It's been a While!

With 2 of 3 courses completed for the semester (hooray!), I feel it is time to post a few updates. Soon I will post a belated summary of the time we spent in Nepal about one month ago.  Right here is will a little piece about the past few weeks back here in Doha.

Amidst all the business of being a nanny, enjoying life with my sister & brother in law, assignment-posting, prayer meetings & Bible study, keeping up with dear friends in the Western hemisphere and boyfriend-ing with my new favourite German - Matthias, I almost forgot that I live in the Middle East! It all became so familiar so quickly. Then every so often I catch a few remaining strains of the call to prayer as I rest in my bed in the early hours of the morning, or step out on the back porch to collect laundry off the line after the sun has gone down... and I ponder with such awe at the God I love. I remember less than a year ago, in Guelph, reading through Andrew Murray’s book “Absolute Surrender” and being struck by these words: 

"I say again, God will bless you. You have been praying for blessing. But do remember, there must be absolute surrender. At every tea-table you see it. Why is tea poured into that cup? Because it is empty, and given up for the tea. But put ink or vinegar or wine into it, and will they pour the tea into the vessel? And can God fill you, can God bless you if you are not absolutely surrendered to Him? He cannot. Let us believe God has wonderful blessings for us if we will but stand up for God and say, be it with a trembling will, yet with a believing heart:

"O God, I accept Your demands. I am Yours and all that I have. Absolute surrender is what my soul yields to You by divine grace."

You may not have such strong, clear feelings of surrender as you would like to have, but humble yourselves in His sight, and acknowledge that you have grieved the Holy Spirit by your self-will, self-confidence, and self-effort. Bow humbly before Him in the confession of that, and ask Him to break the heart and to bring you into the dust before Him. Then, as you bow before Him, just accept God's teaching that in your flesh "there dwelleth no good thing" (Romans 7:18), and that nothing will help you except another life which must come in. You must deny self once and for all. Denying self must every moment be the power of your life, and then Christ will come in and take possession of you. "

(Here is a link to the entire book Absolute Surrender online for free. I *highly* recommend it! http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/murray/absolutesurrender/contents.htm)

When the these words became incorporated into my own life, I was a college student who had recently been rejected from an internship I interviewed for at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens. I was applying frantically for a job in Edmonton, Alberta, to attempt to be with my sisters and their families. I had plans to live here in Doha for 6 months nannying in October of this year, but had not yet heard back about grad school applications. I was preparing to leave the fantastic city of Guelph, Ontario (my Church, campus ministry, incredible employers, some caring Professors, and some very precious friends) where I spent four very important years of my life. Still, as Murray suggests, in God's power it was fairly easy to be "empty" to God.

Currently in my life there is a sense that everything happening in Doha is appointed, and so I find myself very calm (even though life is moving quite quickly, and although the Americans I have came to really love are packing up and leaving Doha for good).  The semester is coming to a close... relationships exist in such a transient setting here. In 6 days Matthias and I will be on a plane to Munich where I will have the opportunity to spend two full weeks with his (fairly large) family that I have heard so many lovely things about. We’ll all head off to Austria for 5 days of skiing (can you imagine!!), and then some of the boys and I will participate in a Bible conference at a CASTLE that will be taught in German (hahaha). I am delighted but have a healthy amount of trepidation... my Pimsleur German lessons have been fun so far, but anyone who spent a semester of French class with me will know that I am more gifted at giggling and winging it than language learning (oh “Moi dans une boite!”... Laura, Sarah & Susannah, that was a shout out to you).  I am thrilled to be learning about the people and way of this part of the world... and especially to be learning it alongside my sweet, adventurous, generous, car-racing, attractive-as-all-get-out boyfriend. Really, I’ve never been to Europe before, so I am bursting with enthusiasm. Good news is that Thias is sort of the weighted sand-thingie to my bunch of helium balloons... he’s quiet and calm when I’m not (and hopefully vice versa). I've got it in my mind that he will somehow keep me from creating too many overly embarrassing situations for myself.  

I am trying to get Christmas wishes out to grandparents, sisters and brothers-in-law, nieces and nephews, 2^nd families, school buddies, and hometown friends alike. So if you are reading this, Merry Christmas! I love you very much, and pray that God would grant you more and more of Himself this upcoming year, for your joy.  And who doesn't love pictures as a part of year-end reviews/letters, so here it goes!

Caleb and I received fabulous gifts in the mail from a lovely friend in Canada: We shall use the teething ring lots and think of you often! Thank you so much!!

My birthday was a lovely affair. The Conley family serenaded me right from the start! Caleb & I went swimming on the compound with some other little Canadian friends, Larissa & Darren took us out to dinner at an Italian restaurant, and Matthias wrote me a beautiful poem (and recited it to me in German). My gift came with a special code to crack too.... it's very fun dating an electrical engineer. :)

We threw a Thanksgiving Dinner for the American exchange students (plus some Arabic, Goan, and Faroese friends) two weeks ago. Kudos to Matthias for driving all around the city to three different grocery stores on three different nights to find all of the specialty ingredients for the day.

We also spent a weekend retreat out in the desert with the wonderful Youth Group from my Church here in Doha. They are really an INCREDIBLE community of brilliant people. I feel so blessed to have become a part of them a little bit.

Next semester is looking like it will be a really wonderful one: I will be taking just one course so I am looking forward to more sleep(!), spending more time in prayer, spending more time with the Youth, cooking more for Bible Study and Larissa and Darren, embarking on my goal for 2011 [mastering the art of bread-making], preparing to run a ½ marathon in May, being present for more of Caleb’s first “big boy” moments, becoming more than pretend-proficient at German for the man that I love (yep - love!), and getting to know the Moms here in our compounds as time and play-dates go by.  Whatever happens I have set it in my heart to have empty but willing hands for God’s work.

The Abnormal Day we had this Week.

First: Halloween fun!!



Haystack Spiders... Larissa's delicious idea!!



Toga Party for the Conleys... their costumes were great!

There was a Princess Invasion, at which point we surrendered most of the candy.
There were more than these three.



I asked who the fellow in the middle was dressed up as and Spiderman said "My friend!"



Little Ceasar eating Mommy's bangles.

Now, onto nephew news:
You might have heard a rumour from the excited parents that Caleb is T*******. It's true. The boy is breaking new oral grounds and teething. I should have taken the hint the other day when I dubbed Caleb "Squealy McSquealer". Or maybe my heart should have sensed how much things would change when I happily announced that, according to the developmental calendar, "Caleb is getting to be so big. He's probably going to start teething!"... like it was something to be happy about :). Here instead is my new (far more pragmatic) observation and projection of the teething/auntie reality: gone are the days when there were scheduled naptimes, continuously-happy Caleb, and volume levels that never reached "Screech" decibels. Instead, from ~7:30am-2pm on Sundays to Thursdays I have a very "spontaneous", exhausted boy who eats, cries and munches on absolutely anything at any time/when he feels the need to do so. I feel the loss for both of us. The only naps that have occured today are the ones where he collapsed in exhaustion (and even then, those portrayed a slight Orajel stupor). Oh my. This teething is an unsettling bit. 

Something else unusual happened today. You'll never guess what it was, so I'm just going to tell you: It RAINED. As in - all afternoon, the clothes-on-the-line-ain't-going-to-dry rain.  Like, thunderstorm rain that makes the Canadians run out of their houses and dance (truly, I met a new neighbour three doors down this afternoon when I noticed we were both gawking aimlesslessly at the sky for a few minutes). It is uncharacteristically dark, and the ex-pats are beside themselves. To put it most accurately, I think we are all acting like Cincinnati-ites (is that the demonym?) in a snow storm. Can we actaully drive in rain here? Can life go on without blue skys and bright sunshine? These were are serious questions that I reflected on a few minutes ago. haha.

So, it was very special. But it was crazy.

I perceive that we will live on another day. But maybe someone could fed-ex me an amber teething necklace. That would add a bit more tenacity to my sense of control regarding the next 4 weeks leading up to Christmas!

A Weekend by the Inland Sea, and more!



The end of next week will mark the 1st full month that I have been blessed to spend in Qatar. It amazes me what has happened over that short time period. For example, just over the past week:

• Caleb has grown to be such a big boy! He's on the verge of crawling and teething, we think!
• I had some hilarious moments at a mother's Infant Music Class that Caleb attends just down the road. I'll include pictures one day, walla (I promise).
• Darren took me to the Women's Tennis Association Semi-Finals in downtown Doha(!). Beau, I thought of you! Here are some pics:

  

  You may notice that the advertisements for the women's tennis cut off modestly at the waist.

   

  

  These next pictures are our veiw from within the tennis stadium from left to right.
  In the far left of this picture, you can see the two "ZigZag Towers"

  



Downtown District, near the Corniche.






The Qatar Central Post Office in the forground; Far end of the bay in the background.

• I began a volunteer position with early school-age children, which refreshes my soul!
• The Conleys + Auntie Leona attended the Doha Tribecca Film Festival for a showing of "Just Like Us" [I highly recommend it!]. Here's more info: http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/just-like-us/trailer
• My friends Matthias, Miguel & Kahla, and Joel travelled through the Desert to the Inland Sea, where we spent a glorious Friday afternoon & evening. We even caught a glimpse of Saudi Arabia!

In particular, the experience of travelling out to the beach/desert is one that I wish I could literally share with each of you. I’ll try to paint you a picture with words, but I warn you that I can do no justice to it here. Nonetheless:

Unconscious to how much planning and care went into such a trip, I gratefully accepted when my friend proposed a college-age crowd trip to the beach. Later I hear it was a trip to the desert... were we going to be driving up sand dunes or swimming in them? I wasn’t sure but was excited to find out! We started the adventure with lunch at an American restaurant in Doha (Seriously, I eat more American food than Qatari food in Doha, but it makes me so happy to see the Texans enjoying homestyle grub! Us blondies don’t exactly blend in all the time, so the ‘normalness’ of seeing a small crowd gathered around mashed potatoes and gravy strangely warms my heart.) Anyways, after lunch most of the Texas A&Mers actually had to split to fulfill some volunteering or academic commitments... we missed them!). So our reduced group zipped through the city to meet up with a family that was new to me (but I now feel so blessed to know), who own a land rover [note: land rovers are imperative to the facilitation of an Inland Sea day]. This family is originally from Mexico City, and had taken the time to prepare a full beach BBQ spread for us all, complete with sweet roasted bananas for dessert!! We quickly changed out of our Church clothes and into ‘bathing suit/adventure’ gear, land oaded up the land rover with coal, ice, the BBQ, towels, drinks, a soccer ball, a small jambe and of course ourselves. Anticipation mounting, we headed South (keep in mind, up until this point, Leona’s limited working-knowledge of Doha geography has included the downtown bay (around which the major downtown hotels, offices, corniche, and Islamic Museum of Art find their homes), and the general assumption that if you drive south in Qatar, you will hit Saudi Arabia. Since I am neither married nor accompanied by my father, visiting Saudi for a beach dip was out of the question. So, happily unaware of the end goal, I settled back to enjoy the wild camels roaming along the highway and the seemingly out-of-nowhere petrol (gas) stations where we filled up before our flight out of civilization. [Another side note: we can fill up a small gas tank for about 50 riel, which generously equates to about 15$ Canadian... isn’t that disgustingly fabulous!]. I suppose it helps that a large scale Qatar ‘chemical valley’ was located just a few more miles down the road.

About 45 minutes outside of Doha we stopped at a sort of unmarked parking lot where the men popped out of the car to release air from our tires. After rearranging the desert-savvy passengers to the front seats of the land rover, we were off. By off, I mean to say that we suddenly took a ‘right’ directly up and over a 50 foot sand dune. This is when the fun really began. For about an hour we flew up, down, around and through one of the most breathtaking environments I have visited yet in life – pure desert. We were indeed sand duning. It has got to be one of the most worthwhile adrenaline rushes available in Qatar. At one point, my sister called on my cell phone to check in on how/where we were: I peeked out my window to the 40 foot drop that our vehicle was skidding around the ridge of and squeaked, “I have no idea, but I think we’re fine”. Reversing, speeding up, cresting over sand rims with little idea of what lay on the other side, a friend of mine in the front seat nonchalantly guided us through the maze of sand (there are no markers, it is just sand) until we reach a clearing. Here is a very, *very* mild version of the first sets of dunes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpARjmEB7Uk&NR=1.

“If you look to your left you will see flamingos... yes. There they are.”

“FLAMINGOS!!! In their natural habitat?” I squealed.

“Well, their habitat changes of course,” he added... pointing out that there was a new sand dune blocking the pathway around the flamingos’ pond of rest. The desert is apparently always changing.  Haha! Talk about spontaneous!

After about another half hour we reached... (do do do doo!!) the end of Doha... the Inland Sea! I am not sure that I have seen an equal to it. All of the tire-tracked desert sand dunes suddenly roll into a narrow strait of clear, widely-currented salt water. In the near distance, on the opposing side of the strait, a magnificent view of Saudi’s (rocky?) mountain ridge extends for a good couple of miles. If seeing camels and flamingos in the wild was not enough, seeing Saudi was too surreal. We arrived at this location at around 4pm – a beautiful time of day in Qatari October/November (temperature wise), and had about an hour of daylight left to spare. We selected a piece of beach void of people, scouted out the dunes and valleys that would make for the best ‘diving board platforms’ and then waltzed right into the 30 degree Celsius water. The current was incredibly strong, and the Sea itself exceptionally deep (compared to dear Lake Huron; I was treading water 5 feet from shore!). I thought of my parents and how much they would love to be at that beach (the Saudi Mountains give the whole thing a ‘Lawrence of Arabia’-type feel, and the salt content in the sea is so high that it wasn’t difficult to imagine we were floating in the notorious Dead Sea). After about 45 minutes of this delight (and some sea snail catching with my new child-friend David!), we watched the sun set behind a sand dune on land. Then, as if on cue, I felt a sharp sting on my right arm and looked down to see a billowy, faint pink jellyfish loosen and swim off. Yes indeed! I was stung by a jellyfish in the Inland Sea. One by one, each person in our group excepting an Indian friend (I was definitely skin jealous... in fact, we used him as a human shield!) was stung by a jelly! In the very dark a few hours later we would discover that we had essentially been swimming in a current of jellyfish, brought about by seasonal climate changes. The guys actually caught one and gave it to me as a pet (we named it Paul in honour of the recently deceased German football amulet... Paul has since passed and I am quite sorry for removing him from his original home).

After swimming, the dear family who hosted our trip broke out the burgers, hot chillies and (beef) bacon! Oh it was delicious. We kicked around the soccer ball as the stars quietly covered the night sky. Then it was finally time for the boys to reveal a desert surprise they had kept from us all day - they call it magic and it is a truly beautiful phenomenon. It was so special. I am actually going to hold that memory close without revealing it to “y’all”. Then we found spots to lay down on the sand and waited patiently for shooting stars to make their treks across the universe. Out came the jambe, and we softly sang a few worship songs together. It was such a humbling experience of completeness and unity, I remember thinking: “I don’t want to live for something other than this; I don’t ever want to be more presumptuous or assuming than I feel in this moment.”

We packed up and began the trip home fairly late (which is really not that late according to Qatari time). We became stuck in the sand twice, which was super fun with all the digging, pushing and collaborating that entailed. At one point a group of cruisers filled with French-speakers suddenly appeared to generously pull us out of a spot. English, French, and Spanish phrases were floating around amidst the horsepower, and it was a bon journey for sure (Thanks to Laura Flick for keeping la langue Francaise on my radar for the past couple of years through her Facebook statuses)!

Not to be outdone, when we reached Doha at midnight, we woke up little David for a PLANNED final stop at a fresh juice joint. 1^st of all, I am friends with a family of middle-school age children who stop for snacks in the middle of the night simply because they are delicious. That is how cool I want to be at 35/40! 2^nd of all, juice bars in Qatar (a country where alcohol is strongly regulated) are FABULOUS! We sampled avocado-mango, carrot-cocktail, kiwi puree, fresh lemonade, some whopper of fruit parfait, frosted milkshakes... you name it, and they make it! I think Canada could do well to follow their model for the end that sweet, decorative, fresh, inexpensive, and nutritiously-strong cocktails are deeply imbibed upon. It goes beyond a Booster Juice experience. It is just so good! [I also learned that nana is the Arabic word for mint. Huh, eh?]

At 2am I crawled into bed back in our happy little compound with a heart just swimming with memories I hope to never forget. I will post a few photos of the trip as I get them. Oh, you will just fall in love with the Middle East when you see it all! It’s impossible not to!



I'm going to Nepal!

Since settling in Doha I have been blessed with a small group of very hospitable, adventurous friends from Texas A&M University. Although it has only been a 1.5 weeks since we first met, in light of my foreigner status and how often we have opportunity to get together, it feels like I have known them for longer than that. Tonight we booked tickets to travel to Nepal for Eid (a Muslim Holiday for which we are all given time off). Isn't that delightful? Nepal is full of traditions and places that I am completely unfamiliar with, not to mention Mount Everest! Vacationing in BC this past summer after my sister's wedding, plus other friends' recent hiking trips have inspired me to head to the mountains, or at least head to something tall! I trust that in the next few days as we arrange our travel plans that I will be channelling even more anticipation. It is such a treat, for the short term, to live relatively close to countries that are dramatically different from North America... and then to have opportunity to actually see them!

Everest

Kathmandu Valley

My Qatari Rite of Passage

One of my favourite parts of Qatar is its newness. Another aspect that I find charming is its straightforwardness. For example, there are about 6-7 universities in Qatar: Qatar University, Texas A&M (which teaches Engineering only), Cornell (Medical school) Virginia Commonwealth University (Fine Arts), the University of Calgary (for Nursing), Carnegie Mellon University (Business Admin. and Computer Science) and a few others. If I wanted to visit any of these campuses, where would I go? 'Education City' of course! Education City is a beautiful section of Doha: the art and architecture of this desert investment is bright and creative. Lines of palm-trees beckon students from one university building to another university's building along  pathways which are dramatically lit at night. (This reminds me, Qatar comes ALIVE at night time. At 11pm on a Thursday, the major downtown boardwalk - the corniche -  has playgrounds full of picnicking families!). I will do my best to take a few pictures of the campus and the corniche in due time.

Now, Leona is not a student of Education City... simply an admirer. What she is a student of is the fantastical rite of passage that is the Qatari health exam for incoming foreigners. A few days ago I had the privilege of diving head first into an entertaining round of this: here I will record a play by play of that evening. Larissa & Darren wished me luck as I whisked out the door to meet my driver/experience facilitator. I called from the stairs - "Do I need my Passport?" To all of our surprise, the DRIVER pipes up: "I've got it.". Great. Well, at least we are keeping track of our documentation. I theorized that it would be better to be on familiar terms with any potential human-trafficker looking my way, so I initiated with: "Nice to meet you. I'm Leona!" Silence.

"Don't worrry. He gave me the same response when I asked him earlier." a friendly voice popped from inside the taxi. This was the redemptive feature of my dinner-timed health exam: a fellow foreigner about to be healthfully examined! Thankfully, she had been through this process before. Actually, the more pertinant quality of my new friend is her female-ness. (I realized this as I tried to explain the hilarity of all this to my 3 new ex-pat guy friends. In retrospect their chest x-rays probably were much less of an orchestration then ours were.) So: unnamed driver, fellow female and I buzz along the mediocre Qatar-at-4pm traffic.


Everyone's story here in Doha is quite interesting (I call it self selection of the travel-happy), and my new girl friend’s story proved to be no exception to my rule. So the comic relief continued, combined with some life history swapping and small attempts to master our new ghetto cell phones (I being the only one really struggling... the tiled floors here make cell-phone dropping more technically-homicidal). When we arrived at the public hospital (which is decidedly night and day different on the Rtitzy scale from the private hospital in Doha -- check out my sister's post-natal buffet on facebook if you want propaganda for birthing babies internationally... Seriously! Fly me out to Qatar for the delivery of my children. But I digress.)... When we arrived at the public hospital our escort roughly educated us on the presence of separate gender hospital entrances; however, true to style, he didn't elaborate on which was which, or the fact that there exists additional waiting rooms that are unofficially co-ed/family oriented. That might have made my accidental galluping into a room of only men [at the time] (honest, I was following signs!) a little less like a playing a doomed round of "MouseTrap" (the board game). Round and round the building we went. Two girls? "Nope. You can get your finger pricked at the other back door.” (Note: I'm completely inferring the conversation based on the direction we walked... whether the real negotiations went on in Arabic or Security Guard Hindi is beyond me.)

Next came the waiting room with its unnecessarily insistent security guards (I truly feel that a pack of tired ex-pat women will manage their own line formation a little more succesfully than my co-Economy flyers in Dubai from a couple weeks ago) and a child that insisted on sucking at the metal junctures of the hospital wall and making honking noises.

Then came the x-ray. Those lucky enough to find the x-ray room in the face of tricky-inaccurate signage (although I'll hand it to you, facilitating the use of the same medical equipment for the genders to access separately takes some coordination) would encounter a tall, burlesque woman in a white lab coat. "From here up (she motioned with her hands) EVERYTHING COMES OFF! Put one of these gowns on." she barked. Pretty straightforward stuff. We started to form our line to the change room while the lab coat lady moved in and out of the waiting room roping up whoever was changed to hit the machine. You could hear that she was coming according to her category 5 volumed "FINISHED", and then the click of the door closing behind her. Happily aware of being in the right place for the procedure my new friend and I waited patiently among the women with shrugged shoulders and (for a few women) clutched abbayas. To go from having never seen an outright Qatari woman without her black covering in my life to being half-exposed in little gowns next to one was quite a surreal experience. To heighten the oddity of it all the beefy lab technician reutrned one more time to "help" us with our undressing. "YOU." she shouted as she called an unsuspecting ex-pat out of line for the changeroom "Take off your shirt, your bra, this, that..." My giggle reflex kicked in (which, if you know about my terribly sad Bollywood Dance Class fiasco would inform you of how quickly I explained the reaction to the poor girl afterward). After a few chats with women about where to find the most authentic Qatari embroidery, and the actual radiation, the x-ray was over. 

For the sake of time, I will not elaborate on the drama of reassuring a woman from the U.K. that the blood drawing system did indeed seem to be according to protocol, minus the fact that we had to elbow through a hallway of 50 young Sri Lankan men to have it done; the fun we had when our driver did eventually tell us his name; and the cookies and Pepsis which sweetened up the irony of the whole experience as we went along. I thought at one point that night that I should probably turn my cell phone off since we were in a hospital. Then I thought of the boy essentially teething on the waiting room appliances and felt that my caution would be a little excessive. 

This country that is my temporary home is so loveable. Also, I had forgotten how humbling it is to bumble around making cultural errors... with the mix of ethnicities present in Qatar, I am sure to (quite) accidentally offend more than one group!  At the very least, my Qatari health exam makes the considerately-sterile hospitals of Canada seem boring in comparison.

Arabic Word of the Day, and I want to be a Newfoundlander!

My EFL-teaching brother-in-law and sister have been helping me break through my uni-lingual-ness with an "Arabic Word of the Day" program. Here's the formal list of what we've succeeded with so far. (Thanks wikibook!)

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       as salaamu alaikum

        Syllable breakdown: as-sa-laa-mu a-lai-kum

        May Peace be with you Islamic Religious origins and a very common greeting.

wa alaikumu èl salaamu

Syllable breakdown: wa-a-lai-ku-mus-sa-laam

And may peace be with you. It is the response to the above phrase.

 

sħukrân

Syllable breakdown: sħuk-ran

Thank You

yalla

Syllable breakdown: yell-a

Hurry Up!/Let's go

 

kaifa hžaalu-ka

Syllable breakdown: kay-fa-haa-luk

How are you? (informal)

        1 - wahid (١), 2 - ithnan (٢), 3 - thalatha (٣), 4 - arba'a (٤), 5 - khamsa (٥) 

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We also succeeded in using the wrap this week - kangaroo style! I felt that I took one small step to becoming a nanny as baby-savvy as Emilie Taylor, which is a big dream of mine. This is Caleb & I post-afternoon nap. (You know life is pretty sweet when Leona gets a regular afternoon nap!)

Another interesting quality of life in Qatar is the difference in weekly schedules: Friday and Saturday make up the weekend, and Friday is the day when most religious gatherings occur. Isn't that nice! So today we shared a delicious turkey potluck lunch in the home of some of my sister & her husband's colleagues from the College of the North Atlantic. Many/most of those gathered are from Newfoundland (pronounced "NufunLAND"), and I fell deeply in love with Newfoundlander hospitality within the first few minutes of meeting them. The Newfoundlander accents were also pretty charming.
Great conversation. Great turkey (with gravy... mmm!). Great pumpkin pie.

As we sipped freshly ground Starbucks coffee and washed our hands with personally-imported Bath & Body Works hand soap, I marvelled as how much a Canadian world can be re-created in a country as dissimilar to it as Qatar. Several families I am meeting have more than "stinted" in Doha - actually raising their children as ex-pats. It is an interesting experience to learn about Canadian & American schools, and how the sweet children here have responded to relative culture change. I actually have yet to speak with a citizen of Qatar, although I have met Moms from Denmark, the U.K., TEXAS (self-differentiated highlighting is intentional on that one), France and across Canada. Quite neat.

Things we Love and are Anticipating this October

There are several features of the compound where we live that are "Green Zone (the movie)-esque"... and I am so grateful for them! A beautiful pool, gym, and corner store are just a hop, skip & jump from our front door. More than that, once 4 o'clock hits (and the sun loses a bit of its intensity), our little village becomes family-central! Mom's and babies, people my parents' ages, and school age children make up our happy world. Ooh, I should count the plentifully ferrel cats too (because they are pretty cute. They definitely increase my life satisfaction)! I tried to make friends with a ferrel cat from a distance the other day actaully... it is sort of my new Cricket, but wild and orange. However, I don't think we will get to stay friends unless I feed it, which is against my value system. Mind you it could be a great (and by great I mean 'desensitizing') trial run for my back up Cleveland security plan.

While the 100 degree F. weather had me concerned upon arrival, it is now more believable that winter could happen in someone's lifetime in Doha; it feels like "Autumn in the Desert". Can you believe it! Autumn in the desert is hard to describe, but I think it is going to be really nice. Cooler, comfortable breeze is about the only major difference I percieve so far. Thin films of dust will still settle on anything outdoors whatever the season, so that will remain our pleasant reminder of where we are! Maybe the humidity will stay below 75% though... That would be a non-summer change for Doha (J/K. I'm exaggerating... it's actually only 50% humidity in the evenings, and it is usually less humid than that during the day). The crowning event of the new climatal season (since I have decided that it has started) is Halloween at our Canadian Compound. I know! Isn't that fun? The only thing that can out-cute kids in little towel-animal house-coats at the pool is kids in little halloween animal costumes at our front door! Seriously. Our unit is going to be handing out 'spider' treats while the neighbours come knocking. It will be my first time handing out candy at Halloween, and I am very excited.

Another reason to love the cooler but still golden rays of Doha October is the fact that our beans are germinating at a visable rate! After only one day of being planted, we can see a couple breaking out of their seed coats!

As promised, here is the cutie! We started customizing our sign language plan of attack today, which has me revv'ed up in anticipation: mom, dad, auntie, more, drink, eat, fruit, cat, hat, hot, bed and diaper are our starter words. Will let you know how it goes. I found it super entertaining when non-vocal toddlers at the children's garden could sign, so like I tell Caleb, let's make some communication-development hay while the sun shines! This fellow is going to be my equivalent to morning coffee now that Larissa is officially off to work. I know! He starts that cute and stays that way all day. It's awesome!