Kayaking in the Gulf

The staff at our school was given the amazing opportunity to go kayaking with Entalek Ecoadventures a few weeks after we arrived here.  We drove about an hour north of Doha to the city of Al Khor.  From there, we were able to kayak out and around the mangrove forest.  It was really neat to see some of the natural beauty of Qatar and to learn more about the importance of the mangroves in Qatar.  

After paddling around the mangroves, we pulled our boats up on a sandy beach and decided to float around in the gulf for a while.  The water was beautifully warm, and it wasn't nearly as smelly as the Great Salt Lake, so it was much more fun to float there!  We watched the sun go down, listened to the call of prayer from a few surrounding mosques, and then made the drive back to Doha.  

My coworker took these pictures and shared them with us.  Our tour guide from Entalek took some great pictures as well, but I keep forgetting to contact him to get copies.  I'll update this post if I get them.  

Our First Visitor!

Near the end of September, we had our first visitor to Doha!  My cousin Adam was able to schedule his layover in Doha and we spent all day Saturday with him.  It was really fun to see a friendly face and be able to take some time to show off our new home.  Here are a couple of the fun activities you can look forward to when you come visit! :)  

1- The Corniche

After showing off our school, neighborhood, church, etc, we took Adam downtown to see some of the big buildings and to venture into the Persian Gulf.

 2- The Museum of Islamic Art

The outside of the building is designed to resemble a woman in the traditional niqab with the eye slits being at the top.  It's downtown and sitting on the water.  And it looks stunning when it's lit up at night!

There are tons of really neat exhibits inside the museum itself as well.  We stayed several hours and had to skip through some of the exhibits due to time.

The inside architecture of the building is super impressive as well.  Can you spot Steve? 

And the view from the cafe on the main floor was pretty sweet.

3- The Souq Waqif

We stopped by the souq (traditional marketplace area) in the evening.  After a delightful dinner at a Lebanese restaurant, we explored a few of the shops.  The atmosphere was so fun!  Qatar is definitely a night culture, and it was good to be out and about.  

So... the next time you're looking for an awesome vacation place, look no further than Doha!  We're already looking forward to our next visitors, and we've found many more exciting places to show off to our next guests.  :)

And... the random picture to end the post- 

Little House on the Prairie with Arabic subtitles.  

Just today

Prepare yourself for a crazy amount of blog posts.  I can't promise you that they're coming... but they are in the works.  And they will be in no particular order.  Just to make things even more crazy. :)  But for today- I am just going to tell you about today.

Today is Friday.  That means that it is the Sabbath here in our part of the world.  On a typical Friday morning, we wake up about an hour later than usual and head to church.  Our congregation meets at 9:00 in a villa that is surrounded by embassies from all over the world and very near downtown.  We hold services from 9-12.  I then usually stay for choir practice, and Steve stays to help with the finances, and we head home around 1.  Then we relax and spend the afternoon and evening at home.  

Today was not a typical Friday.  And it was kind of neat!  Right before we went to bed last night, (which may have been at 8:30...) I decided to check my email.  There was an email there from the leaders of our congregation, telling us that services in our building were cancelled the following morning due to construction.  Now... we were not entirely surprised.  We were at the church on Tuesday night, and this is what it looked like.

Upstairs meeting area  (Sacrament meeting overflow)

Front of the chapel

Back of the chapel

The construction crew was hard at work, but there was still a lot to be done... and 2.5 days to do it.  So, we made alternate plans for church.  Members were given permission to administer the sacrament in their homes in small groups if they wanted.  We were invited over to a nearby neighbor's house to have our own mini sacrament meeting with their family and another couple from the ward.  It was a great experience.  We used flat bread that was more similar to what Christ would have used in his time, and it was kind of neat to have a service that was so entirely focused on the sacrament.  

Hopefully the interior work on our building will be complete by next week and we can see the primary program that the kiddos have been working so hard on!  By Christmas the construction crew is also hoping to have our new building finished.  They are adding on a building behind our existing villa.  The new building will become the new chapel- and we should all be able to fit in one room!  It will be awesome.  We currently overflow into 2 spaces within the building for our sacrament meeting service.

We had a wonderful morning celebrating the Sabbath with friends, and a wonderful evening celebrating birthdays with friends.  Although, it's kind of hard to feel like the holidays are coming up when you go to an outdoor luau themed barbecue in mid-November... :)

I will leave you with this picture that was taken at our last ultrasound-almost 3 weeks ago.  I was 21 weeks at the time.  I think our little guy has got a pretty cute little smile. :)

One Month In

One month.  We have been in Doha for a whole month!  The transition has had its ups and downs, but we are SO grateful to the staff at Awsaj and everything they've done to help us get settled here in our new home.  So- Here is a brief recap of our first month abroad. :) 

Week 1.  

We were picked up from our homes and taken to the school every morning.  It felt early because we were still recovering from jet-lag, but having somewhere to be turned out to be very beneficial.  In the first few days, we were taken to the mall to do basic shopping at a wal-mart type store and get cell phones, we got our laptops, we opened bank accounts, and the amazing Mohammed started the mammoth task of helping us get our drivers licenses.  We got our eye exam, and took the written portion of the driving test. We were SO blessed to have members of the administration here to help cart us around the city to all the places we needed to go, and to have the amazing HR staff who worked so hard to get us here, and then to instantly begin processing the paperwork for our RPs.  (Residency Permits)  We were also incredibly blessed to have breakfast and lunch provided.  And the lunch was amazing!  By the time we got home, all we wanted for dinner was cold cereal.  And that turned out well for us, because grocery shopping has been very challenging!

Week 2

The second week in Doha we began to start thinking about school stuff.  We got assigned our classrooms, started some technology training, and I started some trainings on the direct instruction programs that are used in this school.  

In the middle of all of our school trainings, we also had our medical test and our driving test.  The medical test consisted of all of the exact same tests we had to complete in the US prior to coming to Qatar.  Go figure.  We had to be screened for TB, HIV, and Hepatitis.  Like almost everything the government does here, the men and women were separated.  We took 2 buses over to the medical clinic.  The men were done and back on the bus in 45 minutes.  The women waited for 45 minutes before they even began calling numbers, and then we ran into some more difficulties.  The women finished about 3 hours later.  It's a good thing the buses had air conditioning!  The driving test was an adventure in and of itself!  Again, men and women were separated.  I went with the women early one morning.  We were picked up at 4:30am so that we could be at the driving school by 5am.  We were ushered into the waiting room where we proceeded to wait until 8am.  Then they started calling women out to the cars to take the driving test.  I was in one of the first cars called.  There was another teacher from my school in the car, as well as the middle school principal's wife.  We left the school and drove a few blocks away to an area with a short straight road, a roundabout at each end, and one roundabout in the middle.  Let me stop here and talk about roundabouts.  They are crazy.  The first day we were here I was sure I was going to die.  3 lanes, cars coming in and out, lots of honking, craziness.  Now that I understand the rules, it makes more sense.  But the first few days of watching cars just hop in and out right in front of other cars was crazy stressful.  Anyway- back to the test.  The road wasn't very busy, but there were lots of construction trucks around.  Our test was just to drive up and down the street 1-2 times and flip around at the roundabouts on the end.  About 1 minute of driving... if that.  I was the last driver.  After I completed the roundabout course, the policewoman began to direct me back to the school.  Okay.  I'm including this weird little diagram to help you truly envision what this crazy policewoman asked me to do next.  

We're driving along that nice straight road on the top going in the direction of the arrow.  We need to go right to get back to the school.  So, she tells me to go right.  However, where the red star is- where you should go- the road was closed.  So I kept driving about 20 feet, When I hit the blue star, traffic from the road I wanted to be on started merging into my lane.  The policeman had me stop, and told me to do a u turn right there.  Into oncoming traffic.  With taxis and buses flying around the corner.  I hesitated... Do you know how illegal and unsafe that is!!  She became very frustrated with me, demanding that I make the turn.  I waited for an extra large bus to pass, and we darted into oncoming traffic.  It was one of the more terrifying moments of my life!  But guess what- we made it unscathed!  I then noticed the speed limit sign (50km) and began driving along the road back to the school.  The officer kept telling me "speed! speed!"  I went a little faster, and then asked her what the speed limit on the road was.  She replied, "I don't know.  Speed!!"  So I ended up cruising down to the driving school at over 100km per hour.  Yeah.  I passed my driving test and left the school at 11:00 with my temporary license in hand!  :)  

Week 3

The rest of the staff showed up and we started working more intensely on getting ready for school to start.

Week 4

First week of school.  More on that later.

I have so many other fun adventures to post in here, as well as stories about our awesome new ward, but they will have to wait until the next blog post.  I'll leave you with a very random picture of Steve walking across the bridge that leads from our housing compound to the clubhouse and grocery store across the street.  I cannot even convey how hot it felt when this picture was taken.  The humidity has gotten better since we first got here, but the first few weeks were miserable!  I'll be back with more soon.  :)

The Big Move

Okay!  We've been in Doha for nearly 2 weeks now.  And I'm finally ready to get this blog rolling.

  First, an important announcement.  We have decided to make our blog private.  But we want all of you to still be able to read it!  So please give me your email address asap.  You can post it in the comments, send it to me on facebook, or email it to me at lindzchica@gmail.com.  However you want, just please get it to me!  

Back to the move.  We left Utah on August 15th.  We packed all of our belongings that would be traveling with us into 4 checked bags and 2 carry-ons.  

I feel like I should add a quick disclaimer here- I am by no means an awesome photographer.  But I will be posting lots of pictures of our adventures.  I apologize in advance. :)

The flight was awesome.  We had an extra leg room seat on our flight from Salt Lake to Chicago.  Our second flight was on Qatar Airways.  They rock.  We were fed 2 wonderful meals, (wonderful by airline food standards...) they came around at one point with cute little individual haagen-daz chocolate ice cream, they had a wonderful selection of movies, and just the best all around service I've ever experienced.  The 13 hour flight didn't feel nearly that long.  

After nearly 24 hours of total travel time, we landed in Doha on Saturday at 6pm.  We waited for our passport and visa to be checked, picked up our luggage, and met up with several other families who will also be working at Awsaj.  (I will share more details in later blogs, but the Awsaj staff has been SO helpful in our transition to life in Doha.)  Here we are waiting in the immigration line...exhausted...

The administrative staff was waiting for us, and they helped us get our luggage loaded onto buses, and we took off for our new home.  We are living in a community called Education City.  I will share more pictures of our house next time, but here's a shot of the front.

Yeah.  It's a duplex villa.  We love it.  

Next time:  Week 1 highlights!  

Remember- PLEASE send me your email address so that you can still see the blog when it goes private. That will be happening sometime in the next few days, probably before the next post.  We love you all!!

Here we come!

With our big move approaching, I am more determined to keep this blog updated.  We are moving to Qatar in August!

While we are in Qatar, we plan to do LOTS of traveling all over the world.  This will hopefully be good enough motivation to keep my blog updated, so I can always remember our experience across the world. :)  Currently, we are working on all the paperwork/legal stuff to get ourselves over there.  We are excited for this new chapter in our lives!