Culture Contest

This week I was invited by Minika (my Nigerian-born lady from the UK) to go to the Diplomatic Club. This is a workout facility across the street from the Ritz Carlton. In other words, this is a superbly swanky exercise club complete with juices and dates in the hotel-looking lobby. I played squash for the first time (a British form of racquetball). A Sri Lankan trainer worked me over while trying to teach me the rules. It was great. Then we went to a hot tub and boiled our muscles for a nice relaxing soak. Afterwards, we sat in the steam room which was set at 50 C or 122 F! I could only sit in there for a couple of minutes. Then we jumped into the cold tub to finish it off. I am not too accustomed to spas, so this was quite a treat for me.

Contrast this with some new stores I have been exploring, not all so clean and fancy. I have gotten recommendations from several people at church where to do my grocery shopping. In the last few weeks I have been venturing off by myself to new stores. Our main shopping had thus far been done at Carrefour, a Super Target-sized store at the closest shopping mall. This is a French store with many of its generic brand items in all French, not a lick of English on its packaging. Of course it will have Dutch, Spanish, Italian, and Greek, but never English. Another store I've gone to is Family Food Centre (which Karl votes for best store name). This has a lot of British import items and fairly reasonably priced food. A couple of things you cannot get here is vanilla extract (alcohol is strictly regulated, only purchased at a few hotels and only one liquor store in all of Doha) and of course pork. The meat we get is mainly from New Zealand and Australia. The fish we have gotten is a locally-caught soft fish called hamour, which is quite good. The chicken is from Saudi and pretty good. The other store to go to is Lulu's, which Karl votes for best in experience. This store is very nice and has a lot of Indian food. Half the produce is unrecognizable. In the picture of Christoph, he is holding lychees, which he called woolly fruit. There is a whole department store section dedicated to custom-tailoring saris. One night Karl stopped at Lulu's on his way home from work. It was 10:30 PM and he walked in the front doors. It was packed body to body with everyone crowded around a stage. There was a eating contest going on. There were fully veiled women in their abayas stuffing potato chips and juice boxes down their throats. Amazing. Needless to say, these stores are more culture experiences than we expected. I think I'm going to keep going to new stores just to see what their like. The best thing though is having a market right next door to our compound. So, if we need bread or milk, we can just zip over to get it. This shopping center, though, comes to life at night. I have been driving over in the parking lot with two cars coming at me on both the right and left. The law of the jungle applies to driving around here. If I take too long turning, I am no longer surprised when someone drives into oncoming turners to get around me. If I am not pulled up to the bumper of the car in front of me, then some other car butts in front of me.

Contrast this with going to the W Hotel. We went out with two other couples to a restaurant at the W Hotel. (I told Charlotte where we were going and she said, "Is there a door?" I think she imagined it was a gigantic letter.) It was fantastic with a world class chef and gourmet food. Note in the picture of Karl it has blurry spots. At night, the dust in the air reflects with the flash like snow. So, we are having some very fancy experiences sprinkled among some very day-to-day but interesting cultural experiences.

NC summertime

With my August birthday I share in the misfortune of having felt that life was unfair by missing the first camp and youth conference behind peers with birthdays before June. I am truly sorry that I am half responsible for my two girls experiencing this same misfortune. So Maddie got to take four days of her year-round school off and finally attend her very first girls' camp. She packed, repacked, fretted over her equipment just as I did last year before our 50 mile hike. They went to a camp resort near Ashboro (where the Zoo is) that has cabins that were even air conditioned. I don't know if I would really call this camping. She got to go kayaking, archery, a zip line, BB markmanship, self defence, and first aid. The worst part was the rain the first two days, but the best was kayaking!

I took half a day off work Friday, worked the first half from home. I took Aaron to eat at one of his favorite pizza places. When we walked in he was really confused when he saw 5 of his friends sitting at the first table and said something like "hey Aaron, why don't you come and hang out with us". I had arranged for some of the guys from church (our ward and two others) who he relates to better than some of the Teachers' Quorum. After eating 3 pizzas and 4 pitchers of root beer, we headed out to the van and he asked "did you guys really just happen to be here?" :-) I had given the boys a few options and they decided to play "disc golf" (smaller than frisbees, but the same idea). We went to Target and filled a cooler with Gatorade and ice, and bought some regulation discs (boy, they are expensive @ $10 each) There was a nice course that weaves around the greenway and woods surrounding a quad-baseball diamond park. I had never played before (well, I didn't really play, just walked with them and kept score) but the boys seemed to have a good time, despite the heat (95 deg, one of the hottest days so far).

A friend whose company is a sponsor of the Durham Bulls gave us six tickets for the evening. Aaron was tired from his afternoon and wasn't excited about it, so we let him stay home and we took the two youngest kids. We were treated to a grand slam the first inning that the Bulls were at bat, but then blew it and lost 6-8. :-(

Saturday Dawna went to pick up a load of girls from camp. Maddie was so happy to be back and had a great time. I ran errands to prepare for the 50 mile hike. I went to REI's sidewalk sale where they sell all their returned gear (some is really worn, some just barely). I was number 176 in the line but didn't find any really steals like the folks in the earlier groups before it was picked over.

We celebrated Aaron's birthday Saturday evening so he could get a little bit of time skating on his new skateboard (before Sunday and then leaving on the 50 miler at 04:00 on Monday!)

Dawna studied the photos of River and thinks that he looks like my baby pictures.

Red Red Hair

In the natural sunlight we've realized that River's hair is in indeed very red.

We're nine, she's five

We celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary. We went out to a Moroccan restaurant in the old city which is called Souk Wakif. We ordered salad, soup, and main courses. My salad was called Moroccan salad sampler. It came with brain and heart. I asked to have mine brainless. :) The harira soup was delicious and Karl's lamb with prunes was wonderful. I had couscous supreme. There is a drink we have discovered here that is amazing-- a mint lemonade smoothie. The food here is outstanding! It was especially neat just walking through the old city shops. There are distinct districts of what is sold. We walked through the shoe district, the bedding district, and the perfume district was unmistakable with its scents.

We also celebrated Charlotte's fifth birthday. We had a pool party at our clubhouse with pizza and Snow White cake. Charlotte was in heaven with princess decorations and her friends from church and the compound. Unfortunately, I got sick the night before. There's nothing like managing a child's birthday party when you are incapacitated the night before. (Note for future reference: don't ever throw up in a bidet.) Her big present was a new bike. On her birthday, we went to dinner at the big mall close by. Inside the mall, there is a canal with gondolas that you can take rides on. Attached are pictures of Karl and the kids taking the boat ride. Note that the ceiling of the mall is painted to look like the sky. There are some things here that are very old world, and things like the mall that are so over the top fancy. The kids probably thought they were in heaven. Also there is a picture at Charlotte's preschool when we sang in her class. That afternoon, she was getting Isaak to belly laugh. It was adorable.

More Pictures

River Stuart Sessions

Hi all. This is my attempt to catch up on a few weeks of my life. School just got out Friday so I went from working 4 jobs to 3 ( these others are rather small tutoring jobs and the farm). One of the highlights of the week was a great next door neighbor who is a retired engineer taking pity on my woeful maintenance skills and redesigned much of my sprinkling system to where I am now completely running all outside water off of my well. This will turn into major savings over the long run. Yes I know that isn't terribly interesting to most reading this, but I am thrilled. Sticking it to the man as the say in School of Rock is all it is cracked up to be.

I have been on a reading kick lately where I am reading books with the theme of survival. I have just finished Adrift which is about a guy on a life raft in the Atlantic who has an amazing journey. I am now finishing As Far As My Feet Will Cary Me which is about a German soldier who is sent to a lead mine in Siberia who escapes and walks over 8,000 miles to freedom. Great story. My next book is Into Thin Air which I hope is as good as the reviews. I went to see Star Trek last week and really enjoyed myself. I remember walking a few miles with Clark up to those theaters on Layefeyette Blvd. when we were kids to see the second movie.

Our farm thing is moving forward. We have about 400 plants in the ground and plan on planting more corn soon. After 1/2 an hour of weeding our plot I suddenly realized what lunacy this farming thing is about to become. Weeding it turns out isn't much fun. Even with a hoe it is hardly better. Someone should have warned me about this months ago because suddenly I have a new respect for all farmers. Maybe Willy Nelson isn't such a bad guy after all to care so much about farmers- and his weed habit of a different nature. We will let you know when things get exciting again. For now eat those veggies. And appreciate them.

Laird and family