Monroes Abroad

2009-09-16T04:27:00.003-04:00

It's the end of Ramadan and I've got some Holy Month fatigue.

It happens when I'm getting ready for bed and notice that we're out of coffee. I just went to the store that morning but the stores don't stock much variety in ground coffee - instant is a more common drink here. You can find green beans and beans ground with cardamom, but I've given up on finding any even vaguely-dark roast. Which means I have to go to an actual coffee house. And those, along with any other restaurant, are closed every day during Ramadan until after sunset. Which means I can't run out to Starbuck's in the morning when the demons arrive in my head. I have to either go now - change out of my PJs and face the 11 o'clock crowds in the mall - or endure the withdrawal symptoms in the morning.

The fatigue also happens when I'm picking the kids up from school on Tuesdays. For some strange reason, their school has a half-day every Tuesday (I guess it helps the teachers get over the mid-week hump). I'd love to take the kids out to lunch and maybe even do something fun like go to a park or the ice skating rink in the mall but all the restaurants are closed and we can't eat in public until sunset. I'm hot and hungry and grumpy as hell and it's always a long and imagination-challenged afternoon. You'd think I could find something fun to do with my afternoon with the kids but during Ramadan it just doesn't happen.

I'm not Muslim, I don't fast. I have a huge amount of respect for my friends who do fast throughout this month, and do it with a strength, humility, patience, and devotion that I just can not comprehend. They surrender themselves to their faith, and I'm both awed by their efforts and frivolous enough to complain about how it inconveniences me. Maybe this is how husbands feel when watching their wives go through pregnancy: outside looking in at something inexplicable. How did my husband tolerate me though that process for all those months?

With one week left in the Holy Month, I was looking forward to the week-long Eid break, when we'll have a whole week off work and school with the whole family together. All of us. Here in this house (it's too damn hot and humid to spend much time outside). For nine. Whole. Days.

Weekends are nice for us, but by the third or fourth day at home we get a bad case of cabin fever and can't stand the look of each other by day 5.

I thought about Bob and me driving over to Abu Dhabi for a quick overnight trip - hire a babysitter we know and trust, and take off for a belated anniversary getaway (our 15th was back in July and in the hustle and bustle we never even made it out for an anniversary dinner). But the land route is through Saudi Arabia, and they require you to apply in advance for a transit visa. Between Ramadan and the coming Eid holiday we couldn't get a visa in time. So we thought about taking the family for a short beach vacation in Sri Lanka - it's close and easy and green and you can read in this blog archive how much we loved our trip there two years ago. I got so far as asking the kids whether they wanted to take a day trip to the elephant orphanage, or whether they wanted to spend all three days just lounging at the pool and body surfing in the Indian Ocean. Awesome options, right? Turns out they'd prefer to sit around in Barzan compound doing nothing at all for nine days, thank you very little.

So I'll go back to my original idea: Bob and I will go off on a couple's getaway. We'll go to Oman because although it's not green, it's at least somewhat mountainous, and it's giving me something to look forward to. And sometimes you just really need that.

Arab Qatari Agricultural Co: my personal crack house

2009-09-03T06:31:00.003-04:00

I'm an enthusiastic amateur gardener, and one of the hardest parts of living in Qatar is the near-absence of the color green. The landscape is sandy, dusty beige; the sky is always a dusty blue; the buildings in our compound are a dusty peach color. My eyes ache for green, my lungs ache for oxygen. So my husband had a hard time breaking the news to me when he returned early to Doha after our summer break and found that nearly every plant in our garden had died. I suspect that the maintenance men in the compound let themselves into our (locked, walled-in) back yard to apply insecticide spray and as a favor while they were there turned off the slow drip irrigation pipes I had set up before we left. I have problems with this on many levels. But that's not the point of this post.

I took a trip to the nursery today to re-stock my garden with green. Wow. I haven't come down from the high yet. It's an amazing place: a lush oasis in the midst of the desert made possible by a truly impressive climate control system. They have over a dozen greenhouses in one compound, each about half the size of a football field, filled with wonderful exotic plants. I wat there for over two hours, and didn't see the whole place. Can you imagine? The oxygen content inside those greenhouses must be huge because just walking around gives me a euphoric energy rush.

Coming from Pittsburgh and Michigan, I am so amazed at the plants they grow: I'm reasonably well informed on the plants you typically find in Zone 5 and 6. But if you take a walk through the tropical houseplants department in Lowe's or Home Depot, those are the plants you find here growing in irrigated beds. I like to go with my friend who is a master gardener from Texas: she is much more familiar with the Zone 9 plants we have here. I don't know the names of half the things I buy - I have to rely on the list they write up and then try to research them online - but they are gorgeous and I want to rush out and put them in the ground right now. But it's 108 degrees, so I think maybe I'll wait till tomorrow morning.

The icing on the cake for this day is: not only do they let me wander around in the botanical garden as long as I want for absolutely free, I can take home any plants I want for a nominal price. Here's my bill of sale for today:

3 x lantana (3 foot tall, yellow-orange flowers)
4 x hibiscus (3 foot tall, marvelous lantern-style orange flowers)
3 x jactorpha (can't remember which one this is, probably the 3 foot tall with brilliant red flowers)
3 x spadlima (maybe the 3 foot tall plants with purplish-green leaves?)
3 x jasmine (only 2.5 foot tall but fragrant as you imagine an arabian night)
1 x rubber plant, 6 foot tall!
2 x ficus panda
12 x vinca, pink flowers - hey, I know what this one is!
12 x freein (?) - purplish leaved spreading groundcover
5 x cassandra
3 x gardenia
3 x zamicallus (?) (yeah, no idea - it's downstairs somewhere)
1 x pepperomia (small green houseplant)
3 x bougainvillia - 5 foot tall, pink flowers
1 x acanthus (?) - fleshy green-leaved hanging plant
1 x (?) fuzzy purple leaved hanging plant

Total cost: 574 riyals = $157

I'll be back.

Eid Mubarak!

2008-10-04T06:20:00.002-04:00

OK, this year we took a completely different approach to Eid al-Fitr. For those just joining us, Eid is the holiday that follows the holy fasting month of Ramadan. Schools and government offices shut down for several days and many families take this opportunity to travel. Last year we took an adventurous, eye-opening trip to Sri Lanka. This year we stayed put, partly to conserve resources for winter and spring vacations, partly because my residency card hasn't completed processing yet so I'm kinda stuck here.

Eid got off to a surprise start. The islamic calendar and months do not match with ours - they are based on the sighting of the new moon by islamic authorities. Which means there's a surprising amount of uncertainty about when Ramadan will start and end. For instance, this year Eid was estimated on our calendar (printed a year ago) to be on October 2. The school schedule was set for Eid break to begin Wed., October 1, although there was a possibility that it would begin a day earlier. And at about 9 pm on Mon., September 29, we got emails and text messages announcing that the new mood was seen, Ramadan was over, and school would be out a day early. It felt like a muslim snow day.

But can you imagine the implications? Everyone was expecting it to begin on Wednesday. My dear friend had planned a large group gathering for Eid, but she didn't know which day it would be until 9 pm the evening before. Think of planning a Thanksgiving feast, and learning Tuesday night that nope, this year Thanksgiving's on Wednesday. It all worked out (luck favors the prepared, darling) thank goodness, but I've hardly ever seen anyone look more exhausted.

So what did we do with our extra-long holiday? Hang out at home. I went for a couple of bike rides, Daddy-O got out too. Our biggest event was joining with a couple of other families for a dhow trip. That's a traditional fishing boat in the region, and a big touristy thing to do is go downtown to the bayside and take a ride on a dhow. 20 minute trip, about 15 riyals, make sure you go when the sun isn't baking. We went just before sunset - the weather was perfect, warm and breezy. Then a snack picnic at the playground across the street, and dinner at McDonald's on the way home to round out the evening.

Nothing fancy, just pleasant. I only wish we had done another outing like this during the break. But really, there's no hurry. The weather is only getting nicer. Next weekend, Singing Sands.

Looking Forward To Fall

2008-09-21T02:00:00.003-04:00

Well, yesterday the weather was lovely - the high didn't quite break 100 degrees. When I got up early to go cycling, it was pleasantly cool, and even when I got back it was not too hot for J to take his breakfast outside in the garden. This is a short-lived break from the worst heat, but the temperatures are slowly but consistently getting more reasonable.

One measure: when we arrived, the cold water tap was running at about 105 degrees - that's too hot to stand in the shower, even for me. It would take almost two hours for the kids' bath to cool off enough for them to get in. Now it's closer to 100, which is OK for a hot shower but still too hot for the kids' bath. This is a few degrees worse than last year because our new house is around the corner from the old, and the water tank in the garden here gets less time in the shade. Also, it helped to turn off hot water heater. Not sure why that affects the cold tap, but it brought the temps down a few degrees.

I went to the big plant nursery outside town yesterday - it's truly huge, a worthy side trip for anyone who enjoys that sort of thing. I bought a bunch of things for the back garden - some hibiscus, canna, adenium, and a lemon tree. Those should add some interest and fill the space out a little better 'till the real growing season starts at the end of October. I'm also planning to have the maintenance men here pull up some more of the bricks (the whole yard is bricked in except for a few smallish garden spots with one lovely tree and two rather dehydrated climbing plants) so I can green up the yard some more. I think everyone here is suffering from a green deficit.

Everyone here is well and we're enjoying ourselves. Again, our daughter is suffering worst from homesickness and missing her Pittsburgh friends. We've had a series of fits in the evenings, pining for her best buddy. Fortunately it hasn't been quite as bad as last year - she's sad but not making herself sick over it - because she has at least a few kids her age in the compound to join up with. In fact, the kids have about doubled their base group of buddies in the compound, which means we can enjoy their company without totally monopolizing their time. Another positive development. As for me, I still have some kinks to work out, but I'm definitely heading in the right direction.

New Gadget

2008-09-16T04:40:00.002-04:00

They say you are what you eat. I kind of believe that, although I don't like what that implies about my children. Say what you want, but these kids are anything but bland.

For me, I'd revise the truism. I am what I cook. If you want a decent look into my current state of mental health, take a look at what's going in in my kitchen. When I'm floundering emotionally, I cook safe and dull if I cook at all. When I'm feeling good I get more adventurous in my menu plans. And banana bread is always a good sign.

Also, I found last year that recipes that were tried and true in the States just didn't come out as expected here. I needed to essentially pitch the old model and start with a new set of recipes and a new set of comfort foods

That's why I added a new gadget to the blog: you can take a look and see what I've been cooking lately. It's more fun to focus on the positive, so I'll only post the interesting dishes I've tried. I'm willing to share here, but I don't feel the obligation to document every time we eat pizza, burgers, rigatoni bake, or KFC.

You can assume the kids didn't eat these dishes unless I note otherwise.

Making it Home

2008-09-14T11:48:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the long dry spell (if you will). We got our container at the beginning of the month and we've been working on making this pile of cement blocks and cardboard boxes look and feel like home.

In a nutshell: Wow. What a difference a few rugs can make. We haven't got the pictures up and the kids' rooms are basically a disorganized jumble but other than that we're pretty well settled. I'll go on record here - I thought it was foolish to ship four beds halfway around the world to a fully furnished home. I was totally wrong. Sleeping in our own beds has been a godsend.

And for those who have been wondering, buying a car reasonably cheap in the US and shipping it over to the inflated Middle East hasn't been quite as good a deal as we had hoped. Finanically it's still worked out to our advantage, but it was a much, much, MUCH bigger hassle than we had anticipated. It slowed down receiving our container and took an extra week or so in customs (all because separate customs offices here handle cars and possessions). Then, just a few days after it finally arrived, just about when Daddy-O was finally beginning to breathe easy, the electrical system went kaput. Another week, a trip to the dealership, unknown costs, and hopefully he'll get it for good tomorrow. Insha'allah.

On the other hand, we could not possibly have predicted the ease with which we found and bought a used SUV. It's huge and black and previously owned by another American whose meticulous nature is well known. And you know the best part? On Friday the low fuel light went on so I filled it up for 56 riyals. That's about $15. Including tip for full serve. And the other best part? I can drive over curbs like a native. Yeah, baby.

What else? Rapid fire: the kids are all in school (photos coming any time now) and they admit to loving it there. Pretty much all our friends from last year were still here and we've been able to fall right back into those warm fuzzies. As an added bonus, there are heaps more kids in the compound now, which means I don't have to feel guilty for allowing my kids to totally monopolize one or two families' attention. We're halfway through the holy month of Ramadan. I've started cycling on Friday mornings with some amalgam of the group I enjoyed so much last year; it's actually worth waking up at 4:30 for. And I volunteered for the PTA board - Treasurer - and that's a whole nother posting. I haven't done a job search yet but geez, give me a break. Maybe once I get my residency card...

So what have you been up to?

BACK -- in the State of Qatar!

2008-08-26T01:32:00.003-04:00

... you don't know how lucky you are, boy --
Back in the State of Qatar!
(mental note: finish rewriting those lyrics for next talent show - it's gonna be HUGE!)

Yes, we're back in Doha after a long and exhausting summer. I'm not even going to go into how hard it was to leave Pittsburgh, both emotionally and physically. In short, you know the saying "you don't know what you got till it's gone"? Not always true. I said so many goodbyes, by the end I just shut down and only dealt with the folks who side-tackled me on the street. But my parents' neighbor told me a story about how her family moved to England (I think it was) for a few years when the kids were small, and when they returned everything was right where they left it. So I have hope. Just in case there's anyone left in Pittsburgh who doesn't resent us.

In the meantime, I'm unpacking. I've got almost all of the suitcases empty and put away which is good because any day now the container will arrive at the house (it's sitting in Customs now only a few miles away) and we'll have a big job reacquainting ourselves with our worldly possessions.

For those who've asked, the flight and navigating airports alone with three kids worked out fine, but we had a lot of help. This would have been much harder without business class seats, red-carpet lounges, and the Al Maha welcome wagon / visa and baggage expediting service at the Doha airport. The hardest part came the day after we arrived, when I had spent two nights with a total of four hours' sleep (A's schedule was as upside down as her stomach). Survive and advance. It's been much better since then, and we're all sleeping at night for at least 6 hours at a pop.

Next posts: what's different here, what's the same, and what's just plain screwy.

A Quick Homecoming Before A Long Going Away

2008-08-10T04:04:00.003-04:00

(Another guest post by Daddy-O.)

“I’m homeless, in between jobs, and living with my in-laws. How are you doing?”.

I had my answer ready to go. But to what question? As luck would have it, my high school reunion was scheduled during the few days we had between moving out of our house in Pittsburgh and flying to Doha. The luck part is that we were planning to be in Michigan to visit family at that time anyway so I was able to attend. My lovely spouse (and your regularly scheduled mistress-of-the-blog) showed that she can be an extraordinarily good sport and agreed to come with me. Whew. Didn’t want to have to add ‘umm, she couldn’t make - she and the kids moved back in with her parents’ to my answer.

The question, of course, was ‘how are things going?’, ‘what have you been up to?’, etc. All the standard high-school reunion questions. I had my answer all ready to go. It was fun to see people’s expressions when I answered. Many different flavors of ‘uhh, sorry I asked.’ But in almost all cases it was a good conversation starter, rather than the conversation killer it sounds like.

I guess that’s because I am fortunate to be able to explain that these were all good things, in their own way - homeless because we had sold our house a few days earlier (which greatly impressed my Michigan friends who have watched the housing market collapse locally), between jobs because I’m moving to Qatar in a few days to start an exciting new one (sounding good to my friends working at GM and Chrysler), living with my in-laws because we’re visiting on vacation. It wouldn’t be so fun without the follow-up. Given the state of the economy and the housing meltdown in Michigan, I’m afraid that some of my classmates probably had similar answers but without the fun follow-up. Michigan’s economy really is that grim now. I wish them the best. It’s sad to see your home town and the people you grew up with suffering.

As with the last reunion I went to ten years ago, this one was a lot more fun than I expected. Although only a few of my close friends from high school made it to the reunion (those of you who did - thanks so much for making the trip), it was fun to see how people had grown - in most case more body, less hair - and chosen to live their lives. Even my good sport of a spouse seemed to have a good time.

Oh yeah, the elephants. I posted a picture on the reunion web site of your intrepid adventurering family on an elephant ride in Sri Lanka prior to the actual get-together. Apparently it generated a lot of interest. Before even making it to the registration table at the party I had three people stop me and ask what we were doing riding an elephant on the other side of the world. For the rest of the night, almost everybody I met wanted to hear about the elephant. I guess my concept of what’s exotic and far away has changed more than I realized in the past couple of years. Sri Lanka seems a lot more exotic to my friends in Michigan than it does to my friends in Doha. Funny how your perspective evolves, sometimes without your even being aware of it...

A Fond Farewell to Friends

2008-08-10T03:14:00.003-04:00

(A special guest-post by Daddy-O)

Moving isn’t fun. Helping your friends move, probably even less so. That’s my big insight after spending the past couple of months somewhere between living in Pittsburgh and living in Doha. (I’ll just keep thinking the big thoughts, that’s what I’m good at...) One of the upsides to the whole experience has been the chance to recall why we’ve loved living in Regent Square for all these years - our friends and the community that we’ve become part of.

That’s where the helping your friends move comes in. We dragged the process of moving out seemingly forever - pack a shipping container, hang around for a few weeks, head off for vacation, come back, pack a storage container, pack our bags for Doha, hit the road, etc. Through it all, our friends from the neighborhood were amazing. Need us to watch the kids this afternoon? No problem, send ‘em down. Need some help moving the furniture out to the container? No problem, we’ll be over in a few minutes. No time to cook tonight? We’ll stop by with some food. I was deeply touched by the outpouring of support and friendship over the past couple of months. It meant a ton to me and made it possible for B to get through the experience at all.

Thanks. You’re great friends and wonderfully generous. We’ll miss you while we’re away and look forward to rekindling our friendships when we return. Of course, if you ever find yourself in Qatar, look us up. We’d be delighted to see you.

THIS is why we're going.

2008-04-06T19:23:00.003-04:00

I found this prayer in a comment on the Burgh Blog (great read, by the way) and wanted to run around waving a copy. This is it! This is why we're going! I tried to express our motivation when I started this blog, but this is much better. And I can even refer back to it when the kids and I get depressed about giving up our home and community in Pittsburgh. I made J read and unravel the metaphors and he really gets it -- probably because some fancy-looking dead guy wrote the prayer, rather than just Mom, whose sole purpose is to provide authority for him to challenge.

Prayer of Sir Francis Drake

Disturb us, Lord, when We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life, We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land, We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future In strength, courage, hope, and love.

To sell or not to sell...

2008-04-04T22:45:00.004-04:00

That is the gut-wrenching question.

For a long time we have been concerned about the quality of public education for our children here. Pair that with a giant mortgage and ridiculous taxes, and it makes sense to sell our house before we go. Which is fine by me. My happiness is not laid in that foundation; it's the relationships and nature that surround us here that enrich my life. As three years pass our attachment to this particular house will fade.

I just don't know how to explain that to the kids.

They've all been excited to go back to Doha. They miss their friends there, they miss the school (ASD). It was a great experience. But as soon as they realized that there is a cost - there is a permanence in three years that was easy to overlook for four months - the reaction changed. A is too young (4, now) to understand so I can kind of gloss that over. J (now 9) is more aware; he gets that three years will be a long, long time and things will change. He's sad about that but he's still basically on board. Which maybe I shouldn't trust so much, given that he second-guesses pretty much everything else that comes out of my mouth. But that's a different entry.

C (still 6) is another story. When he first heard us talk about renting the house he immediately understood that we won't be coming back to his old bedroom twice a year. Dead stop. Total deal breaker. He's less visceral now but just yesterday he told me "You know, one year is the right amount of time to go. It's enough to really have friends but now too long to be away." But that's not an option.

How do I relate to three young children that we're selling their home because the schools just aren't good enough? So far I've come up with this: We're not sure where we'll live when we come back to Pittsburgh but we will find a nice home in a nice neighborhood with good schools and no matter what, they can still see their dear friends.

Not bad, but I know I'll fall apart when they freak out.

Reprise, extended dance remix

2008-04-04T22:19:00.003-04:00

Yep - you guessed it. We're heading back.

Daddy-O got an invitation to leapfrog his career in a three-year contract in Doha. So that's just what we're going to do. It was an easy decision, really - this is an opportunity that doesn't come around but once a decade (or two). And there are opportunities for me too - I've been chomping at the bit for over a year to re-launch my career, and as the US economy tanks it makes some sense to go where there are tons of interesting projects. The kids were happy during our first visit, their school is fantastic, way beyond anything we could afford here.

So it's a good decision. Except that getting there is going to suck. Once we decided to go to Qatar, the easy choice was over and everything that has followed has been grueling hard.

We've been happy is the thing. We have a comfortable life, surrounded by wonderful friends and close (enough) to family. We lack for nothing, in contrast we are incredibly fortunate. Is it ungrateful to pursue more? I hope not, because I try hard to be conscious and appreciate the life I have. Have I mentioned before that I hate to say goodbye? Well, we've got a lot of that going on.

It's going to be a long haul.

Thanksgiving Surprise

2007-12-01T04:06:00.000-05:00

I know, it's practically Christmas. I'm way behind in posting but I didn't want to omit our Thanksgiving surprise.

The weekend before Thanksgiving we got a call from my brother-in-law, Josh and his wife Linda. It turns out that soon after we told them of our plans to spend the fall term in Qatar, they bought tickets to come visit us. This is months before we had our own tickets, mind you. They figured that, although they have traveled all over the world, they've never been to the Middle East. What better time to go? And to add to the excitement they decided to make it a surprise visit.

They flew in to Dubai for a couple days' sightseeing and then hopped over to Doha in time for Thanksgiving. They rounded out the tour with a second hop over to Bahrain before flying home. So Josh and Linda, in just over a week, actually saw more of the Middle East than we have in four months. I mean, who moves to the Middle East and doesn't ski Dubai? But that's OK - they're seasoned travelers. And skiing wasn't really an option anyhow.

The other big news is that Linda is expecting, which is absolutely wonderful. You see, Josh and Linda are a great couple. They work hard, they know how to play and they have a great sense of adventure. That zest for life is a trait I think we should all share with our children (and, heck, everyone we meet).

Of course, for the first couple of years it's a struggle to hold on to that enthusiasm, as Linda is certainly learning. She was wretchedly morning sick throughout the trip but she was a trooper and I hope she had a nice time despite the nausea. Poor Linda - even after months of acclimating I think the food in Qatar has an off-flavor; it must be ten times worse if you're in the first trimester.

We didn't spoil the big surprise for the kids. I left a house key with the guards at the compound gate when I picked them up from school, and they were there when we returned. C came in first, and Josh walked around the corner wearing a thobe (white robe), keffiyeh (head scarf), and agal (black cord circle to hold the keffiyeh in place). And don't forget the aviator glasses. Stopped that kid in his tracks; this is not what he was expecting. Fortunately A was too shocked to cry immediately and figured out it was OK when her brothers screamed and laughed and tackled this strange Arab man. Josh looked good but it takes a certain panache to wear the keffiyeh well. Kind of like the guys wearing sarongs in Sri Lanka. You gotta believe it to wear it.

Anyhow, Thanksgiving morning came and we decided to go out for a quick jaunt to the beach before dinner. We packed a lunch and went to a spot north of Doha that has some interesting rock formations along the coastline. Well, it was a decent plan and I'm glad we got out of the house. But the beach was a bust. The second we opened the car, a cloud of flies descended upon us and our food. You literally couldn't stop moving because the flies were everywhere. At least they didn't bite, but yuck. The kids were cranky, Linda was sick, we couldn't win for losing. So we stayed only about an hour before we packed up to go. B and Josh got in the car, opened all the windows, and tore around in the packed sand waving and smacking to get rid of the flies.

Mercifully, Thanksgiving dinner was very nice. We were invited to a friend's house who arrived in Doha at the same time we did. Polly is a marvelous cook, who has unraveled the mysteries of baking in Qatar in a way I can only dream of emulating. Mind you, Thanksgiving dinner three months after you arrive in a foreign country is a daunting task. I decided early on that it was way beyond my ability and I don't know what we would have done if Polly and George hadn't invited us. She brined the turkey and it was moist and delicious. There were several families, and we ate outside at picnic tables in their community garden. Short sleeves and bare feet. Not to brag.

And before we knew it, the visit was over. I wish we had been able to see a camel race, or somehow show Josh and Linda some fancier sights. We did get a babysitter one night and go out to dinner at a restaurant in Souq Waqif. But it was wonderful of them to visit, and I appreciate it.

Home Sweet Home

2007-11-13T10:54:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I did or said anything interesting and my imagination hasn't been clicking the way I might like. The sense of humor is lacking, too. Good day to decide to post, B. The idea is that maybe blogging will help me regain perspective.

This is not what my house looks like. This is what my house would look like if it were clean.

Here's the sitting area in the living room, in the front of the house next to the entryway. I like the floor pillows. The orange you can see through the window is the wall to the side garden, which in our case is just a bricked walkway. If we were staying longer I would pull up a couple rows of brick alongside the wall and plant creeping vines like bougainvillea so we would see some green out the windows... one neighbor did that last year and the effect is really nice.

Here you're looking from the couches at the entertainment console and its mass of wires. We've more recently spruced up that area with family photos on the shelves.

Here's the dining room - an open plan from the front of the house to the back. You can't see the door to the back garden, just past the right edge of the picture.

The kitchen is the only small thing in the house, complete with metal cabinets and an exhaust fan that draws steam from the stovetop and vents directly out the top side; I have no idea what use that might be. You have to light the oven with a match, which adds a nice element of danger to cooking. The kitchen is only connected to the house by a door off the hallway that leads to the laundry and maid's room. It's really hard to hear anything that's happening in the rest of the house when you're in there. I've been spoiled by my Pittsburgh kitchen; I really miss being able to talk to people while I get the food ready.

Here's the master bedroom.

The boys share this room now; A is in her own space using the maid's bed which we carried upstairs. For the past week the boys have had a camping tent pitched between their beds (a birthday gift for C) which really adds to the effect of the room as you might imagine.

And this is what a bathroom looks like. No shower curtains or rods. Never quite got around to fixing that in the kids' bath...

Hopefully my mood funk will pass today. I'm doing all the things that usually work for me: getting exercise, planning family outings, cooking meals. Yesterday really stunk and if my job is to keep the family happy, balanced and functioning we can't have much more of that...

Thin Blood

2007-11-08T13:02:00.000-05:00

It's 79 degrees and I'm pulling out the fleece.

I'm actually glad they've switched off the chiller in the pool and switched on the heat. I can exercise outside during the day so long as I either ride bikes or stay in the shade. We're going to have to start using sunscreen, which we haven't had to do so far because the sun was so painfully strong even the kids hid from it. The cold water tap actually runs somewhat cool; I don't have to put ice in the bathtub to prevent the kids from being scalded. We sleep without the A/C blowing at us. It's the beginning of the growing season, so I planted some annuals in the back garden. Nothing fancy - just vinca, petunias, and dianthus. But things are getting greener (where there are irrigation tubes).

This is very nice.

Now if I could only get a good steak...

C's Birthday Pool Party (and ruminations)

2007-11-06T00:00:00.000-05:00

To celebrate C's birthday (the big six!) he wanted a pool party because when will he ever again be able to have a pool party in November?

Normally the birthday parties in our family involve a theme, a fancy cake, decorations, and a bunch of special party games. Well, this year there was a lot going on so we took a lighter approach of more self-directed fun. We invited friends to the community center in the compound and played with folding and decorating paper,

bopped balloons around, played a couple of games, had cake,

(the birthday boy)
(Tobias, C, Dane, A, Lucas)

(Tom, Alex and his mom)

opened presents,

and then went swimming. Many thanks to Gigi for providing pictures...

I was extra glad it worked out (and nervous) because for his birthday dinner we planned a sure-thing: KFC at the skate park. Either there was a special event or it's just going to be mobbed for the rest of the winter, but there were at least 10 times as many people as we have ever seen at the family park. Poor C; it just wasn't much fun and they weren't able to practice on the skateboards at all.

But the party was a laid-back good time; the boys were just really excited to be together and they didn't need a lot of bells and whistles to have fun. C is just so happy to have school friends. I remember being amazed at how J matured when he went off to kindergarten - he really felt good about himself, he enjoyed being around kids his age, he learned so much about friendship. C is there now and it's just a joy to hear him talk about how he has so many friends, and to watch him make artistic creations out of everything he can get his hands, scissors, and some glue on.

I think C was the perfect age to come here. J and A felt really uprooted - they were pretty established and happy with their daily routines. Of course, being five years older J dealt with the stress better than his sister did but this hasn't been as easy for him as I thought it would. For C it was going to be a time of upheaval anyhow, going off to school for the first time, so he didn't have any rigid expectations of what his life should be like. It will be harder for him to leave Doha. J and A both really miss their friends in Pittsburgh and talk about them often; their home base definitely without a doubt did not move.

That night we also said goodbye to Gigi and Grandpa Dave. It was wonderful to see them and I remain thoroughly impressed that they made the trip. Now, I don't know how spectacular Doha seemed to them in the wake of a whirlwind tour of London, but they certainly seemed amused and happy to be part of all the Halloween and birthday festivities. I guess those events were the main attraction here more so than sightseeing. It was a long way to come and I'm sure they're exhausted but we really enjoyed seeing them and we appreciate that effort.

Beach Day

2007-11-05T03:56:00.000-05:00

We wanted to do something fun outside Doha with Gigi and Grandpa Dave, so took our honkin' big SUV south of the city to a beachside resort called Sealine.

(Aside - did I mention that we got a honkin' big SUV? Now that the weather is getting so nice, we wanted to do some exploring in the desert and that means 4WD. It's handy, too, while the grands are in town so we can move the whole group in one vehicle. And there's something kind of surreal about trucking around a Middle Eastern city in a big-a** TrailBlazer with Johnny Cash playing on the stereo. Add that to the list of "never thought I'd...")

Back to the beach. Sealine is about an hour's drive Doha, going south through the desert. Photos don't serve a purpose in most of Qatar's desert areas because there's absolutely nothing to look at. It's tabletop flat and the ground isn't really sandy but rocky, hard-packed dust and widely scattered scrub. Occasionally you see a group of camels but they stay pretty far away from the road. Most of the coastline is the same thing: packed dust turned to mud flats by the tide. So you have to know where to look for a decent beach.

After driving through that for an hour, going past oil refineries and a massive power plant, you get to the sand dunes and a nice, long sandy beach. Sealine is a resort on the beach, and for 50 QR per person you can go use their facilities and enjoy the beach and pool. We were not the only ones to have this idea. The pool was crazy.

I need to get my rant about Sealine out of the way so I can move on... the pool water was cloudy, the facilities were barely a step up from what you would expect at a public beach, and there were hardly any umbrellas or chairs on the beach. But what made me crazy was the trash - I picked up plastic bags, bottles, paper cups, even broken glass. What people do makes me sick.

OK, now I'm going to move on and show what a day at the beach looks like in Qatar: a lot of it is like any beach. We had a strong offshore breeze, so no body surfing today. We get bigger waves in Northern Michigan.

Mother and son bonding time.

But I haven't ever seen camel rides offered along the beach at Mullett Lake. Key tip: sit behind the hump. I'm not sure why they don't just slide right off the hind end, but I guess that's what the saddle is for.

Nor do you see groups of women in abayas on the beach at Walloon Lake.

Maybe it's that the heat has broken, maybe I'm acclimating to the culture, maybe I'm being brainwashed. But the abayas don't look particularly restrictive to me anymore. These women don't look oppressed to me. Their abayas are detailed and ornate with rhinestones and embroidery. They're wearing jeans or whatever they want underneath, walking with sandals or barefoot along the beach, drinking a soda, talking and laughing. As far as I can tell, in Qatar the black robe (abaya) and head scarf (shella) are pretty much obligatory for Muslim women, but further covering is up to the individual. And it's not so discriminatory when you realize that the men wear full robes and head coverings as well. I don't really get why women have to wear black, but what woman doesn't have a little black dress in her wardrobe?

Sorry for all the tangents... Here you can see the dunes in the distance. The tiny bumps on top of the dunes are SUVs - dune bashing is a big sport here. There are ATV rental places lining the road that leads to the dunes...

All in all, it was a good day, and it was helpful to be able to use Sealine's facilities. We're hoping to get out of Doha a lot more often now that we have an appropriate vehicle for the desert. I have a long list of places I want to see...

Halloween

2007-10-31T14:01:00.001-04:00

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

2007-10-30T01:15:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-23T15:21:00.000-04:00

'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!

2007-10-22T04:26:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-22T03:59:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-08T02:22:00.001-04:00

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

2007-10-06T14:46:00.000-04:00

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.

Challenge to schoolkids

2007-09-30T01:35:00.000-04:00

In case there are any school kids out there reading this blog, here's an idea. In this blog, as with any Internet resource, you need to question the source. Despite my authoritative voice, my authority is really limited to the fact that I live here and you probably don't. I try to be better than that, but really I don't have any fact checkers or even legitimate titles. Given my stated credentials, I am the indisputable authority on my daughter's gut but perhaps not so on Islam, native Qatari fauna, and Middle Eastern politics.

The challenge is to find an erroneous statement or assumption I've made - pick an entry and check my facts. Respond through comments here (click on the pinkish "x comments" link at the bottom right of this entry). I'm curious what you'll come up with.

Dress Code

2007-09-27T10:01:00.001-04:00

I'm running out of interesting things to say. This isn't really life in the fast lane any more than it was in Pittsburgh...

But I've gotten some questions about the dress code, so I guess I'll offer my description.

The general rule I've heard is, cover the shoulders and knees, men and women alike. Westerners (and others) wear western dress - I basically live in a variety of t-shirts and I rotate through two pairs of capri pants, two long linen skirts, and two sarongs. Some women like to wear those comfy cami tops with thin straps; in public they add a bolero-type sweater or a large wrap scarf to cover the shoulders. Western men wear pants or long shorts that cover the knees. Now, I've seen women at the mall wearing midriff-exposing tank tops and mini skirts (and that was even during Ramadan!), but that's pretty uncommon. I suspect they get helpful advice from their fellow mall-goers: people here will certainly let you know when you're out of line. It's not threatening, but the message is clear.

The rules are much looser inside our compound - we kind of treat the compound as an extension of our homes. It's not a huge place but you can wear shorts to walk around the block and on the tennis courts. Also, Ramadan restrictions seem to be lifted inside the compound - I've seen snacks and water at the pool. Incidentally, pool and beach attire is the same as at home.

There's a completely different set of rules for Muslims. Arab women and men mostly wear traditional dress - that's the black abayas for women and the white head scarf and thobe for men. Once you get used to the abayas you can see that there's a wide variation in style. Some women just wear a head scarf to cover the hair and a robe to cover the arms and legs, while some cover every possible inch - full length robe, lightweight gloves, and the face completely covered (including eyes) with a veil. I have to remind myself that I don't really know anything about the woman underneath the veil, except that she is a devout Muslim with a strict interpretation of appropriate dress. Sometimes her voice is surprisingly young, cheerful, and western. Honestly, at first I just ignored women whose face I couldn't see - I didn't know what to say. Now I'm getting better at the normal polite exchanges (excuse me, sorry, thank you). Still, I feel like I aim my communications vaguely at the head but slightly off target. I've got a way to go.

These coverings can come off when the women are in an environment where they are certain they will not be seen by men outside their immediate family.

There are ways for women to make a fashion statement. Accessories are important - handbags and jewelry, obviously, are a great way to stand out. You see some Sex in the City type purses that are I'm sure at the height of fashion although I am completely unfamiliar with the medium. The abayas also have a lot of variance in details like the type of fabric and ornamentation. Some are really beautiful, with a lovely drape and intricate embroidery along the edges. Now, that's an abaya I'd like to take home. I suspect the nice ones are very expensive. Just look at the cars these ladies get in.

Mens' thobes offer less opportunity for stating personal style and income. The style is dictated by country of origin. Those who know can tell a man's native land by the existence of a collar, pleats, buttons, and cuffs on his thobe, and the presence of a black or red patten on his head scarf. That leaves the quality of the fabric and jewelery (cuff links, rings) for individualization. And his face. Don't forget that.

That's my summary of high fashion in the Gulf. Maybe I'll get the courage to take some photos at the mall (I understand that folks may or may not want their pictures taken). Remember that I am not a particularly interested observer of fashion; my main goal is comfort, both physical and cultural. I just want my dress to be basically appropriate. Beyond that is really beyond me.

A Good Fit / Up-Beat Entry

2007-09-25T07:19:00.000-04:00

I'm beginning to appreciate our good fortune in landing in this compound.

There are two compounds here where CMU places most of its families: Barzan 2 (our compound) and the Qatar Foundation, which is a little bit closer to Education City, where RTM works. We have friends in QF and one neighbor here who is relocating over there, but I'm really happy with where we are - it's a good fit.

The compound is on the small side so it's not crowded and there's not much traffic. At the same time it's big enough and filled mostly with families, so there's almost always kids at the pool in the afternoon. We have a nice pool, a tennis court and a gym, all effectively in our back yard, which I am finding is great for a compound this size. Although the compound itself is very Western, the surrounding area is distinctly Arab. We have a small business strip just around the corner, and when it cools off we'll be able to walk to a children's park with grass, trees, and a playground (sorry, Dad, it's for women and children only). We have met lots and lots of neighbors and they're great people.

The QF houses are definitely nicer, with hardwood floors upstairs, beautiful eat-in kitchens, and Western-style (read bigger) appliances. Their water cisterns are inside, too, so they don't have the problem with steaming water out of the cold tap... But the pool and gym aren't open yet, and when they open they'll be shared between two big compounds. It has the feel more of a neighborhood in suburban America. In a year or two it will be a great place, but right now I'm really liking where we are.

I guess the "grass is greener" complex just doesn't make much sense to me. Most of the time I'd rather figure out how to be happy where I am than knock myself out finding the perfect situation. And as it turns out, both in Pittsburgh and Doha, we've got it pretty darn good.

PS - I'm feeling really upbeat - could you tell? This week A started preschool and she likes it, we got our mail, and I got the DVD player fixed so we can actually watch the Netflix movies on a big screen. Three aggravations, resolved... And the temperature is slowly coming down - it was downright pleasant early this morning. Up for next week, I'll try gardening, get a haircut, and go for a run outside.

The Tide is Turning

2007-09-20T06:16:00.000-04:00

You probably know by now that our 3 year old girl ("A") hasn't handled the transition so well. Basically, waiting for her to settle in and get comfortable wasn't working, because what she really needed was to establish some relationships. And waiting for friends to find us wasn't working so hot either. So I got a little more proactive (let's not call it aggressive) in finding her a buddy and/or something to do.

We've been getting rather sick of each other, you see. Two weeks ago the boys went off to their first day of school, and that day was wonderful. A just pattered off and played quietly by herself - she clearly was needing some quiet time on her own. It was a delightful day.

Since then, she has needed more and more attention to the point where I couldn't get a chore done without a fight.

I was going crazy all over again.

So my project for this week was to fix that problem. After a couple of days of phone calls, toddler networking, emails, driving around lost, crashing play dates, and (literally) knocking on doors, I have successfully found two little girls her age - one just around the corner in our compound. She has had play dates with both Alisha and Hannah and is so proud of her new friends. I'm sure she'll be pestering me for friend time on a daily basis, but there's no contest: it's so much better having her beg for a play date than having her whine and groan about her bellyache. Yesterday in the car she actually said to me "Mommy, my belly doesn't hurt at all!"
Mom: "Really?"
A: "Yeah. But my back hurts now."

You take what you can get.

And to top it all off, the nursery school that a bunch of the toddlers in our compound go to called this morning - they have space for A starting Sunday. She'll go four mornings a week, which means that four mornings a week I will have a life.

Hoo-ah!

I have been known to declare victory too soon (what can I say - I'm American), but I really think things are coming around.

It's Complicated

2007-09-18T13:17:00.001-04:00

Some days I feel like whatever simple stupid thing I try to do, it's complicated. Many of these annoyances center themselves around the tv. So I'll moan and groan today about that.

We have three satellite dishes on our roof and I can't find a program worth watching. To be honest, I don't even turn on the TV anymore because there is such a ridiculous amount of PORN - it's everywhere! RTM has gone through and put parental control locks as best he can but it seems like the channels change randomly and you click to the next channel and boom, they're doin' the boom-boom. Right there in your living room. And even when the parental control catches it, you still get a solid second for the frame to freeze itself in your brain. I'm not some prude; I just want a flippin' sit-com.

We bought a DVD player when we got here so that it would work with the current but that hasn't worked out so well. We brought it home and found that it doesn't play American DVDs - it displays "wrong region" - some pointless attempt to stop piracy. So we brought it back to Carrefour and they programmed it, right at the front desk, to accept Western discs. Great. It worked for two weeks till the power strip got turned off, then Wrong Region came back. When I brought it back to Carrefour (on Friday) they said they'd have to get it in for service - two or three days. Four days later I call to see what's going on and the word is that service takes at least two WEEKS, maybe a month. Don't call us, we'll call you. No, I can't get my money back because the lady who fixed it last time misplaced the receipt. So we bought this stupid thing to use for four months and a quarter of that is shot.

Not that it really matters because we haven't gotten any of our Netflix movies anyhow. Or any other mail. It turns out after weeks of waiting, calling the Swissvale post office, and calling CMU's post office that our Pittsburgh mail has been forwarded to RTM's office at CMU Pittsburgh, not Qatar. All our magazines, movies, mail, etc. have been sitting on his desk in his empty office. Maybe next week we'll get our August mail.

At least the Wii works. Here's a picture of the assemblage we needed to construct to plug it into the wall.

That's the Wii cord on the left plugged into an adapter plugged into an adapter plugged into a transformer plugged into an adapter plugged into a power strip plugged into the wall. But it works. 'Nuff said.

Enough groaning - what are we DOING? Here are the stop-gaps we have in place - we download tv shows on iTunes on the computer, we play DVDs on the computer, we play on the Wii, we'll buy a new blessed DVD player if we can't get the other one fixed. So there is no deficit of screen time, at least in the kids' lives.

But it's complicated.

Ramadan Begins

2007-09-13T09:01:00.000-04:00

Today is the first day of Ramadan, which is a huge deal in this part of the world, so I thought I'd say something about that. Because as a non-Muslim and after one day of experience with the holiday I must be an expert. But that's the fun of the internet, right? With just a few keystrokes I can relay my self-importance to the world.

Ramadan is the most important holiday in Islam, and it's really the toughest holiday I've ever seen. For 30 days (marking the time when the Quran was revealed), Muslims fast from first light to sunset, abstaining from all food, drink, sex and tobacco. Children, pregnant women, the elderly and infirm are not obligated to fast. The fast is intended to remind people of the suffering of the poor, force them to practice self-control, and impart a sense of kinship among fellow believers. It is traditionally a time when people give themselves over to spiritual devotion.

So how does this play out in the real world?

Well, it's not nauseatingly commercialized like Christmas, although to be fair, Islam is a younger faith - we'll see what Ramadan looks like in 600 years... There are "Ramadan Kareem" (that's Ramadan blessings) signs up in the stores but this holiday is not about decoration and gift-giving. It's all about food.

Restaurants are closed during daylight hours; the liquor store is closed for the entire month. It is illegal for adults to eat or drink in public, even for non-Muslims. The official workday is reduced to 5 hours. Although the megastores (like Carrefour) still have long hours, most stores are closed in the afternoon; they might open again for a couple of hours before sundown or later in the evening. People are advised by the US Embassy to stay off the streets during the hour before sunset because the roads are filled with cranky, hungry drivers rushing home to break the fast. The accident rate is even higher than normal.

The first meal after sundown is called Iftar, which usually begins with dates and juices for quick energy. Later in the evening is a larger feast, which often lasts late into the night. I hear that Ramadan has moved away from a month of self-sacrifice and towards a more bipolar/nocturnal time where the day just shifts forward by several hours... This is the hearsay portion of the account, and I think I should stop before I either offend or say something completely unsupportable.

I'm sure I'll have more later on what Ramadan does to life in Doha.

First Day of School

2007-09-12T03:22:00.000-04:00

OK, the first day of school was Sunday but it took me four days to get the pictures uploaded, not that there were so many. Just think of the delay if we actually used film... So here's a summary of the first few days of school.

The first day of school was overall a success. RTM and I drove the boys in (with A also) to walk them to their classrooms and get them settled. They each had to bring in all their school supplies plus a lunch plus a snack plus two bottles of water. They must have been pretty excited because with all that weight, they still wore their backpacks and didn't even think to ask for help.

We found the classrooms - with all the construction at ASD (the American School of Doha - www.asd.edu.qa) they both have temporary portacube rooms, but they're air conditioned and the Kindergarten classes even have their own bathrooms, so it's no hardship. Both boys have 20-minute recess twice a day, plus PE class twice a week. Recess is outside - I guess they're not impressed by 104-degree heat. Most of the play area is covered with a canopy, and there's always a breeze. Sunglasses are a must, though. The third graders get a lot of freedom - J can do whatever he wants at recess, so he goes to the library half of the time. At the library orientation last week he asked three questions and the librarian made a point of learning his name - "I can tell we're going to get to know each other," she said. And they have - we got to school ten minutes early on the first day and J went straight there to see if a book he "reserved" was ready.

C was a little nervous at the beginning of the day but on Monday he brought home a birthday party invitation and on Tuesday he said he's making a friend with a girl whose name he doesn't know. Don't knock it - this is progress. He was excited about his first music class Tuesday, too. They're both happy to go to school in the morning.

The end of the day Sunday I had a scare. They bring all the elementary grade kids to the front gate of the school to be picked up by parents. It's a small space, sunny and hot and crowded. A had fallen asleep in the car so I left her inside with the a/c on to get a decent nap (you gotta do what you gotta do). After about 15 minutes I found C and hurried him back to the car to cool off and keep A company in case she woke up. Then I waited and waited for J. 20 minutes later all the kids have come out and no J; I was rather agitated. Two kids in the idling car in the parking lot and one kid unaccounted for - I'm 0 for 3 and pretty unnerved. Eventually we found him waiting for bus #5 - there was a typo on his tag and he got shuffled into the bus line. Fortunately bus #5 never showed up (I suppose that's good for me but bad for the other parents) otherwise he'd have been driving around the city who knows where. It took 45 minutes to find my kids.

Monday morning I updated the boys' records to make sure their information is correct in the computer and talked with all the teachers so everyone knows where they go. Subsequent days the pickup has gone smoothly. It's still hot and sunny and crowded - more like a cattle call than I'd have chosen, but it's reasonable.

Things You Don't See in Pittsburgh

2007-09-08T12:40:00.000-04:00

On a lighter note, I thought I'd write a quickie about things you don't see back home.

How's this - I filled the kids' bath up with water entirely from the cold tap, threw in two trays of ice cubes, and they still complained it was too hot.

The refrigerated swimming pool's chilling unit seems to have broken yesterday or the day before. The water will be uncomfortably warm by tomorrow.

The boys' first day of school is on Sunday. They won't be taking the bus - it costs about $1,500 per child per year.

People are commenting on how fair the weather's been - it was really hot last year. Tomorrow it's only supposed to get up to 102 degrees!

I have seven different flavors of fresh fruit juice in my fridge: apple, grape, strawberry, watermelon, passion fruit, orange, and pineapple. I hear the carrot juice is great too.

You can walk around the corner and get fresh hot pita bread from the bakery, five pieces for a riyal (that's about 30 cents). The juice stall next door is where you go for carrot juice.

You can also walk around the corner to the neighborhood grocery and get all sorts of fresh fruits and veggies, herbs and whatever else you might need for dinner tonight. But the eggs are risky - they're not refrigerated in the truck.

All those saloons you see the signs for? They're barbers. Don't ask for a beer. Do ask for a facial.

Ladies, when you're in the public restroom, keep looking in stalls 'till you find one with an actual toilet...

It's best to enter the roundabout at full tilt, if at all possible.

That driver in the left lane probably wants to turn right. Don't expect a signal.

You'll have giant SUVs passing you on the right in a residential neighborhood, but when the parking lot gridlocks no one leans on the horn. You get hand gestures that (they tell me) aren't offensive - they mean "chill out!" I don't think road rage happens here. They drive like fiends but when the traffic is bad or there's a crash, it was the will of Allah. Accept it.

If you need your car washed, go to the mall. Come on, you were going there anyhow. There are guys in the parking lot who'll wash your car while you shop for 10 riyals.

Rush hour is 8 pm. Parks and playgrounds are lit well into the night, and still busy after 9 pm.

I'm sure I'll think of more, but these are just the things that have struck me in the last few days.

Doha Debates

2007-09-05T16:01:00.000-04:00

Tonight I did something totally different: my dear husband gave me his ticket to the Doha Debates, and I spent a couple of hours in the company of adults engaged in an intellectual conversation.

Apparently the Qatar Foundation hosts an annual series of debates on hot topics relevant to the Middle East. Today's debate was centered on the following statement: "This House believes it is time to talk to Al Qaeda". Two speakers supported and two opposed the motion. You can get the full details on the speakers and the format at the Doha Debates website: www.thedohadebates.com. In case you want to see it yourself, tonight's debate will be broadcast internationally on BBC World on September 8 and 9; I recommend checking it out.

The speakers defending the House position basically said that it is time to end the violence, and the only way to do that is to negotiate. Violence only begets violence, but solutions come from dialogue. The speakers opposing said that negotiation requires both rational leaders and achievable goals; Al Qaeda is an organization of extremist sociopaths whose main goals are creating mayhem, violence, and the eradication of the West.

At the end of the debate, the audience voted 2 to 1 in favor of the House. I have to say, I doubt that a Western audience would have voted that way, but this was not a Western crowd. I'd guess that slightly less than half of the audience were wearing traditional Arabic dress, and the conversation felt like it assumed a basis in Islam. Everyone agreed that Al Qaeda is a group of extremist sociopathic murderers; there was the additional insult of how it has distorted Islam and erased its emphasis on compassion and mercy. But there were members of the audience who come from places like Iraq and Afghanistan who asked questions, and their general position was that we just have to stop the violence. It was interesting, though. There was this strong, urgent sentiment that the most important thing is to stop the violence, but there were also a few questions that struggled to find some atonement - people will want to see the terrorists punished.

Anyhow, it was an enlightening evening; I know for sure that an open debate like this would not occur in our neighbor, Saudi Arabia. Let's hear it for the Emir's dedication to free speech.

Quick trip to Al Ahli

2007-09-04T16:10:00.000-04:00

Well, A's bellyaching got worse - she's always complained that her belly hurts but on Sunday night it actually woke her up from sleeping. She had a rough night and never really recovered - cranky and no appetite all day, but the part that worried me most was that I couldn't get her to drink more than a couple of sips. Even in the a/c, that's just not sustainable here. So I decided to take her to the hospital.

This was an interesting experience. I called around during the day but couldn't get through to anyone at the hospital who could make an appointment for us. I didn't get the impression this was a language problem; it's just that the people at the main line didn't know how to get us through to Pediatrics. Weird. I asked around the compound and people said that, to get to a doctor, you have to go to the hospital.

OK, it sounds totally obvious here, but that's not what I'm used to doing unless it's a real emergency.

So we went to the closest hospital, where all our friends have taken their children for treatment. The place looks more like a large hotel than a hospital. It's beautiful. And when you get to the waiting room they take your drink order - coffee, tea, juice? All the nurses made a fuss over A; something that J would eat up with a spoon but my shy girl doesn't enjoy. But how nice was that? The doctor took her whole history, he had all the time in the world, it seemed, and no detail was irrelevant. I told him more about her gut and bowel habits than you have any desire to hear. He ordered an x-ray and read the results right there.

Turns out she has Functional Abdominal Pain, which has been ongoing for more than a year, and I knew about it but didn't have an actual term for. That means that her belly hurts, but nothing is physically wrong with her and she can go about her regular life. Now, that shouldn't be waking her up at night, but she also had just developed a head cold, which could have enlarged her lymph nodes in an already tender area. Add to that a loaded colon, and no wonder she was hurting.

So now we're doing regular suppositories and she felt much, much better today. She still says her belly hurts, of course, but at least she was able to eat three decent meals.

I was trying to break away from being an active participant in her every bowel movement. I'm not joking here - I have to talk the kid through every single stinking crap she takes. And still she gets backed up. At least she doesn't fight the medicine - I swear, she'd rather do anything just to feel like she's doing something.

And the total bill for the after-hours hospital visit, x-ray and pharmacy included, at the fancy private hospital? Less than $100. I paid cash.

The Rest of the Clan

2007-08-31T14:40:00.000-04:00

Well, things seem to be stabilizing. I am doing much better, making friends and making plans. If you know me, you know I've always got a plan... I must be pretty out of sorts if I can't come up with something.

But how is the rest of the Monroe family doing? Here's the brief:

J and C are adjusting very well. We all hit a rough spot together at the beginning of the week, and we opened some friends' care packages from Pittsburgh and that helped (thanks, Maureen!). And they also have spent a lot of time with our neighbors, Dane and Lucas, which is just great. They met when Jonathan saw the dad and boys walking past our house on the way to the club house with a DVD player in his hand. It was like the Pied Piper - my boys were out the door before A and I found our shoes. The rest is history - we've seen their family every day since, and the boys have had a great time together. And you know from the Hallelujah post that the parents are the right kind too. On the belly front, C has liked the food; J has resisted but he can almost always steel himself and choke down enough to warrant dessert. Both boys declare unsolicited that they love Qatar - there's a pool and a tennis court and we live in a castle. Now that they have co-conspirators they have really found their groove.

A is coming along more slowly. And implying that she is coming along would be optimistic. She doesn't like the food, almost across the board. Her belly hurts, which I think is a combination of gas, stress, and manipulating Mom and Dad to get what she wants. We've got some medicine and that has helped but she's just out of sorts all the time, and she didn't start out as a low-maintenance child. She needs to find friends, but she really hasn't responded to the 3-year-old girls we have introduced her to so far. They're just not Tyler. I think we need to force her to socialize at first but that hardly seems fair to the other kids. I'll be looking for a preschool for her - she need to see the same kids on a regular basis. She also does better when she has Mom or Dad's full attention, which will happen much more once the boys go off to school.

Bob is happy as a clam. Really, his world hasn't changed so radically - he gets up, he goes to work in the morning, he teaches or prepares for class - his students speak English quite well and he's used to teaching ESL students in Pittsburgh, he comes home to the family at dinnertime. He's been happy to find a real feeling of openness and community in the office here. His big adjustment has been learning to recognize and talk with women in traditional dress - black head scarves and robes. It does take some practice, to remember that there's a regular personality behind the scarf or veil, you focus on the voice and eyes rather than other cues. So teaching here has been a great experience for him. And coming home for a swim with the kids before dinner is another big plus.

So that's the bunch of us. Distinctly more good than bad. And in a few weeks it's going to get better.

Ups and Downs

2007-08-27T15:03:00.000-04:00

I spent most of the day today feeling about as low as could be. Which makes very little sense because by all metrics (other than my personal emotional well-being) it was a really nice day.

We started early with C's assessment testing at the American School of Doha (ASD), which went well. C tested at the normal level and we'll hear the formal admissions decision in a couple of days, which sounds like a formality; I have no doubt that C will get in. School starts on September 9, which is a little late because they are finishing construction of a large new complex which should be beautiful.

But by the time we got home at 9:30 I was pretty much done for the day. We had our new friends Dane and Lucas stop by and the boys played with them at the community center and then at their house for half the day, which is wonderful. Their dad, an acknowledged saint, delivered a case of my favorite adult beverage. My parents called and we all got to talk to them for a good while. And I still felt like crap. I miss my friends, I miss my dog, I miss my garden, I miss Frick Park. I'm sick of hauling three kids to a different mall every day because there's pretty much nothing else we can do. The malls are plentiful and spectacular -- they've figured out how they can draw folks in when the heat is oppressive -- but they're still malls, and I just don't like those places. I want to get outside and play.

It felt like Seasonal Affective Disorder but in reverse, like my body just can't handle this much sunshine without shutting down and seeking a dark hole. Maybe I'll get used to it? The good news is that once we got to 5 pm and the sun went down, I started to rebound. There was an actual crowd at the (usually empty) pool, all the regulars were there. The community here isn't so different from Regent Square with all the young families, friendly neighbors, and the huge proportion of people with post-graduate degrees. I just need to get my head in the right place, forcibly if necessary. Must... regain... perspective....

I hear there's a walled children's garden just a block or two away from our house, only women and children allowed, I'm hoping to try it out tomorrow morning before it gets unbearable. And I think I'll invite someone over for dinner, which as you probably know is one of my favorite ways to improve my mental health.

Hallelujah!

2007-08-24T13:55:00.000-04:00

Guess what's in my fridge?

Beer. Five cold ones. I am almost giddy.

I met a really nice family a few doors down from us with a liquor permit (and two boys entering the American School of Doha in 3rd grade and Kindergarten which is fun but not quite as exciting right now) and they say we should be able to get a permit without too much trouble. We just need a letter from CMU affirming that we are not Muslim and stating Bob's salary - you can only buy some set percentage of your monthly income on alcohol. Then we send that in with a liquor permit application and hope like heck it comes through before Ramadan starts and the liquor stores close down for a month.

They'll even show me where the liquor store is - apparently it's on the outskirts of town and not really signed and the hours are pretty limited and it's not on any map.

So how hard could that be? Well, the point is that someone who has been through the process said it's possible and let me tell you, I'm thinking it's worth the effort.

That's all the news for today. Now we adults are going to settle down and drink the beverage of our choice. And I'm not talking about strawberry juice.

Tour Day

2007-08-23T15:36:00.000-04:00

Today I actually got to see the city of Doha.

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.

Our house, is a very very very fine house...

2007-08-22T13:05:00.000-04:00

So I've been getting some questions about what the digs are like. We call it the Castle.

It's huge - five bedrooms, five and 1/2 baths (including the maid's quarters downstairs), and a one-car garage. All the floors are tiled and there are big windows in all the rooms. The ceilings are about eleven feet high. There's a dining room and family room downstairs. The kitchen is clearly not intended to be used by the people who live here - it's small and pretty basic, separated from the rest of the house in floor plan and accoutrements.

No, we don't have a maid. We're just not here long enough and face it, with the boys in school I think I'll be able to handle that job.

Upstairs we have the bedrooms. Each bedroom has its private bath of course, each with a tub or shower and "It has something extra!" --J "It has a baby sink!" --A. That would be the bidet, a source of great interest and amusement. A and C are sharing a room which leaves a room empty, which is now filled with a sprawl of LEGOs that I don't have to step on. Not bad.

There are steps to the third floor, but that's really just the roof where all the a/c units and "cold" water tank and water heater are. Really there is no cold water - it's hot enough up there that the water from the cold tap is too hot for the kids to comfortably bathe. I shower with the tap full on cold and it's just right. My meat thermometer says the water from the hot tap is upwards of 130 degrees. You can walk around on the roof - it is covered with white lava rocks and the area is walled so it's completely private. This is where I hang the laundry. I understand it's quite nice up there once the weather breaks.

We have a small walled back yard, mostly brick patio with a small garden of succulents, ornamental grasses, and some variety of desert rose.

It's a reasonably large compound, which is basically a walled (notice a theme?) neighborhood block. We have about 56 villas here, with each connected on one side to another that is the mirror image. In the middle of the compound there's a community center with a gathering space with a big TV, a multi-purpose room with ping-pong and billiards tables, and a gym with decent equipment. Behind the community center is the pool, with a small wading area and a deeper pool for playing (no laps).

Past the pool is the tennis court, lit at night, and past the tennis court is our back yard.

This is taken from the pool area across the tennis court to the back of our house. You can see the wall for the back yard below, the second floor windows, and the wall for the roof patio area above. Our house continues further to the left but I didn't know that when I snapped it...

They are just this week installing a kids' playground with a slide and stuff next to the tennis court. It think the work is being done by genies. Every day I walk by and see the progress that has been made but I've never seen a worker. They're digging irrigation, pouring concrete, and building a play set 40 feet from my house and I wouldn't ever have noticed if I didn't walk by on the way to the pool.

I didn't post any pictures of the inside because there's nothing much to see. Although it's a surprisingly nice furnished villa and CMU has taken great pains to stock it with the essentials that we will need, it still feels bare. We've been into a villa of a family that's been here for over a year and it's nicely decorated and feels quite homey. But we won't be here long enough to invest in shelves, rugs, wall hangings, all the personal touches. There is a noticeable echo. I was really looking forward to leaving behind all the STUFF that crams my life and home; I found that I miss it. Maybe I'll return home with a greater appreciation for all that I have.

Maybe I'll also ask the house sitters to quietly remove three or four bins of kids' junk...

Recipe for culture shock

2007-08-21T14:11:00.000-04:00

Start with a healthy dose of jet lag, add a foreign language, alphabet, and culture. Brew at 106 degrees for three days in complete isolation - no TV, no phone, no car, no internet, access only to a one-block walled compound. Season with PMS.

Stand clear of the explosion.

Everything is different - here's a short list:

Arabic letters are written from right to left but the numbers go left to right.
Light switches - on is down.
Electrical current is 220 v and the plugs for even locally bought items may not fit the wall sockets without an adapter.
Dawn is at 4:00 am; sunset is at 6:00 pm. You can not get up early enough to beat the heat - the lows are in the 90s and it's humid. Your only hope to be comfortable outside is the pool.
The sun is painful at midday. Even in the shade it's blinding. It feels like a hot direct sunshine at very high altitude, like on top of a mountain, except the brightness comes from everywhere because it reflects off every surface.
Even basic food items taste different - the beef and chicken are grass fed, not grain. Other items that don't have an American brand are generally Arab interpretations of the product. Even familiar American brands (which don't come cheap) taste somehow, vaguely different. Pork is outlawed.
A box of cereal costs $7.
The stores and malls are bustling at 9 pm on a weeknight - life here largely operates after dark.
Appliances don't work - so far we've had the washer, dryer, microwave, oven, and a cell phone break. The only things that have worked are the dishwasher, toaster, and coffee maker (God is merciful). They fixed the washer; losing the dryer hasn't been a problem because a clothes line on the roof patio is just as fast.
There is virtually no flora or fauna, except in gardens and homes. There are no weeds. There are no bugs (except a few itty bitty ants), no mice, no dogs. Once or twice a day I see a bird fly by; I've counted three cats. The wind has no leaves to rattle. The only sound is the hum of air conditioners. Our house has seven. That's not window units; each of those would equal the cumulative a/c power that we use in our Pittsburgh house.

I could really really use a beer right about now. I thought it wouldn't be a big deal, but... yeah. Oh well.

London Layover

2007-08-18T07:53:00.001-04:00

[I wrote this posting on the plane leaving London; it's taken us a couple of days in Doha to get up to speed and we're not quite there yet - the photos will follow. In the meantime, here's something to catch everyone up:] **Photos are in - scroll down!**

The kids have been great travelers – they trooped through the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia airports and were wonderful on board the planes. They were under orders to go to sleep ASAP on the flight to London and that actually worked, as well as I could possibly have expected. The hours we slept were inversely proportional to age, which is better than the opposite.

Upon arrival in London, it got a little rough. We are all (IMHO) excellent travelers, but the jet lag was harsh. A bag fell on my foot while waiting for the currency exchange, no biggie, but it injured a blood vessel and left a huge bruise on the top of my foot. We made it to the hotel before noon but the room wasn’t ready till 3:00 so we wandered around in a fog for a few hours. I think we saw Buckingham Palace but I don’t remember what it looked like. If you ask the kids I think they’ll tell you we took them on a forced march for EVER and all they remember is that when it was over they got to go to the hotel pool. In the evening I went to bed early with A, and Dad took the opportunity to adventure out with the boys, catching the first double-decker bus that came by, hopping off whenever they found someplace interesting, and then hopping on the next one that came by heading in vaguely the correct direction. They continued with that plan until they stumbled upon the hotel a couple of hours later, having seen quite a bit of the city. All of the boys thought this quite an adventure.

Tuesday was much more interesting. We went to the National Museum and saw the Elgin Marbles, Rosetta Stone and Egypt exhibit, then did some more wandering around the city. The boys enjoyed the museum but it became clear that the only museum A had any interest in would have to feature the rich world of fashion ("Where are the dresses Mommy?"). And by the end of the day even that was beyond her. We did some more wandering around and found our way to Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey. The surprise highlight of the day was Westminster – I got the boys in by promising they would see the graves of the knights. It turns out most of the tombs there (and there are a lot) are not so glamorous, but at the end of the visit the choir began their rehearsal for the Evensong service. The sound was so beautiful, even with the stops and starts, we didn't want to leave. C was enchanted. He would not move – he just wanted to sit and listen to the music. The visit was transformed from a tourist exhibit to a meaningful experience, if that makes sense.

I guess we knew this going in, but everything in London is unbelievably expensive. I look at the menus and see prices I would expect in the big city, then realize that’s in pounds – it’s over double once you do the conversion. Holy smokes. We went out for dinner at a neighborhood pub and the kids ate $9 bowls of plain pasta noodles.

We continued to gather momentum Wednesday with our most ambitious day – King’s Cross station, the London Eye, and the Tower of London – and knocked it out of the park. Awesome. You can see the pictures of King’s Cross Station; we walked right past the Cambridge Express to get to Platform 9 ¾. Here’s what it looked like.

London Eye was really cool and we all had fun...

...but my favorite part was walking past the buskers in Jubilee Park.

And we saved the best for last – the Tower of London. C’s favorite part of London was seeing the Crown Jewels; J’s favorite part was watching a pair of knights in full armor duel.

As I said, I think the layover will help us acclimate in some surprising ways. For one thing, we are now really ready for the desert. London was cold and pouring rain for the majority of our visit. We have agreed that next time we long for wet weather we will remember how disagreeable it really is.

The second adjustment was a surprise. Our hotel turned out to be located in a predominantly Middle-Eastern neighborhood – I called it “Little Lebanon.” Most signs were in Arabic, hookah bars left and right, women in veils and burkas, you get the idea. I ate two Middle Eastern dinners but failed to get a proper fish & chips. When we get to Doha I’ll be looking for another lamb tajine with prunes and almonds – delicious.

And I don’t think I’ll have any trouble with dress code in the Middle East. I packed summer clothes for London – shorts and t-shirts – and felt uncomfortably exposed. Outside our family, I didn’t see another person wearing shorts (check the Westminster photo for proof!). Long pants, wool sweaters, even a puffy winter jacket, but not another single pair of shorts. Maybe they show skin in Paris, but apparently not in London. I guess it’s better I learn that lesson in a Western culture. I don’t care so much what I wear – I’d rather just blend in.

Now we’re on the plane to Bahrain (a quick hop from there to Doha), and I gotta tell ya, British Airways Club Class is the way to fly. Yes, another glass of wine would be lovely. A chocolate? Super. The boys agree – six hours of PG-13 movies, TV, and videogames. They made sure they were sitting together and not next to a parent, to enhance their viewing pleasure. "A" wanted to sit next to her Daddy, a decision I wholeheartedly support. Not that anyone can get her to change her mind anyhow.

And now I will sign off, because these are my last remaining hours to learn a phrase or two of Arabic. Our phrase book has all sorts of useful things to learn. I already have hello, goodbye, please, thank you, yes, and no. Having mastered those pleasantries, I’m not sure if I should continue with “the scorpion bit him right there” (just for fun) or “if you don’t stop following me I’ll scream” (a useful phrase to know in any culture). Maybe I should take a poll….

Mailing Address

2007-08-08T07:48:00.001-04:00

For all who want to send us letters and postcards, we now have the mailing address at CMU that will be forwarded to us in Qatar.

Bob Monroe
Qatar Office SMC 1070
5032 Forbes Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA 15289

We have a 20 pound monthly weight limit and international postage over that will be charged to us, so check with us before sending anything heavy (like books). But letters and postcards we will be delighted to receive as often as possible.

A Tiny Funeral

2007-07-31T21:49:00.001-04:00

It's a sad day. C's beloved hamster, Little Guy, died today. He wasn't looking so great when we went to pick him up from a friend's house, and by the time we got home he was gone.

We held a short memorial service and buried him in the vegetable garden, which is a special and loved place for C.

How's that for irony - the rodents we want dead are still frolicking in the kitchen but we couldn't keep the one we love alive.

If Little Guy fails in the prime of his life while we are away for one month, what hope do I have for our geriatric dog who has nearly kicked the bucket three times so far this year?

Ominous.

Home again, Home again, Clickety click

2007-07-30T23:35:00.000-04:00

It has become clear that we will need some variant of a house-sitter when we're gone. We arrived home from Michigan last night and it appears that a crew of mice have been taking care of the place. Just like us, they seemed to spend most of their time in the kitchen and sunroom (rooting through the kids' toy baskets) but in time they found their way to the bedrooms too. I spent half the day today cleaning away mouse droppings, and now I'm sitting at the computer, listening to the traps click.

It's a hundred-year-old house. These things happen. My job is to detect rodents' presence and set traps. My dear husband does the rest. So far we're two down; who knows how many to go.

Want to hear the funny thing? Tomorrow I'm going to pick up our pet hamster from a friend's house. Mental note - remove the trap from the boys' room before Little Guy gets back. We don't want any collateral damage.

When we got home last night, I had not made it in the door before J was on the phone inviting friends to come play. Between 7 and 9 pm we had nine friends stop by. It's good to be home.

SO here are the things that need to be done once a week to maintain the house while we're gone:

Run water in all the sinks and flush all the toilets so the s-traps don't dry up and allow stinky sewer gas into the house.

Check for rodents; set traps; remove bodies.

Water the plants (over the summer I just move them to the back deck and they survive on rainwater but come November that's not going to work out).

Start the car and drive it around the block to prevent the tires from flattening.

In the week before we return, we need a housekeeper to give it a heavy duty all around cleaning - dust settles when we're gone, and everything gets a thick coating. The air smells musty and the water tastes funny.

Leg 3 Tour de Michigan

2007-07-30T22:54:00.000-04:00

Michigan really is best done in two legs. Some day we'll get that right.

Walloon Lake was lovely as always. I think that was the longest stretch of time we've ever spent up there with my sister and her family, and it was wonderful. Her girls (ages 4 and 6) are really fun to be around, and time with them is always a high point for my kids. I love to see them together.

For a side trip, our two families (nine in all for whoever's counting) drove out to Sleeping Bear Dunes on the Lake Michigan coast. In another year or two we'll do the Dunes as a camping overnight because it takes a while to get there, but it's worth it even for a day trip. The dunes are a funny thing - when we turned into the parking lot I thought "that's ALL?" - I was expecting them to be visually bigger. But when you're in the middle of the dunes it really looks and feels huge. The sand is powder-soft and miles deep -- Steve dug holes deep enough to bury C and A vertically!

Thing is, at the edge of every slope there are dune grasses and even trees here and there. In Michigan, even the sand dunes are mostly green. Wait till we get to the real desert where at the edge of the dune there's just more and more sand.

I love the feeling you get at the top of a mountain, when all you can see is a horizon of peaks overlapping like waves. I wonder if the desert is like that. I read that there's a place in Qatar you can go to experience "singing sands", where the sand is the perfect texture that it makes a resonant sound when it tumbles down the dune. I read a National Geographic article about another place with singing sand - that's something I want to experience.

It amazes me how we can spend four weeks - a whole month - at the lakes and it's still sad to leave.

BONUS READER QUIZ: What is wrong with the above picture? You know us well if you can spot the one thing that's just not right... Click on the "x comments" or "Post a Comment" link below to make a guess!

Leg 2 Tour de Michigan

2007-07-30T22:03:00.000-04:00

Time to visit my folks in Ann Arbor, and it just happened to be Art Fair. Art Fair is the four days of summer when the city completely turns on its ear - four of the main streets downtown, from one end of the town to the other, are closed for the fair, rendering it virtually impossible to get from one place to another. At the same time, thousands of people who wouldn't know their way around in the best of situations descend on the fair city to further clog streets, parking lots, and restaurants.

I remember when I thought of Art Fair as the biggest party of the year. What a miserable old bag I've become.

Really, though, I still do enjoy visiting the fair - I'm a fan of art fairs in general, and I did have the chance to see most of the booths. I even bought something. But Art Fair added a layer of complexity that I could have lived without this year.

Another flash from the past - we spent some time at the Racquet Club, where I spent uncounted days when I was a kid/adolescent. They still play gutter ball, pom pom, and Marco Polo. I gave the kids a tour ("That's the barn we always thought was haunted, here's the bush I hid under when it was time for tennis lessons, this is where we crawled around in the dirt chasing kittens") and it's hard to believe I'm remembering when I was my kids' age. It seems almost as likely that I'm thinking of something they did.

Ah, me.

Oh yeah, where was I? Way, way off topic as usual. This is a weblog about traveling where?

The point was to go to Ann Arbor because that's where my dad was laid up. By force of sheer grit and determination he's getting around remarkably well but there's no doubt he needs surgery to fix that disc. Now there's a series of visits he needs to line up to get that done - an exam, consult with the neurosurgeon, pre-surgery tests, etc. In the meantime he's hobbling around and Mom is following him around worrying.

Thank God for martinis - vodka, dry with an extra olive.

Leg 1 - Tour de Michigan

2007-07-16T13:41:00.000-04:00

Because the classes RTM teaches all fall during the school year, he has the summers off which makes it possible for us to take an extended month-long summer vacation in Northern Michigan. Our kids are the fourth generation of Monroes at RTM's place on Mullett Lake, while my parents are relative newcomers to the region - they're approaching their 20th year on Walloon Lake.

Sometimes, especially up here, I almost get how neighboring cultures can harbor ill feelings for each other even after decades of peace.

People can have uncommonly long memories. I shouldn't say that - it sounds bad, and that's not a fair representation. It's just that there's a stronger feeling of generational history here than I have seen anywhere else, probably because this is the only place I have experienced where families keep coming back for generation after generation.

Pittsburgh is like that for several of my friends - I should ask if they have any idea what I'm trying to say.

It's just beautiful up here, though. We have everything I could want - family for visiting, lakes for swimming, sand for building, long roads for cycling, good food for - well, you get the idea. I get more high-quality exercise here than anywhere. At home I do a lot of quickie workouts, just enough to stay in shape for the rare occasion when I can really go knock myself out. Here I can knock myself out on a regular basis. Running, open water swimming, hammerfest biking, you name it. Sweet.

S0 we've been up here for two weeks and it's time to move from Mullett Lake to Walloon, although that's not what we're going to do. Turns out my dad's back, which has been an issue on good days, hasn't been having any of those lately. He's holed up at home in Ann Arbor waiting for an MRI and an appointment with the neurosurgeon. So we're going to bring the whole famdamily downstate to relieve him from the tedium of waiting. Or relieve him from the comfort of a quiet couch in front of his choice of non-animated TV show. Whatever.

I'm worried about my dad and it's beginning to dawn on me that this may not be a convenient time to leave the country. Although we don't live really close by, I like to think I can be there if my folks need me. So add that to my list of concerns.

(PS An idea for a future posting - What Could Go Wrong? Sounds like a fun one - I'll hold off on that one for a really wigged out hormonal day. You are hereby warned.)

QATAR?! A geopolitical map

2007-06-26T20:00:00.000-04:00

Out of the perennial questions (who what where why when) I think to date I've only missed Where, so here goes.

Qatar (pronounced somewhere between "cutter" and "gutter") is a small country (although it's still bigger the Kuwait) in the Persian Gulf, contiguous only to Saudia Arabia, and between Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. I'm proud to say that I can now not only correctly identify all of these countries, but also Oman and Yemen, further down the coast towards Africa. You could also correctly identify Qatar as right between Iran and Saudia Arabia.

Qatar is not in Iraq, so just calm down now.

In fact, Qatar is probably the most western friendly nation in the Middle East (not saying much) and should serve more often as an example of an open and tolerant Islamic country. Women can drive, earn an advanced degree, work outside the home, and dress as they wish. Free speech is valued, although the local press is rarely critical of the ruling family. Islam is the national religion, but other faiths practice openly; however I have heard that polytheist religions such as Hinduism are not given so much latitude.

Like many countries in the region, Qatar is very wealthy, and it has the highest GDP in the Middle East. Its revenue comes largely from natural gas which was discovered in the 1940s. With a population around 800,000, roughly 25% are Qatari citizens; most of the rest are expatriates coming to work in the gas, oil, and service industries. Most of the population is Sunni Muslim.

The greatest oppression in the country, I understand, is the heat. Summer temperatures often linger around 105 degrees, but it's a moist heat. Humidity in late summer - and that's when we're going - is often 90% with no hope of rain. But it should be beautiful by the time we leave in December.

The bottom line, of course, is safety. Qatar is fortunately not embroiled in terrorist activity - there was one bombing at a mall a couple of years ago but it seems to have been an isolated event, conducted by an individual. Qataris don't hate Americans; in fact, they have welcomed US troups, and currently host our Middle East Central Command station. And personal safety in Doha is probably better than it is here in Pittsburgh, where RTM's car window was smashed yesterday.

We're all curious to see how our current understanding will hold up to actual experience.

What's the Big Idea?

2007-06-18T22:56:00.000-04:00

Why are we taking our family to the Middle East in 2007?

Because CMU asked for faculty to volunteer to teach, and put together some attractive incentives.

Because although Qatar is a very safe and western-friendly country, it's also in the Middle East, and that's a region Americans need to understand better.

Because we've always talked about living overseas and wanting to travel to Exciting Destinations, but we haven't ever made it happen.

Because the kids are out of diapers but still young enough to go just because we said so. Because they'll always remember this experience, and it will enrich their lives.

Because I won't be a stay-at-home mom forever, and this sort of experience probably won't be an option once I go back to work.

But most importantly, because RTM and I made a commitment to reclaim our adventurous spirits. I've always thought of myself as someone who is up for an adventure; letting this opportunity pass would mean giving up on that. It's a link to my youth, and I'm a long long way from ready to let that go.

What do I hope to accomplish in Qatar?

World peace and enlightenment.

Really, though, I want to try something new and exciting, learn to roll with the punches, see a part of the world that is effectively inaccessible from Pittsburgh, and come home with a greater appreciation for the people and things we love most.

To do before we go

2007-06-18T16:37:00.000-04:00

DONE Take dog to vet. Hope he says she is unlikely to die in the next six months. Get bordatella vaccine in case Grandma M has to board her for a weekend. Vet says her status hasn't really changed since he last saw her in March, but her weight has continued to drop to 45 lbs. We're trying her on a steroid to see if that helps her arthritis and gut. The steroid has done wonders for her appetite and general wellbeing; we'll see what happens when she finishes the script...

DONE Take family to the Health Dept. for recommended immunizations.

DONE Get my physical, labs, and chest x-ray.

Receive confirmation directly from the American School of Doha that J & C are admitted (we have confirmation from CMU but not from the school itself). (school is out - we'll check in when we arrive)

Contact ASD's PTA to volunteer for the fall term.

Hand off Pittsburgh PTO responsibilities to (ahem) willing volunteer.

DONE Hire lawn service.

Find out where we're going to live.

Find out dress code for children (I know what I'm supposed to wear and cover; but does that mean that we should leave the 3-year-old's adorable sundresses at home?).

DONE Find out how much we are allowed to bring and how we pack (crates, suitcases?). (RTM checked - can ship up to 8 boxes plus checked and carry-on luggage)

Learn Arabic. (OK, this is a work in progress)

DONE Make travel plans, including possible side-trip on the way over. (We fly out 8/12 and spend a few days in London before continuing to Doha; we return 12/16)

Make photo album of family, friends, familiar places to look at when we are lonely or homesick.

Either hire a house-sitter or coordinate neighbors to check on house and care for plants.

Pack clothes, toys, books, cookbook(s), medicines, familiar non-perishable foods, candy/toys to give as gifts.

Clean house thoroughly, top to bottom.

Stow air conditioner units.

Hand off hamster to friends and dog to Grandma M.

How hard could that be?

First Entry Ever

2007-06-13T16:05:00.000-04:00

This is my first blog entry ever, so forgive the amateurism. I'll work on technique later... Now I just want to get the ball rolling.

So a word of introduction.

The intent of this blog is to chronicle my family's 2007 adventure in the Middle East. We are an ordinary American family with three kids - J, a boy age 8; C, a boy age 5; and A, a girl age 3. Last fall RTM, the big guy, Daddy-O, came across an Exciting Opportunity to teach college during the Fall semester 2007 in Doha, Qatar. Our family took the bait and now, in about two months, we are launching ourselves into what may be the most exotic travel and family adventure I will ever undertake.

Some times I get pretty intimidated by the prospect, but I have to remind myself that this is a relatively short expatriate experience. Many, many families have taken more adventurous journeys with great success. But what do I know about that? Very little from the first person perspective. Our greatest adventure so far was to take the family with grandparents to an Arizona guest ranch, which was fantastic by all accounts, but come on. We had at least two extra adults and went somewhere they spoke English, played with horses, and ate primarily steak. Not exactly pushing the limits in terms of culture shock. But we'll have plenty of that later.

Next entries:

Mission statement (what do I hope to achieve in the trip, and what's the point of this blog anyway you narcissistic attention-hound?)

Current status on plans and logistics

Signing off,

Mom Monroe