Catching up

 So apparently my last post was in OCTOBER OF 2019, FFS! Thanks to Julie and Ross for keeping their blog up and inspiring me to get back to it.

I think I'll just hodgepodge together some of the highlights since then.

Parks and recreation

I spent a lot of the 2019-2020 school year trying to come to terms with the new place I am living. When we got a car, it became easier to do a little exploring.

All drives around the city and countryside will probably end up going past one of the new world cup stadia. Here's Al Khor, built to look like a desert tent.

We participated in a few 5/10K running series in the parks around Doha, which are actually pretty nice when the weather is good. This is Al Bidda, right on the water with a nice view of downtown.

This was the biggest race we joined, held down by Doha's corniche. It was in the middle of a rainy few days (if you can believe it) and parts of the course were flooded. Went home with wet shoes!

Aspire Park, near the biggest pre-world cup stadium, has nice water features and the iconic aspire tower, which you can see from all over Doha when the air is clear.

Oxygen park in education city is pretty nice, surrounded by interesting architecture. The site for our ultimate frisbee games with fellow teachers. Rani dealing with some strong defense here. 

During covid, we did a lot of walking around the neighborhood. Rani likes to dancercise on abandoned streets.

When she does that, I just walk away.

Road trippin'

After Covid became a thing, and we realized we'd be stuck here for most of the 2020-2021 school year, we made a conscious effort to do some exploring as well, especially during the winter break.

Check out this place! Restaurant in the Souk. Yes, that's a fountain in the middle of the dining room.

They had inspiring tea service.

Here's a fun sign you don't see everywhere...

This is the East-West/West-East monument by Richard Serra. In the middle of the desert with nothing around it, required some off-roading to get to.

This is one of the lesser-known stadia in Qatar. I wonder where the fans will sit?

Ancient (?) rock carvings in the north.

Rock formation on the northern coast.

Yet another strange sculpture in the desert. This is a marker for Zubara Fort.

One of my favorite finds is Al Karaana Lagoon, which is a water-treatment plant turned into a bird sanctuary.

It's just a beautiful manmade wetlands in the middle of the desert. Tons of birds

And then there's this sinkhole... Lame.

And this is kind of what passes for a beach here... I miss Florida!

We've done a couple of dhow boat cruises in the harbor with friends. Here's the view of Doha at sunset.

Home life

We live in a housing complex about 20 minutes from school WITH ALL OF THE OTHER TEACHERS OF THE SCHOOL. Not my favorite situation, but we're making it work. 

Food and friends

Our first night of entertaining. A progressive dinner with people from all over the whole compound. We ended up with the director and his wife in our group, which was a little awkward. Mom, DK: recognize the tablecloth and napkins?

Thanksgiving 2019: our first turkey, smothered in butter.

Came out pretty well. I must have cut my hair while it cooked!

This is how they did Tday on the compound before covid.

Thanksgiving 2020: Spatchcocked! I just like saying it. and it was fun to cut through the ribs of a turkey. And it was really good, and took less time to cook.

Thanksgiving crew 2020

Much of that crew started a sort of cooking club, where we get together and do dough-wrapped food from different cultures. Here's ravioli.

Puri

Chinese dumplings. We also did a taco night, but I can't find any pics.

Outside space

The roof of our apartment building has nice views of the city.

Evening happy hours.

And the occasional gorgeous sunset.

Rare rainbow from our balcony.

My first pepper flower, grown from seed.

And some of our purple flowers from this awesome spreading plant we bought at Ikea.

Nesting

We (mostly Rani) spent quite a lot of time making our apartment feel like a home. Especially after covid, when we spent so much time there.

Here's what our apartment looked like before we got started. Just missing the padded walls...

Our to-do list shortly after quarantine started.

If you're wondering about "Art-Map!", here's some of it.

My favorite decoration: Congo cloth hanging in the hallway. Makes me feel appropriately regal every time I walk through.

One iteration of our living room around xmas 2020, complete with Charlie Brown tree.

A more recent living room view, with our new plant babies and friends/travel buddies Matt and Sarah. Matt was cold...

Rona-ku

So shall dis tin sing!

It's a global panda, mic!

Mask up, hunker down.

Everyone has their 'rona stories, right? These are just some recollections.

Weird feeling with the lock down, and the first big hit was our loss of spring break travel. At work, we went totally virtual, so I was zooming with my classes. Life on the compound got weird(er). We debated for quite some time about what to do for summer, but ended up making the decision to get out while we could. We were scared about not being able to leave if we waited too long, so we figured out a nice place to stay in Florida and got out in April. 

Geared up for the flight. Arrived in FLA late, picked up car that Wendy had dropped off for us, and barely made it to our house (I was falling asleep in the car, IDK about Rani) in a rainstorm...

We stayed on Doha time to be able to work, so I woke up around midnight, and teaching until around 5 or 6 AM. Made for a very weird schedule, but we felt good about being in a nice place and near to Rani's family.

This might be me in a staff meeting... Don't tell anyone.

Decent summer in FLA that I'll address in a later section, passport hassles (mine was expiring, and the offices were understaffed, so had to enlist the help of a state congressman to get it back in time), flight delays (stayed an extra week with Rani's folks waiting for approval to travel back to Doha), and finally flew back. 

Is it ok to say I kind of miss empty airports?

On arrival, we had to quarantine IN THIS ROOM FOR A WEEK! It was a nice room, but we couldn't leave, the food was lame, watched the entire run of True Blood, tried to stay sane.

The school year was ok: my classes were great for the most part, and I didn't have to deal with most of the things that I don't like about teaching. For most of the year, we were working on a hybrid schedule, where I had half of my students in front of me, and half on zoom. It meant it was pretty difficult to do anything interesting, but we got by. 

Things in Doha opened up reasonably, so we were able to go shopping easily, go to restaurants with a reservation, etc. 

This is the Etheraz App, which we need to show when entering any public space in Qatar.

Vaccines began rolling out for teachers in February. This was the first or second day at the big convention center. I decided not to wait, but a friend said the line took about 4 hours.

Passing the time

Rani dabbled in sourdough. This is her starter, Charlie. Charlie is now dead. RIP Charlie.

We got a treadmill, and tricked out our second spare bedroom as a gym. Especially helpful when it's too hot to run outside.

Face mask, anyone?

I started doing yoga with Tim Senesi right when everything blew up (quarantine challenge), and he's been a staple of my routine ever since. Sometimes he wears funny hats, too.

After an especially hard week, and as we went into another spring break in Doha, a friend from China got me into Borderlands 2. This was perfect timing, as we went back to full virtual with shortened classes for the rest of the year. Had lots of time to kill, and I used it to kill things. Then I got Rani into it, and she's hooked, too. It was a unique situation that will probably never happen again, and video games helped me to appreciate it as a gift rather than focus on all the frustrations. Thanks Tommy!

And of course...

In a lot of ways, Pakistan was great training for living in a pandemic; most importantly,

Puzzlin!

Here's a sampling. It was interesting, and annoying, that puzzles were almost sold out in the US in the summer of 2020. See that bullshit Captain Hook puzzle? You think we'd buy that if Target had any others in stock? The circle was fun, but we had to get it through Amazon. We have now pretty much bought all the puzzles offered in Doha with more than 1000 pieces. 

Travel

We did get some traveling in during this time.

Egypt (Dec. 2019)

First stop: Hurghada for a week on a boat diving in the Red Sea. The crew made an insane spread for Christmas dinner.

Then on to Luxor and the Valley of the Kings, with questionable history lessons from our own personal Egyptologist. One memory for which I have no visual evidence was an afternoon spent in a handicraft store, where the owner played guitar and sang for us (Led Zepplin, I think) and served us tea.

We ended the journey in Cairo, where the archeology was totally lame compared to Luxor. We made our own fun.

Also learned about the ancient art of penis-washing from the hotel gift shop...

USA (April-August 2020)

We spent the first part of the summer in a rental house near Rani's parents in Bradenton. The house was featured on 90 Day Fiancé, apparently. It was nice: near the river, cool neighborhood for walking around and checking out nature and fun Florida houses. I'll mostly remember it for the first month, where we were living on the graveyard shift. 

Blackout curtains a la the homeowner. Hey, it worked!

Jon in his natural habitat.

Our housemate: Robbie the r-worded robot. Always getting stuck under things, and only liked to sweep one corner of the house. These guys aren't taking over any time soon.

Wendy's favorite tree in Bradenton.

We had a few weeks of daydreaming about building a small apartment in Wendy's garage. Then we got a quote from a contractor, and let that dream go.

Of course, plenty of beach time. The wildlife was amazing this year. Dolphins more often than not, herons fishing right in front of us, and a close encounter with a manatee! We stayed the second half of the summer in our beach house from two (three?) summers ago, and it was delightful.

Don't tell Rani :)

Our friends Kim and Jay from China came to stay nearby with some of their family for a week or so.

Paid a quick visit to Rani's brother, whose wife was expecting (Tyce was born soon after this visit).

We were, of course, sad to leave.

Georgia (May 2021)

FINALLY, after a December and Spring break spent in Doha, things started opening up in time for our Eid break in May, so we decided to make a quick jaunt to Tbilisi, Georgia with Matt and Sarah and their two kids, plus a few other teachers. It was wonderful to get out, and Tbilisi is very cool, like a chilled out version of Istanbul. 

Did a fun wine tour of the countryside. Georgia is pretty famous for wine (oldest tradition of winemaking in Europe, according to some).

Did all the tourist things: balloon ride, cable car, funicular, fanciest golf cart in the world, plus lots of beautiful street walking and cafe sitting. Visited a very soviet amusement park and rode the roller coaster, then played carnival games with very strict rules, and no prizes unless you were perfect.

USA and Spain (Summer 2021)

Jesus, this is too long already. I'll do another post for this summer.

Random nonsense

Not before my first coffee!

No shopping experience is complete without China grass. So many flavors to choose from!

I can't believe they haven't changed this name yet. At least it's 100% veggie.

My favorite aisle in the Doha supermarket, browsing the crips.

Kids of this generation don't know how to use paperclips! A fellow teacher gave some kids clips and there were at least 4 different incorrect ways to use them. I laughed for hours.

Moving sidewalk to nowhere in Egyptian airport.