Catching Up: Weeks 2 and 3

Well a lot has happened since our last entry so I will try bring folks back up to speed as best I can. Let me begin by saying that keeping a blog is a royal pain in the ass! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…this was totally Belle’s idea:). However, I must admit it’s therapeutic in a way. It’s almost like I’m having a conversation with all of my dearest friends and family at the same time – only trying to be witty, introspective, and concise at the same time. I actually feel like I’m back in grad school. Anyway, enough rambling…

So I guess I drew the short straw and got to be the first person to get sick in Qatar. As we speak, I’m sitting on the coach with pills, lozenges, and dirty kleenex’s scattered all over the coffee table. Maybe Belle got me sick knowing that at some point I would get so bored of watching horrendous episodes of Dr. Phil (the only American show it seems Arabs can’t get enough of) and soccer matches in Arabic that I would write something for our blog. Regardless, I must admit that I haven’t felt overly homesick until I got sick. Suddenly not knowing how to use the hospital system here if I needed it or where to find products familiar to me in the states was a little stressful. Lucky for me it’s just a cold and we packed enough Nyquil and Ricola to get me through this first brush with sickness. Of course there are many wonderful people here ready to help (we even got a couple new home remedies to try from our Qatari colleagues) but it all goes back to a feeling of not being in total control, having all the answers, or understanding the system. I’m sure this is the same for anyone living in a new culture for the first time.

We did finally manage to get our temporary driver’s licenses. In many ways we felt trapped in our home for the first several weeks…so much so that we named our rental car “FREEDOM” (a quality American piece of junk – Ford Mondeo). I must admit we drove illegally for about a week because it was driving us crazy but only from home to Education City which is only a couple of miles in light traffic. Now that we have our licenses we have been able to enjoy the finer aspects of driving in Doha. Let’s just say that many people living in Doha view driving as a sport – getting from point A to B in the fastest possible time regardless of speed limits or say other cars. The city is full of roundabouts, not streetlights, and even you Northeasterners would be scared. You really have to drive aggressively to survive while at the same time watching your own ass. You especially have to keep an eye on white Toyota Landcruisers – the national vehicle (typically Qatari men driving like complete lunatics). I swear I’m about ready to open my own Toyota dealership over here! It will certainly take some time to get used to…until then we try to drive at slow traffic times or on less crowded roads. Another challenge is lack of street signs of any kind. Instead of street signs they give random names to each roundabout (but no actual signage) so people know where they are in the city such as “Burger King roundabout”, “Decoration roundabout”, “Slopey roundabout” – I am not kidding…they are even on the official city map! The good news is that the country is finally realizing they have a genuine safety problem. One attempt at slowing people down is through the strategic placement of speed bumps. They are seemingly everywhere and we’ll probably end up with permanent neck damage by the time we leave here. There is also countrywide campaign of signs that have gruesome crash pictures with the word ENOUGH! on them as well as quotes such as “Where are you daddy?”. They have also started to replace roundabouts with streetlights on new streets and have just increased the penalties for reckless driving. Hopefully it will start to have an impact but just in case we will be buying a car with full airbags. After seeing “The Bourne Ultimatum” last night (Belle will share a funny story about that) we were hoping to import a NYC police car but it’s a little out of our price range:).

Well, that should cover me for a couple weeks…Curt.