Ah Temperature Break!

Hey
The temperature this morning was only 37C ... Relief!! Its amazing that it actually felt cool this morning when I got into the car. We start the car in morning and get the A/C going so it's bearable inside the vehicle, today I didn't have to!

Ramadan

Ramadan is a holy time in the Muslim calendar. I must confess that I know very little about Ramadan but I will do my best to share my perceptions and surmises. Ramadan occurs ever year but not at the same time. This year it started during the last week of August with the sighting of the first crescent moon and ends the last week of september with the next crescent moon. Next year it will start at the end of July , the year after June... At the end of Ramadan we have Eid (all the expats at the school head out on trips and school is closed for a week).


Ramadan is a time of denial, it reminds me of lent, but the guidelines are rigorous, universally observed and quite challenging. During Ramadan all Muslims fast. The fasts include all food and liquids including water. The fast begins at sunrise and lasts until sunset.Families get up before sunrise to chow down and hydrate. For kids that can be super tough at school when the temperature is 40+ and they're outside during their breaks. Lenore regularly sees kids with hydration issues around midday. She has to call home first before giving any water!
All restaurants and coffee shops observe Ramadan, you can't even buy a Dunkin' donut or a Big Mac until after 5:56pm (tonight).This is observed all month long. The flip side of that is that restaurants stay open until mid night or later. Some kids come to school really tired... nuf said.



One rule I've learned during Ramadan is "never drive betwen 4:30 and 6:00pm". The local men who are already not the most easy going of divers are now behind the wheel, hypoglycemic/cranky and can't get home fast enough! It's actually somewhat dangerous.
Ex pats are also encouraged not to be seen eating and drinking, therfore, no coffee, no water, no gum ... zip. Students need to go to their locker to get a drink of water, teachers can step into the hallway and descretely take a sip of water. While playing hockey at the mall on Friday we were all told to watch our fluid intake, be discrete.
Something I love about the whole experience is the call to prayer. Every evening mulahs climb the minerettes next to the mosques and sing. The singing repeats when the prayer is over. From my roof there are 6-7 towers. You can hear the different chants over lapping, its beautiful. For me its been the quintessential Mideast experience. All the photos of the minerrettes in the blog were taken from my roof without a 35mm camera. There many mosques in Doha. In this country anyone anywhere in the city must be able to hear the call to prayer.

Our Stuff Has Arrived

Finally all our gear is here, which means most importantly .... I can play ice hockey this Friday at the Villagio mall! Oh yeah! Oh and our clothing is finally here too... This is nice because, since July 16 we've been wearing the same sets of clothing in our suitcases(ugh!)
There was a communal sigh of relief as we started opening boxes. There is nothing like a lot of familiar stuff to make you feel at home! The school placed all the boxes in our home while we were work... that was great!
The one thing I have noticed to my chagrin is alot of the excess unecessary stuff we sent over. No I am not talking about the hockey equipment. Mugs, silverware, lots of books, dvds, camping gear etc... we paid a good hunk of change to send, we could have bought here and not been out of pocket.
For example I thought we should have a christmas tree, so we shipped one, in retrospect not one of my more stellar decisionsHo ho ho... It kinda feels like Christmas around here with all the opening of boxes so maybe the tree isn't totally out of place. The camping gear will be fun when we go camping out in the desert. DVD's will come in handy as we are getting tired of watching "Tooltime" reruns. As well there's nothing better than a up of coffee in an old favorite mug.
As well the beds here are firm, so I am looking forward to using the egg carton foamies we sent, as well as our pillows from home.
The other thing that will be great is to get familiar pictures up on our wall, the villa is so bland, a little color will be nice.
Finally there is not alot of storage space so until I get my own classroom, many boxes will remain packed.
School is early tomorrow, the first couple of days have been great but Evelyn Lerose was right the amount of behind the scenes work is staggering! Oh yeah one other little change... apparently facial hair buys you a little more respect around here .... we'll see. Lenore isn't impressed, so I'm a little sketical ;)

The Mall

See my daughter's blog at http://breanamulvaney.blogspot.com/ if you want a teen's perspective on this adventure...

Malls here are in a word palatial! For anyone out there who is the consummate shopaholic Doha is your Nirvana. The malls are beautiful, wide and they are clean. The malls are a cultural phenomena over here. Their like north american malls, but on steroids. All my hockey games this season are at the City Center Mall ( above ) or the Villagio Mall, you know the one with the canals and the gondolas.
We went out last thursday to shop at about 8 pm, we figured it would be nice and quiet being first day of the weekend. Stop for a second and think about a large city, say with a million people or so. Now imagine a Friday night. Got it? Ok! Now in your mind, close all the bars, all of them. Now ask yourself, hmmm where should we go tonight to kinda get out of the house. Yes siree bob.... I have never in my life seen so many people in a grocery store at one time! When its 40+ outside and you've been stuck indoors all day, a nice fancy air conditioned mall, where all your friends hang out is appealing.
The prices are comparable to Canada and the US. Some things are cheaper, some things more. You can't get a gas barbeque for less than 300 $ - 400$.
There are sidewalk cafes in the walkways of the mall where men drink coffee, chat and smoke. There are many stores that are local but we also have Marks and Spencer, Gap, Foot locker, Claire's, Body Shop and Carrefour (the French Walmart). You get almost anything in a mall with the exception of Victoria's Secret and Budweiser.
You can also get your car washed for 10 QR while you shop, that's if you can find a parking spot which any night of the week, can be a real challenge.

A Cold Shower

The temperature here over the last week or so has been dancing between 44 C during the day and 36C at night. Its hot....always! Trust me, I've been up at 4am (jet lag), on my roof (the majority of roofs are flat, with direct access, its kinda funky, but I digress) and guess what? Its hot out ! So, now that I've convinced you that this is no delusion, let me propose the appeeeeal of a cool shower amidst the pervasive heat..! But, oh me, oh my, no such luck! Why might you ask? The answer is simple. The water tank is outside.

If you want hot water... no problem! You get it regardless of which tap you turn! Actually we have found that the cold hot water is in fact hotter than the hot hot water because you can turn the hot water tank temperature down and the tank also happens to be indoors.......(I know, don't ask). Where was I? A cold glass of water comes from inside the fridge or the water cooler. When Lenore needs to do a cold wash or rinse when doing clothes she ........... wait for it ......... adds ............... ice cubes!..... really! You know, its just funny, you just have to laugh! I love this country!

Qatar is not Dry!

Contrary to much speculation the State of Qatar is not dry... But its not all that wet either. There is only one place in the whole country to buy booze. The place looks like Fort Knox when you pull in. As well, you need your boss' permission to get a photo Id pass card. As well, the card costs 1000QR or about 300 $ which mercifully you get back. There are restrictions however on the amount of alcohol you can buy each month! No more than 20 % of your monthly income! ...... I hope that never becomes a concern. Anyway, you can pay about 40$ for 24 beer and wine is about 20 to 25 $ for an ok bottle of wine. The store closes in a few days for the entire month of Ramadan... so everyone is stocking up, the place is crazy-hectic and its not that big! Shopping carts are more like bumper cars. The selection is good but... not a single bottle of Canadian beer to be found anywhere! (HEAVY SIGH)

Once you leave the alcohol must be concealed from view. You unload the booze behind closed gates.... etc.. Drinking and driving here is an obvious major no-no. I'm not sure what the penalty is (deportation?), but there is zero tolerence. It sounds like local house parties are definitely the way 2 go :)

We have Arrived

Asalaam Alaikum

Well, we had a wonderful flight from DC to Doha. Qatar Airways is a 5 star airline and its easy to understand why. The meals were delicious, a selection of dozens of new and old tv shows, movies...etc We were received at the airport by a greeting service. They collected our lugggage while we sat in a lovely lobby eating dates. They then marched us past long queues at customs straight to my new administrators who drove us to our new villa. Everyone was incredibly nice.

The first few nights have been challenging as the jet lag made it very difficult to sleep. In fact there has been only one night since I've been here that I have managed to sleep through the night. We all seem to be roaming the halls from 2 to 4 in the morning unable to sleep. Its improving slowly .

Monday morning All the new men teachers were picked up by a bus and taken for blood tests, blood typing, chest xrays and drivers licences. What an experience! You go local medical facilities and stand in line with dozens of men from Nepal and Bangledesh waiting to get poked and proded.

The driving here is.... bizarre. Its a mixture of rigorous rules with huge fines and drivers who seem oblivious to those two things. If you get caught in an intersection on a yellow/red the fine is 6000 QR or 1500 US. The traffic after 6pm is bumper to bumper. People here drive fast! If aren't going fast enough they will flash their headlights and honk their horn until you get out of the way, they pass on shoulders or simply create a new lane between two preexisting ones. There are roundabouts everywhere and they are 3 lanes wide and the basic rule of conduct is ... every man for himself. Lenore was hoping to get here license but was informed that she needs for me to get my residency first, it could take a month (after seeing the local drivers, that could be a good thing)


We have been very busy all week being orientated to the school. The school is very structured and is very big on communicating everything to everyone. We have been "in class" all week trying to get caught up. Every evening has been a night out to homes or restaurants where we have sampled arabic, indian and other exotic dishes. Lunches were subway subs, pizza hut ...etc. The new food is delicious but its also nice to get a burger or hot dog once in a while.

The girls and I got up this morning at 4:15 and drove down to the corniche, which is the seawall on the Persian Gulf.

We watched the sun come up and then drove around down town. It was quite busy as the air temperature was only 29. The daytime temps get up to 45C, but its been mercifully dry and the heat is not that bad ( I need gloves though to hold onto my steering wheel).

The people are all very nice. The admin has put all the new families with teen agers on the same street. Our neighboors are street hockey fanatics from Alberta, should be fun. There is an exceptional sense of community here. The new teachers organised a family b-ball tournament, it was fun!

The old town has markets called Souks where you can buy fabric, watches, luggage, clothing, rugs... They are these tiny littleshops with guys calling you in to take a look. It felt just like Tiajuana.

The home is nice, humungous, made of plaster, tile and stone. Everything echos. We need throw rugs in a hurry.

The electrical outlets are a challenge as most are designed for 220V asian appliances. They will power European appliances but the plugs don't fit the outlets so you need adaptors for everything. North American appliances need transformers to convert 120 to 220, Its been interesting. We have ordered cable tv and you get many american networks as well as three sports channels (yes!)

TTFN