Happy National Day!

On December 18th, Qatar celebrates its biggest holiday, National Day! My school has been preparing for our big National Day celebration for quite a while and it was very exciting to see it all come together. All of the teachers wore thobes and abayas, which are the cultural dress for the men and women here in Qatar. National Day celebrates Qatar's unification and independence. I know it is not a long standing holiday, but the Qataris sure love it. Leading up to this week, I have seen more Qatar flags and cars decorated with the Emir's face than ever before. 

The students came dressed up to school with the boys wearing mini thobes and the girls wearing dresses decorated with the Qatar flag. Each class performed a dance and then there was a carnival with camels, falcons, henna, and much more. Unfortunately, I was hanging out with my students so I did not take photos during the carnival. But, the next day there was a big parade, so we walked over bright and early.  Read More...

Driving Around The Country (Or Half Of It)

As anyone can see, Qatar is not a very big country (but bigger than Bahrain!). So when a friend suggested we drive the whole circumference of the country in one day, it seemed like a fairly easy task.

We set out in the morning with all intents of going the whole way around. We quickly learned that, although we definitely could have made it timewise, it would not have left much time for exploration. So, we quickly decided to do half the country one day and go back and complete the rest another time. Read More...

Disclaimer: As I am clearly not a professional photographer, I am still learning. So, as you will notice, it did not occur to me to clean my lens before this adventure. So, sorry about the dirt that you might see at the top of these horrendous photos, it's clearly amateur hour over here!

Meanwhile in Qatar...

As much as I would like to say I have been jetting around and living the high life here in the wealthiest country in the world, the truth is not that exciting. My job starts at 7 in the morning. I wake up at 5 o'clock (before the sun but after the first call to prayer) and try to be in bed by 8 o'clock at night. I run around with 20 five years olds and when I get home around 4 I lay on my couch and catch up on my reading and tv shows. Glamorous! And not that much different than what I would doing in California...

I have been slowly learning about my new city. Although I have been busy with work, I have made time to go out with my new friends. So get ready for a photo dump as nothing I have done has really been worth making a whole post about. Read More...

Cliffs and Heights and Night, Oh My!

After one of the coolest things I have ever done in my life, I did one of the scariest. After duning, we headed up towards the city of Nizwa in order to make our way to Jebel Shams, where we would be staying for the night. Jebel Shams, the highest mountain in Oman, is often called the "Grand Canyon of the Middle East." Read More...

A Love Affair Continues

When Terrey and I met with Sara, the woman who lived in Muscat and took us to dinner, she insisted that we could not drive through Oman and not go dune bashing. She also insisted that we need to meet up with "her bedouin" and that he would take us out, no problem. So, after this exchange, we found ourselves waiting for a man named Bader to meet us at an Al Maha gas station outside the village of Biddiyah. Not quite sure what to expect, we waited anxiously. Read More...

A Land of Randoms

After living in the land of perpetual heat, sand, and construction cranes, I have not been surprised in a while. After driving through Oman for a week, I had my fair share of strange and random happenings. Qatar is fully a desert from what I have witnessed with not much variety. In Oman, we would be driving through beautiful red mountains and in the next minute, they were brown, and then, there would be steps built right into the side. What? Read More...

Out Of Doha And Off To Oman

As my first school break was fast approaching, the question I asked myself was this: Where to go??? Doha is a great jumping point to a multitude of places and the only issue was picking where. I had a whole week to explore somewhere new, so the decision was hard. Turkey? Sri Lanka? Hogwarts? As the last was not an option, a friend and I chose to spend a week exploring the country of Oman. Read More...