Boys and their bacon

Even though Qatar is a Muslim country and alcohol is therefore frowned upon, Doha is not completely "dry."  Many hotels serve alcohol at bars and brunches, and alcohol is available for purchase at one place in the city, the Qatar Distribution Center or QDC.  You must have a permit to buy alcohol there and getting one is a bit of a production: you need to bring a signed letter from your employer on letterhead stating your name, ID number, monthly income, and accommodation arrangements, and your marital status.  (So first you have to go into HR and tell your employer you really, really want to buy tequila and/or ribs.)  Then you have to take your letter and 1000QR (in cash, of course) to the QDC itself, a gated, nondescript little building in an out-of-the-way location far outside city center.  Next you have to fill out an application, which asks for, among other things, your religion.  (So, yes, you have to tell them I am a Christian and I really, really want to buy wine and/or ham.)  If your application is approved, you pay your 1000QR fee (which, surprisingly, is refundable) and your are given an amount you can spend per month, usually something like 10% of your monthly income or thereabouts.

So we haven't gotten one of these licenses until recently, and then only to help out the husband's new boss who wasn't in country yet, but a few weekends ago we went and did the whole process.  Want to feel totally bizarre, a little furtive, and quite guilty by association?  Go to the QDC on a Saturday morning in Doha and watch the (mostly Western) expats go in and out with cases and cases of booze.  It all feels a little seamy, really.

BUT you can also walk in and leave with cases (if you want) of pork products, so since we were already there anyway, I went into the freezer room to check out what they had.  After practically fainting at some of the prices, we left with two pounds of smoked, thick cut bacon (for only $7.50 per pound, a veritable steal!) and a small salami (a bit more expensive than the bacon but not much).  Now, I am as big a fan of ham as the next (non-Jewish or Muslim) person, but I have my limits, for crying out loud and buying a 3-4 pound ham for 275QR (that's $75, by the way) is apparently beyond my limits.   Can you imagine??!!  I still can't believe how much that is!  So we are officially saving our ham eating for the States.  Salty pork goodness for less than the cost of a microwave, here we come!

But we did have bacon.  And as soon as we got in the car, J started asking when we were going to eat it.  Can we eat it now?  No, it's frozen and raw besides.  Can we have it for dinner?  Well, it's frozen solid and a brick so it may take a while to thaw.  Can you thaw it in water when we get home? Can you thaw it in the microwave? Can we have it with eggs? How many pieces can I have? I want to eat it now nownownownownownowNOW!

Did I mention bacon is J's favorite food?  Turns out, he hadn't forgotten and the poor, deprived boy was just biding his time until we gave him some, but being that close to it and not being able to eat bacon was almost more than J could bear!  So we had bacon and eggs for dinner.  And it was DELICIOUS!  We haven't eaten the salami yet, but the boys demonstrated a heretofore unknown love for salami while we were in Germany, so I know they will be happy to eat it right up.  I'm thinking I may slice it up for school lunches before we go and then bring the rest to eat on the plane since salami keeps so well.  Let the pork appreciation parade of summer begin!

On writing a newcomer's guide to Doha

I think I mentioned that I have been working on a brief guide for new members of our church group.  I had all kinds of momentum after I volunteered to chair the committee...and then only one stalwart soul appeared at the meeting I called out of the five or six other volunteers...and then J got Scarlet Fever...and then I just shelved the project until I had more time or guilt set in.  Last weekend, both those things happened at the same time: I started to think I should perhaps get working on the guide again AND the woman I told I would do this in the first place checked in and wondered about my progress.  Time to get writing!

More precisely, it's time to get typing.  We had an earlier document to work with, and I had already done a thorough edit of that piece, cutting sections that seemed superfluous, shortening sections that were far too long, regularizing the format so the information available was easy to find, etc.  We decided that we only wanted to include locations that had actual street names, as opposed to instructions that reminded me most of the kinds of directions people gave in Guatemala ("You know the green door?  That's not it.  Go up, up, up and turn and a little right and pass where the old tree used to be and there it is!") There are no street addresses here, which complicates matters immensely, but we worked hard to find cross streets at least!  I had also done most of the additional research needed to flesh out the sections that seemed to be missing information already, and my lone helper had done research on two new sections as well, so really what I needed to do was check a few websites, update a few phone numbers, and re-type the whole thing, which I have been doing this past week.

In order to give you a little insight into life in Doha, the new guide contains the following sections:

• Essential print guides--like every major city, Doha has an entertainment coupon book and a version of the Time Out magazine.  We also have this incredibly detailed and super comprehensive book called Marhaba, which means welcome in Arabic.  This book is basically the Doha Bible, with maps and restaurant listings and descriptions about how to get a driver's license or hire a maid and everything in between.
• Event and information websites--despite the existence of Marhaba and Time Out Doha, I have found it very difficult to get information on what events are happening this week in the city.  I am forever finding out about something fun that we missed because we never heard about it.  So I have been assiduously collecting websites that list events so we can know more about what's going on.  Doha actually has a million activities taking place and it's a shame to miss so many of them!  This section includes a few of those along with some websites designed just for new residents, with even more up-to-date information about settling in.
• Schools and Nurseries--the question of schooling looms large here, where there are not nearly enough international schools for all the expat families that keep pouring into the city.  Some employers, like ours, sponsor various schools and arrange for automatic placements for employee children.  Others do not, and the wait lists to get kids into schools can be very, very long (one teacher at a primary school I met said their wait list had 3000 kids on it!).  Questions regarding schooling can make or break your time here, really, which is a shame.
• Shopping--consistent readers will remember that my biggest concern during my first days here (besides schooling!) was where to go to find everything I needed.  It took a while to discover that grocery stores are often located in shopping malls, that "express" stores are smaller but not necessarily less well stocked, that many kinds of things can be found in souqs or outdoor markets including vegetables and shovels, and that you can't judge a shop by its appearance on the outside (one of my favorite places to go now turned me off for months because it looked so dodgy as I drove past).  Plus, I would have loved for someone to tell me about the relative "bargain" stores when all the usual prices were giving me some serious sticker shocks!

Tricks of the trade for leaving Doha

In the past few months, we have learned a lot about how to game the summer, as it were, and get the most out of the yearly expat exodus here.  Some of this we learned too late to help us this year, unfortunately, but we will definitely be applying it all to next summer's vacation.

For example, as I noted in an earlier post, this year Ramadan happens during the summer.  One of the hallmarks of Ramadan here is a shortened work day for everyone, Muslim or not.  It's like paid time off everyone takes, basically.  Sadly for the husband, we are leaving just after Ramadan starts, so he doesn't get to take advantage of many of the shortened days, though he does come back before the month ends, so he will get a few.   But if we had been smarter or known more, we would have had him stay here for the entire month and then join at the end of our vacation, rather than at the beginning.  Silly, silly us!

The same is true of school schedules.  I mistakenly thought that the children would need to be in school until the very last day, like they have to be in the States.  Instead, we could have left anytime after the middle of this month, apparently, and not really missed anything or been held accountable for leaving.  (I read somewhere before we moved that there are expat children out there who have never attended a full year of school.  Now, I believe it!)  In fact, I've been told that no one expects anyone but the teachers to be around on the last two days of school since Ramadan will already have started.  Of course, none of this is official, so how were we to know when we were making our travel arrangements months ago, but we'll be ready for next year, when Ramadan happens even earlier...and so does our summer break, I guess!

Several families have also told us that the working parent flies out with the family for a week or so at the beginning of vacation and then flies out again at the end of vacation so he or she can fly back with the family as well, meaning that one parent isn't left to fly alone with the kids.  While this sounds like a great idea in theory, in practice it just wouldn't work for us, because it takes almost a week just to get back on a livable schedule in the States.  However, if we were vacationing in Europe or Asia, where the time differences are much smaller, this would be a fabulous idea!  So we will just tuck away that little tidbit of information in case we might need it some day.

We have finally learned the beauty of airport lounges since we've moved here, and we intend to take advantage of every last one of them we can while we are traveling this time around.  Places that have free food, kid's rooms, comfortable seats, and even showers all available as perks because of frequent flyer memberships or credit cards?  Genius!  We have a long layover in JFK on the way over, and I plan to milk those lounges for all they are worth!

Another thing we have learned is that most folks seem to wait until the last possible moment to return, even the night before school starts, and then just toss the kids into class and hope for the best.  We are coming back about 10 days before school because I remember with dread how hard it was for us when we came here the first time, but we might learn that's a mistake as well.   On the other hand, I also remember how loud and long J cried when we came back from spring break the night before school started, wailing that he needed another day of vacation to get used to the idea of going back to school, so maybe we will need all the time we can get for readjustment.

We are such novices!  Maybe by the time next summer rolls around, we'll be expert expats!

Pre-Ramadan jitters

To be perfectly frank, I'm a little nervous about Ramadan.  There are so many rules, and, it seems to me, so many opportunities to break the rules.  In some ways, daily life in Qatar is rife with chances to mess up as a Western expat, but Ramadan seems to put all that in greater relief.  Luckily, we will only be here for a few days of our first Ramadan, since we fly out on July 1st, and this year the season starts on June 28th or thereabouts (the timing has a lot to do with the moon, I think).  And, of course, the rules I need to follow are nothing compared to the rules for the believers, as it were, but still.

So, a quick review for those not familiar: during Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, all adult Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking, having sex, and any other temptations from sunrise to sunset for about 30 days.  They also usually offer more prayers than normal and recite from frequently from the Quran and often make substantial charitable donations.  The meal before dawn is called the suhoor and the meal after sunset is called the iftar.  Iftar feasts are reportedly elaborate and delicious.  Children, the insane, those who are ill, those who are traveling, and women who are pregnant or breastfeeding are among those who are excused from fasting, though in many of these instances the fasting needs to be made up at a later date.  Ramadan is a period of increased spirituality and as such all the of usual rules that govern Muslim society are given even more emphasis during this time.

So how does this affect us?

• I am glad to hear that children are exempt from fasting, because eating is one of the only ways I can convince my boys that all the time we spend in the car is not absolutely awful for everyone.  As non-Muslims, we are not required to fast, nor would the boys need to fast at their ages, but we need to be very discreet and avoid eating in public out of respect for those who are fasting.  I have heard that there are restaurants that are still open here where you can eat behind screens or in the back or something, but I am not sure how one goes about finding these establishments, because just asking around seems, I don't know, gauche somehow?
• As I have said earlier, the increased emphasis on modesty doesn't really concern me, but as it is I spend a not insignificant part of my day already carefully thinking through my wardrobe choices.  
• Likewise, the husband and I have adapted pretty well to the everyday rules regarding avoiding public displays of affection, so I don't think the additional emphasis on keeping those rules will affect us at all.
• The reportedly dangerous traffic around the time everyone is rushing home to break their fast gives me pause, however, because it must be truly awful for everyone to comment on it at all, since bad traffic is usually just a given here.   Apparently, it is quite dangerous to be on the roads around sunset, so we will plan our trips accordingly.
• Our compound is maybe 60/40 non-Muslims to Muslims, so we shall see how the noisy nighttime celebrations play out here.  My children sleep with the incredibly loud air conditioner going in their room, which also faces a vacant lot beyond our backyard, so they should be fairly shielded from any noise.  We do the same in our room, though our window looks out onto the compound itself, but usually our air conditioner drowns out almost everything.

I realize as I type this that my nervousness about all these trivial issues is completely ridiculous and I've already worked out solutions for most potential areas of concern, but I feel a little anxiety nonetheless.  Mainly, I'm just worried about the unknown.  We have never experienced Ramadan before, let alone in a Muslim country, so I just don't know a whole lot about how things work here.  And those of you who know me know I really, really don't like not knowing what's going on at all times!  Next year, Ramadan starts two weeks earlier, while school is still in session, supposedly, though I have heard that our academic schedule will be adjusted accordingly, so I'll be interested to see how that works, particularly as the boys' school is predominantly Arabic right now.  I will, of course, let you know how it goes at the end of the month this year.  We shall see!

Lists, lists, lists

Because I know that no matter how hard I try to remember not to do it, I will probably lose my visit to the States planning notebook at some point before the summer is over, so I am going to share some of my list making here.  This will serve two purposes: I will have a back-up in case (read when) my notebook goes missing and you can see the kinds of things that are hard to find in Qatar, just in case you were wondering.  You weren't?  Too bad!  Here we go!

Groceries

• Basil couscous (this is one of my kids' favorite foods and I have tried and failed to make it from scratch, so we need a few boxes)
• taco seasoning (naturally)
• onion soup mix (have you ever thought about how much onion soup mix you use?  I apparently use it for everything since I miss it quite often these days)
• ranch dressing mix (this is for E mainly, but also for making dip since the made up at home version I have tried really doesn't cut it)
• chili powder (the version here is made with Thai chilis and is good, but not the same)
• dried onions (I use pounds of these and am down to my last few shakes)
• Mrs. Dash (salt substitutes do NOT exist here in any form)
• passion tea (ohmygoodness, how I love this Tazo creation)
• Asian 5 spice (I am sure all these spices exist here individually, but I would rather just buy them already mixed, since I only use this one on occasion)
• craisins (available but super expensive)
• chocolate chips (ditto)
• there are a few other items on this list but I'm not totally sure about them yet, so we'll see.

Clothes

• boys' shorts (they have almost grown out of all we had)
• boys' pajamas (they have already grown out of these)
• boys' white Sunday (aka Friday) shirts (in the next two sizes up)
• boys' black and white socks (required for their school uniforms)
• boys' black shoes (ditto)
• boys' flip flops (again, they have grown out of theirs)
• sun hats for everyone
• jeans that fit me (all mine have shrunk, darn my silly dryer)
• assorted items of temple clothes for the husband and me
• linen pants (never thought I would want these but I wear the one pair I have to death)
• thin capri leggings (to wear under skirts/dresses that might be a tad too short for the locals)
• a more modest swim suit or two for me (not that mine were very risqué but swimwear here is VERY conservative)
• rash guards for everyone (the sun!  It burns!)
• maxi skirts and dresses for me (already ordered from Target, hooray!)

Toiletries and Meds

• children's Tylenol and Ibuprofen (children's meds are not available at all here except by prescription)
• Benadryl (also only available by prescription)
• kids' vitamins (very hard to come by and uber-expensive)
• Nyquil/Dayquil (similar drugs only available by prescription also)
• sunscreen (totally ineffective varieties here)
• deodorant for the husband and me (the only varieties here are all sprays...?)
• tampons (the lack of these kills me!)
• cough drops (the only ones here are just candy)

Miscellaneous

• stain remover (the stain removers they have here are women who scrub the living daylights out of their employers' white clothes.  I need Shout to do that for me!)
• ziplock bags of all sizes (the ones here are not very sturdy)
• stickers (the kids love them and the only ones available are licensed characters)
• gifts for friends' birthdays
• gift bags (cost more than the gifts here, and that's saying something)
• books for everyone
• art supplies (in short supply here)
• printer ink (of course our printer isn't supported here)
• printer paper 
• small toys like silly putty, play dough, matchbox cars, etc. (for traveling, bribes, last minute gifts, etc)
• travel backpacks for all of us (for using on our next adventures)
• portable booster seats (also for travel)

It looks like a lot, I know, and I haven't even included some of the other clothes items we have already bought and had sent to our parents' houses, but we are only bringing two suitcases with us for vacation and we will leave with 8 between us (we also ordered new luggage), not counting carry-ons, so I am confident we will fit it all in.  I can survive without many of the grocery items (I have so far), but we're going to use my master packing skills and make it work!  

The countdown

The boys have been counting down until we head to the States since we were 9 weeks out.  That is a LONG time for two little boys.  Luckily, right now we are down to 4, about a month left, and that is a much more manageable number for short attention spans.  In between then and now, we've had (or will have) a music concert, an art show, and a book fair at the school, so we've been busy.  Nothing like waiting until the last minute to do everything, huh?

The music concert was somewhat successful: J sang his heart out (that boy loves to perform!), but unfortunately he was only partially visible on the back row for part of the time.  When I arrived 15 minutes early, I heard E yelling emphatically from the stage "I want my mom!" so I went in and rescued his teachers.  He had been very anxious about singing on the stage for some reason (I blame the husband's childhood shyness for this!), and when it came time for the final practice, he just shut down.  So he sat out the concert with me in the audience, singing along quietly and power-eating half a package of sweet tarts I had in the bottom of my bag (note to self: bring more snacks, always.  Kids get really hungry in the desert for some reason!).  One of his friends who is even newer to school than he is, from our compound but in another grade, sat out with us, since he had been refusing to participate all along.  So we were a merry band of not-so-conscientious objectors!

Here is J after the concert looking smily in his "fancy dress" clothes! 

Here he is next to his favorite friend from class, E the second in pink.  She and J are two peas in a very entertaining pod, according to their teachers, and she was the first person to befriend him, for which we will be forever grateful!  J and I both love that little girl!

E was also all smiles AFTER the festivities and posed for a shot with his little friend I.  Unfortunately, he then hit and then pinched poor little I at school during his pre-ear infection foul mood, so they aren't so friendly any more, sadly for everyone.  And E really, really wanted to dress up as Superman for the concert, so we compromised on this bright red shirt, because that is totally what Superman would wear for fancy dress, yo!

The art show was very impressive.  The younger grades had painted a life-size Monet with waterlilies that parents could walk through, a very ambitious project, but of course I forgot to take a picture.  I did manage to get shots of the boys at some of the art project stations they had, which included things like iPad drawing, symmetry, an abstract mural, and origami.  The boys were so intent at their stations I could hardly get them to look up at me, so forgive the blurriness and the strange expressions.  They were only barely humoring me.

The book fair has actually been rescheduled twice, first because of some problem with ordering and the second time because the book vendor from Lebanon had a medical emergency....?  It is finally supposed to take place next week.  Hopefully, this fair will be a little more successful than our last book fair experience (in which J picked out a very expensive book because I hadn't given him a specific limit and then felt like he had "failed" at book buying until we went back together and renegotiated his purchases) but, if it is, it will only be because I have asked a bunch of questions beforehand to try and suss out the situation before the boys visit the fair.  At one point, they sent home envelopes asking us to send back an indeterminate amount of cash for the children to spend at the fair, but no book prices or list of what titles will be available.  And the classes will only visit once each, so they have to make their purchases then and there, with no parental input or approval, which seems a bit much for the pre-K and K set!  Even worse, these are Qatari book prices, which means they will undoubtedly be exorbitant.  Hopefully, since the librarian is running the sale, there will be more than the usual local Disney character books, but I am prepared for some paperback "book" about Frozen to appear in their backpacks.  I did get the librarian to tell me a price range but no additional specifics, so we shall see how it goes for the boys.  As usual, the whole thing is run a little haphazardly, as is the current MO of the school.

One of those weeks

This past week started out like most of the others: the boys were sick with something or other (an ear infection for J, an eye infection for E) and after we got them started on some meds to help, I came down with something myself, nasty sore throat that escalated into congestion and a killer cough but I wasn't too worried because it wasn't supposed to be a very busy week for us...hint: foreshadowing.

However, E was acting very strangely at school, cranky and aggressive with his best friends and finally one morning about midweek he came in to our room and said, "My ear hurts."  The husband took a look and it turns out he had an ear infection so severe the outside of the back of his ear was inflamed and hurt to the touch.  Umm, yes, no wonder you were cranky; you were in a ton of pain!  Thanks for the head's up, kid!  Fortunately, we had a bottle of antibiotics ready to go (they give it to you dry, in powder form here, to mix as needed) and got him started on his own round.

That same day, I had my once monthly volunteer session at a private children's library, which is usually a breeze but this day we ran into all sorts of issues: damaged books, missing memberships, overdue fines, research paper on the Titanic, and various other things I have never done before, so I spent the morning basically guessing and hoping I was guessing right.  That night, someone from church called with a last minute request: could we host the Single Status dinner on Friday after church?  Once a month, someone from the congregation here feeds all the members who are here without their families, usually men from the Philippines and various countries in Africa.  This group can be anywhere from 10-20 strong, depending on the week, and the folks who were scheduled to do it had a conflict no one had remembered so they needed a substitute.  Could we step in?  Sure!  I wondered why our name was on anyone's mind in the first place, which is surely a dangerous sign: when people think you can do things at the last minute, they are sure to come looking for you again and again.  But at that point my voice was pretty much gone but I felt more or less fine and there really was no one else, so we jumped in.  After a few panicked moments wondering what in the world I was going to feed that many people given the state and cost of groceries here, I decided on crockpot chili and rice (very Hawaii to serve those together, by the way) and some sort of crockpot fruit dessert with carrot sticks and cucumbers on the side.  Only I don't have a crock pot any more because we sold them all before we came!  Sometimes I cannot believe that after walking away from our wedding reception with 7 crockpots we do not have one to our names!  Anywho, I sent out an SOS to the church's Facebook group here and wrangled up a few (thank you, ladies!) and started to feel fine about the whole thing.

That was Tuesday, I think.  It's all a bit hazy!  By Wednesday morning, I was feeling very, very bad.  Really, really bad. Coughing all night left me sleep deprived and headachy and E had been coming in during the night as well because he wasn't sleeping either, plus J had been having a rare round of sleeplessness himself, so it was musical beds and coughing fits, which was just as much fun as you might imagine.  And I had a fever in 115 degree heat, which was pretty much torturous!  But I had grocery shopping to do and crockpots to borrow and all the other things of my life life picking up other kids from school with my own and watching some of them after school for their parents, so I got to it.  That afternoon, it was also our turn to clean the villa where we meet for church.  You get randomly assigned a date and that day was unfortunately our turn.  So we picked up the husband after school and went over and vacuumed and swept and mopped and cleaned toilets and set up chairs and emptied the trash for a couple of hours and by the end of all that I was ready to faint.