What I miss most right now

Living abroad requires a constant set of negotiations.  One of the balancing acts I'm learning how to manage is finding a way to remember the things we left behind while not dwelling on them so much I start to get dissatisfied with our current lives.  My response to this is to try not to think about what we are missing and focus on what we get to do here that we never would have done in Cleveland or anywhere else for that matter.  I try to keep the kids' spirits up, too, while acknowledging that they miss Shaker Heights and their friends and so many, many other things.  I am the Qatar cheerleader, the desert apologist, the Arabian Gulf cruise's Julie McCoy.  It's very wearing some days.  I see myself become my mother, who used to (and still does) brightly point out all sorts of things along the roads on our long, cross-country trips to keep us interested and entertained.  I used to wonder that she could be so peppy all the time, but now I see how crucial even manufactured pep can be in changing children's moods.  Touché, Sita!

But.

Sometimes there are days when I really miss certain things and will be very happy to see them when we visit the States in the summer.  (See, right there is an example of what I am talking about.  I am very careful not to say "go home" for the summer, even though that is my first instinct, because I want the kids to think of Qatar as home as much as possible and I don't want them to get upset because they still consider Shaker Heights their home and get sad every time they remember they are not there.  My conversations are riddled with these little linguistic tricks I use to--hopefully--help us all adjust and stay adjusted.)

But enough about that!  Today, I am missing retail America.  For all that acquiring things is a national pastime here, retail therapy isn't really done.  People walk into stores, point at what they want, and walk out.  No browsing, no comparison shopping, certainly no impulse control.  Some days I really just want to wander around a TJ Maxx or a Target, you know?  Not even really to buy anything, because I don't need more stuff, as I have said, but it would be nice just to look at things that don't cost twelve quadrillion dollars!  I mean, I appreciate the little touches of some of the malls here, too.  One leaves out baskets of green apples and little water bottles at all the lounge areas throughout the mall.  For free.  Can you imagine such a thing at any mall near you?  But still, these lounges are most often used by women who are exhausted from buying so much, which isn't the same reason I might be using them!

I am also missing simplicity.  Design here is somewhat...overdone for me.  We went to a world trade festival when we first arrived, and I found myself explaining to J that the ornate mirrors and gold treasure chests and intricate glass lamps that make busy Tiffany lamps look positively streamlined were really not my style.  Mommy likes things simple, you see!  But I can't even point to Ikea here as an example because they don't carry quite the same stuff as Ikea USA.  I miss clean lines, for crying out loud!

I also really miss ham!  And boxed stuffing.  And sour jelly beans.  And black beans.  And onion soup mix.  I know, can I be any more prosaic??  I guess it's a good thing that I don't miss anything more profound, right?  Right!  Go Qatar!

That being said, I am very much looking forward to our visit to Germany largely because it gives us all ample opportunity to eat pork.  Bring on the bratwurst and bacon!  Maybe even a spanferkel while we're at it!  Anything with schwein!!

Kicking it

This post is not at all about the Middle East--well, just peripherally it is, just a little bit.  But really, this post is about Veronica Mars!  You see, as some of you know, I was a backer of the Kickstarter campaign to crowdsource the funding for a Veronica Mars movie years after the television show ended abruptly.  For the uninitiated (or for those who couldn't care less about this sort of thing) being a backer meant I made a pledge as part of the campaign that ultimately raised over 5 million dollars.  Mine was a modest pledge, enough to feel like I had contributed and earn myself a t-shirt, a PDF copy of the shooting script, and a digital copy of the movie when it came out.  There were others who pledged much, much more and earned themselves everything from a trip to the premiere(s) to being an extra on the set to an actual speaking role.  I neither had that much money nor was I going to give it to a movie, but I did my small part for the cause.

In truth, when I was re-watching the three seasons on Veronica Mars in preparation for the movie, I realized that somewhere in the middle of the third season I had quit watching, so the end of the show was a revelation for me and had I realized just how much the end left the viewer hanging, I probably would have been even more insistent that I be part of the campaign to tie up loose ends in a movie!

In between the Kickstarter campaign's beginnings and the eventual release of the movie on March 14th, a lot happened for me.  Most importantly, I moved out of the country and far out of the realm of the Kickstarter campaign, though there were people who pledged who lived in Europe and Austrailia and the like, but I was pretty much on the edges of where I assumed the movie would reach when it premiered.  And I was right.  There were premieres in Canada and in various European countries, but I think the closest to me was somewhere in Germany.  And I was not about to fly over there just to see the movie on the big screen!

But not to worry, right?  I got a digital copy of the movie that was sent out to me on the same day as the theatrical premiere so I would be able to watch the movie in the comfort of my own home here in the desert.  Only...there was a problem.  I got my digital download code fine...but it didn't work.  I needed to download a new app and then load the movie onto a new video library in the cloud which the app recognized, but the app wouldn't recognize me or my code nor could I get the cloud library to work properly or at all, really.  I was pretty sick during the week of the premiere, so I calmly emailed customer service and went back to bed, sure I could either work it out when I felt better or when customer service got back to me, whichever came first.  The next day, and the next, I tried again, emailing customer service all along with my progress, or lack thereof.  I finally realized that part of the problem was my computer telling the app I wasn't in North America, the UK, or Europe, so I remedied that problem with my handy dandy VPN service (LOVE this, by the way!) and then tried a few different ways of backing myself into these services to see if I could find a way of leapfrogging the problem areas and then, all at once, I was in!  Success!  So I downloaded the movie as quickly as I could to my iPad and started watching it right then on the desktop, just in case the download failed.  The download functioned perfectly, and I was finally able to watch the movie in its entirety, just a few days after the rest of the world.

Apparently, I was one of the lucky ones.  A significant percentage of backers had problems with the digital downloading and some were even given refunds when they ended up having to purchase the movie in order to watch it at all.  I never did hear from customer service, probably because they were inundated with complaints from these angry backers.  The problem with rabid fans is they are always rabid, particularly when things go wrong!  But I was happy to see the movie at all, especially given my geographical issues.

As for the movie itself (SPOILER ALERT!)...

Sicky

Being sick is the pits.

I haven't been really sick since we came here, thankfully, except for the usual stomach stuff (blah, blah, belch).  Then last week and this one I got hit with a doozy.  E was flirting with croup, as he always does, every 2 months or so, in between his incessant sinus infections, and I got something similar, but apparently worse, since he was only affected at night and I was out for most of last week and still am not quite back.  Sore throat, barking cough, nausea, dizziness, sleeplessness, disorientation, body aches, check, check, triple check.  It's been awful.

And, of course, in the midst of all this we finally had E's birthday party (happy belated 4th birthday!  Your parents are super timely!) and there was school, as usual, and thank goodness the husband was home last weekend and this one or it would have been a catastrophe.  As it was, I basically called in the towel on the kids' party games in favor of them playing in the boys' room and spent a good portion of the party otherwise engaged being sick, but the food was good and the kids were young and had a good time and there were treat bags, so everyone went home happy and I went to bed for the rest of the day.  The next day, I drove the kids to school and came right home and slept for four hours until I had to go pick one of them up, then managed to get to the store for some laundry detergent and take him to the playground until it was time to get the other one and then came home and slowly spiraled downward until the husband got home from work and ordered pizza for dinner and I went to bed again. Rinse, repeat.  I even missed church this weekend, something I so rarely do I can't remember the last time it happened.

Luckily, I feel better now, more or less, though my voice is gone and I still feel dizzy often and I have the sniffles.  But at least I can stay upright, a major improvement.  I even got a load or two of laundry done...or maybe it was two!  Woot!

The underlying problem here is that we don't have a primary care doc or a pediatrician yet.  I keep asking for recommendations and getting very mixed reviews, and I really don't want to wade into the abyss of healthcare in Qatar until I absolutely have to, although by then, of course, it will be too late.  I need to get a pediatrician at the very least since we are on borrowed time with E's cyclical sicknesses and will certainly need an antibiotic before too long AND I really, really need to see a pulmonologist to get some scans taken before I go back to the States in case I need to follow up there.    So those are my goals for the next few months.   E will also need a round of vaccinations soon, if he doesn't need them already, and I think we all need some additional vaccines to keep us a bit more protected here in our second world home.  I think I can wait and have E's done in the US, but the others will undoubtedly be cheaper here or even in Germany when we visit, so I need to get on those as soon as possible.  Wish me luck; I am more certainly going to need it!

This girl's night out!

A few nights ago I went out with some women from church to celebrate a birthday.  I didn't have to leave until the kids were almost ready for bed, so I thought it would be an easy escape.

I was wrong.

The boys screamed and ranted and cried like I was leaving for good.  As the husband pointed out (he was there, by the way.  I wasn't even leaving them with a sitter for crying out loud!), I haven't left to go anywhere by myself at night except for one time since we moved here.  The husband is gone fairly regularly for business dinners or even business trips, but I have stayed at home or taken the boys with me everywhere, every day.  But still, they caterwauled like I was killing them and kept it up until long after I left.

It was heartbreaking to hear, of course, but also completely overblown, so I was only upset for a little while.  And I did have fun, getting to try a Japanese-ish place (I had gyoza, a muddled berries and ginger beer drink, and chili chocolate cake--actually, my meal wasn't Japanese at all, was it?  There was also teriyaki and some noodle dishes, so I guess they can still say they're Japanese, even though I would argue the connection is pretty tenuous!) and getting to chat with some new women.  I am a little starved for adult conversation some times over here right now!

On the way back, I chatted with the husband about how the boys made out.  He was understandably upset about their theatrics and declared that I had just won the family lottery and now got to go out by myself at least once per week so they could get used to it.  I'm pretty excited about the chance to go do something...though I'm going to have to scare up some friends to do it with!  (I don't want my nights out to be pathetic, ya'll!)  So now I'm going to make a list of all the new restaurants I want to try and all the new people I want to get to know better and have some fun! I may even...wait for it...go see a movie IN A THEATER!!  I know, I can't believe it either.  I think the last time I did that was a year ago to see Iron Man number whatever it was with the husband for his birthday and before that...the previous Iron Man movie.  At the very least I need to see something besides Iron Man on the big screen, right? (No disrespect to Robert Downey, Jr., whom I enjoy as much as the next girl!)

Let's get ready to party!!

Going to meet the Queen

Today the boys had a fun experience.  They got to head to the convention center and have their picture taken with Her Highness Sheikha Moza, the mother of the current Emir and the head of the Qatar Foundation.  The Qatar Foundation owns the husband's hospital and the children attend one of several primary and secondary schools also owned by QF.  Today, all 6000 students in these schools are heading to the newly built convention center to have their picture taken with Her Highness.

The boys have had funny reactions to this news.  J has been convinced she is going to ask him about his hair (everyone does!) and has been bursting with excitement since he found out they were going to see "the queen."  This morning he came running down the stairs yelling "Today we get to see the queen! Today we get to see the queen!" I'm a little concerned he will be too excited to listen to his teachers and very disappointed when it turns out he can hardly see Sheikha Moza through the throngs of students (all of whom will be wearing the same uniforms, by the way).  E, on the other hand, has been approaching the whole day with a very vocal sense of dread.  I think he is worried about going on the big buses they will take to get there, nervous about the mammoth convention center that we have seen only from the outside, and maybe even concerned about meeting a real live queen!

I can't wait to hear how it all goes.  I spoke to the boys' teachers, and they were equal parts nervous and resigned.  E's teacher said last year she was told to sit her three and four year old students on a line and then walk away.  She was incredulous and worried she would have some runners but thankfully they did stay seated.  I'm worried E will be the problem child who actually does run away this time, but his favorite friend is in class today, so that will help if they can just keep those two together.

UPDATE: They boys performed well but were disappointed not to see the Queen.  As I said, with 6000 students, the chances of being even near her were slim, but apparently the highlights of getting to ride in a bus "that looked just like an airplane inside!" and really great packed lunches (J even got two, one later for "tea" his teacher said) outweighed not getting to see her!

But look at what they missed!

these and even more images available at http://sheikhamozahfashion.tumblr.com

(I think they are all splendid, really, though my favorites are the purple and the black and white ombre gown.)

A sense of direction

One of the ways I most quickly acclimatize to a new place is getting familiar with the roads.  Until I can get from one important place to another confidently, I feel adrift, images in my head whirling around as I try (and fail) to get my bearings while someone else is driving.  It doesn't help that I have a very poor understanding North, South, East, and West.  Coming of age in Hawaii where the major directions are "toward the ocean" and "toward the mountains" has always hurt me when it comes to orienting myself on a compass.  Fortunately, I have a fabulous ability to orient myself to landmarks.  If I drive to a place once, I can get back there again, following landmarks.

But Qatar is challenging my skillz, yo!  The constant construction here means that routes change without notice.  The lawless driving means that new "roads" appear daily as some lemming-like urge suddenly causes people to drive across empty lots and fields and create their own paths, which may or may not conflict with already established traffic patterns.  Even electronic maps can't keep up with the  new developments in official roads, let alone account for construction blockages and sheer driver bullheadedness.   Plus, road names here are virtually meaningless anyway.  You would think the fact that everyone gives directions via landmarks would work for me, but here it just results in people never bothering to find out the names of major roads so you find yourself saying things like I did the other day when I was trying to give directions to someone who was coming to pick up some empty boxes we had: "You know the flyover on X road after the expressway?  So you go through the roundabout under the flyover, then straight through the next roundabout, then you pass Y compound on your right, then at the next roundabout with the two petrol stations you flip a U turn and then take your second right and look for the mosque on your left and then you will see our compound where the road dead-ends."  Unfortunately, this is as good as it gets, since only one of these roundabouts even has an unofficial name, the road you turn on to get to my place isn't named at all, and our compound doesn't show up on any maps yet.  Sheesh!

So I am persevering, and I am winning the battle, slowly, with the help of GPS and my landmarks.  Sometimes, ever more frequently, without the help of GPS, which brings me inordinate satisfaction.  The other day, we were trying to get to the wholesale vegetable market from a new direction.  The lovely voice of Google Maps told me to get on the expressway to shorten our trip, but when I took the suggested route, I discovered that the expressway entrance recommended had been closed without any indication signs or suggested detours.  I knew more or less where we were and how to get back to another major road so I started making my way back there.  Meanwhile, the voice kept trying to route me back to the expressway, again and again telling me to turn the way I didn't want to go, but I didn't have time to turn it off, so I ignored it.

All the sudden, J asked "Has that lady ever BEEN to the vegetable market?? Cause she really doesn't know where she is going, does she?"  After laughing for quite a while, we had a fun discussion about maps and electronic information and computer algorithms and artificial intelligence as I tried to explain that the voice didn't really belong to a person but to a computer (because that's the kind of thing we always discuss in the car, no joke!) as we made our way back to a route that Google Maps recognized and the voice started to be helpful again.  At the end of our chat and our journey, J said indignantly "I think we need to help them correct their maps so that she doesn't tell people the wrong way to go!"  Ever since that day, whenever we use Google Maps, which is thankfully less and less each week, he is quick to ask if she is sending us the right way or not.  Usually, I now know enough to be able to scan ahead and make sure we aren't about to go on a wild goose chase through areas I know are full of construction, but I know J still believes she can't be trusted!

Easy listening

There are only three English language radio stations here.  One is the Qatar Foundation station, which has strange programming, beginning with a meditation hour which is followed by an English morning show (your typical two DJs and their cast of characters, with sports, interviews, and music thrown in. And by music, I mean Jefferson Airplane and Elton John, etc.).  Want to feel completely out of your depth? Listen to a British sports announcer discuss what happened in cricket and soccer over the weekend.  I have NO IDEA what anyone is saying ever!  After the morning show, classical music and instrumental oldies are interspersed randomly interspersed with recorded interviews with members of the Qatar Foundation describing their work and bizarre information pieces on topics like the origins of ice cream or comets.  I like the morning show, but it doesn't start until after I drop the kids off at school, and the later programming is sometimes frustrating because you never know when there is going to be music, muzak, or talk.

The second station, Qatar Radio, plays international music sung in English, which mainly consists of wacky songs from all sorts of genres (mostly pop songs by Filipino artists) mixed in with a few top 40 UK or American artists (I just switched to that station and they were playing Royals by Lorde followed by Want Dem All by Seal Paul...?  Never heard of it?  Me either.  Apparently he's Jamaican?)  Most of the pop is really frenetic, and I find it difficult to listen to that music while dealing with the crazy traffic so I mostly skip this station.

The third station is the audio feed from the English language station of Al Jazeera television.  You knew Al Jazeera was based in Qatar, right?  It's one of the country's greatest claims to fame--or infamy, depending on your perspective--and certainly the country's biggest contribution to the international scene.  And as much as I love listening to the news, I can only take so much of it.  The world is far to depressing for a steady diet of news.

So what to listen to when trapped for long periods of the day in the car?  Ladies and gentlemen, I have become the queen of the podcasts!

You see, it occurred to me shortly after I arrived here and was pushed into got an iPhone that surely there was something within all those available apps that could help me.  And what was this new kind of broadcasting all the kids were talking about...five to ten years ago?  (I live in the vanguard of technology, I know!)  After a little searching, I found the podcast app, and I have never looked back.  I'm hooked!

What's on the menu?

I've posted before about how Qatar is vexing my efforts in the kitchen.  The other day, at church, I was relieved to hear that I'm not alone in this.  A new friend of mine who arrived here shortly after I did told me she gets so discouraged by her own cooking she wants to throw in the dish towel and quit altogether.  I hear ya, Sister!

So I feel like I need to celebrate the few moments when things go right, when I do manage to cook something not only edible but even, dare I say it, delicious!

Today I had a bunch of red and yellow cherry tomatoes in danger of going bad, the result of my eyes being MUCH bigger than my stomach while I was shopping at the vegetable market and the fact that the yellow tomatoes were inexplicably CHEAPER than the red ones.  What is up with that??  Like I said, I was so shocked I bought a half kilo of the yellows when I had already bought a half kilo of the reds!  (NOTE: a half kilo is my new favorite measurement.  When I'm at the market, I have a hard time estimating how much I will need of a given vegetable or fruit and talking about pounds is useless, but I have discovered that if I get a half kilo of most things, it's just about enough to get my family through the week.  Plus, when I ask for a half kilo, they invariably give me more anyway, because it's so novel for a white woman to be buying her own produce and carrying it herself--thank you giant reusable shopping bags--and with a half kilo, a few more won't hurt, but with a full kilo, pretty soon I've got way more than we can eat.  Just sayin!).

Anywho, I had all these yummy tomatoes that I didn't want to waste, so I looked for something simple and yummier I could do with them and I ran into this recipe and roasted cherry tomato sauce sounds pretty good, doesn't it?  As a bonus, I had all the ingredients on hand (except I only had dried basil instead of fresh but CLOSE ENOUGH!).  And, even better, it didn't violate my five ingredients or fewer goal for all my favorite recipes (spices you always have on hand don't count in your five ingredient total), and it looked super simple and virtually foolproof, which meant it might even be Qatar-proof!  And it was!  Omigosh, folks, this stuff is luscious!  I want to eat it on everything.  I think tonight we will try it on pita pizzas to class them up a bit.  Granted, mine didn't look as beautiful as hers does, because you know what happens when you char yellow and red cherry tomatoes a little bit until they burst?  They turn a different color but they still taste so so good, so I don't care!

My success buoyed me on to do some menu planning.  It was a painstaking process but I persevered.

Step 1: Brainstorm recipes your family likes.  Wonder at your list: are we really that American??

Step 2: Delete those recipes that contain ingredients that aren't available locally or cost more than your first child will ever make in his whole life.  (Deletions will include your favorite pasta salad, pumpkin soup, and anything involving ham or other pork products.)

Step 3: Cry a little, take a deep breath, and brainstorm some more.  Wonder about your fixation with pork.

Step 4: Come up with a 7 day rotation, talk to the husband about something else entirely, find out he has decided he doesn't really want to eat pasta any more, take off the (still cheap in Qatar, dang it!) pasta options, revamp your rotation, and try to expand into a 14 day rotation because you are a glutton for punishment.

Step 5: Make up a loose shopping list for your menu plan, bearing in mind always that many items may just not be in stock for some unknown reason, now or ever again, and decide to look at the whole process as a game!

Step 6: Go out for dinner!

70 Sharpies

That's the number of Sharpies I have unpacked (so far).  Don't let the roundish number fool you.  All but 8 and 12 of those came in packs of two or three or even one at a time.  I have every color of the rainbow and then some, every size and shape the fine people at Sharpie make, from tiny, thin lines to giant thick ones, including Sharpies that hang from your key chain.

When I was packing, sorting, selling stuff, many sources, including my world-traveling sister, told me only to pack those things I wouldn't miss if my container fell off into the ocean.  And I dutifully sent most of our memorabilia home to our parents' houses.  And then I pared down A LOT, and I thought I was only bringing the most necessary things with me.  And I DID do a pretty good job, overall.  I brought art supplies they don't have here, enough activity books to keep the boys entertained in church and restaurants until they're 12 and 14, toys they have played with non-stop since they arrived, books we are so happy to be reading, and lots of other things I have sorely missed.

But 70 Sharpies??

I do use Sharpies, almost daily, because I am a labeling fiend, I have small boys who can't seem to keep track of all the clothes they are wearing, and I buy cheap shoes (Sharpie-ing those bad boys up can make them last for YEARS, I tell you).  And they probably do sell Sharpies here, though I haven't seen them, and, if they do, I bet they cost much more than I have ever paid or want to pay.  However, if those Sharpies had fallen into the ocean, I wouldn't have missed them.  Or a bucket of counting bears.  Or seven blank notebooks.  Or an old flip cell phone.  Or a giant Canadian flag.

You know what I was happiest to unpack?  Two rolls of Quilted Northern toilet paper and a box and a half of Puff Plus Lotion kleenex that I had forgotten were under the sink in one of my old bathrooms. I practically shouted with glee when I uncovered those!  Who'd a thunk it?

So now I have a new goal, in keeping with my new home: keep purging, until I'm down to what we could take on the airplane with us without paying excess baggage fees.  This means a few more loads to take with us when we visit the States and a massive garage sale/friend donation when we leave or move to a new house, whenever that is.  It means donating all my now empty boxes to women at my church group, some of whom are moving themselves shortly.  And it means not buying very much new stuff, which is easier than it has ever been with the prices here.

Which leads me to goal number two: replace things with experiences.  You know what doesn't take up any space in a suitcase?  Visits to castles and and a boat trip up the Rhine!  And both are on order for our upcoming trip to Germany.  It's going to be great!

I think it's going to take some time for us to really make this switch, but after all this sorting and packing and unpacking and re-sorting, I am ready to be done with the STUFF!

Who's with me?!

Go, go, GO speed racer!

I feel like it's a trope of moving, everyone has to comment on everyone else's driving.  Either the drivers where you just moved are terrible, awful, the worst, or the drivers you just left are horrible, dangerous, unbelievable.  Or people make other equally untrue and outlandish statements: in Utah, where my parents live, some folks swear up and down that all the bad drivers in town are immigrants from some other state (not in my experience) while in South Carolina, all locals maintain that the bad drivers are tourists (also not true, in my experience).

Add in foreign travel, where the rules of the road are different and in some places people drive on the other (not wrong, by the way!) side of the road, and the number of complaints seems to expand exponentially.  I have been guilty of this myself: when I visited Taiwan in high school, I was convinced we were going to die each and every time we got on the road.  Yes, our bus did get side-swiped once and yes, we were taken to a very shady area by a seemingly narcoleptic taxi driver who then left us there, presumably to be fallen upon by thieves had not another taxi driver swooped in but really, the traffic there was probably just as bad as any major city anywhere but certainly worse than I knew, given that I didn't have a driver's license at the time and had never driven a car in my life.

So I get it, I do, drivers are bad everywhere.  I totally, completely get it.  Really!  Qatar doesn't even rank in the top 20 countries with the most traffic fatalities (though my experience here has me seriously questioning how the data that ranks those countries is even gathered, let alone how accurate it is!)

BUT sheesh, omigosh, aaahhh, the driving here is aggravating, horrendous, often incredibly frightening, and sometimes life-threatening!  Why, you ask?  Well, for one, roundabouts.  ROUNDABOUTS!

Now, I know the rotaries are the norm in many countries, and I am not knocking them in principle, but I am against them as they manifest themselves here.  You see, there are, as hard as it may be for Americans to believe, actually rules with regard to proper roundabout usage.  In fact, one might even call them laws!  Also in fact, the state of Qatar might call them laws and does in its little driver
instruction manual, but in actuality, roundabouts in this country are lawless circles of death.  I am not kidding.  There are roundabouts on either side of my house, so I have to pass through them no matter where I go or take tiny, unmapped back roads (and I do this a lot, trust me).  One is bigger than the other and it's an oval, for some reason, so it's even more difficult to maneuver than the others.  But the problem is not the roundabouts, per se, it's the conduct of the drivers in the roundabouts.

Where is my Reading Rainbow?

We are a family of readers.  Our books have finally arrived, and we couldn't be happier!  We were missing them sorely these last few months.  And we have always loved spending time at our local libraries.  One of the only initiatives I was able to oversee from start to finish during my short time as preschool co-op president was the establishment of a lending library for the preschoolers.  And our town library down the street in Shaker Heights was one of the finest community libraries I have ever seen, with a huge collection and lots of programming for all ages.  We visited at least once a week, often more, and checked out 15-20 books per visit.   Even then, we often blew through those before we had planned to go back and had to make an emergency library run.  J's favorite day of the week was library day in Kindergarten and the book fair that took place before we left was a family affair.  My personal favorite activity of all time is visiting a used book store or sale and our libraries in Ohio, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania always put on great sales at which I could spend hours and hours and only a few dollars, since the prices were so good.  All in all, we have been lucky to have all sorts of book resources everywhere we have lived.

Naturally, when we learned we were moving here, one of the first things I did was research the library situation.  What I found was disheartening, to say the least.  Sadly, Qatar is not a very reader-friendly place.  First, there are few libraries.  The Qatar National Library exists only virtually at the moment, though it's supposed to open soon (which means absolutely nothing).  Supposedly, there will be a large children's section and robust programming for kids when the library is completed, but I will believe all that when I see it.  The enterprising group of expat mothers, DohaMums, has worked hard to create its own lending library, which you can join for a fee after you pay another fee to join DohaMums.  The fees aren't much, about $70 a year in total, but for that you can only check out 5 books per child per visit and you need to RSVP at least 36 hours in advance to one of the three or four weekly two-hour blocks when the library is staffed by volunteers.  The kids do have a school library they visit once a week, but the collection isn't very large.

If you want to supplement the lack of libraries by buying books, you are also out of luck.  There are quite a few "bookstores" here, but every single one I have visited (and I have seen a few of the big names so far) is either an electronics store that happens to stock a few books or a glorified stationary store.  And the children's books they do stock are all licensed Disney character books that cost a gazillion dollars and barely count as books in my opinion.  We have picked up a few secondhand books at some craft bazaars, but the secondhand market is just beginning here and, of course, folks don't have many books to begin with.  (When we leave and sell off all our outgrown books, I am going to make a killing!)  You can order from Amazon if you have a courier service that forwards the mail on from the US, but you get charged by the kilo for those orders so you want to be very sure you need every book you order.  Another company, Bookdepository.com, is actually owned by Amazon and based in the UK, and they will ship books anywhere in the world for free, but their offerings are quite expensive in comparison with Amazon's prices, so you have to balance reduced prices and shipping costs with higher prices and free shipping...and the costs end up being almost the same.  Besides, I hate to pay anywhere near retail for books anyway!

To review, I am so, so grateful our own books have arrived!  They have been gone so long they are all new to the boys while at the same time having shelves filled with books they recognize makes the villa seem even more familiar to them.  The boys haven't actually read all the books we own (I was visiting a library book sale just one week before we packed up the shipping container, actually!) so we have still got surprises and new favorites for them to discover.  But one of my big goals when we go to the States (or anywhere else for that matter) is going to be buying up a suitcase full of books to bring back with us, at least until the national library opens.  In fact, I have been looking into getting hired at the library, even just as a circulation clerk, so I can maximize our involvement in the library's offerings.  Extreme?  Perhaps.  But totally justified, trust me!

Compound fractures

We live in a compound.  (See how I tricked you into reading there?  Just keep going!)

In 95% of the cases, that's not as forbidding are it sounds!  Most compounds here consist of groups of townhouses surrounding a clubhouse that usually contains a pool, sports courts, pool tables, a coffee shop, a little grocery store, a projection room, and assorted other amenities.  Club "house" is really sort of a misnomer, come to think of it.  Usually, these places are fun-filled meeting areas around which compound life revolves.

But not in our compound!  You see, ours is new, and we are experiencing a few growing pains.  At first, I was willing to let all these things go because I know things are evolving here, and I didn't want to be one to rock the boat in a new country at a new job with new rules.  You see, most employers either pay a housing stipend and let you find your own compound or build compounds of their own for their employees.  Even if employers don't sponsor their own compound, lots of people who work together live together anyway, because when one family likes a compound, they usually share the wealth with their friends.  Our compound is sponsored by the husband's company, so we live with fellow employees.  But, because of hiring issues and hierarchies (did I forget to mention that housing allotments are determined by job rank here?  So our complex is designated for managers and above.  Don't even get me started on this plan.  Rank means that a manager gets a two or three bedroom apartment, while a director or above gets a four bedroom villa, regardless of number of dependents.  It's craziness!), our complex is still fairly empty and because of licensing issues I don't fully understand, the additional amenities you find elsewhere are slow in coming.  And because of some design choices which are in keeping with the ultra modern vibe here, our buildings are square and grey and therefore the complex as a whole looks a bit like a prison on the outside.  Just a little bit!

Supposedly, we will soon be getting a replacement for the hazardous play structure they abruptly moved out of our playroom the other day (we do have a few rooms that are in working order-ish: a playroom, now minus its central feature, a weight room with individual monitors on the machines that don't work, and a game room with a few pool tables that do function perfectly, depending on who is playing, of course!).  And also soon (which is very relative and not as soon as the other soon) we will be getting an outdoor play structure covered by a sun shade to be located by our pool.  Because we do have a pool, a giant, beautiful, ENORMOUS pool that no one uses except for three hardy children from New Zealand because the water is too gosh darn cold right now, but hey, there it is.  In the meantime, we wait.  (But trust me, in a few weeks, we are going to be loving that pool!)

In Qatar, you do a lot of waiting, oh so very much waiting, but because I am not one to just hope that things get done, I have been pressuring the husband to pressure the powers that be so that these promises are actually kept.  And I have put our names on a wait list for another compound that is older (and therefore has all the kinks worked out) and closer to the boys' school.  This complex is beautiful and therefore highly in demand, so I figure we might have a long, long time to wait on that list, but that gives our current compound time to catch up, so we have nothing to lose.

Our place has such potential, which is largely unrealized at this point, which makes living here a teeny bit more frustrating than I would wish.  And, of course, it feels silly to complain about a missing projection room or swing set or convenience store (first world problems, much??), but these sorts of things really are the norm here, so when in Rome!