Is There An End To The Dust?

Last week was very windy.  So windy that it kicked up a lot of dust and you could see it in the air as you drove.

Our house unfortunately is poorly sealed from the weather and is situated so that the wind blows fully onto the back side of the house.  There is a noticeable draft in the house on windy days.  And with that draft comes the endless dust.

The kid's bathroom is on that end of the house.  The exhaust vent is in the wall, in line with the wind.  And this is what happens on a windy day if I don't have the vent on:



You may not be able to see it well.  But it's covered in dust, and not only the side, but the tub itself was covered as well as everything else in the bathroom. You should know that I had cleaned the bathroom only the day before. 

Rock Candy

Pretty much since we moved here I have been watching kids before and after school.  Their parents all work at the same school as Steve.  Before coming, the HR person at the school sent around an email to the new employees who had spouses who wouldn't be working to see it anyone would be interested in watching some kids after school.  I said I would do it.

So it started out with three girls after school.  Then shortly after, two more came.  So for a while I had 5 girls coming Sunday through Thursday. Now this semester two more come on Tuesdays and Thursdays and two others come just on Tuesdays.  So that makes a total of 9 kids (not including my own) that come to my house on Tuesdays.  Tuesdays are early release day for the two schools that these kids go to, so the first ones get to my house around 12:40.  They're all here by 1:20 or so.

With a houseful of kids, I've started doing some activities or experiments on Tuesdays.  We've soaked a raw egg in vinegar; put whole milk in a baking sheet, added a few drops of different colors of food coloring and then added dish soap and watched it swirl around (they loved that one);  made paper helicopters an dropped them from the upstairs landing, adding paper clips to see what happens; we've made goop.

Last Tuesday we made rock candy.  I had each kid come into the kitchen one at a time and make one with me.  (It took a few weeks of collecting glass jars and having friends and neighbors save them for me to have enough to do it.  I needed two for each kid. We had to do a jar change a few times so that the crystals would grow on the pipe cleaner rather than the jar. I needed 20; but I made it work with only 19.) With brining in each kid one at a time, it took 2 hours for me to make 10 batches.  But they were excited and couldn't wait to see the crystals.

And then for the next week, I had 10 jars of sugar syrup covered with paper towel sitting on my counter.



On Thursday we did our second and last jar change.  Some of the crystals grew quickly and though the pipe cleaner didn't touch the bottom of the jar, the crystals grew up to meet it and I had trouble getting it loose.  One girl's jar crystalized so fast that by Thursday I couldn't get hers out (she's one that only comes on Tuesday).  Another one was about the same, but when I was trying to get it out, with the girl standing next to me on the stool, it suddenly broke free and sloshed blue sugar syrup all over the girl's front, into her shoes, all over the counter and the stool and the floor.  It was quite a mess.  Poor girl, she's the shiest one of the bunch and still won't talk to me. I'm sure covering her in a sticky, syrupy mess didn't help.

Today we took the rock candy out and let them dry.  The kids could hardly wait to let them dry before eating them. So we went outside to play.  I didn't really want drops of sugar throughout the house.  The ones that did work well look cool.  I don't know why some crystalized on the jar more than the pipe cleaner and some worked well.
Here is Big E's before it dried.


Here are some of the ones that turned out well.

The kids enjoyed it and for the last 30 minutes or so, the house was much quieter while the kids munched on their rock candy. And I call that a success. 

Week of Memories Day 6

Thursday we took a little road trip to the northern end of Qatar to Zubarah.  Zubarah was an old port community.  Now it's just ruins that are being excavated.  There's also a fort that was built in 1938.  I was thinking that the fort was a bit older than 1938, since that seems like an older thing to do.  But that is where this country still was then.  They hadn't developed like the US or Europe.  So eight years after the Empire State building was built, Qatar was still building defensive forts. This one was for the coast guard. In the US in 1938, movies like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released.  World Ward II was about to start.  That's just to give you an idea of how fast this country has developed. 

Here's the fort as we were driving up to it.




Here's the inside. You can go up some stairs and walk on the roof of the rooms to get to the towers.


The ceiling was made with bambo and palm fronds with some wood that was imported from Africa.


We looked in three of the four towers, though honestly, once you've seen one, you've seen them all.  I'm surprised (well, not really) that there were no guard rails installed along the stairs or the walk way on the second level.


Even though we were a little ways from the ocean (though we could see if from the towers) the ground was littered with tiny shells.


There were of course guards outside in the parking lot not doing anything.  I'm assuming that these were their cars.




After looking around the fort, we wanted to see the ruins. From what Steve read we should have been able to keep driving on the road and we'd be able to see the ruins, but all we saw was a sign that said we weren't allowed beyond that point, and we weren't allowed to take pictures.  Random request for the middle of no where with no one in sight.  So we turn around and go back to the fort to ask the guards how to get there.  I don't think they spoke English well, if at all.  They pointed us in another direction, which we followed, but it did not lead us to the old city.  We did see this though.

The sign says "Warning  Archaeological Site, No access or exploration is allowed on this Site, Only after obtaining Formal Approval from Qatar Museum Authority Anyone who violates these Instruction will be subject to the Penalties Contained in The Law No. (2) of 1980, As Amended by Law no. (23) For the year 2010." All of the grammar errors are actually on the sign.




We went down one road because it was in the right direction, but it was a dead end.  So we turned around and drove home.

At home we cleaned up the house a bit to get ready for a birthday get together for me.  Steve invited some people from church to come to our house for a pot luck dinner for my birthday.  I had a fabulous time.  I made a german chocolate cake (but with walnut instead of pecan because pecans, if you can find them, are around $60 a pound.  Not paying that).  One of the kids someone who came is allergic to eggs, milk, and nuts, which german chocolate cake frosting has. So I made a cake and frosting without any of those and it turned out pretty well.

So Steve's gift of a week of memories and time together was wonderful. We had a great week and I enjoyed even the mishaps, because those made good memories too.

Week of Memories Day 5

We had been talking about doing something fun and unique with some money we were given for Christmas.  And we were looking at an "Inland Sea" adventure where they take you dune bashing and then there's dinner and activities.  But we weren't sure about going alone.  That didn't seem like much fun.  But then a neighbor, whose parents were visiting, invited us to go with them on this same adventure.  So we went.

The driver came promptly at 2 pm.  He was Palestinian and had been dune bashing for about 10 years.  He drove us south for about an hour with three other car loads of families from Steve's work and a few other people following us.  Both Big E and Miss A were with us and neither fell asleep until just before we pulled off the road, which is unusual. Miss A is usually out quickly when she's tired an in the car.


In order to go dune bashing you have to let some air out of the tires, otherwise you're more likely to get stuck.  So we stopped to deflate the tires some and stretch.  And then we were off.  I was a bit nervous as I wasn't quite sure what to expect or how rough it would be.  It turned out to be quite smooth for almost the entire trip.  Big E woke up shortly after we began.  He was so funny to watch. His eyes were wide in wonder and he said, "This is fun!" I, on the other hand, was just about scared out of my mind for the first 10 minutes.

We drove along the ridge of some high dunes, then we'd drive straight down, but we'd go at an angle an almost slide down the dune.  There were times when I was sure the car was going to roll and all I could think was, "Oh crap, oh crap" especially when we'd drive up so that all you could see out the front window was sky and then we'd go over the top and drive down.  I don't like "crap", to me it's rude, but that was honestly what was going through my mind.  After a while I got used to how the car would handle things and it wasn't so bad.

Our driver was the lead driver and all the other drivers were to follow him. But at one point one of the other drivers didn't quite follow and got stuck. So we tried to get up to were he was to pull him down, but we couldn't get up there, so another driver went up and got there and pulled the other car down.
It was fun, and I'd do it again, but with a driver.  I'm not about to do it with Steve driving, and I certainly will never drive on a dune myself. That was worth the cost.

Here's the car that got stuck and the other car rescuing them.


That's one of the dunes we drove down, but not the biggest.


We stopped twice during the dune bashing for pictures and such.

This was the second time we stopped.  See those mountains in the distance behind me?  That's Saudi Arabia.  And this is the closest I'll ever be to that country.


After an hour of dune bashing and driving about as far south as we could so that we saw Saudi Arabia and Steve even received welcoming texts from their phone service letting him know the rates, we drove back up to where the company has a camp set up on the beach.  There were tents for us to lounge in with traditional seats/cushions. They had a camel you could ride, of course you had to pay QR25 more to ride the camel, but that was worth it to me. There was a snow board that you could ride down a dune, beach volley ball, and tables for us to eat dinner.

 

 Big E, when he first saw the camels, asked if he could ride one.  But then he heard one grunt and lost interest.  I had to hold on with both hands when the camel stood up and sat back down, so Miss A didn't go with me. But she was glad to have me back.

 

Dinner was good.  There was of course hummus and other dips that were so good. They made the bread (kinda like pita, but more like naan) right there in a open oven.  The guy slapped the dough ball between his hands.  When is was the right size, he put it on a cushion type things and stuck it to the wall of the oven.  When it was done, he pulled it out using two metal poles.  We ate dinner at tables that were low to the ground and sat on cushions.

Here you can see the tents.  The one on the right was the food tent, the others were the tents for us to sit in.  The dinner tables are in the center.


Big E loved being with his friends. The other kids were the kids that I watch every day, so Big E plays with the all the time.  One in particular is a good friend and they enjoyed making sand angels and running around.



Miss A handled everything quite well.  I'm actually quite surprised how well she did.  She got a little fussy at the end of the dune bashing, but that was it.  And I think that was more related to how long she'd been in her car seat than anything.  During dinner and afterwards she had no problem wandering away from Steve and me (which is almost unheard of, she never leaves us outside of our house and park). She loved crawling in the soft sand, and even got to where she could walk on it.



Here's Steve's account of the day.

So if we ever get visitors, we'll go on this again. 

Breaking News....

We interrupt the regularly scheduled blog posts to report that Miss A can now say "up" when she wants up, though she doesn't do it all the time.  She also says "uck" when she or something is stuck, which is often.  Somehow she frequently gets stuck between a wall and an end table with one leg under the table an the other somewhere else and she doesn't know how to get out.

She'll also say "uh uh" for no and shake her head.  And she can nod her head.  Though she does get a bit confused as to when she should say no and yes. :)

And now back to our regularly scheduled posts...I promise I'll write about the most exiting part of our week of memories soon. 

Week of Memories Day 4

Tuesday Steve planned for us to go to Katara, which is advertised as a "Cultural Village". There is also a nice beach with a lot of water activities.  The original plan was to go parasailing and spend the day at the beach hav lunch there and gelato, which I've always wanted to try.

But I chickened out of parasailing because I thought it was took cool to get into the water and Steve wasn't going to go with me as he was coming down with a cold and didn't want to push it and not be able to the next days activity.  So instead we walked around Katara, which wasn't too exciting.  There was a nice amphitheater and a few museums, but the ones that were open were modern art, and I don't really like that.

But there was a beautiful Mosque there.


We decided to rent a paddle boat instead of parasailing.   I told Steve when it was warmer and he wasn't sick with a cold, we'd do it.  Big E thought it was pretty cool to get into a paddle boat.  It was more work than I anticipated, and by the time we got back to shore, my legs were on fire.





Since it was too early for any of the restaurants to be open in Katara, we went to City Center Mall, which was close by and ate at the food court.  Fast food as a different array of options here.  You can find Pizza Hut and McDonalds and Burger King and KFC in food courts and around town, but you also have places that give you indan food and Filipino food, with rice and curries and such.  So we went to an Indian place.  I did not get sick like the last time we ate at a food court.

City Center Mall also has a small gelato stand.  So we went there to get some.  It was sooo good, expensive for what the size we got, but worth a try.  It's much creamier and smoother and richer than ice cream (especially a lot of the ice cream here which is awful and made with reconstituted skim milk, which I can taste, and is more like eating cool whip frozen).

 Miss A even got a taste. She thought it was the best thing she's ever had.  As did Big E, as you can see in the photo above.

We went home for naps, well really, the kids fell asleep in the car.  So naps were short at home.  But that's okay.  That's when Big E and Steve sanded the growth chart. (not when I showed the pictures.  But it worked better then.  That way you could see what I was talking about.) We were looking forward to next day were, hopefully, we'd get to go on an inland sea adventure.