to talk and it was really enlightening.

The southern coast of Sri Lanka was hard hit by the tsunami in December 2004 and the evidence still is everywhere. It was dark and late when we drove in, but even so I was aware that Nandana's commentary changed from identifying the types of farm (coconut, pineapple, tea, tobacco, banana, turpentine, etc.) to noting the impact of the tsunami: in this empty stretch there were houses. Here the commuter train was swept from its tracks, killing hundreds. See the boats still grounded well away from the shore. Many hotels and homes have been rebuilt, and life has clearly moved on but all along the coastline there are are homes and shops where only ruins remain like memories.

The memory is a constant shadow on the people as well. Everyone we met had a comment on what it was like before the tsunami. I was glad that when the tuk-tuk drivers heard I was American they told me, "After the tsunami the Americans were the first ones here. 24 hours later they came with supplies to help us." "Bill Clinton stood on that spot to speak." I saw a Habitat for Humanity t-shirt, UNICEF trucks (from the UN), and a US Aid outpost; it was good to feel proud of my country, like we had actually done something right in the global community. At the same time I felt completely impotent, because clearly there is so much left to do, and so little I could help. But that afternoon I could talk and listen. You wonder whether it's ghoulish to go to a tourist spot after a disaster, but at this point I think what Sri Lanka needs most is to bring back their economy, and this is the right time to go. Of course, now the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) violence is crippling the tourist industry, so I don't know how they're going to get past that.

Enough said. I didn't take pictures of tsunami damage, but we did get some nice ones on our last day, so here we'll cut back to the vacation. By Thursday we were ready to venture out again. We arranged for a tour of the old Dutch and Portugese forts at Galle and stopped at a turtle hatchery on the way home. Maybe we were spoiled by Sigiriya, but Galle wasn't as impressive as we had hoped. On the other hand, the turtle hatchery was very cool.

For the last 15 years, this small outfit on the beach has been buying back the turtle eggs that beach combers dig up to sell at the market as food. They identify, label, and re-bury the eggs and then raise the young turtles until they have a decent shot at survival in the wild. We got to see green turtles and hawksbills, but they also had leatherback eggs buried. This baby green turtle was four weeks old.


Watch your finger, dad!


Even A got brave and fished a couple out of the water.


We made an extra donation for the opportunity to release six young turtles back to the sea. It was a stirring experience, much more up close and personal than you'd ever be allowed to get in the US.

I was unsuccessful in uploading a movie to this site; click here for a youtube video of the release.

It was another excellent day.

Our last day in Sri Lanka was pretty much eaten up by travel. We got out early and walked along the beach until we found a good spot to body surf in the Indian Ocean. Check out was at noon, and Nandana picked us up and delivered us to the airport in plenty of time to make our flight.

Sri Lanka - Cultural Triangle - long post!

We arrived in Sri Lanka in the late afternoon on Thursday, met Nandana our English-speaking driver, and were off in the van. Yes, Red Dot Tours did get the memo (ref. previous post) and although the van was by no means new, it was roomy and had seat belts to spare. Because driving in Sri Lanka is an experience.

The tour companies strongly encourage tourists to hire drivers and that's not just to boost the economy. It's a safety issue. The roads are narrow and potholed, generally two lanes or less, and traffic is both heavy and diverse. The most common vehicles include bicycles, tuk-tuks (three wheeled enclosed motorcycles), modified tractors, trucks, and cars, in order of increasing velocity. The speed of the vehicles varies wildly, so cars are continually passing other travelers. Remember the potholes and two lanes?
Yep, you'll have cars going in opposite directions while simultaneously passing bikes and tuk-tuks, as many as four abreast, on a two lane road. Use of the burm is widespread and has prevented countless fatalities. Let's just say we were all glad to have Nandana who got us around the country safely and, with liberal dramamine, in reasonable comfort.

Our first night was in a hotel on the beach in Negombo, close to the airport. The beach was great - probably 100 yards of sand from the hotel to the sea, and stretched in either direction as far as I could see.


That's A with one of the sailboats you see in the boys' surf picture. But we only had the morning to enjoy it because we had a long drive to Sigiriya, our base for the next three nights. The drive was quite interesting though, as you just read, and filled with sights. There are fruit stands with coconuts and bananas all along the roadside, and Nandana was great at pointing out different plants and animals.

It was interesting to see the Buddhist shrines next to Catholic churches and Muslim mosques. I was surprised to see religious tolerance, and I don't know whether that's because I've spent the last couple of months in Qatar where non-Muslim religions are invisible or because I assumed a third-world country wouldn't be so progressive.

We stopped for lunch at a place he recommended at the edge of a lake. The food is... well, it's curry. You can often get simple Western food but generally, the food is curried x. Turns out that it's kind of hard to feed blonde kids in Sri Lanka because even the plain chicken sandwich has curry and even the hamburgers have minced onion mixed in. We were hard pressed to find anything J and A would eat, but C was in his glory. That kid eats like a champ - there's not a table he's seen that doesn't have something he likes on it. He doesn't get motion sickness and can sleep anywhere too, which was a good thing. Overall, C definitely won the prize for being a good traveler.

The best part of the day was the elephant ride. Nandana brought us to a place near Sigiriya where they do elephant rides, which I thought sounded pretty kitschy but it was really fun. Sometimes I need to remind myself it's OK to be a tourist. Our elephant was named Rani and everyone enjoyed the ride, even A who I thought would hate it. As the sun got lower, the creatures started coming out - the sky was filled with huge fruit bats, and we saw monitor lizards and cormorants and cranes and a hornbill and monkeys and all sorts of cool things. Of course there was a vendor conveniently selling bags of bananas so we all got to ride on Rani's neck and feed her bananas. Except for A because three-year-olds don't do that, as she was quick to point out.



And here are the fruit bats - click to enlarge.


We arrived at the hotel after dark, so it wasn't till morning that we got to appreciate the surroundings. You can see Sigiriya rock from the open-air restaurant.

All the restaurants were open-air; now that I think of it, the only reason they closed rooms off was to keep in the air-conditioning. We were outside all day long from the minute we left our hotel room. Sigiriya Village, our hotel, had beautiful grounds filled with plants and wildlife (mostly birds and monkeys). We had two adjacent rooms and the kids decided they were brave enough to sleep in their own room rather than splitting up with the 'rents. Crafty little buggers - they figured out they wouldn't be allowed to turn on the TV unless they ruled their own roost. Score for both kids and parents. After a two-minute tutorial J was confident he could summon us on the phone and we all got a good night's sleep.

In the morning we got off to see the ancient ruins at Polonnaruwa. On the way Nandana stopped at the roadside where he knew a man who feeds monitor lizards for the tourists.

Polonnaruwa is the second ancient capital of Sri Lanka, after Anuradhapura. Those two cities, with the last ancient capital (Kandy) create the cultural triangle. Polonnaruwa was the capital from the 11th to 15th century. The fun thing about ancient ruins in Sri Lanka (aside from how very old they are) is that you can walk around inside them. Be careful not to fall off the edge. This is the council chamber where the king would meet with his advisors.

All the walls and columns were engraved with relief pictures of lions, elephants, monkeys, dragons, and flowers.

Here is a moonstone - they were placed at the bottom of the steps at the entrance to temples and other important chambers. It represents the cycle of reincarnation from geese on the outside through elephants, horses, creeper vines, and finally the lotus in the center representing nirvana.

The most common ancient architectural feature in Sri Lanka is the dagoba. The one at Polonnaruwa is 55 meters high and was built at the end of the 12th century.

Here we are standing with a Buddha inside one of the smaller shrines surrounding the dagoba.

And this is the rock-cut shrine at Polonnaruwa. These depictions of the Lord Buddha, along with two more to the left that don't appear in this photo, are all cut from one enormous rock. It's hard to get a feel for the magnitude of many of the Buddha statues in Sri Lanka - they're just so huge.

We decided to climb Sigiriya rock in the morning on Sunday.
Sigiriya is a citadel built by King Kasyapa who reigned for only 18 years at the end of the 5th century. This is an interesting story: he killed his father the king, stole the crown, and sent his older brother into exile in India. With this history, he was pretty paranoid so he built this citadel on top of a 370 meter high rock to protect him from his brother's inevitable return. It's worth a few minutes to read the wikipedia entry on Sigiriya. These are the gardens at the base of the rock.


The steps are carved right into the cracks between boulders.

The actual palace at the top has been destroyed by time but here the kids are at the very top step.

Looking back down to the water gardens.

And this is what the top stretch of steps looks like...

Every once in a while you come across a snake charmer.

Cows roam freely all over the place.

In the afternoon we took a jeep safari tour of Menneriya National Park where we saw loads of wild elephants, including several babies.


On Monday we had an unbelievably long day. We needed to drive from Sigiriya all the way down to Kogalla, at the southern tip of the country. We started at about 8:30 and made three stops: at an Ayurvedic garden where we had a tour and learned about medicinal herbs, at Dambulla cave temple, and at the Pinnewala elephant orphanage. The cave temple at Dambulla was impressive - five caves filled with hundreds of Buddha statues and murals.

I especially liked this shrine, where in the 12th century they added a couple of Hindu gods just to be fair. You can see Vishnu on the left, next to all the Buddhas.

But by this time we were pretty well behind schedule and a long way from our hotel, with one stop left at Pinnewala. Just our luck - the bridge for the main road was out and it took forever to get there on a tiny, winding, cratered one lane road. Thank you, dramamine. We got there just in time to see them finishing up the elephants' bath in the river and walked around to get a front-row view. It was a great vantage right there on the rocky bank of the river. Turned out that was also the exact path they parade the elephants along to get back to the orphanage. It was pretty exciting when the elephants started coming straight at us; C and I were pressed against a rock wall trying to get out of their way while Dad fled with A and J up to the gate for their own close-up. Those elephants are pretty blinkin' big, and not so tame that you'd really want to be that close. Unlike the docile Rani, I got the clear impression that these guys wouldn't mind charging and there was no fence, no wall, not even a mahout with a pointy stick between us and them. I started thinking that maybe the super-conservative American safety measures weren't such a bad idea.

It was now nearly 5 pm, we had gotten about 50 km down the road and we had about 200 km left to go, and the average traveling speed in Sri Lanka is 30 km per hour. It was very late by the time we arrived at the Fortress Hotel, in Koggala just east of Galle. We were exhausted and ready to spend a few days chilling out by the beach.

Vacation in Sri Lanka - Going

We just got back on Friday from a nine-day vacation in Sri Lanka. What a fantastic experience. I need to think about how to document because I don't really know how to put it into words. I think I'll do the entries in four parts: going, the cultural triangle, the southern beach, and coming home.

To start, let me be candid. We were both excited and nervous about taking the family to Sri Lanka. It takes more balls than I typically have to bring the kids to a country with malaria, dengue fever, separatist violence, and tsunami devastation. We went back and forth a couple of times between "this is a bad idea" and "but it sounds so cool!" Obviously, cool won out. What did it for Daddy-O was the elephants. He really wanted to see elephants. For me, it was the ancient ruins and knowledge that this is a one-chance opportunity. How many people do I know who have seen Sri Lanka? How many Americans can even find it on a map?

After copious research, we realized that fewer civilians have been injured by the Tamil Tigers than by terrorists in London recently, and London didn't feel too risky. Sri Lanka didn't look any more dangerous than other alternatives like Petra (ancient ruins in Jordan) or Egypt. We decided to get out of the Middle East and go someplace green. As an added bonus, the dollar is strong in Sri Lanka, so the trip was a great value.

We registered with CMU and the American Embassy, downed our malaria tablets, and bought the tickets. We used Red Dot Tours as a travel agent - RTM found them online and they set us up with a great trip complete with fancy hotels, a custom itinerary, and a van with a guide / driver just for us.

Early Thursday morning (that's October 11) the cab came to take us to the airport and we weren't so pleased to see it. I don't think it's possible to schedule a minivan cab in Doha, despite their availability, despite valiant efforts on RTM's part, and despite the cab company's assurances that they're sending a minivan. You just can't get it through to them that you really do want seat belts for all the passengers. Call us crazy Americans. Anyhow, off to the airport with A on my lap, praying that Red Dot Tours got the memo because we can relax our standards for one early morning trip but an entire week in Sri Lanka with six people (including the driver) crammed in a sedan would not be fun.

I was relieved to find that I haven't gotten any speeding tickets. There are cameras along the roads in Doha that check your speed and ticket you for speeding. Catch is, you aren't really notified. You have to look it up yourself online, and you aren't allowed to leave the country with outstanding tickets. Every time I drive by one of those suckers I go "doh!" and pray the speed limit isn't 80 kph because I'm going 95.

So now my mom's going "Stop. What was that middle part? The one about separatist violence? Talk to me about that." OK. Pretty much the only thing you've seen from Sri Lanka in the news is about the tsunami (more on that later) and the Tamil Tigers. The word is that the fighting is ongoing in the North and pretty darn tense in the East, although that area has been claimed as recaptured by the Sri Lankan army. The State Department travel advisory ("Travel advisory? NOW I hear about a travel advisory?" Sorry, Mom.) is to stay away from the North and East, and exercise caution in other areas especially near military bases. Now, they didn't note that the military is frickin' everywhere in Sri Lanka but that turns out to be a lesser issue. The important thing is that the Tigers, although actively fighting to separate from Sri Lanka, have never targeted tourists or tourist areas. With one little exception on October 15 but we were nowhere Yala National Park and no civilians were involved.

OK, I'll be candid again. Sri Lanka was a fantastic experience (I've said it before and I'll say it again before we're through this episode) but I think I found my risk threshold. I'm so glad we went but I think our next adventure will be a little more tame. That's all the balls I got.

Our New Favorite Place

Last weekend we went back to Dahal al Hamam family park near our house (family parks allow fathers with their kids but no unattached men, while men are not permitted inside women & children's parks at all). We went there about a month ago, after dark of course, and we decided it was a great place but still too hot and sweaty. The weather has changed since then - it stays below 100 degrees during the day and it's really pleasant in the morning and evening. And now we have a new favorite place.

There's a big playground with swings and all sorts of things to climb on, which A really loves. But the special thing is the skate park section.

Check out C's red and sweaty face - that photo is from our first visit. It's a small half pipe type of structure, where kids like to race from side to side and bounce off the walls.



There's also an area with what looks like a series of dry wading pools, set in a circle with shallow trenches to connect. The cement is smooth and it's a great place to practice skating.

On Friday night we went on the late side - we didn't get there till almost 8 pm - and the place was full but not crowded. We met a really nice 9 year old kid from Lebanon whose English was amazing although he protested that assessment and was shocked that we don't know Arabic. We swapped stories about home and played around. J and C brought their skateboards. Their goal is to get good enough to tackle the half pipe, but they have a long way to go.



On Saturday we got smart and picked up a bucket of chicken at KFC as soon as the restaurants opened and had a picnic dinner there. That gave us plenty of time to eat and play before bedtime. It was almost empty - school night - but the cats certainly noticed us. Stray cats are everywhere here, and as soon as we pulled out the chicken a kitten found us. It was very friendly though (the older ones are quite shy) and it hung out with us for most of the evening.



Relax, mom. J put on his helmet right after I took the photo. See all those pads? These are the ONLY two kids in the park with any padding or safety gear whatsoever (good American kids who live in a protective bubble) but they don't complain. They're just so psyched they get to skateboard. C, of course, has tested every piece of padding.

The family park also has a dirt bike track with jumps and lumps to go over on bikes, which hopefully we'll try out another time. There's a reasonable chance we'll end a trip to the family park with a trip to the ER, but that's just life with boys. I figure the stitches are inevitable even with the standard American helmet and full body pad precautions; you may as well pick the venue.

Ramadan Bazaar

This is the last weekend of Ramadan, and quite honestly I'm glad of it. I'm really looking forward to being able to get a cup of coffee before 6 pm, or go out to lunch with the kids, and it will be nice to figure out what a normal schedule is. Because really, we didn't get settled in until school started and by that time Ramadan was upon us and turned everything back on its head.

Qatar Foundation (the generous benefactor of Education City) sponsored a Ramadan Bazaar on Thursday night to celebrate the holy month and highlight Qatari culture. So we packed up the kids and went out to see what we could see.

It starts with the tent. Tents are a big part of Qatari culture - it comes from the nomadic heritage. Now, of course, we have nice big buildings with air conditioning, electricity and other modern conveniences. Qataris appreciate these conveniences and bring them into their tents. They're just your basic event canopy, white, with steel post supports and side walls, the floor covered with carpets. It's air conditioned, of course, because everything here is. Ramadan tents are giant spaces but I've seen small ones too that are privately owned and used for casual entertaining. Those ones have cushy furniture inside and satellite dishes to watch TV. I don't expect I'll get inside one of those.

Anyhow, the Ramadan Bazaar was interesting in a good way. They had a ladies' area showing traditional crafts like basket weaving, embroidery, and henna. I got a henna design on my right hand - it's very cool, and I hear it will look good for a week or two then slowly fade away.



I wanted to take a picture of the ladies doing the crafts but the one I asked indicated I should take a picture of the handwork rather than of her. So I guess it's good I asked but they did look like something, the row of women with their crafts in their abayas. Here she is embroidering with silver thread on a sheer black fabric.



There was also a group of boys doing acrobatics and playing traditional Qatari games like Batta Batta Waza (that's Duck Duck Goose and yes, I did have to look up those words and no, I'm not sure they're right). You can just see the ladies doing henna painting in the background under the green drapery.



And what kind of celebration would it be without men dancing and waving swords in the air? These are not ceremonial dress - that's the thobe I mentioned in a recent entry.



Here A is playing with a toy horse they brought in. I liked the outfit the boy next to her is wearing.



I didn't get a picture of the food they had: two flatbreads on griddles and a pureed meat and rice concoction. I actually found a recipe for that one but it just doesn't translate well to the Western palate. You can imagine. I liked the flat bread though, especially the one where the lady rubbed dough on a hot griddle and pulled off all but the crust directly touching the plate. It came out like a giant ancient cracker.

It was a fun evening, and we saw lots of things that I don't know we would have seen otherwise. But in the end, the incense got the better of J, A was falling asleep on Dad's shoulder, and C had fixated on buying everything in sight. We packed it in by 9:00.