Author: Robin Chartier

That is me, sticking out my tongue and blowing raspberries on hearing the news that our house will not be ready tomorrow. Since tomorrow is Virtual Friday (the weekend here is Thursday and Friday), it means we won’t get into our house until Saturday (Virtual Monday).

I have a hard enough time keeping track of what day it is in America, where I’ve lived my entire life with a M-F work week. Now that I have to keep track of a whole new weekend? Let’s just say every morning when I go to take my medicine I look at my days of the week pill box (yes, my grandma had one too — laugh away) and feel like playing “eenie, meanie, miney, moe” since I can’t even begin to guess which compartment to open. I end up just flipping them all open until I find one with a pill still in it and think, “huh. I guess it’s Tuesday today. Who knew?”

So back to our house/not our house yet. I don’t know why it really matters that we can’t move in for an extra 3 days, it’s not like we have anything to “move in.” Once we’re living there I’m sure I’ll just be posting about how everything is all echoey and the kids are playing soccer in the living room since we have tons of space and nothing to fill it. And while we’re at the hotel we get breakfast every morning and housekeeping comes to clean every day. In the big house we’ll be doing all our own cleaning for a few weeks until all the paperwork has been processed allowing our maid to work for us.

So I’ll just enjoy the hotel comforts like TV and wi-fi for a few more days without complaint. We’ll get moved in soon enough and then we’ll have to do all the work and have the expense of setting up those systems in our new house ourselves.

We hired a maid today. Well, we took the first steps toward hiring her. One of the unique things about Oman is all the rules regarding hiring household help. In this country, all the maids are from foreign countries: India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, etc. So every person you hire has to be sponsored by you, (insert lots of boring paperwork info here), and in our case, vetted by the American embassy.

As an employer you are also responsible for providing housing (part time employees are not allowed), food or a food allowance, medical care, a living wage and a plane ticket to their home country once every two years. Also, if they don’t work out and you have to fire them, they either have to be hired and sponsored by a new person within 30 days or you have to buy them a one-way ticket back to their home country.

All this is WAY more complicated than when we hired Madiha and sounded a little scary too, but the idea of someone cleaning the kitchen for me every day quickly conquered any fears I might have had regarding a stranger living in my house.

So our potential maid is from India (she has to pass a background check through the embassy before we can officially hire her). I can’t tell how old she is except that she is older than me because she has at least two grown kids back home in India and her daughter is giving birth to her first grandchild this fall. But she looks a lot younger than she must be. She has zero gray hair and I envy her skin cause she has almost no wrinkles. Anyway, she’s this tiny little thing, barely taller than Calvin, speaks really good English, was very happy, and seemed to love the kids from the first moment she met them.

On the plus side, she has a husband who works as a personal chef in Muscat, so she won’t be living with us. She will come to our house from 7am-3pm five days a week and any time we need her for anything else, she’ll be available. She cooks, cleans, and watches kids. If she could only exercise for me too . . .

*** a try in rugby = a touchdown in American football

The boys are playing rugby. Leave it to us to be in a country for only a week before finding a sport to enroll them in. Josh was asking around at the embassy what sports the kids play here in Oman and we found out that the soccer season ended a week ago, but 2 different people mentioned a rugby club that meets on Sunday nights.

So, we loaded the kids in the rental car and headed out to the rugby field last night.

There were 5 different age groups out there — kids as young as 4 all the way up through high school. The boys joined the groups for their ages and spent the next hour and a half running, passing, tackling and having a great time. There were probably 60 – 70 kids playing in all the groups combined. (that’s Carter running out to join his group.)

The club is run by a group of dads, most from Australia or New Zealand, of course. Carter and Caleb’s groups spent time doing drills and playing games that reinforced rugby skills. They scrimmaged at the end with flags, no tackling. 

Calvin’s group (he’s #8 in the white jersey and red shorts) did some drills and then scrimmaged. Calvin scored a try and almost had a second one, but was forced out of bounds. At his age they wear mouth guards and tackle like the grownups would. The coach warned us that they’ve already had two broken arms this season and Josh, like a seasoned rugby player, said, “of course.” :sigh: I can do bumps and bruises and banging around and even a little blood, but I don’t know that I’m up for broken bones . . .

 

Girly, Josh, and I hung out and watched practice together and enjoyed the warm evening. Aside from me getting bitten by an ant (stupid fire ants), it was a fun way to spend the evening.  Especially since Camille is happy to sit and play and isn’t trying to crawl all over the field like her brothers used to. It’s *really* nice to finally have a baby that will hang out with us and isn’t always in search of the next big adventure.

At the end of practice, all three boys said it was “awesome” and “better than football” so I’d say we have three new rugby fans/players on our hands.

Just as we were leaving, the call to prayer started. Except for the part where I almost jumped out of my skin when the call started with the loud, “Allah Akbar!” it was really beautiful and crystal clear. (the popping noises you hear are all from the breeze hitting my camera microphone).

We went to the mall today and I couldn’t resist buying our little girly her own headscarf.

Right now I’m trying to remember how cute she is since she’s back to not sleeping again. Those few weeks were so nice . . . hope we can get back there soon.

The mall we went to today has a Borders, GAP, Forever 21 and Pinkberry. We had never been to one before, but I’m going back there again soon. It was really good frozen yogurt and we all had fresh fruit toppings: raspberries, blackberries, kiwi, strawberries and pineapple.

It might look like we’re in America, but the people in the background give it away.

The dude behind Caleb is wearing a dishdasha, the traditional Omani dress. Josh would wear one if he could. They look really comfortable and cool in our 90 degree weather. 

Gotta go take care of the screaming, non-sleeping baby. I think that we’ve figured out that she gets sick, her throwing up keeps her from getting her medicine, she gets better, but now she’s having reflux pain until she can get the medicine built back up in her system. We think we have 3 more nights in the hotel. I’m hoping that getting settled in our permanent place will help her sleep better too. Night night!

Ah, it’s so nice to have friends and family who get me and aren’t all “judgy.” I almost didn’t post my last entry, but I’m glad I did. There were several great stories in the comments that made me laugh out loud and I realized how many of your kids are just like mine. I guess that’s why we’re friends. And if I hadn’t posted, I never would have found out that my kids played dirty scrabble with their Nana. Good times.

Anyway, you’re all always welcome to move in next door to me. Although if it’s a duplex, I wouldn’t recommend it. These boys can get pretty loud. Just ask poor Tina how many times the kids were kicking against her bedroom wall at night . . .

Today we met up with our military friends from Monterey who have been living here since June, but were traveling in Morocco this past week. The boys had fun reuniting with their old friends and Calvin went along to drop them off at school. He wanted to check it out since they’ll be going there in the fall. Yep, they’re going to real school next year.

The reason for homeschooling in Egypt was so that we would have the freedom to travel with Josh on all his trips and because we were going to be straddling a school year: spring semester of one year and fall semester of the other. One of the things we learned in Egypt was the best part about our year overseas is the actual day to day living in a foreign country — visiting local markets and coffee shops, being on sports teams with kids from other countries, and fitting in as a local. As local as we could get with our pale skin and light hair . . .

Since we have new 12 month orders, we will actually be here for almost the entire school year and since the number of middle eastern countries that we’ll be able to visit is shrinking rapidly (Egypt? no Syria? no Tunisia? no), we decided to enroll all of them at the American school here starting in September.

Two of the three were very resistant to the idea, but I keep telling them how much they’re going to love it and Calvin’s positive report today helped. Since I know you’re probably curious, Caleb has been totally begging to go since I first mentioned the possibility, but Calvin and Carter wanted to keep homeschooling. I’m just going to keep talking it up and I know by the time September rolls around, they’ll be ready to go.     

This photo has nothing to do with this post, but I got a new cell phone and was playing around with the camera. We are going to have lots of girl time next year when baby girl’s brothers are gone all day long . . . maybe we’ll go get fishy pedicures together.