"Caryl's Kennel" continues

Don't worry, Marjorie and Justin. Tribble the cat is in good (and increasingly qualified) hands while you're in Gabon.

In other news, I finally planned a vacation! Which means if I had a pet, I would need someone else to take care of it. Well, I suppose I will need to find someone who can feed Mr. Fish. Any of the people I've been pet-sitting for want to step up?? :-)

In case you're wondering, my vacation is to London for a weekend, and then Paris for the week. Yay!

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.

Everyone is leaving :-(

I'm discovering one of the more unfortunate parts of ex-pat reality. Make new friends, then they leave. And being that I associate mostly with people from universities, they all leave at the same time. Tim left a week ago, Ramzi on Thursday, Erik and Silvia on Friday, Ryan yesterday, and I took Andrew to the airport this morning. Mollie and Gregg leave at the end of the month. Lauren will be here until June and Drew until July but they're still leaving.

The flip side is that there are new people coming in all the time. And its a small ex-pat world in Doha. Side story: The other day I met a girl named Jinynn, who has only been here a few weeks, and we were just chatting about her work and other stuff. Turns out she knows Jen, the first friend to leave this semester (way back in March) because she is now doing the job that Jen had at Qatar University. I went to put her name and number in my phone, and she says, "oh I'll spell my name 'cause it has a weird 'y' in it." I was like, "no way, my name has a weird 'y' in it too, its c-a-r-y-l." And she goes, "wait! you're c-a-r-y-l! you're in my phone already!" So it turns out that she has Jen's phone, and Jen left some numbers in there and instructed Jinynn to call Mollie, who would introduce her to the rest of the people in the phone. So she's already gotten together with Mollie, Drew, and some other people, and she and I decided that we're destined to become friends. Yay!

I like it when my happy side stories become longer than my sad main entry.

Thobe and Abaya Day

Yesterday a bunch of us decided to wear traditional Qatari clothes to work and around Doha. It was interesting, especially since I went to the grocery store, a small Arabic shop that doesn't get much traffic from Westerners, and a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Most people knew that I wasn't Arab, but a few thought that my pale skin and light hair (what little of my hair could be seen) meant that I was Syrian or Iranian or something.

Anyway, thought you might like to see the results.

Group shot: Dave, 'Funke, Nikki, Lily, me, Marjorie, and Ryan














Jinanne lent me an abaya (the actual robe), a shayla (the head scarf), and the sunglasses to anchor the shayla 'cause I was having trouble keeping it on my head. Jinnane is wearing hejab instead of shayla - hejab would be the head covering that shows absolutely no hair, and that is what religious women wear in Islam. The shayla is more cultural to the gulf area.














Dave models the Qatari dress for men - the thobe (the white robe), the ghutra (the white head covering), and the aghal (the black ropes on the head), along with the traditional accessories - worry beads, sunglasses, and cell phone.



















Nikki, Marjorie, Dave, me, and Lily














Ryan gets a little too close for thobes and abayas.



















Ryan models the casual look of the young Qatari men - thobe and baseball cap.



















I managed to get a bit of work done on abaya day. The fact that yesterday was payday also led to more than one joke about "put on Qatari dress for just one day, and all of a sudden you have a couple thousand dollars more than you used to - how appropriate!"

Pittsburgh trip!

I know, I know, I seriously suck at this "updating blog in a timely manner" thing. Work has been busy since I got back and although I have work to do right now, I've chosen, um, not to do it. Blog post instead. Also, in my defense, I've been writing this post for about 3 weeks now, for about 5 minutes at a time.

In a way the blog post is kind of like work, since its about the trip I took to Pittsburgh with the students! Yes, lots of work, but in a fun way. And I got to see some of my favorite-est people in the world. Chronologically is the easiest way to do this post, I'm thinking.

We left Doha, flew through Amsterdam and Detroit and finally to Pittsburgh. Note: 1.5 hour layovers are not enough time to get eight Middle Eastern students through EU security and U.S. immigration. Thankfully we did actually make it to Pittsburgh, with two bags still in Amsterdam, and two bags still in Detroit. Upon registering all lost baggage, we finally left the airport, made a stop at Target for the half of our students that were missing all of their luggage, and went to the hotel (approximately 28 hours after leaving Doha). Forty five minutes later, most of us were back on the bus headed for one of my favorite events of the CMU year - Greek Sing! Too bad the students were too exhausted to enjoy it. I did though!

After returning the students to the hotel, I got a chance to see Paloma and Justin, Allie and Ben, Josh, Lacey, Little, Jack, Eugene, and BHirsch - all at good ol' PHI. Mmmmm, my first Yuengling in 8 months was soooo good.

On Sunday we took the students (all Muslim) to the Southern Baptist church in East Liberty. I had so much fun - singing and dancing makes church way better - and the students LOVED it. I thought they would like it, but I had no idea it would be such a hit. It helped that the preacher was an awesome speaker with a universal message, and that they got a standing ovation when our presence was announced. After church we had Sunday brunch at the Grand Concourse where I ate lots of bacon and pork roast (yay!) and so did some of the students (oops! - but its ok, its not haram if you didn't know it was pork).

After that I left the students for their tour of the city and met up with my dad, brother, and stepmom. We went to the Science Center, since none of us had ever been, and then got dinner at Monterey Bay, where (as expected) restaurant turnover has claimed all but two of the people that I worked with. Unfortunately I felt really ill and exhausted, but my family had to get back on the road home anyway, so they just took me back to the hotel.

One of the students' photos from their trip up the incline :-)











On Monday, the students took a tour of campus and participated in a leadership workshop while Jumana and I did work for our jobs in Qatar. I took a break to stop by Tridelt and get some truck food for lunch. Then we all went shopping in Shadyside, where I bought a bunch of stuff in about a half hour, then sat at the coffee shop with the boys, waiting for the other girls to finish exploring.

On Tuesday, we started the first of three days of community service in Carnegie, PA, which was devastated by the flooding in Allegheny County in 2004. My memory of this flood is being at a Pitt-Nebraska game, in the stands behind the endzone, and seeing an entire marina float by the stadium and get stuck near the fountain at the Point (all of which was underwater). Somehow it escaped the CMU community that entire towns in the suburbs were completely destroyed - Carnegie was one of those towns. We first took a tour of the area that had been flooded, which included most of the businesses on Main Street, and met the group of Seventh Day Adventist volunteers that we worked with for the week.

Main Street in Carnegie, which was underwater during the flooding in 2004











At that point I left to go back to campus to give a presentation to people who are interested in doing my job in Qatar in the future. It was fun showing pictures and answering questions. While I was gone, the students put together a business plan for an internet cafe that the non-profit group will use to generate revenue for their community projects.

Wednesday was hard labor day! We cleaned out a basement of flood silt, then painted the room with waterproof paint to protect it in case of future flooding. At lunch, we also were able to meet the Turkish man who owns the business, which was enough to give the students the energy to keep working.

Mehrunissa uses her newfound skills with a hammer to attack some stubborn nails in the basement

















Oh that's right, the chaperone did her part!











Even though I was exhausted that night, I managed to make it out to half price at La Fiesta with Paloma and Justin, Little, and GA.

On Thursday we also did hard labor, at the Carnegie Carnegie. That would be the Andrew Carnegie Free Library and Music Hall in Carnegie, PA. The library is actually the reason that the town got its name. We cleaned out the storage room in the music hall, and repaired the 100 year old seats. We also reorganized the children's section of the library. For me, it was like my entire childhood was in this 10 square foot area - they had the Berenstein Bears, Babysitters Club, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Boxcar Children - everything I used to read when I was little. And just being in a Carnegie Library is enough to make me nostalgic, of course.


Maha and Nasreen figure out what nuts and bolts are, then repair the loose and missing ones in the Carnegie Carnegie Music Hall.














After the work, we had a reception at the library with people from Carnegie, including the people who had organized all of the community service. The rabbi from the synagogue in Carnegie was there also, and even gave one of our students a yamika, which the student now keeps in his dorm room on campus. Later that night we also went to a performance called campus superstar, which gave a scholarship to the winner and raised money for Hillel. Although it was the end of the trip and the students were exhausted (I've used that word a lot in this post), I think they really enjoyed it. They clapped a lot when the CMU person won :-)

group shot (with Renee and Jim) from the last day











The trip home was uneventful. Some of the students wanted to leave the airport and go into the city of Amsterdam, but thankfully we only had a three hour layover so they couldn't. The last thing I needed was to bring a group of students back to Doha after letting them loose in Amsterdam for a couple of hours. One more piece of lost luggage to deal with, and then thankfully Ramzi was at the airport to pick up his brothers, so I didn't have to spend time, money, and effort getting a cab back home. I finally made it back to my apartment around 11:30pm on Saturday night. And I was at work around 9:30 the next morning. Ick.

Being in Pittsburgh did make me nostalgic, it was great to see my family and friends, and the trip to the CVS and hairdresser were key. I think that my favorite part was watching the students see these things for the first time, because I really wanted them to like my hometown. But I really did realize when I got back to Doha that I was happy to be home then. No hotel, no knowing that I had to be back on a plane in a week. Just back to my job and my compound and the routine of my life here. With the regular nonstop flights to D.C. and New York starting soon, it will be a lot easier to visit the U.S., and that makes me happy, but for now I think I'll stick to travel that doesn't require flying over an ocean.

The Coolest Picture I've Ever Taken

As part of the "Tim Jumps Over Caryl" photo series (which so far has had locations around Qatar and Dubai), I decided that I wanted a picture from the perspective of Caryl. This was the first and only attempt at the photo. And it is awesome.

Dubai

So I just got back from a weekend in Dubai. Very interesting city. A little overhyped, I think, but the group that I went with - CMUQ faculty and staff - was pretty cool. (I know I still owe a vacation post about Hong Kong, but its taking me much longer!)

We covered most of the Dubai basics in the three days we were there - the first day we took a boat ride on the river that cuts the city in half, and then we wandered around the souq (market) area for awhile before eventually going to Jumeirah, a famous beach and shopping area. We hung out on the beach until sunset and then went back to the hotel and crashed.
from the boat cruise, the Dubai business district and the old-style fishing dhows - a pretty common sight all over the Gulf, actually.












the gold souqs :-) the middle necklace can be yours for the low low price of $12,000USD











On Friday, we went back to the public beach at Jumeirah, where we relaxed in the sun and I didn't get sunburned! That afternoon we went to Wild Wadi ("wadi" is Arabic for "seasonal riverbed"), a waterpark that has a decent number of slides and a wave pool. We had a good time running around the park, and floating on the lazy river. It's also in the shadow of the Burj al-Arab hotel, probably the most luxury hotel in the world, which definitely provides a nice background to the lazy river.
The Jumeirah mosque













Andrew and Ryan have a "how much sand can you hold in your hands" contest












On Saturday before our plane left, we went to the Mall of the Emirates - most ridiculous shopping experience I've ever seen. Super expensive stores, moderately priced shops, world famous brand names and locally famous Arabic designers. Multiple food courts, a toy store with gigantic stuffed mammoths and camels, a huge arcade area, and to top it all off - an indoor ski slope. Yeah. Crazy. Tim and I even rode an indoor rollercoaster simulator in the arcade at the mall!
The interior of the mall of the Emirates.




















The stuffed mammoths















Ski Dubai, the indoor ski slope in the Middle East













Obviously I had to go to Dubai, because I'm so close. Now that I've seen it, I could definitely go back on a weekend when I want to just get out of Doha and relax. Go to the beach, maybe back to Wild Wadi... if I ever make a huge amount of money, then the Mall of the Emirates. Doha could definitely learn something in the way of highway construction and quality English language bookstores. But in the end it was pretty much more of the same. The common complaints about Doha were only compounded in Dubai - traffic is awful, the "money can buy happiness" mentality, and the lack of real cultural opportunities such as quality theatre. I'd rather live in Doha and visit Dubai. But for a relaxing mini-vacation, really it has everything you could ask for. I did hear a rumor that you could get real bacon there, too, but didn't manage to get my hands on any...

Some stereotypes do turn out to be true

Last Wednesday I had possibly the strangest day I've had in a long time. It was one odd occurance after another, and my internal schedule for the day was just completely thrown off. By far the strangest occurance within the strangest day was Andrew's arrest by the Qatari police. The story goes something like this:

Background: The Asian Games are coming to Doha, and a few days before the opening ceremony, the Asian Games torch ran all over the city, including through Education City. They closed two of the three security gates to E.C. for the entire afternoon, and the third was to be closed for approximately 15 minutes. People came from all over Qatar to watch the torch in Education City, probably because Her Highness Sheikha Mozah held a ceremony on campus to celebrate. Andrew had to teach an SAT prep class at 4, but we ran out quickly to get lunch, because it was 2:30 and neither of us had eaten yet, due to the aforementioned craziness of the day.

The Misunderstanding: As Andrew and I were pulling up to the Education City campus through the only open security gate, we noticed that they were only allowing people with Education City parking stickers in, they'd blocked the gate to the public. Most people were being forced to make the U-turn in front of the gate and go park somewhere else. The first security officer pointed us forward, the second told us to stop and then pointed to the U-Turn. The third security officer said "No, no... sticker" and pointed us ahead. Since we had already made the U-turn and both of the gates for the exit were open, Andrew and I thought that he was telling us to go through the exit into our parking garage.

The Arrest: As Andrew and I are pulling into the parking garage, we hear sirens entering behind us, and Andrew says he thinks he should get out of their way and pulls off to the side. The police SUV pulls up in front of him and two motorcycles block him in from behind. At this point Andrew says "is this for me?" Four police offers jump out of their cars and start yelling at us in Arabic, and when we don't react because we don't speak Arabic, they open the front door and pull Andrew out, slam him up against the car, and frisk him. They're still shouting in Arabic, Andrew keeps saying "What the fuck?" and I'm staying inside the car but shouting "No Arabic" and "La Arabe" (which means "no Arabic" in Arabic). So eventually they remember the word license, Andrew gives him his driver's license and they determine that there are no weapons on car or person. My first thought is that I need an Arabic speaker, but as soon as I picked up my phone they tell me (or I should say motion to me) to put it down. They manage to get Andrew to understand that they want him to follow them back to the gate guard stand. This all took place at an extremely high volume, but once in the car I finally got a chance to call Dave and told him to call one of our Arabic speaking staff and have him meet us at the gate.

As soon as we reached the gate, they pulled Andrew out of the car again, handcuffed him, and put him for awhile in the back of the cops' SUV, but then moved him inside the guard stand while we waited for Ahmed, our helpful CMU staffer. While waiting, I found the only English speaking policeman and had the following conversation:
Me: Excuse me, can you tell me what is going on with my friend?
Police: No ma'am, nothing wrong, just waiting for torch.
at this exact moment, a Qatari junior high student runs through the gate with the Asian Games torch.
Me: No, no... the police took my friend inside, can you tell me what's happening.
Police: Oh, what nationality your friend?
Me: He's American.
Police: Oh no, no have American
Me: He looks Chinese, but he's American
Police: Oh yes China man, he right there (points through open window at Andrew)
Me: Yes I can see him too, can tell me what they will do with him.
Police: Right there. (points again)
Me: Ok, never mind, shu'kran (thank you).

At this point Ahmed arrived. He's a very religious man, which is easy to see in this culture because of his beard and the way he wears his traditional dress, and as soon as the cops saw him it was like Andrew and I were completely different people. Ahmed asked me what happened, he translated it to them, they did the same with Andrew, they all came to the conclusion that it was a misunderstanding, but they couldn't let him go without telling their supervisor (who was with the Sheikha and obviously we weren't a priority at that point.) They allowed him a phone call to get his backup to teach the SAT prep class, and an hour later, they let him out. He has bruises and cuts on his wrist, but otherwise he's ok. I wish I had pictures, but I think the police would have put me in jail too if I had tried to take pictures of this rediculous scene.

The next day: Andrew had to go to the police station to pick up his license (with Ahmed, our CMU security guy, and Education City's head security officer). At this point we discovered it wasn't the police at all that we were dealing with, it was the Qatari version of the Secret Service.

And that was just the craziest part of the craziest day is a really crazy week. I slept most of the weekend.