Now that we have our tickets to Oman (March 30th) I was thinking about my blog and wondering if I’ll even have anything to write about once we get to there. The great thing about Egypt was there was a wealth of material everywhere I looked. There are still blog posts kicking around in my head about the Egypt way of doing things that I never got around to writing. Like how in an emergency we were told not to call an ambulance. Since no one yields for one (you see them sitting in traffic along with everyone else) you’re much better off calling a cab and having them take you to a hospital. There might also have been something about how the ambulance crews weren’t known for having the greatest emergency skills either, but I might have made that part up. But a country that has an emergency system that you’re not supposed to utilize? That’s comedy gold — unless you’re the one actually having the emergency. Then you better hope you have an awesome cab driver.
But from everything I’ve read about Oman and from all the pictures I’ve seen, it looks so normal. I’m a little afraid it might be boring in comparison. Since it’s an absolute monarchy and the Omanis actually like their king (yea for them), there are laws that everyone follows, the streets are clean, and except for the fact that lots of dudes wear dresses (just kidding, they’re actually called dishdashas and they are awesome and we’ve already promised Carter that we’ll buy him one when we get there) everything looks so orderly in comparison to Cairo.
I got a taste of it when trying to create posts about our trip to SF. Without the trash eating cats and the thrill of a successful street crossing, my stories all felt mundane and ordinary. What once was, “I saw a lady almost get hit by a car as the donkey she was riding stepped out into the road in front of a car driving the wrong way down the street” turned into: “We found ourselves standing at a street corner, waiting for a green light and Carter asked, “why are we standing here? There aren’t any cars coming!” Yawn.
But I’m sure the Chartier boys arrival in Oman will shake things up. There’s got to be an elevator waiting to break down. Just for us.