The Perfect Weekend Getaway

Hello again!
Two weekends ago, Zach and I got out of Muscat for a little rest and relaxation. The trimester ended for Middle School on Wednesday and the quarter ends for high school this coming Wednesday, so we figured we would get away to allow ourselves to do some work and decompress from all of the stress caused by school. Neither of us had to teach in the afternoon on Wednesday, so we took a half-day personal day and headed out with plenty of time to get to our destination that was five hours away--Khaluf.

Anyone who has visited me thus far needs to come back over to Oman, because Khaluf instantly became my favorite place in Oman. The two best parts of this incredible country--the beach and the desert--smack into each other at this beach. The dunes of the desert literally run into the white beach and ocean. It's absolutely breathtaking. It's also remote enough that its ecosystem doesn't seem to be too impacted by humans. We had a 5 miles stretch of beach all to ourselves.

Speaking of the 5 miles stretch, my wonderful boyfriend had the sweet idea of taking a morning beach walk our first morning there. We set off to go to the point at the end of the beach. We had NO idea how far away it was. 10 miles and 4 hours later, we arrived back at camp sun burnt and dehydrated (we hadn't put on sun screen and didn't bring water on the walk). OOPS! That's the last time I let Zach decide how far we're going to go.

The great thing about the 10 mile beach adventure was that we got to see incredible wildlife! There were dead stingrays and sea turtles. We ended up decapitating one of the dead turtles later in the trip so that we could have the skull. Even cooler were the cattle nose rays that were swimming around in the shallow bay. Absolutely amazing!

The weekend was spent frolicking in the dunes, reading in the shade tent, swimming in the ocean and staring up at the stars at night. Simply magical. I love my life.

I Love Visitors

Hey all!
I just had an awesome week with a fabulous visitor: Daniel came to visit for ten days and I simply can't believe how quickly the time passed! When he arrived we headed straight off to Dubai and Abu Dhabi for an ultimate frisbee tournament and to do a little sight-seeing in the UAE. Unfortunately, not a lot of sight-seeing was done due to some unforeseen time constraints. The drive to the border between Oman and the UAE is only about 3 hours (and then another hour and a half to Dubai from the border), but as soon as we got the the border, Zach deadpanned, "I forgot my passport." We all thought he was kidding; then I saw the look on his face and realized he was serious. Honestly, I thought is was hysterical that on the very first day of meeting someone in my family (yes, I consider Daniel family) Zach screwed up, causing us to have to drive an extra 6 hours. The poor guy was beating himself up so much that we didn't even get to experience the pleasure of making fun of him for it!

So we trucked it back to Muscat, and then BACK to the border and into Dubai. What is usually a 4-5 hour drive ended up being a 12 hour journey. It was midnight by the time we got into the city--not much to see. Then we spent the following day playing ultimate frisbee in Abu Dhabi, which was a great way for Danny to get to know a bunch of my friends here in Muscat and see what ex-pat life is all about. Plus, he kicked ass on the ultimate pitch. :-)

Throughout the week Danny took the car and explored the forts, wadis, and souks of Oman. He came to school with me on Wednesday and experienced both my middle school and high school classes. The middle schoolers LOVED asking him questions about becoming a doctor. (They have no shame in telling me that everyone in my family is WAY cooler than me...) We had a fun-run at school that day to raise money for cancer research, so Danny participated in that and then went home to get ready for our weekend exploring the country. Zach and I were THRILLED to come home to appetizers, wine, and scrumptious spaghetti cooking on the stove. Note to potential future visitors: Danny has set the bar VERY high.

We relaxed at home Wednesday night and then headed off early Thursday morning to the sink hole, wadi shab, and then the desert for the night. We've had a fair amount of rain this year (totally weird), so the wadis have been very full. Neither Zach nor I have ever seen wadi shab so full of water. I'm pretty sure Danny got sick of hearing us constantly exclaim, "Oh my god! There's just SO much water! I've never seen it like this before!" The falaj was overflowing in many parts of the hike and gushing waterfalls popped up out of nowhere. It was absolutely stunning. When we got to the cave at the end of the hike, the waterfall was more powerful than I ever imagined it could be. Swimming in the cave pool was actually difficult because of the strong current. It was SO cool.

At wadi shab, we ran into my Omani friend, Juma. He invited us to his friend's restaurant in Tiwi (the small town next to wadi shab) for some lunch and juice. Juma is the epitome of arab hospitality and I'm so happy Danny got the chance to meet him.

From Tiwi we headed to the interior so that Danny could experience the real arabian desert. We stayed at a bedouin camp, frolicking in the sands and relaxing to the live bedouin music. The only downside of the experience was our guide, Abdullah. I've known Abdullah since I first went to this bedouin camp two years ago when my sister visited. We've always had a friendly relationship, but he was very rude this time. He was constantly taking jabs at Zach and hitting on me. I can usually expect and handle a little bit of that, but this was incessant. As annoying and disrespectful as it was, in the end it made Zach and Danny join forces against a common enemy, and I was loving the bond that it helped form between two of my favorite guys in the world. Danny and I both agreed that Zach was a really good sport throughout the whole thing and handled himself very well.

Other than Abdullah's behavior, the trip to the desert was wonderful. In the morning we got to watch some camel racing, which is always an interesting affair, as well as ride camels ourselves. More than anything though, watching the sunset over the endless dunes is one of the most magical experiences I've ever had. I've done it numerous times now, and it takes my breath away and makes me fall more in love with Oman every single time.

Having Daniel visit was phenomenal. It was so nice for me to have the comfort of someone from home seeing my life here. My family visited the first year I was in Oman, and I'm very happy they got to see the country. But things have changed in the past three years, and it means a lot to me that Daniel got to see my life here now that I've settled into teaching at TAISM and life in the gulf. Of course, I'm also THRILLED that someone from home finally met Zach, and can't think of anyone better than Daniel for the job of vetting him before I bring him home to the whole family this summer.

That's all for now!

Back!!

Hey all!
After a LONG hiatus, I'm back in blogging mode. I think it's mostly because it's starting to sink in that I won't be here forever. The plan at this point is to start applying to schools next fall for the academic year 2011-2012. It seems so far away, yet it's amazing how quickly those decisions are coming up!

Things are going really well here in Muscat. We just finished with Discover Oman. DO is the week when we all go camping with the kids around the country for a week. The trip I have been on for the past three years has been the 8th grade Coastal Trip (read: beach). The plan for the week is to take the kids camping at two of the best beaches here in Oman, hike in the wadis nearby (including my favorite--Wadi Shab), and visit some cultural and historical spots. Camping on a beach for a week sounds pretty sweet, huh? Time to relax and work on my tan...well, apparently Allah doesn't like us discovering Oman because we've endured pretty heavy rainstorms 2 out of the 3 years I've been here. RAINSTORMS! In a place that is bright sunshine 360 days out of the year!

This year's DO was particularly rough. The rainstorm was worse than any I've experienced here in Oman and our camp got washed away. Due to the geology of Oman, flash floods are a major hazard. The rain water builds up as it flows down the mountains and through the wadis. Our trip had it particularly bad because all of the water flowing through the wadis has to go somewhere, and it just happened to flood our beach! I've really never seen anything like it. One minute we were standing underneath the shade with the kids waiting for the rain to stop, the next minute our camp was out at sea. The way our camp was situated made it so that the flash floods attacked from two sides. We had a 5 meter wide gushing river attack diagonally from the side and a 20 meter wide gushing river attack straight on from the back. Scott (my co-chaperone) and I spent a solid 2 hours fighting with the rain, wind, sand, and ocean trying to salvage as much stuff as possible. I felt like I was in an adventure movie.

All of the students were fine (albeit wet and sandy for their night spent in the cars on high ground) and handled it incredibly well. While the students at TAISM (like any other middle schoolers I suspect) tend to be pretty lazy and weak willed, it's times like our DO trip that remind me of how amazing they can be when they don't have a choice. It could have been absolutely miserable being cold, wet, and sandy sleeping in the cars, but they kept their spirits up and made it almost a fun adventure. I was just so proud of them!

Almost everyone lost some of their belongings. We initially lost 4 entire tents, including the belongings in them, but we found three of them at low tide the following morning. Personally, I lost a tennis shoe and my flipcam and camera will need repair. :-( The only other thing that got broken was my tailbone. One of the guides was showing off driving his car for the kids during the rainstorm and he ended up hitting me as I was helping get the kids out of the storm and into the vehicles. I was so hyped up on adrenaline that the impact didn't immediately make me feel anything other than absolute fury at him being so irresponsible when there were students around (what if I had been one of the kids?!?!). But as the week progressed I started to feel the pain. Needless to say, that guide will not be invited back next year. And I can make sure of that because Zach was chosen to be the Middle School Discover Oman Coordinator next year!!

At first Zach was thrilled about the opportunity. But after this year, I think he may be having some doubts! Just kidding. I know he'll do a great job and I'm excited to see him take on something he's so passionate about.

That's about it for now. More soon and I'll try to keep them shorter than this from now on.

Wadi Suway and the Demise of Latika

After Discover Oman I wanted to explore Wadi Suway a bit more, so Zach and packed up Subway sandwiches and our books and hit the road for the 2 1/2 hour drive.  As most people who know me are aware, I have some pretty major control issues that manifest in the form of not letting anyone else drive.  Anywhere.  Anytime.  So, of course, I drove Latika (my car).  After a beautiful day laying in the sun, attempting to climb the beautiful rock faces, reading on boulders in the wadi, and cliff jumping, we headed back to Muscat with Zach taking videos of my superb driving skills along the bumpy dirt roads.  What I couldn't possibly have known at the time was that this would be Latika's last trip for a while.  

A few days after we returned from our peaceful day out in one of the most perfect wadis I've come across, our tranquil life was interrupted...by a 4ft high wall of dirt and rocks.  Driving to school at the still dark hour of 6am on a road I've taken countless times throughout the year Latika (with me at the wheel and Zach in the shotgun seat) ran head on into the massive dirt wall somewhere between 60 and 80 km/h.  Ouch.  My airbag didn't deploy (oops, Kia), so I ended up breaking my steering wheel with my head.  When Zach was relaying the story to his family in an e-mail, he was sure to get in a joke about my hard-headed nature.  He's really laying some nice groundwork for me to meet them this summer.

The accident was in mid-February...it is now mid-April and Latika has yet to return to the wild roads of Oman.  I can say with absolute certainty that this is the longest I've gone without driving since I got my license at age 16.  It has been a good experience in that it is helping me grow as a person and learn to relinquish control.  But I think everyone who has had to drive me somewhere (thanks Zach) or has dealt with my moodiness due to my independence being snatched away (sorry Zach), is ready for Latika to get fixed.  Things move slowly here in Oman (except the addition of an unmarked dirt wall on a regularly used road apparently...), but I'm expecting to be back in the driver's seat in a week or so. 

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.