Views of Qatar

Please enjoy some collected pictures of Qatar and Doha.

This is the Arabian, aka Persian, Gulf and the Inland Sea. When you're on the Arabian Peninsula - it's definitely the Arabian Gulf. Persia, aka Iran, is not a favorite thing. It has something to do with the Shia vs. Sunni thing, but I think more to do with nationalism.

Al Zubara Fort. North part of the country. Meant to defend from invading Bahraini's, I believe. Obviously obsolete, but way cool looking. It made me want to run around pretending all sorts of swash buckling and/or pistol popping adventures.


Al Zubara - Manned by Mormons!

Fetche de vache!


A traditional Bedouin tent - at a beach side campground.
The inside surface of a woven tent. Looks pretty darn hairy.

"Welcome to my majlis." A majlis (pronounced mah-zh-lease, the "zh" rhyming with "beige") is an area with cushions used for welcoming and entertaining. It is usually for men. There are female majlis, as well.

Some textures of the place.

These are carvings, though they look like divots.

Sand. There's lots of it.

Water - not so much.

On a dhow. Dhow is the Masai (?) word for boat. If it's not Masai, it's some East African language.
The following photos are from the roof of our house.




The entrance to our "compound."

Our street.


Waqif Souk. Traditional style market. Was actually recently demolished and rebuilt in order to look traditional.



They've got a bunch a truly fun fabric here.
And a lot of spice shops.
Dad has a rug fixation. I think he was rug deprived as a child.


This is at the local gas station/grocery store. Look closely at the upper right. Only found sold in back rooms of seedy places in the States.

Oops - here they are again - at a campground on the beach. Smoking with hookas is the thing here.
Some views of city life in Doha.
TGIF - should be TAIT. Thank Allah it's Thursday.

Ahh - do the dew, in any language.



Not a common sign in the city - but out in the country.
Some more pics from Al Zubara.





Some of the flora and fauna.




Falconry is a popular sport here. They sell the birds at the old souks and probably other places I just don't know about. Falcons have their own passports in this country.
Falcon prey!
An old abandoned village.
A mosque - though it may not look like it at first. We call it the port-a-mosque.


Doha at night from a boat, and by day from a car. The amount of construction going on is hard to see from this picture but approxiamately half of the tall buildings are not completed. Maybe even more.


Throne a stone in Doha and you're either going to hit a mosque or a sports stadium. Here's one. The tall thing by it was used as the torch during the Asian Games held in December 2006. I call it Lord Farquad's Tower.
This building is near the airport. The picture on the side is of the emir raising his hand in greeting. It was put up by a prominent Shia family (most of Qatar is Sunni, including the emir). There's just enough absurdity in the picture to tell that it was sponsored by -well- not a good friend of the emir, but not enough to get the sponsor in trouble. If you can't spot the absurdity - just ask my brother Bean.
This is the inside of a new shopping mall - the Villagio. Hmmm. I wonder if the Venetian and Bellagio could sue jointly.

Days of the Week

New days of the week:

Smunday (aka Sunday)
Moosday (aka Monday)
Twednesday (aka Tuesday)
Wursday (aka Wednesday)
Thriday (aka Thursday)
Frunday (aka Friday)
Saturday

These names help me make sense of the totally wacked out feeling I get when the Sabbath is on Friday and you have to go to work on Sunday.

The following are pictures from the internet mostly of Doha. They are no longer accurate, because the place is one giant construction zone. Each of the buildings shown has multiple tall buildings being built around it.







And the Pearl development (reclaimed land for luxury living ) is no where near done. It's just a pile of dirt in the water now and I don't know if even that portion of the project is completed. The image shown is a computer generated promotional image.

Finally Getting Over Jet Lag

Left home on April 16th, before the crack of a Monday dawn. Arrived after sundown on Tuesday. It's now - bother! I don't know what the date is. Look at the posting time. Which probabely doesn't reflect my change in time zones. Anyway - it's taken me just about this long to get my brain and circadian rhythms into this time zone. Only a few days longer than it took for our luggage to get here.

The flight over was long and uneventful. Despite the terrible weather in the north east, we didn’t have any delays. The most exciting thing was sitting in the Chicago airport for a few hours next to a lady who liked she’d been run over by a steamroller – her face was all bruised and her arm in a sling. Turns out she had fallen while on vacation in New York. Must have been quite a fall. We got a bit turned around at the Frankfurt airport and ended up getting two stamps in our passports. I like passport stamps.

It was when we arrived in Doha that we found that none – repeat – none of our luggage had made it. We had our carry-on bags and nothing else. In the U.S. this wouldn’t be too much of a problem because lost luggage is usually found in a matter of hours or days. Here, however, lost luggage may take a month to show up. I thought I’d be wearing my dad’s t-shirts and not going out in public for an indefinite period.

Worse though is that Mom bought a bunch of books in Utah to distribute to the Arabian Stake Primary leaders at the Stake Leadership Training in a couple of weeks. They were all in the luggage. The books couldn’t be shipped because mail here is difficult. For instance, we do not have mailing address, let alone a street address, and in some countries there cannot be lists of church members and their contact information. So if the luggage didn’t arrive in the impossible to expect time period of two weeks, all of the effort to get those books (and believe it was an effort – we went to every Deseret Book and Seagull Book in Provo, Orem and A.F.) would have been wasted and the prime opportunity to get them out would be lost.

But there was a minor miracle. The luggage was found in two days and arrived in Doha only four days after we did. The only inconvenience was that, drat, we had to buy me a new outfit for church. O, the woe. And my short stack of books showed up. Having at least one small shelf partially lined with books makes me feel home-like.

The Sabbath is on Friday here, which messes me up more than I thought it would. But more on that later. We went to church on Friday, and the ward is so loving. Everyone was so welcoming and friendly. I didn’t get much of a chance to introduce myself, because the members beat me to the punch. They would introduce themselves, and then introduce me to someone else. So already I have multiple friends and two church activities on my calendar, even in this foreign land. How do people get around without the Church?

So Church is in Friday, Saturday is a day off, and the work week begins on Sunday. Mom and told me before that having Church on Fridays messes up your sense of time in the week. I thought that was kind of silly. It seemed like an easy shift. But then, after Friday, I’m totally messed up. Like right now, it feels like a Thursday. And I have to really concentrate to figure out that today is Tuesday. And then I have to remind myself that’s the middle of the week and to not have the slightly-better-than-Monday feeling that normally accompanies Tuesdays.

But it’s more than just an emotional discombobulation. While trying to figure out the exact day I would start teaching, I couldn’t keep straight that that day would be Sunday, of all days. I almost made a fool of myself in front of the person interviewing me.

Yes, you heard me right. I have a job teaching 9th grad World Geography. It’s the freakiest thing, and quite the opposite of any job hunt I’ve ever embarked on in Utah. It’s happened at warp speed, and with only one resume. I sent out my resume once two days ago to my brother’s school on the off chance of a position at this late date in the school year. Not more than three hours later I get a call from the principal and set up an interview for the next day. I think the principal was almost ready to have me in the classroom, instead of interviewing. I get the offer later that day and sent in my acceptance barely. I’ll probably be teaching on Sunday, which may not be soon enough for the school.

It’s an ideal position for me, because it’s only part-time, every other day and only for the next two months. I’m working with Dad at his Center, and will continue looking for other employment. So it gives me some income, time in front of a class again to see if I really want to go back into teaching, and time to work with Dad and to look for another job. Couldn’t be better.

This is kind of a long and rambling letter. And yet, I still want to write more about what it’s like here. I’ll do that in a bit. So you can look forward to another long, hopefully illustrated and not boring epistle from your friend in Doha.

Dancing Daniel

Check out the transition video. It's a work in progress.