Discover Oman 2009

Well, I just got back from an eventful week camping with 23 eighth graders along the northeast coast of Oman and I'm more in love with my job than ever.  Camping with middle schoolers can bring out the best or worst in the students--and Scott, my co-chaperone, and I totally lucked out with our mix of kids and the weather.  

Last year, the weather for Discover Oman was less than optimal, with temperatures in the mid-fifties, raging winds, and daily rainfall.  This is VERY unusual weather for Oman, needless to say, the kids had no idea how to pack for "cold weather" and rain.  In addition, our entire trip consisted of various water activities.  I don't care who you are or where you're from, 55 degrees with crazy wind and rain is NOT fun to swim and snorkel in.  

So this year when the weather report for the week told us that it would be in the 80s during the day and cool off to the 60s at night, we couldn't believe our luck.  We packed up 6 four wheel drive vehicles and headed off for the beach.  The following 4 days were filled with sun, sand, and lots of laughing.  It never ceases to amaze me at how great the kids are at entertaining themselves when you take away their cell phones, ipods, and video games.  At home these kids spend hours everyday in front of the TV either watching shows or playing games...it's so great to get them away from all of that and see how them interact with one another.  For a generation and community of kids in which everything is done for them (household chores, entertainment, often even homework) it was very cool to see that if they are given the opportunity, they are still capable of entertaining themselves.  Contrary to what so many of their parents believe, it ISN'T the end of the world if someone accidentally gets roughed up a bit in a game of Fliers Up in the water...they CAN take care of themselves.  They also are ENTIRELY capable of entertaining themselves without the latest technology.  We simply need to provide these opportunities for our children.

Anyway, we had a blast exploring the coast of Oman, hiking through wadis and playing on the beaches.  So many times over the course of the week I found myself sunbathing on a beautiful beach thinking, Oh my gosh...I can't believe this is called WORK!  I had the most amazing group of kids and a fabulous co-chaperone. 

I love my job...

School Closures Due to Severe Weather and Football

After a lovely, snowy holiday season in Rochester and Seattle, I headed back to Muscat on December 30th. The way the flights work out between Seattle and Musca ton British Airways, that meant I would be spending New Years Eve in London on a 22 hour layover. This sounds fabulous, except for the fact that I don't know anyone in London right now, and it's one of the most expensive cities in the world--not something I wanted to deal with on one of the most expensive nights of the year. So instead of heading into London, I crashed in Terminal 1 of Heathrow. It was good people watching, but the place was dead.

Shortly after arriving back in Muscat, it was clear that the whole city was buzzing with the event taking place--the Arabian Gulf Cup, or AGC. The football (sorry, I've been programmed by the folks over here to never say soccer) tournament lasted a couple of weeks and was taking place in the Sultan Qaboos Stadium, which happens to be next door to our school. It was CHAOS. In a country where people rarely get excited about anything, it was amazing to see the city so alive.

The first bout of excitement came when Oman beat Iraq 4-0. The people filled the streets and "partied" all night long. It was bumper to bumper traffice, but no one cared. Music was blasted, people were covered head to toe in red, white and green, and they were getting out of their cars in the middle of the road to dance around. It was impossible to not join in. And that was just for a win during pool play.

Once it got to the playoffs of the tournament, things started to really pick up around the school. My friend Zach and I would head off right after school to get seats in the "family section" of the stadium. It was actually pretty fun being a woman duirng the AGC because it was nearly impossible for the men to get into the games without having a "wife" so that they could sit in the family section. The stadium holds 39,000 people with seats. Of the whole stadium, there were two sections devoted to families--these are the only two areas where women were allowed to sit. Yep--as progressive as Oman is over here, it's still pretty crazy with some stuff. Event still, this was the easiest section to get into, so our male colleagues were desperate for "wives".

I mentioned that the stadium holds 39,000 people in seats. But keep in mind, this is the Arab world, which means there is virtually no order. No tickets, no counting people, no real lines--just lots and lots of people crammed into really small places. So it's hard to say how many people were actually at these games, but I can say that every seat and every step was taken. Talk about a fire hazzard.

The real fun came when Oman won the semi-finals. Zach and I had gotten to go and decided to celebrate the win by going out to an Indian restaurant where they actually serve (gasp!) alcohol. I never thought of myself as needing beer for a sporting event, but we both agreed that it was weird to not be able to drink a beer while cheering your brains out (especially when you didn't understand any of the cheers except for the funny sounding ole). As we chowed down on butter chicken and prawn marsala, we got a text message from the director of our school--classes had been canceled the next day due to severe weather.

Let me take a minute to explain "severe weather". Muscat is a city that is not built to handle any kind of precipitation. So when we DO get a couple hours of rain, the whole city floods and shuts down. I'm not talking a couple of hours of hard core rain like you get in the tropics...I'm talking about a couple hours of wimpy Seattle rain. Seeing as it was a Tuesday night and Wednesdays are like fridays for us...we celebrated with our friends who were out at dinner with us and ordered another bottle of wine--YAY for long weekends!

After a long, relaxing weekend we had a scheduled half-day on Saturday so that families would be able to try and get to the AGC finals, which Oman had made it to. We knew there was no chance of us getting in, so Zach, Jeff and I hunkered down at Jeff's place to watch the game with shawarma and beer while we listened out his window to the cheers coming from the stadium. After Oman WON (this was a huge surprise) we rushed over to the stadium to join in the mayhem going on in the streets. We sang, danced, and covered ourselves with our Omani paraphernalia. It was awesome. It truly was incredible to see such spirit from a group of people who don't generally show such enthusiasm.

Later that night we got a text message saying that Sultan Qaboos had called a national holiday to celebrate Oman's win...there would be no classes the next day. :-)

Well, I'm off for a week of camping with a group of 8th graders. I get to hike through wadis, jump off rocks into crystal clear water, snorkle around coral reefs, and watch sea turtles lay eggs with some of the most inquisitive, extraordinary middle schoolers. And I get to call it a job! Pretty sweet deal I've got here.

Eid Break all over Oman

For Eid break this year I decided not to leave Oman.  My friend, Josh, was visiting for the month--so we opted to travel all around the country, exploring wadis, the Empty quarter, and the green south.  Josh lives in Yemen, and I visited him last year for Easter...so it was fun to return the favor in hosting him at my place this year.  He also introduced me to some new friends here in Oman who were evacuated from Yemen after the second bombing in Sana'a last year.  

We spent our 5 days traveling throughout the country, sleeping wherever we could find a secluded place to park the car once it got dark.  Given the fact that the VAST majority of the population of Oman (which is only about 2.5 million) live in Muscat, finding secluded places to park your car in the interior of the country isn't hard.  In fact, we quickly found that it's much harder to find a place with people once you leave the city!

We spent our first night out in the true Arabian Desert--in the empty quarter.  The dunes we big and went on forever.  Josh was determined to be the driver, which make me the navigator.  Now, for anyone who has driven with me I can only guess at what your faces look like at the mention of me navigating.  Given my absolutely devastating sense of direction, we got lost numerous times.   Really bad idea.  I shouldn't be allowed to navigate in a well marked and easy to understand city, let alone the middle of the ARABIAN DESERT where every dune looks the same.  The other silly (and by silly I mean really stupid) part of this set up was that between Josh and I, only one of us had experience driving in sand.  That would be me.  Driving in sand is definitely a skill that takes time to learn, and most people don't consider themselves to truly have learned until they go through the right of passage of getting the car stuck.  Generally people try to go through this desert ritual somewhere close to civilization, as I did last fall right by school.  Not Josh.  Leave it someone who lives in Yemen by choice to decide to take his first shot at driving in sand in the middle of the empty quarter, just a couple dozen kilometers way from the unmarked Saudi border.  With all his bravado about looking up how to drive in sand and being a naturally good driver...it took him a total of 7 minutes to get us hopelessly stuck.  

We had just embarked on a 5 day long camping trip with now hope of a shower.  We were 8 hours into the trip and I stood outside the car in the blazing desert sun looking at the car wheels knowing that I was about to get more sandy and sweaty than I had ever been before.  Awesome.  We both flopped onto the ground on opposite sides of the car and began to dig.  An hour and a half later we finally managed to dig the car out of the sand.  Covered in sand mixd with sweat, I took the wheel.  We spent the night sleeping on a sand dune under the most stars I've ever seen.  Simply gorgeous.

The next few days were a blur of ancient ruins, green wadis, frankincense trees, and fields with camels and cows grazing side by side.  I didn't expect to be so taken aback by the sight of cows and camels together in green fields...but it was just so strange.  The morning traffic on the roads as we neared the Yemeni border was a mix of cows, goats, and camels, and it never ceased to make me giggle each time we drove past the strange field-mates.  The climate and vegetation made you feel almost as if you were in Europe--but we were quickly brought back to the Arabian reality when we saw a camel lung for the same tuft of grass as the black and white spotted cow.

We almost got into some trouble when we came dangerously close to running out of gas.  We were taking the coastal route (which according to our map was supposed to be finished)...turns out they hadn't finished the road yet.  So we had to turn around after driving for 3 hours in one direction and make our way back to the main, very ugly, highway back to Muscat (a 12 hour drive).  We didn't have enough gas, so we checked our map for the nearest gas station.  It had a gas symbol pretty close to where we were, so we figured we were in the clear.  The gas light came on when we were still 40 km from where we needed to be.  I began to conserve gas as much as possible, desperately trying to find trucks to coast behind.  The road took us down a winding hill into a really tiny coastal fishing town.  We could see the entire village as we came down the hill...there was no shell station, that's for damn sure.  We drove all around the village--which took a total of two minutes--without any luck.  We checked the map again; it definitely had a gas symbol in this tiny little town.  We could figure out for the life of us what the hell the map was talking about.  Finally we saw a couple of men standing in the village wadi and we decided to ask them.  They didn't speak English (why would they?) so we played charades for a while (I have now played charades in numerous countries on 4 different continents...it is my method of choice for communicating with non English speakers) and finally they waved us to their hut.  The two men then pulled out a barrel and a hose, and got ready to syphon.  I can't imagine how many brain cells these guys kill daily syphoning gas into cars and I felt bad about being a part of the problem...but we needed gas.  Desperately. 

With our tank a quarter full, we pulled out of the village, waved goodbye to our new friends and headed back to Muscat.  The whole trip was a blast and I'm looking forward to going to the south again.  Salalah (the only other main city in Oman, which is the capital of the south) was so green and the weather was far less harsh, even in October.  It's a different world down there...which makes sense given the proximity to Yemen.  :-)  The trip reminded me that one of my favorite parts about this country is that you can literally camp wherever you want.  Going off-road to find your own little beach is the norm here for expats and I feel very lucky to be experiencing it before it gets taken over by tourism.

Climbing Kilimanjaro

This past summer my mom and i embarked on a wonderful journey up Africa's highest mountain.  After a long, hard spring finishing my first year of teaching, it was great to meet up with my mom in a totally new environment: no more desert, no more middle schoolers, no more Arab culture!  I love Oman, but I couldn't get out of Muscat fast enough last June.

Mom and I met up at our hotel in Moshi--the town most people people stay in before climbing up Kilimanjaro.  I arrived before mom did, and I must, I don't think I've ever been happier to see my mother than when she pulled up in the truck that brought her from the airport.  First year teachers often have pretty low spirits at the end of the year, as the whole thing has basically been countless beatings to your self-esteem and sense of accomplishment and general competence for 10 months.  So I'm not ashamed to say that at that point, I just wanted my mommy.

After getting acquainted with our group over mediocre food and Kilimanjaro beer, we packed our bags and got excited about the coming week.  I wasn't really intimidated by the mountain, but I was pretty scared about spending a week in a tent with my mom.  Sharing a tent for a week with anyone is a daunting idea, let alone someone from your family.  As I tried to fall asleep, I thought about all of the things I do that are annoying and made several mental notes to keep them to a minimum on the trip to spare my poor mother.  Though I shouldn't have worried so much about it, as spending a week sharing a tent with my mom turned out to be one the highlights of the trip for me.  (Though I'm not sure she feels the same way....)

One of the most impressive aspects of the climb was how much the terrain changed from day to day.  Our first day we were in the jungle.  It was we, green, wet, hot, wet, muddy...did I mention it was wet?  I LOVED it.  The next day we climbed out of the jungle to moorland.  The next day we were in a weird Dr. Seuss type land with funky plants, the next we were climbing on rugged rocks, and then we hit glaciers.  Quite the variety!  And what I loved even more was that when we arrived at camp, it was all set up for us--our tents were arranged with our cushy sleeping pads and our bags (which our porters had carried up) were already in the tents.  This is DEFINITELY the way to climb a mountain.

After resting for a while, we got called into the mess tent for dinner.  I must say, it's pretty easy to camp when you don't have to do ANY of the work.  THroughout dinner our guides did our daily health check-in.  You get to know your group quite quickly when you start answering questions about the last time you had a bowel movement while eating suspicious looking and very chewy beef.  Gross.

The next morning we were woken up with coffee and tea being brought right to the front door of our tent.  Naturally, mom and I had brought our own mocha mix (if you have to ask questions about this, you clearly don't know us very well....), which we slurrped down each morning, keeping us happy campers.  That mocha mix is truly as much for the people who have to be around us throughout the day as it is for us.  We Bouillon-Jensen girls aren't very nice when we don't get our morning mochas (some of you have had the displeasure of experiencing this).  

After another wonderful day hiking out of the jungle and into the moorlands, the porters added another surprise to our arrival at camp.  As we rounded the last bend, we heard singing and clapping.  As we rolled into camp, all of our porters were gathered together singing us a song.  We quickly joined in...some of us joined in the dancing as well.  This became one of the best parts of each day.

This daily routine kept up for the whole trip--what a magical experience!  On summit day we saw the snows of Kilimanjaro, trekked past glaciers, and sang and danced with our porters and group.  Everyone on the trip made it to the top, which I celebrated by eating a whole bag of Sour Patch Kids that mom had brought me from the States.  :-)

The night of the day we reached the peak, three of us got to sleep at crater camp because our oxygen intake was strong and we were feeling good at the high altitude.  Crater camp is just below the peak of Kilimanjaro and is a huge ice field surrounded by glaciers.  It's one of the coolest places I've ever been.  The glacier right outside of our tent looked like the ice castle from the James Bond movie, "Die Another Day".  Britt, Jennifer and I played in the snow field, asking our guide to take pictures of us doing snow angels.  He has no idea what a snow angel was, so I'm pretty sure he just thought that we were showing him our crotches for no reason.  Awkward.

We slept as soundly as possible at that elevation--which is to say we got about an hour of sleep.  The next morning we checked out the crater and headed back down to meet up with the group.  I didn't like that I couldn't share the experience with my mom, but she had encouraged me to go even though she wasn't feeling up to it.  She had become close friends with a marathon runner from Texas who was on our trip, so they bunked up for the night.

We spent one more night on the mountain before making the final push down to Moshi.  The whole trip was incredible and I can't find the words to describe just how special  it was to share the experience with my mom.  This post doesn't do it justice, but I wanted to get a few words down about the trip before moving on to more recent events.  I will be heading back to Africa in a couple of months to visit my brother in Uganda and I simply can't wait to get back!

Kilimanjaro Pictures

Mom looking super hardcore in front of a glacier.

Me, hanging out in the first snow we saw!

Possibly the coolest campsite ever.  I love being above the clouds!

These two shots--the one above and the one below--show how different the mountain looked each day.  Unreal.

Snow angels at crater camp...our poor guide was traumatized.

Walking to crater camp.

Britt and me hanging out at the top!

Mom and me at the peak.

I bring Sour Patch Kids everywhere...

The group on the very first day.

As we were heading out of the jungle...not so wet anymore.

Starting to climb in the snow!

Our porters singing us into camp.  This was by far the best part of each day!