Month: April 2011

The water here is WARM!

After two years in Monterey where touching the water with your toes meant instant frostbite — to be able to run straight in without flinching, cringing, or risking bodily harm is heavenly. I’m totally wearing my swimsuit next time.

But today baby and I stayed close to shore and watched the boys play. Besides, I think I want to find some swim trunks first so I can be more covered up when I swim. (I already have a rashguard to keep from getting sunburned). I would feel strange swimming in a swimsuit when the women 10 feet down the beach are wading in the water with their abayas (the black overdress that many Muslim women wear) hiked up only revealing their shins.

There are no real waves — just little rolling ones like you’d get at the edge of a lake after a speed boat cruises by . . .

but they had fun jumping over them and pretending to body surf anyway. 

Our resident stray animal whisperer found another friend. A cute dog who wanted to jump and splash in the waves with the boys. I  know Caleb is going to start asking for a dog or a cat as soon as we get settled in our house. Especially since the friend he made yesterday adopted two stray dogs this past week. Wearenotgettingapetwearenotgettingapet . . .

Camille loved watching her brothers jump in the waves. The noise of the waves makes it hard to hear, but she was laughing and giggling at Caleb as he splashed around. 

I thought it was sweet that baby was being so snugly, and we headed home because she was falling asleep on my shoulder, but it turned out that she was coming down with a fever. Poor girl. Hoping tomorrow is a better day for her!

For these first two weeks we are staying in a hotel while we wait for our house to become available. Instead of a regular hotel room, we have a 2 bedroom suite with a living room/dining area and a separate kitchen with a washing machine. No dryer, but there is a huge drying rack and the clothes have been drying really quickly. It’s like we’re in an apartment instead of a hotel which is nice because the baby can nap, the kids can play and we can each have our own little space and not feel like we’re on top of each other all the time.

This is the view from one of our windows. There is a girl’s school right across the street. They start at 6:45am. Of course the only reason I know when they start is because I’ve been waking up at 4:30. Normally 6:45 and I are not close friends. The ocean is right behind the buildings in the background, but you can’t see it in this picture because it just blends into the sky.

 

We’ve been getting up early, going to breakfast around 7 and then spending the morning in the hotel while Josh does paperwork/check-in stuff at the embassy. The boys have been drawing, reading, listening to audiobooks, and doing some math while the baby naps. In the afternoons we’ve been exploring, and for dinner each night we’ve eaten with different embassy families and have made some new friends.

We’re having fun making ourselves at home in Oman, but we can’t wait until we can move into our house!

So you know I hate pictures without people in them, but today we drove around and explored the area by car, so this is all I could get. Unlike Egypt, you have to have a car to get around here. It’s basically a city connected by highways so that rules out a lot of walking tours.

I know nothing about any of these places/buildings, but they are different than anything we have in America and gives you a good feel for the style of architecture here, so there you go.

Near the souk (marketplace). I didn’t take any photos in the souk because since we’ll be here for a year, I’ll have lots of other opportunities to take pictures there. (Hello Egypt, have you met my friend irony?)

A cruise ship next to a special kind of boat that Josh told me the name of, but now I forget. Not really important except you can rent them. I’m sure we will and then I will take lots of pictures and tell you what they are really called.

The mountains/hills here are just like what we have in 29 Palms. Josh and I agree that Muscat feels a lot like old town Palm Springs. It’s more exotic than Egypt, but it feels more familiar. We were driving around and aside from the domed structures and the sultanesque flair to the buildings (most windows have an Aladdin-like shape), we could be in America. Except the roads here are better and most of the cars are nicer.

This Omani is stylin’ in the pinked out car with the Pink Panther hanging from the rear view mirror. We saw crazy things like this all the time in Egypt, but this is the first non-conformist I’ve seen in Muscat. Most people drive neutral colored BMWs or other luxury cars. There’s also a fair share of mid-range cars, but all cars are in good shape. There’s no “beater culture” here.

Finally, a people picture! It was 85 and humid, but breezy. Perfect weather. We ate lunch across the street from here at a place called Gulf Fast Food (or something like that). We had chicken tikka (spicy chicken), kabob, and schwarma (meat/tomato/cucumber/lettuce with a white sauce wrapped in flatbread). Lunch cost about $15 including 5 waters.

As I was sitting there it reminded me of when we ate lunch on the street in Egypt (yes, I know, everything reminds me of Egypt or is different than Egypt — I’ll get over it soon. I’m getting sick of it myself). Anyway, as I’m eating, I hear meowing. Seriously. I’ve seen exactly one cat in the three days we’ve been here so I think, “Aw, the kids are remembering the time in Egypt when we ate lunch and the cat scared me” until I see this scrawny creature come running out from under the table. Then Caleb got all excited and started freaking out and wanting me to take a picture of the cat and there we are . . . back in Egypt. And once again I’m the crazy lady taking pictures of stray cats. Here you go.

At least it’s not another boring picture of a building . . .

Our first day in Muscat went much better than our first day in Egypt. But since everyone (except me) woke up at 3 or 4 in the morning it made for a really L O N G day for our already overtired kids.

Our goal was to keep everyone awake until 8pm so around 4 we headed out to run a few errands. We went to Lu Lu’s hypermarket which is like Super Wal-Mart. The bottom floor is all groceries and the top floor has electronics, clothing, appliances, etc. I’ll have plenty more to say about Lu Lu’s another time, but for now, this is what our kids thought about this shopping trip.

Poor Caleb was so tired he was whimpering with every step. He’s holding a bag because he said he felt like he was going to throw up.

I know it seems mean, but if we stopped moving, they were going to fall asleep. Josh did end up carrying Caleb for a while and thankfully, we didn’t need to use the bag. 

On the way home I had to keep poking Bob and Carter to keep them from falling asleep. It was 5:30 and we had to keep them going long enough to go to dinner at 6 at the Thai restaurant in our hotel. We had a yummy dinner of spicy prawns in coconut milk, fried fish fillets in chili sauce, chicken in peanut sauce, and fish cakes. Food here is supposedly much more expensive than in Egypt and so far we’ve found that to be true.

After dinner the kids were begging to go to bed so we let them crawl in at 7 and they all were out within 5 minutes. They each slept a full 12 hours and are much happier today. Of course I woke up at 3 am and couldn’t go back to sleep so today I’m the one wanting to go to bed in the middle of the day.

I think this post is boring and not very informative at all, but I’m too tired to revamp it. Give me a few days to adjust to the new time zone and I’ll be back to my old self.

but we can still buy local strawberries! Yep, halfway around the world in a grocery store in Muscat, they have Driscoll strawberries, grown in Watsonville, CA.

 Of course you’d have to pay around $7.50 for only 8 oz of strawberries, but aren’t they beautiful?

The other brand of American strawberries (I have no idea where they are grown)  are more white than red and just as expensive. Good thing I ate loads of strawberries while we could still afford them — straight from the fields!

*** This post is mostly for my mom and dad who have friends that grow Driscoll strawberries. Kind of a 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon thing. 😉