Month: May 2012

My friend Angela has been teaching me to make beaded bracelets. The beads are sewn/woven in-between two pieces of leather cording so the bracelet looks like a ladder of beads that coils around your wrist. Angela has great style and it was her idea to string 4 different kinds of beads so it looks like 4 different bracelets stacked together. She saw this type of bracelet on a website and asked her mom to send her the supplies. She learned how to do it by watching a YouTube video. Beautiful, isn’t it? It’s even more amazing when you find out that the originals sell for $250-300 dollars. 

Next we ran over to the framer’s to pick up our Omani people shadowboxes. Almost all the wall space in his tiny shop is covered with framed pictures of the Sultan. 

Today he had a new piece that was framed and waiting to be picked up. It’s the Sultan embroidered with silver (yes, actual silver) on leather. It’s the same kind of handwork that they do on the khajars (the traditional Omani knives). 

Look at the silver work close up. It must have taken forever to do that many stitches. And what happens if you get a knot in your silver?

I had my “goats in the wadi” piece framed and this one that I call “Camille with camel.” The purple matting brings out all the purple in her dress and in the camel blanket. It’s going to hang in her room.

Finally I got home and we went to lunch (me, Josh and Camille). Gotta do it while we can since who knows what Josh’s schedule will be like once he goes back to working regular hours. And yes, it’s as hot as it looks. We’re only about 25 yards from our house and her face is already red.   

Be forewarned: As I get closer to the end of my time in Oman, I’m finding less and less to blog about because my thoughts are moving ahead of my body. I can’t very well blog about how I’m imagining Bahrain will be. But I spend plenty of time thinking about where we’re going to live, and wondering how we’re going to manage living in a hotel for a month and a 1/2 while we look for a place to live, and whether we should live in the city (close to work) or out on the island (peaceful, but a commute). So expect plenty of this cute face over the next few weeks:

As part of Project Sleepy Camille we took a trip to the mall this afternoon. We are having to get creative when looking for things for her to do because we’re in the ridiculously HOT part of the year (and will be for at least the next 5 months) and there isn’t much she can do outside other than get cooked. 

So we took her along when we went to the embassy to check mail (and she explored the ground floor while Josh went up to his office) and then we took her to the mall so she could run. And since she’s the baby of the family she got ice cream. 

Tonight before bed she sat with her big pile of books and “read” to herself for about 30 minutes. I wonder who she gets that from . . .

This game was a scrimmage among the TAISM 7th & 8th graders. They divided into 4 teams (blue/red/white/gray) and played 20 minute games Round Robin style. 

Calvin played awesome. A few swishes, one almost-3 pointer (feet on the line), some slick passing, and several assists. I would have taken some video, but my camera battery died (and I was too busy jumping and cheering to hold a camera steady). 

Watching him play well was almost as great as having him come off the court with a sheepish grin to say, “You were right.”  

One of the things that I love about Caleb is his persistence. It’s also one of his qualities that can drive me crazy, but this story is about how his hard-headedness makes me proud. 

Every quarter the elementary school offers many different after-school activities to choose from. The boys have participated in soccer, watercolor, basketball, hockey, swimming, puppets, gardening, etc. Caleb has been wanting to take Irish Dance for months, but the Irish Dance class is always on the same day as AWANA. Since he made a commitment to AWANA at the beginning of the year, he needed to finish what he started. 

The final quarter’s activity schedule was released last month and once again Caleb was desperate to do Irish Dance. (In case you hadn’t guessed, all his girl friends take Irish Dance . . . ) I looked at the calendar and saw that there were only 3 weeks left of AWANA so I gave him the green light. We decided he could go to Irish Dance for those 3 weeks and I would come to school and walk him across the street to the church after class. Win. Win. 

Camille and I came and watched a little bit of his class — my funny little boy perfectly at home surrounded by 30 girls. He doesn’t care that he’s the only boy in class. He’s more upset about the fact that I won’t buy him the special shoes and that he doesn’t have a costume/uniform like the girls do. (I was not paying 18 rial/$50 for shoes that he’ll wear for 7 classes!) The Irish Dance uniform for the boys is black pants/green t-shirt, but the girls have a special skirt/leotard. I did look all over for a plain green t-shirt, but when I couldn’t find one he had the idea of turning a shirt with a logo on it inside out. Even though he could wear his regular school clothes, he insists on changing into that green shirt before class. 

Half the class doing one of the dances. Caleb dances like an athlete — I can tell he is mentally scrolling through the combinations and attacking the different steps. It totally cracks me up.

Same dance, in pairs, so the teacher can evaluate their progress.

At the end of each class they play a dance version of red light/green light where they skip in a circle and then freeze whenever the music stops. The last one standing wins. He loves it. 

I’m proud that he is so sure of himself and so confident. It’s a gift to be able to do what you want without worrying what other people think.

We made it to the church in time for the AWANA awards ceremony. The cotton candy is because it was circus themed so there was plenty of popcorn, cotton candy and clowns. She liked everything but the clowns.