Christmas in Doha

One of the unexpectedly great things about being in the Middle East over the Christmas holidays is that you miss most of the commercial hype over Santa and his presents that starts after Halloween in the US.  Instead, you have to, or, I should say, you GET to decide exactly how you will celebrate the season for yourself.  It takes a bit more planning than you may be used to, but, in the end, I think it makes the holiday more thoughtful and less frenzied, which I quite enjoy.  Some folks take a Christmas trip to somewhere else with snow and/or other Christians, but we have decided to stay in Qatar instead.

Which is not to say that Christmas is completely missing here in Doha.  Many of the hotels have one or two holiday events and lots of seasonal decorations; there are many holiday markets that pop up selling handicrafts; most restaurants have a special Christmas Eve dinner or brunch on Christmas Day; and Ikea just announced that they are now selling, in addition to their plentiful Christmas decorations, live Christmas trees to be delivered right to your door, Doha-style.  So there are festivities and twinkling lights to be had, if you want to find them.

A few years ago, we started doing an activity advent in addition to our usual habit of unwrapping and reading a Christmas book (or two) every night until Christmas.  We've got a big felt tree with numbered pockets we fill with slips of paper telling us what we will do that day, and the boys take turns pulling the slips out.  Last year, sadly, since we were busy moving until right before Christmas, we didn't do the activity advent and contented ourselves with the (light and portable) Lego advent instead.  This year, we're doing it all: books, Lego, and an activity per day!  However, as I was plotting out the activities this month, I made an alarming realization.  After I had put in all the already scheduled events I knew about, like a holiday concert and the ward Christmas activity at the singing sand dunes, I still had many, many more days than usual to fill up!  This is the other thing that happens when you spend the Christmas season in a Muslim country, my friends!  You DO need to get a bit more creative when it comes to holiday celebrations.

So, without further ado, here is our list of Christmas advent activities for the month of December:

• Decorate the tree
• Set up the nativities
• Make Christmas pictures/cards for the grandparents
• Pajama party (maybe)
• Gingerbread house making (this is at the Doha Marriott)
• Christmas pancakes for dinner
• Christmas movie party
• Make paper snowflakes
• Go through toys and find some to donate to church
• Buy/make Christmas gifts for Daddy
• Doha Singers/Orchestra concert
• Singing sand dunes ward activity
• Eat dinner by candlelight
• Family game night
• Make a Christmas craft
• Christmas songs dance party
• Qatar National Day parade
• Christmas carols (another event at the Marriott)
• Make s'mores outside
• Pictures with Santa (at another hotel)
• Visit the beach
• Make peppermint bark or fudge
• Go Christmas caroling
• Read the Christmas story and open one present
• Skype family

These are roughly in order.  Our activities are further complicated by the fact that the husband will be in the States from December 3-16, so I will be on my own for a lot of the month, meaning the activities need to be low-stress and low-commitment and/or preferably planned or executed by someone else at least part of the time...hence, the hotels!  And we may add in a few day trips to places outside of Doha that we haven't visited yet when the husband gets back and we're feeling adventurous again.  I am not above pulling the slips out at night and rearranging or replacing them as needed.  I'm a pragmatic elf!

Happy (American) Thanksgiving!

We didn't get this holiday off from work or school, of course, so we had Thanksgiving dinner at actual dinnertime (as opposed to the noon meal I usually serve because I can't wait any longer!).  This year, our first Thanksgiving in Doha, we hosted, and we had a full house of 20, including lots of kids and friends from the US, New Zealand, and Canada.

For the first time ever, we cooked a fresh turkey.  In the run up to November, I began to wonder what the turkey situation would be like.  It turns out they do sell frozen birds here, Jennie O's in fact, but I also found a farm about an hour north of Doha where they sell turkeys, ducks, duck eggs, goats and goat's milk, and rabbits.  They kill and pluck the turkey and bring it to your door within the hour.  We were a little skeptical since ordering was very informal, through Facebook private message with the supervisor of the farm as opposed to the Qatari owner, and they increased the price by 30% upon delivery the day before (so we were up against a wall!), but it all worked out!  Granted, the plucking they did was a bit less thorough than we were used to (picture the husband and I hunched over the sink with tweezers!) and the bird was not gutted, nor was the neck cut off, so we also had to do a bit of surgery the night before.  It was a much more hand's on holiday than I was wishing for but certainly an adventure!

Here is the husband after he cut off the neck; he was very proud!

Post turkey surgery.

In addition to turkey, I made cornbread stuffing, gravy, a strawberry/granny smith apple/pecan jello mold, mashed potatoes, cranberry relish (from scratch, another first), and pumpkin bread pudding made out of croissants (a substitute for my usual pumpkin gingerbread trifle, which is a bit too labor intensive to came completely from scratch).  Sadly, right before I was ready to mash the potatoes, I discovered one of my children had taken the potato masher outside and either lost it or broke it, so the potatoes ended up more squashed than mashed with the help of a ladle and a rice paddle.  My cleaner, who was home helping me set up the tables and such, was completely mystified about what I was making and how--try explaining the appeal of mashed potatoes to someone who has never seen them before--it's harder than you would think!  I also served rolls (store bought), apple and mango chutney (homemade by someone else) along with the cranberry sauce (for some international flavor), and dill and sweet pickles.  Others brought homemade rolls (we used hers instead!), pavlova, more stuffing, sweet potatoes, an apple cheesecake dessert, and veggie spring rolls.  I'm of the opinion that if you don't end up in a food coma after Thanksgiving, you're not doing it right!  Plus, I love all the Thanksgiving fixings so much, I wanted to be sure to have plenty of leftovers (there were!).

Working on decorations before the guests arrived.

We used two of my green table clothes and decorated with just a few Ikea candles (hint: the most versatile colors for year round entertaining and decor?  Plain red and plain green--think Valentines, Christmas, and 4th of July, and then Thanksgiving, St. Patrick's Day, and Easter--so be sure to pick up what you need at an after Christmas sale!).  I borrowed additional dishes and glasses from our neighbors (thankfully, we all have the same set, which makes things easier) for the main meal, but we went with cheery yellow paper goods for dessert to save us all a little work.  We had a toast with sparkling apple juice, and the kids stayed fairly well-behaved, especially since they ranged in age from 3 to 18!  It was a late night for the boys since we leisurely had (herbal) tea with dessert and were all in the requisite turkey coma after dinner, but everyone had fun, I think, and dinner was a yummy success!

The kids' table!

Some of our hungry guests.

Still smiling after it was all over!

Driving in Doha

It occurs to me that next month I will celebrate one year of living in Doha, which means I will also "celebrate" one year of driving in Doha.  The second commemoration seems much more significant than the first, believe me.

Doha roads take all the things that sometimes annoy you about driving (traffic, constant construction, hopelessly inaccurate signs, lax policing, aggressive drivers, new drivers, foreign drivers, and people driving while talking on their cell phones) and throws in some extra tidbits for flavor (unnamed roads that lead to nowhere, pretty frequent dust storms, occasionally impenetrable fog, mind boggling roundabouts, reckless underage drivers, and extreme danger) and serves it up to you on a platter that, for most of the year, is scorchingly hot.  Going anywhere means you must brave all this, for there is no way to avoid any of it, even on a very, very good day.

Sure, you may not have to face the fog, which only comes out in the mornings during winter, and you may happily skip the afternoon dust storms depending on your timing, but it is almost impossible to get to virtually any destination without being forced through a roundabout at some point.  Believe me, I've tried!  I have become the queen of backroads and back ways, all in an ongoing effort to spare myself as many roundabouts as possible, but it's really no use.  All the divided roads here mean that sooner or later you will want to turn left, and the only way to do that is to go around a roundabout.

And roundabouts are a microcosm of the worst parts of Doha driving.  Often, especially recently, the roundabouts are under construction.  Usually that means inadequate, confusing, or just plain false signs.  Roundabouts are where the aggressive drivers get positively mean, the new drivers get completely flustered and act erratically, which is almost as dangerous, and the foreign drivers, particularly those used to driving on the other side of the road, just generally contribute to chaos.  All of this is not helped by the configuration of my favorite roundabouts, in which three lanes of traffic feed into just two lanes going around.  Not that anyone actually recognizes the switch; most people just drive blithely on, forcing three lanes into two or, more often, simply moving into your lane without warning.  During high traffic times, policemen appear to "direct" traffic, but often it seems as if they themselves have not driven much when they "direct" you into a near accident or tell cars to stop or go completely arbitrarily.

Today, for example, I was caught in two inexplicable and one explicable traffic jam(s)--the last one was caused by a car that had run into the back of someone else so hard the front of the car was completely crumpled, but the driver was still standing, so that's good.  I also saw a woman drive down the middle of a backed up three lane road.  As in she moved herself into a space between cars in lane one and lane two and then basically forced her way forward as if she were an emergency vehicle with lights and sirens, straddling the dotted line between the lanes and inching so close to people they felt they had to move so she wouldn't hit them.  She was driving a sedan as opposed to the ubiquitous SUVs, so I guess she saw herself as being super maneuverable...?  Then another guy passed me on the right...on the sidewalk...going at least 30mph.  Because of course he did!  And all this was only on the approach to the roundabout!  Once we got there and were waiting for the light to change--some actually do have lights, which makes them marginally better than others--another car drove through really fast after the light had changed and he has lost his right of way, but he was laying on his horn really hard to let us all know to get out of his way.  Thanks for the warning, buddy!

As I said to a newly minted Doha driver, driving here is always strategic.  You never just get in your car and GO!  Oh no, you need to plot out your route, either via GPS or mentally, account for new construction, consider the danger of the roundabouts you might face, plan for alternate routes, build in 20 extra minutes for something unexpected, and then maybe reconsider whether you really want to go anywhere at all!  And once you're on the road, it's the ultimate defensive driving course where the stakes really are life and death!

Wanna come ride with me??

Dragon Mart Doha

A few days ago I decided to visit Dragon Mart, a new(ish) collection of stores where everything is imported from Asia.  In typical Doha fashion, despite having had a soft opening in June or July and a grand opening in October, I had heard from multiple sources that the place really wasn't up and running yet.  However, after seeing someone post a picture of cheap fabric for sale and being in the market for some fabric for a Thanksgiving table cloth, I decided to give it a go.

And so began the usual Doha errand: first, the place didn't come up on an map, but I had seen a pin dropped on a fuzzy map in a newspaper story, so I tracked down the story and strained to see the crossroads and eventually figured out more or less where I thought I was going.  I set off with three hours before the kids got home from school, plenty of time for even the most disastrous of Doha days.  

It's a good thing I gave myself those three hours.

First, this place is out in the "industrial area," part of a complex called the 8 Mile Mall.  And yes, it's 8 miles long, though much of it is uninhabited and/or unfinished at the moment and there is some residential space in there as well (I think).  And all the major roads going in and out of the industrial area are under construction, so getting to the right intersection was tricky and took much longer than the 17 minutes my map program estimated.  Eventually, I did make it to the right intersection, though of course that intersection was now a roundabout, meaning I drove right past where I wanted to go and then much farther down the road as I looked for a place to make a U-turn.  And when I made the U-turn, I ran smack into a huge traffic jam of unmoving cars.

Now, traffic in Doha is the norm, but this was unusual, given that is was the middle of the day and this was a huge three land road out in the middle of nowhere, but I patiently sat in the barely moving traffic for a long, long, longlonglong time...until I started to see people driving past me on the right over the shoulder and into the desert to skirt the traffic.  Normally, I don't ever do this, but what happened when these people went off-roading, as I could see by craning my neck and looking waaaay down the road, if that eventually then ended up in the parking lot for Dragon Mart, exactly where I wanted to be!  Now most of the drivers, of course, were just using that parking lot as a means to an end, but I actually wanted to be right there so I finally steeled my nerves, thanked the husband again for our four wheel drive, and headed off road myself.

Only this time, I was deathly afraid while doing so, because just last week, the Qatari government passed a law outlawing passing on the right in an attempt to stop the rampant disregard of driving laws around here.  The penalty, if you are caught, is...wait for it...seven days in jail and your car is impounded for seven days.  You read that right: SEVEN DAYS IN JAIL!  I justified my actions by saying I really and truly wasn't trying to pass all these people but just get to my destination that just happened to be to the right, but I was driving as fast as I could and scanning the road for police as I did so, just in case.  Admittedly, I was one of about 30 people who were doing the same thing, so there was safety in numbers and the police here are not very proactive about stopping anyone at all usually, but I worried that their enthusiasm for the new law might spur them to action all of the sudden.  

(As I made it to the parking lot, I saw that the trouble ahead was actually an enormous dump truck on its side they were trying to get upright again, hence the huge traffic jam.)

So, once I parked, took a few deep breaths to calm back down, and collected myself, I entered Dragon Mart, just an hour and a half after I set out on my journey!  Happily, my trip was not a waste of time.  Dragon Mart turns out to be a million little storefronts, like an indoor flea market, selling all kinds of things from Asia, many of which were fun and useful, some of which were incredibly over the top.  For example...

this vendor is selling astroturf...in your choice of colors!

This is wall paper made to look like stone tile.  Because of COURSE it is! 

I don't think this picture does these tile samples justice,
because all that glittering is not the flash; they really were that sparkly!

I did finally find the fabric, but there were a bunch of stores
selling dresses like these and leggings in every print imaginable
...and many I had never imagined!

Oh, I was just looking for a HUGE ornate mirror!  Lucky me!
(Notice the now righted dump truck in the background!)

In the end, Dragon Mart sells lots of cheap toys, women's clothes, home decor, accessories, and a little smattering of everything else, including dresses for women and girls in the Qatari national colors (useful if they ask you to dress up for National Day), abayas, outdoor furniture and playground equipment, and kids' clothes.  There are many stalls yet to open downstairs and a whole upper floor that is completely uninhabited, but even in its current unfinished state, it was worth a trip.  any of The prices are cheaper than most of the other places in Doha and it's always helpful to know where such bargains can be found.  Doha friends, be warned: the air conditioning is weak, so I would plan on visiting only during the winter months for the time being.  And there is nowhere to eat on the premises and no restaurants close by yet, so you will need to head back to Salwa Road for that.

This is how we do it

I was thinking the other day that I haven't done a post just about Qatar in a long while.  I mean, clearly I write "about" living in Qatar all the time, but I don't write a whole lot about the country or the terrain or the culture or the language or the people specifically.  And I think it's probably time that I explain why that is.

Because there is a reason, you see.  More than at any other time in my life, at this time, in this place, I am learning to be careful.  Careful about what I say, careful about what I write, careful about how I dress, careful about where I go, careful, careful, careful.  I am careful not to offend, careful not to disrupt, careful not to speak or write or do anything without thinking.  In many ways, I live a filtered life, and so this blog is filtered, as well, no matter how much I might wish it not to be.  It's partially one of the trade-offs I have made to have a public blog, one that my casual readers can read once in a while if they feel like it, instead of a private, invite-only blog.  But it's also partially a reflection of expat life in Qatar.

We are guests here.  We know this.  We are reminded of this daily.  Every day, we encounter situations or people or subtle signs that remind us of our status as guests.  And we don't want to put our hosts out if at all possible, nor do we want to be put out ourselves (as in, put out of the country).  So we are respectful, tolerant, considerate, and, above all else, careful.

For example, when we had our church Halloween party last month, we were reminded not to come in costumes so scary they would upset our neighbors.  (One young girl did come as a weeping angel, which was pretty dang scary and TOTALLY AWESOME, but until she put on the mask inside, she just looked like a regular angel, and I am willing to bet not many of our neighbors are big Doctor Who fans anyway!)  In fact, we maintain such a low profile at church we don't even have printed programs on Sundays so we don't leave an unnecessary and possibly ill-advised paper trail.  We're that careful.

Recently, we got a warning from the US State Department telling us about some specific but anonymous threats placed on websites against American teachers in some Middle Eastern countries (Qatar was not specifically mentioned).  We were advised to avoid crowds or large gatherings when traveling in public, know where we were going and have a plan in case we encountered violence or demonstrations, tell co-workers or neighbors where we were going and when we would return, and have embassy numbers programmed into our phones, among other similar instructions.  The funny thing is, we are already taking all of these precautions and more, just as a part of our daily life here, because we are always being careful.  It's what you do.

At the same time, we still feel very safe here.  I'm certain that the minute we stopped feeling safe, we would be on the next plane home, but for now, the only real dangers we face involve the crazy drivers on the roads.  And we're happy, despite our everyday caution.  I, for one, have probably benefited from these new lessons in how to be circumspect!  I know my children are learning much more about modesty and cultural tolerance and social appropriateness by osmosis than they ever would have in your everyday American elementary school.  My six year old recently explained to me that he thought his shorts were getting too short "because Mommy, in this country, we like to cover up a bit more than this."  You can't buy an education like that!  And I think it behooves us all to learn how to be respectful in public at all times, public respect being a commodity that is sometimes in short supply elsewhere. 

The banging...the BANGING!!

When we first arrived to our new home, we noticed a leak in one of our upstairs closets.  The paint was peeling in the back of the closet at first and then, after the first big rain storm, we could tell the water was now leaking down into the corner of our dining room.  At some point, we told maintenance about the issue but we really didn't feel much urgency about it since we didn't use that closest regularly for anything but storage and everything we stored there was in waterproof bins (side note: can I just tell you how happy I am the movers in OH let me keep everything that was already in a bin packed in the same bin to transport here?  These kinds of big rubbermaid containers are unavailable here, or at least I haven't found them yet, and, just like in the states, I use them for EVERYTHING!  So glad I was able to bring so many!).  I think we somehow communicated our lack of urgency too effectively because although we reported the leak, we saw no one for weeks, months, until, one day, a painter arrived to "fix" it.  This was before we left for summer vacation.

I explained to the supervisor (the painter spoke no English) that painting was really the least of our problems and the paint was likely to get ruined again during the next rain because there was a leak, you see, so cosmetic fixes really were beside the point.  He nodded energetically, fired off something in some Indian dialect to the painter, and then told me again they were going to paint to fix the problem.  Sigh.  Okay, fine, do what you want.  It turned out the paint they chose was this incredibly toxic stuff so I opened all the windows and doors to the hot outside air and then declared we were going out for the day to give the place a chance to dry without killing our brain cells in the process.  When we got back that night, the paint was dry...and it was a different color than the rest of the room, which would have been fine, if they had just painted the whole wall affected, but instead they left a nice little line about two feet from the corner of the wall where the new paint color ended and the old began.  Sigh again.  But really, I wasn't worried because chances are it was going to rain again and ruin this paint, too, and they would have to do it all over again, as I had tried to explain to them.

Fast forward until this month, November: I get an agitated call from the maintenance supervisor telling me urgently "Madame, you have a leak on your roof and we must fix it at once!"  Oh, really?  At once, you say?  Well certainly, if you must, you must!  He then explains that the process will be a long one, taking 7-10 days.  The first step involves drilling on the roof for 2-3 days, then something else happens, he wasn't clear about that, then the weatherproofing occurs for another 2-3 days, then something else he also didn't explain too clearly, and then perhaps they were done, but they couldn't be sure until it rains, at which point they might have to start all over again.  Did I give them permission to do all this?  Of course, why not?  Let's get it fixed!

And so it began.  Every day this week, from 7am until 2pm, someone has been drilling or scraping or clanking or, and this really is the worst part, banging about on my roof constantly.  I cannot imagine how the leak could be serious enough to warrant all this time, work, and most annoyingly of all, infernal NOISE, but now they seem to feel that it's a huge problem that must be solved.  There is a huge skylight on the second level of my house and through it I can watch the workers, at least 8 of them at any given time, all day long if I want.  I can also hear all their muffled conversations, in between the bangs.  It's a veritable construction symphony!  Today, I saw them unloading rolls and rolls of weatherproofing material, feet and feet of it, but the area in question really can't be that large...unless they never weatherproofed in the first place....which is entirely possible!  I did tell them that I didn't want any work to be done in the late afternoon, after the kids get here, because they are even less tolerant of repetitive noises than I am, truth be told, but glory, glory be, I had NO IDEA of the production that was about to unfold!  Triple sigh....

Unfortunately, this is how construction projects usually roll around here: slowly, very very slowly, not on any timeline you might expect, and with very little rhyme or reason.  Super dooper fun!

Everyday signs of life

And by signs, I literally mean signs, mostly street signs, the kind I see every day around here, with a few other fun tidbits thrown in for good measure!

I found this sign over a small section of shoes that
were actually my size and above (though not very far above,
since my size is so gigantic already).  I especially like how they have
 included the Qatari flag so I know who exactly thinks
my feet are so incredibly large!

This sign is part of an ongoing public awareness campaign.
Based on the other signs in the series, all of which are about as
clear as this one, I THINK what they want to say is there is a
 thin line between X risky behavior (in some other versions,
 it's texting) and unsafe driving...or something like that,
but, instead, what we get is this!

I'm not sure why humps is so much more entertaining
than bumps, but it is!

This is prescription I filled for one of the boys.
 Notice that the instructions are hand written
on the side of the box.  This drives the husband crazy,
by the way, and is more than a little freaky for me, too.

Especially when sometimes, as in this case,
I have to write them on the bottle myself!
Yep, that's my handwriting on this bottle!

Another ongoing PSA, this one is about littering,
which makes sense (even if it is in Arabic here)...

...although this one seems a little more unusual,
though equally important here, of course!

Just a random goat.  They are all over the roads here.

Oh, what's that?  Only a scorpion we found in our house
after our last vacation.  No big deal....!  In fact, this
particular scorpion was dispatched by the husband
and thrown down drain in the road outside our house,
at which point it crawled out of the drain and then
had to be killed by one of the maintenance workers with a shovel,
after he pointed to it and looked at me and said "Danger!"  No kidding!

One reason why Qatar has an obesity epidemic to rival any Western country.

This is the housing for an air conditioner or exhaust unit
at the gas station by our house.  One of the things I love
most about Qatar is how sometimes the most mundane
things can be so beautiful, like this amazing concrete work.

These last two are from Sri Lanka, which isn't really part of
my everyday, but they are entertaining nonetheless. 

And another goat.  See, they're everywhere!