The past month

Happy Father's Day, Dad! Look, I got you a blog post!

Well the most important event of the past few weeks is that Gloria informed me that my job responsibilities will be changing for the next year! I'm pretty excited about this, not because I wasn't interested in what I was doing in Student Activities, but because I think my talents are more applicable to my two new offices... The Office of International Education, which organizes study abroad for our students and helps our international students here in Doha; and the office of Professional Development, which does internships, and this year will actually be helping our first graduating class to get jobs :-)

Relatedly, we are getting six new people in the Carnegie Mellon Qatar Student Affairs Office. Three new Student Development Coordinators (like me!), a new Administrative Assistant, and new Directors of International Education and Health and Wellness. This means that on a team of 11 people, 6 of them will be new. I like my old team. But I also like new people. So we'll see how it goes.

Ramzi visited! He went back to his family's place in Saudi after graduation and before his move to NYC, so he came over to Doha for a couple of days. He was working with the business club most of the time, but I got to see him in the evenings. It was great to have him back, even if it did mostly involve driving him back and forth to his hotel and to the Qatar Airways office. Then it was sad again when he left. He showed me pictures of his place in New York, though, and it looks awesome, and he said I'm welcome any time. With a direct flight from Doha to Newark starting, I might take him up on that offer.

We also had an intern in student affairs for the past three weeks! Megan is from the Pittsburgh campus, and was living in my compound. She's really cool, but unfortunately her time here was too too short. Luckily for everyone, she's coming back to study here in the fall, as our first Pittsburgh-Doha exchange student, which will be awesome.













Ben, Drew, me, and Megan. (Mollie's behind the camera). Georgetown cooked, Carnegie Mellon baked. It worked out well :-)

We've been to three beaches around Qatar in the past couple of weeks. The first was all the way at the north and had some good snorkeling. The second two were both on the west coast, one just north of Dukhan and one a bit more south in Umm Bab (that's right, say it outloud. Then sing.) Its getting rediculously hot here, so I'm thinking that was the last beach trip until September or October. We also attempted to go to Bahrain, but it was expensive for just a weekend. Rumor still has it that they are working on the bridge from Qatar to Bahrain, but I'm sure I'll be gone way before that actually opens. For now its the airport, or just don't leave Qatar.

I'm pretty much running a kennel this week for my friends' animals. I have Nikki's dog Athena with me for the month. Kathryn's three cats are staying in her place but I'm feeding them for the week. And tonight Drew is dropping off a plant that I'm supposed to keep alive for a month until Ben gets home. (Drew and Ben share this plant, and while they are both out of the country - Drew for good and Ben for a month - I have the responsibility to keep it alive. While I realize that a plant is not a "pet" per se, I fear that this will be the most difficult for me to keep alive. For those of you who have seen "How to lose a guy in 10 days", if I kill Ben and Drew's love fern, I'm gonna feel really bad...)

I bought the Mika CD. Megan tells me that Mika is not as popular in the States and this is a shame. He's Lebanese-British, pure pop, and awesome. The album is "Life in Cartoon Motion" and for downloads, I recommend the songs Grace Kelly, Relax (Take It Easy), Love Today, Stuck in the Middle, and My Interpretation. "Grace Kelly" was Number 1 on the World Charts a couple of months ago. Check it out.

We had a trivial pursuit night last Friday. Boys vs. girls. The boys won, but it was tied at the end and they got their last question right first. The girls also had less people, so we did well (especially considering that we got more than one sports question right, and I hate to be stereotypical, but those sports questions are really obscure).

People continue to leave, either for vacation or to go back to the States forever. Next week is probably going to be the emptiest Doha has been in awhile. NIkki, Marjorie, Dave, Karen, Megan, Ben, Drew, and Kathryn are all gone, and Mollie will be too if she gets her visa to Iran. I have the dog to keep me company, but she's not quite as good as people. I have been reading a good book, "My Name is Red" by Orhan Pamuk. Its really good, but I took it to the pool and the sun melted the glue in the binding so now some of the pages are falling out. Anyway, if you have more book suggestions, send them my way!

See, Caryl... that post wasn't so hard... you should do it more often.