Just one reason why I love my CDAs...

...and why I will miss them so much when I leave.

They make me laugh!

Here are just two examples (but perhaps you have to know them to really understand how unintentionally funny they are):

#1
Me: "Setareh, is that a photo of a water treatment plant as your desktop background?"
Setareh: laughing "No, it is a pretty snowy picture of Iran."

#2
Sundus: "Maha listened to such crazy music all last year."
Maha: "BECAUSE I WAS ANGRY!"

Is someone playing the bagpipes?

I kept hearing bagpipes around Education City today. It was so confusing. Why? And in all places...

And then it dawned on me. The grand opening of Carnegie Mellon's new building is going down and thus it makes perfect sense when you realize that CMU's nickname is the Tartans. Of course!

But it still is a bit bizarre to hear Scottish music in the Gulf.

Article on Qatar in The Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/robert_crampton/article5754983.ece

You know you live in Qatar when...

...you are sitting in traffic as jerkfaces in Land Cruisers cut in from all directions listening to the radio hoping for a good song to make the experience a bit more tolerable when Warren G's "Regulator" randomly comes on and thus you get all excited, but then your joy is dashed when the call to prayer interrupts the song and as a result you are back to being on the verge of going bananas...

February

February should be eradicated. Gone. It is the shortest month yet it causes us, or at least me and many people I know, so much trouble. The students are buggin' out. I am absolutely exhausted. No one I know likes Valentine's Day. And in hindsight February has always been a very busy with work month. It was also the month when I had my infamous busting the head open accident (11 February 2004). It just causes lots of trouble and grief. So we should break it up, give each month a couple more days, and then call it a day. Just a thought.

Now, I would give anything for a glass of wine.

Actually, make it a bottle.

Dust/sandstorm!

My first dust/sandstorm! And I guess it is one of the gnarliest ones in years. It sort of came out of nowhere. I was in a meeting with two students in my office and looked out the window to see this wall of dust/sand (is it dust or is it sand?) starting to swallow us up. This was at around 12:00 p.m. or so...and, while not as bad at this very instance, you still cannot see much of anything at nearly 9:30 p.m. (no moon, no cranes, etc.) and going outside is a stupid idea because the sand/dust gets in your eyes, nose and mouth and it coats you and all your stuff. And it somehow finds its way into buildings, including the smell, even when you try to minimize the opening and closing of doors. Here is a picture of it around 1:30 p.m:


And here is its theme song: http://www.ilike.com/artist/Darude/track/Sandstorm

Frontline

I still do not have television. I have a TV, but no cable or anything like that. I am supposed to have it, but I do not. It is quite frustrating to be told that it is being worked on blah blah blah, but there has been no progress and at this point, since I am peacing out in July, I am not going to fight for it anymore. So I just watch DVDs or look for shows online. One of my favorite shows, Frontline, puts full episodes on the website of PBS, the network that broadcasts it. Frontline is an amazing (but some would say elitist but I think that is a bunch of bull) documentary program that I got turned on to in college. Here is an episode from January called The Old Man and The Storm.

But I also watch The Hills on MTV.com too...

Holy crack! Rain!

God read my mind. It rained today. And by rained I mean it sprinkled a little. But it was glorious! It felt good on the skin and smelled good too! I love rain.

See video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRTRQxOnzWo
FYI I apologize for my camera looking at the ground most of the time, but taking a picture or making a video is a bit of a no-no in Education City (but really the whole country). So I had to be all stealthy.

U.S. Embassy

I have lived here since the beginning of July and have never been to the U.S. Embassy. I did not even know where it was. They keep it hidden. That might be smart for security purposes (but someone who really wants to cause trouble will find a way to cause trouble). It just makes life very difficult for Americans seeking assistance.

So using a colleague's shabby directions (it is hard to give directions around here when there are no road signs and such), I was off to the U.S. Embassy to add more pages to my passport. But I ended up driving into a massive construction site for a damn freeway. It was awful. But I did not give up and eventually found it. I happened to notice on one compound's outside wall a rather small sign stating the Embassy of the United States of America. Victory! Note: There is no American waving flag to help guide you, just a little but still glorious one inside the complex.

But I was not done. I had to go through four security checkpoints. They took my mobile, my camera and my keys (why?) and they went through and looked at everything else in my bag. It is a rather unwelcoming process. Additionally, there was no U.S. military personnel. G4S, a security firm that also works for QF, did everything. I am not sure how I feel about this. I always thought it was U.S. military peeps like the Marines watching our embassies overseas. In fact, I remember seeing them at the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo. You would especially think they would be protecting an embassy in the Middle East! Moving on...

But once inside, you saw pictures of a smiling Obama! It was a comforting image regardless if you like the guy or not. I even cracked some jokes with the security guards. And I swiped (it was free so no need to worry) a cool little book in Arabic about the new administration. Talk about a unique souvenir regardless if you are down with Barack or not. Here are some pics of it:

Front cover. Note: It goes from right to left cause that is how they roll in Arabic.

Information on the first family.

The section on Joe Biden.

And I got extra pages added to my passport and thus I am good to go for more adventures around the globe! But first I had to figure out how to get back home...