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.