Wendy Klotz

2009-11-11T06:06:00.000-08:00

Well, we have just returned to Doha from a trip of a lifetime! We were joined by Liz and James, which made it really fun to have someone to share the adventure with. We packed a lot into just under two weeks, however, we managed to see most of the major sights in both Egypt and Jordan. The tour guides were amazing, especially Walid in Egypt. He was a mine of information and we learned so much history and archeology from him. Above are of course the pyramids, just on the ouskirts of Cairo. The drivers in Cairo are even worse than Doha and frequently drive 3 or 4 abreast where most people would have just two lanes of traffic! I was glad we were driven by some great bus drivers. We stayed at the Marriot and the food was really great. We saw all kinds of temples and the Valley of the Kings, you name it - we saw it.

An extra side trip we decided to take was to go to Abu Simbal. I am so glad we did, it was amazing and so well preserved. We cruised on the Nile for four days, getting off for various sights. I had never been on a cruise before and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. After an early morning start to sightseeing, we really enjoyed our afternoons lying on deck and watching Egypt unfold before our eyes as we floated down the Nile. We were able to see the local people going about their pastoral lives and the sites role by like a giant screen. It was so relaxing sipping our beer watching the world go by and sitting in the sun.

From Egypt we flew to Jordan with several others from our Egypt tour. Again, we packed in a huge amount in three days, of course the highlight was Petra. Walking through the siq, you know what you are about to see, but your first look at the Treasury is as magical as everyone says it is going to be. After lunch, we continued on with a few other brave souls and went up to the Monastery, which is like another version of the Treasury but 700 steps further on and up. However, when you get to the top, there is an amazing view of the Rift valley and of course it is downhill on the way back!

Our flight out on the last day was not until the afternoon and originally we thought we might try to change it to an earlier time. However, we had wanted to see the Dead Sea, which was not included on out tour. The tour director quickly organized a couple of minivans to pick up 12 of us and in about and hour we were there, lathering ourselves up with mud and then floating in the very salty water. It was so buoyant that try as you might, you just could not turn over and it was really funny to see us all bobbing around.

We had such a wonderful trip and took literally thousands of pictures between the four of us. Enough to bore most of our friends for years to come! As the plane touched down in Doha, we both had the feeling that we were coming home. What a great way to end our adventure to the Middle East. We now have a couple of days to finish packing up and to say our goodbyes then back to the snow and ice and to our real home, although I have a feeling that now we have had a taste of adventure, we will have a hard time settling into a rut again before looking for more!

2009-10-24T12:31:00.000-07:00

This weekend we drove up to the north west of Qatar and went to Al Zubara. It had been a large settlement area at one time housing about 5 or 6,000 inhabitants. They fished and harvested pearls, until a siege in 1878 bought things to an end. At the moment archaeological excavations are taking place. However, we also found that it is right next to a wonderful beach with lots of wierd creatures to find on the beach. Derek saw a ray and there were lots of sea birds. It was very shallow and would be a wonderful place for young children to play and explore the little tide pools with their small fish.

We walked out along this man made breakwater of local rocks full of tiny shells. I presume it had been here for a long time. All around it were little rock pools full of crabs and small fish, amongst other strange purple wormy like creatures were hadn't seen before. There were also some brown mushroom looking creatures as well.

It is hard to show just how vast this area is, but this gives a little bit of an idea. This is where they are going to build the Friendship bridge to Bahrain. On the map it said 2013. It seems so shallow here, you could almost walk across!

Here is a picture of what is still remaining of the settlement. This is just a small portion of it, there is a surrounding wall with some turrets and the area is suposedly about 54 hectares. We had a great time, paddling in the water and then poking around the settlement. It was an interesting day and unfortunately it is likely to be our last adventure in Qatar. I still have a few more pictures of the leaving party that his coworkers gave him and I went and took more souq pictures of things I always see, but hadn't captured before, so will add some more tomorrow.

2009-10-18T04:42:00.000-07:00

This weekend we went back to my favourite beach, Al Ghariya which is in the north east of Qatar. There is a beach resort nearby, but we like the public beach just beyond it and drive through the abandoned village and set up our umbrella on the beach to claim our spot. The temperature was absolutely perfect at about 35 degrees and the water was even refreshing. We stayed in the water for ages and actually had to finally get out because we were starting to get chilly! who would ever have thought it! Derek doesn't normally like beaches and swimming, but with the saltiness of the water, he was able to float and the temperature of course, was lovely. He saw a sea turtle , and every now and again a yellow torpedo like fish leapt out of the water and then skimmed across it like a skipping stone. I dont think we could have dreamed up a more perfect afternoon.

As the afternoon wore on, more Qataris came down to the beach. A couple of groups of ladies in black were at either end of the beach with their children and their nannies, the men had gone out in their fishing boats. They only paddled and I wonder if after Derek had left, they might have gone in the water. Some go in fully dressed and then hand their robe to the maid who then returns it to her when she wants to come out. Others just swim fully dressed. In this instance they just waded up to their knees. As the sun sets, you often see groups of men in their Toyota Land Cruisers stop in the middle of the desert, or in this case on a hill, to watch the sunset. One of the prayer times is at sunset, although I have never actually seen them pray, just look at the sun going down. Qataris come to life at night and often when I have not been able to sleep, I look from our window at the Corniche and it is always packed with cars and with people walking and greeting each other, until at least 2 as that is the latest I have been awake, but it would not surprise me if it goes on all night.

Last night we went out to our favourite restaurant in Souq Waqif. We now know the route through the little alleyways, sometimes taking a detour depending on our mood. This shop is one of our landmarks. It sells some of the largest pots I have ever seen! Outside the store are the really big pots, that you could cook a whole camel in!

As it was our last meal at Cinque Sensi, we decided to be gluttons and go for their set meal for 150 QAR each. What we hadn't realized was that the three choices of anti pasto and three choices of pasta were in fact not choices, they bought all three of each of them! and they weren't small portions either! By the time we got to the main course, we were very full - especially since they always have the most wonderful warm rolls that we cannot resist. However, we had asked if they would change the desert to include my favourite nougat semifredo with almond sauce, and it was amazing how we still had enough room to squeeze every last morsel of that in! The meal ended with a thimbleful of espresso which just set off the sweetness perfectly and was not enough to keep us awake at night. It is a good thing I still have one more session with Mohammed, the personal trainer at the gym in our building. He is very strict about my workouts and I have to go every day or he wants to know why I haven't signed in that day! Without that, I would be in big trouble with all these last meals at our favourite places - we have so many of them!

2009-10-17T22:11:00.000-07:00

I am a bit behind again with the blog, but as our time in Qatar comes to an end, we are starting to return to some of our favourite places, or trying to pack in some of those we haven't seen yet. Last weekend we returned to Al Khor island "purple island". To get to the island, you have to wade through two cut-throughs, which, depending on the tide can either be up to your knees or around your ankles. This time we timed it so it would be round our ankles and we managed to successfully negotiate the crossings without seeing the myriad of black crabs about 2" across, which I was very thankful for. They had, however, returned for our homeward trip! The island is known for the purple or in fact red dye that used to be extracted from shells here. A very laborious and expensive business which is why only royalty or very special people used to wear the colour purple. We were searching for the piles of shells left behind from the proces, but were unsuccessful. It would have been nice to have gone with the natural history group here, but, alas, no time. The geology of the island is very strange, with a band of holy rock like the picture shows.

There are mangroves starting and this was a neat picture of showing how the new shoots radiate from the central tree.

The water is very shallow around here and you can see people wading through the water with nets catching their supper. They had strung a net across the whole area and must have been able to catch a lot of fish.

Another picture of the strange geology of the area. We had a great afternoon walking around exploring, and got back to the car just as the sun was setting. Another good time of exploration.

2009-10-08T07:28:00.000-07:00

The other night we went for a walk and took a few pictures of the nearby hotels. West Bay, the area where we live, has a number of big hotels as well as various embassies nearby. We took a few photos of the nearby hotels, which all seem to try to outdo each other with their outdoor decorations and lights.

This is the Four Seasons, which we see from our window every night.

This one looks like it has one of the arabic hats on top

This is the Sheraton near us - it is in the shape of a pyramid from the outside and very elaborate on the inside!

2009-10-07T05:10:00.000-07:00

This was the picture I forgot to put in my last blog. After we had been driving over the sand dunes for about 20 minutes or so - one of the cars got a flat tire and it had to be changed. I am not sure how they knew it was flat, since you have to let a lot of air out of the tires anyway to drive on the sand. Quite funny to watch though - as our group was full of mostly male engineers, together with the Qatari drivers - all of whom are car mad. Anyway you could smell the testosterone in the air as helpful comments were made in English, French and Arabic throughout the exercise! Surprisingly quickly we were on our way again.

At sunrise, the next morning, we got up to take some photos. Our neighbours the previous night were a group of Qataris who had been camping back on the sand dunes a bit of a way down the water from us. They sounded like they were having fun, talking and laughing around a campfire - you could have been camping anywhere in Canada! Anyway, the next morning, the tide was out and our neighbours had driven right to the edge of the water and were busy fishing. They kindly gave us a fish! although the cook at our camp didn't think too much of the type of fish! it somehow never got cooked! One of the easiest ways to get around is to drive right by the water as it is firm sand. On our walk, we were passed by several cars! A little bit unnerving!

It was well worth getting up early for this view.

Back to the camp for coffee and tea, kindly served by the "tea boy" who had been quite the dancer the night before! I still have a hard time getting used to being able to have couches and comfy chairs and tables which are left outside. The roof is not for the risk of rain, but for shade! So we got our plates of delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs with spices, some kind of sweet noodle with fool (mashed up beans) on top, juices, muffins etc. and bought them back to our comfy chairs to sit on. Then back into the cars again for a more direct route back to our awaiting cars. Sad to think that this will likely be our last trip to the sand dunes.

2009-10-07T04:45:00.000-07:00

Thursday afternoon, we went with a group of people from the company for my second and Derek's third trip to the desert. While they were letting the air out of the tires of the ubiquitous Land Cruisers that we were driven in - oh I forgot to put that picture in, I will put it in the next one. Anyway, several people rode on camels to while away the time.

This time we stayed overnight and this was our accommodation. We just had a sleeping bag to put on top of the cushions, with carpets to walk on - quite cosy! We just slept on top of the sleeping bags and had a light sheet on top as it was still pretty warm and humid. The tent is only closed on three sides, with the third, long side, open. We were fed a typical bedouin meal, which was basically meat, rice and pulses of different kinds. All with lots of tasty spices.

This was another option of a place to sleep. But I just wanted to show how much carpets are used here. This beautiful carpet was just laid on the sand and was in fact covered in sand from people walking on it. They did ask us to remove our footwear before entering the tents, but you have sand all over you and of course it gets everywhere.

After dinner, we were entertained by our drivers, one got out his electric organ or whatever it is called and played obviously well known Arabic songs. They were all singing and clapping along to them. Before long, everyone was up dancing, our drivers included. They were very hospitable and friendly. Derek played a lengthy game of volleyball as well, so we were definitely ready for bed around midnight and too tired to care if there were snakes or scorpions - which there weren't. To be continued.

2009-10-07T04:27:00.000-07:00

A few more textile related pictures. You see textiles in the most unusual places. While we were waiting for the air to be let out of our tires last Thursday evening, before our trip to the desert, we were invited to ride on some camels. The camels are so beautifully decorated, both with crocheted "snoods" for their noses -

And the array of tassels they wear.

Here are a couple more pictures of our shopping trip. More combinations of fabrics to choose from. I am not sure exactly who these are aimed at. There are very few Indian or Pakistani women here, only the men come here to work and I have never seen Indian men shopping here. The Qatari women supposedly wear very elaborate clothing under their abayas, and I see many Qatari women shopping in the souq, buying really gorgeous painted silks and sequined fabrics.

A never ending supply of ideas! You can see, the one I chose was middle row, furthest to the left. I will do a blog next on our trip to the desert, it was quite different going with a large group of people, and this time we stayed overnight.

2009-10-05T22:36:00.000-07:00

Well, it is official - our end date has been moved up and we will be coming home after our vacation in Egypt and Jordan, around the middle of November. We are quite sad about it, as we were looking forward to doing a lot more exploring in the cooler temperatures. However, it has been a great experience and if we were offered the chance to come here again, we would jump at the chance. Anyway, I am realizing that there are lots of things I have not yet put on the blog and also we had another trip to the desert last weekend, so will try and add to the blog each day this week to try and catch up. We will be doing a lot of catch up ourselves with all the things we had put off seeing until the weather was cooler, now we will have to get busy to fit them all in.

Anyway, these next pictures are for my textile friends. I thought the fabric souq was going to be terribly exotic, but in fact there are several large department store type buildings all in the same area. Each one containing masses of little tiny stores, with a few larger ones. Over time, you get to have favourites. But each store has a real mixture of dated fabrics, silks, japanese cotton which is very thin and fabrics of unknown origin and fibre content, well known cotton brands such as Liberty and Hoffman, a real mixture. Often the men (only men) selling the fabric dont really know the difference between cotton and polycotton, or silk and "silky" and short of burning a piece on the spot - I can't tell the difference often.

This is a picture of Souq al Dira which is the more expensive fabrics. The ceiling is quite exotic! with its chandelier and it is all air conditioned with a fountain in the middle of it, although it doesn't seem to be functioning!

This is what the little shops look like, and there are masses of them. Of course you never pay the listed price, but have to bargain. Sometimes you are offered tea and the local ladies all sit on chairs and have the fabric bought to them and the fellows show them yards of fabric with a flourish! I usually just poke around to find what I want. The cheapest I have bought was around 4 QAR which is about $1.30 and it was definitely a polycotton, but just right for what I was looking for. The silk goes up to about 35-40 QAR, around $10 - 15 for heavy charmeuse and around 44QAR for fine silk dupioni at the Bombay Silk Company which is in another area of town. It doesn't seem to matter what I pay in the same store for the same thing either, I think it has to do with how much they have sold so far that day and how hard they or I want to bargain. Who knows!

The fabrics can be quite elaborately decorated with lots of beading and stitching. These are more like 100 QAR and up. For reference it is around 3QAR to 1 C$. I am told there are some you can pay hundreds of dollars for, but they are still cheaper than you would pay in the west. A friend and I went shopping yesterday and she introduced me to her tailor, so he is making a few things for me before I leave. It was fun to go shopping with her as she is much better at bargaining than I am.

I normally shop in souq Asiery, "the escalator souq". This was the first souq to have an escalator in it as opposed to the usual stairs. The stores on the top floor have better prices than those on the ground floor as their rents are cheaper. So I usually stick to the upstairs ones for cotton, and downstairs for silk. This is some fabric I bought yesterday to be made into an outfit. It actually is a set for Indian ladies, with an elaborate piece of fabric for the long tunic top, some more floaty stuff for the pants and this thin organza type for the sheila? the shawl. The whole set came to 120 QAR which was probably pricey, but I loved the pattern and hope the tailor can make it into a nice outfit for me. It is probably a total of about 6 or more metres of fabric. I have to start thinking of how to pack all this stuff, so had better slow down on the shopping! I did do some dyeing last week with procyon dyes on some silk. It worked very well, but a bit nerve racking trying to do it in an appartment with white tile floors, I was paranoid about drips! So think I will now wait until I get home to do more. I bought some silk dyes to paint on from a local shop, so will probably use those up before coming home, I think they are more like setacolour as you iron them to set the colour. I will add a few more in the next blog.

2009-09-24T02:49:00.000-07:00

It appears that our tire is beyond repair and we need another one, so while waiting for this to be negotiated, we thought we would explore closer to home, in fact, on the edge of Doha. We went looking for Borj Barzan Fort in the Umm Slal Mohammed area. Barzan means "high place" in Arabic. These were lookout points in the late 19 century to protect a precious water reservoir. This is not very old, and it has been repaired quite a bit by the looks of it. Anyway, it has paths all around it and is well maintained. You can walk up the steps and look out from the top, so we spent a pleasant time until sunset.

The ubiquitous crescent moon on the top of the tower now has a great deal more significance to us after experiencing the anxious awaiting of the crescent moon for the start of Eid. It is very different for us not to know the exact date of a holiday and, if you have been fasting all day for the past month, it must be excrutiating having to wait one or two more days until the moon has been sighted by the official committee. I noticed in the shopping centre yesterday, the abeyas are much more colourful now, especially the ones the younger girls are wearing. Instead of the usual decorations of silver or black, or occasionally gold, I noticed lots of colourful trims. I will be interested to see how long the period of celebration is for, and when they return to the usual colours. A friend had told me to be particularly careful to wear conservative clothes during the Holy month of Ramadan as she had actually been told off by the clothes police in the mall saying she was not appropriately dessed. I am not sure whether there really are "clothes police" or just someone who was offended.

On the way back we went to a new grocery shop that we had driven by every time on our way out of town. Yesterday we had the time to stop and take a look. They certainly had gone "over the top" for their Eid decorations. I actually took a small video clip of this as it moves continuously!

Now this is what I call decorating with lights! The actual store was really nice and had great ethnic vegetables and in fact was nicer I think than our regular store. I thought this was a cheaper store, and yet they carried the "dutchy" line of products attributed to Prince Charles, as well as a huge cheese selection and quite a lot of different products from our usual store, things that I thought I couldn't get in Doha. This was definitely a "find". The night before we had finally tried out "Turkey Central" which is basically a fast food restaurant but with really tasty middle eastern food. You can eat in, rather cafeteria style, but we opted for schwarmas to take out with some tabouleh and babaganouch. The fellow making them was a going concern, he churned out a huge quantity of them in the time we waited for our order to be filled. A really good cheap meal - a far cry from the fancy french restaurant I had been hoping to be taken to at La Cigalle - oh well, another time. A few doors down from Turkey Central, we went to Patisserie Swiss, which we have seen all over town and is in fact a Lebanese bakery and nothing swiss about it. But they have a huge selection of pastries with pistachio nuts, dates etc. so we picked up a selection to try for desert. There always seems to be something new to find and experience. One more day, then it is Friday and hopefully we will have a new tire so we can go further afield.

2009-09-21T23:54:00.000-07:00

A few more pictures from our trip yesterday. These are the main roads through the desert and you often encounter forks in the road where you have no clue where they will take you, one may go back miles and end up on the real highway, or it may just go round in a loop or end up at someone's palace, an abandoned fishing village or just a really nice beach. We usually find that taking the "one less travelled" is not necessarily a good idea as you run the risk of getting stuck in some deep sand in over 40 degree celcius heat - not a good idea. Anyway the point I wanted to get across is that this is a "main" road, what we get to after this is a lot less easy to follow. Next trip I will remember to take some photos of our usual roads. Often they are a barely defined track in the sand or well used but very rough and stoney as was the case today. Very sharp stones as it turned out!

As the sun was going down, we headed back to Al Ruwais area, near the docks where all the newer fishing boats are, these are some of the older more weathered Dhow's that I have seen, especially the one that looked like a dead fish! People were gathering on the docks to watch as the sun was starting to go down so we rushed to get further down the coast to an old fort and fishing village we wanted to see before it got too dark.

We seemed to miss the ones we were aiming for, the map reader was obviously sleeping, but this we reached just after the sun had gone down, we got to it over a very stony dirt track and as I got out of the car to take this picture, we hear the ominous whomp, whomp, whomp of the tire!

Sure enough, the tire was flat as a pancake. I had the manual in hand reading out directions while Derek did the work, until the part where we had to lift this really heavy tire onto lugs, by which time the sun had pretty much gone! Anyway, the teamwork paid off and before too too long, we were on our way back to the highway and home. We wont be going too far afield today though as you wouldn't want to get caught without a spare tire. We phoned the number we had been given by the rental company for emergencies, but the answer was pretty much, it is a three day Eid holiday, call me at the end of it! Put very politely though! So, we will try to get it fixed or more likely, just stay and see things closer to home and on better roads! It certainly was a shocker though, these tires are really heavy duty, so dont know what we could have gone over that would made it go that flat. All part of the adventure I suppose!

2009-09-21T13:09:00.000-07:00

Three days holiday for Eid means three days of exploring Qatar for us. Many people have gone away, but we thought we would take the opportunity to see a few more places. Today we went up to the far end of the island to Shamal, then went on to Ras al Shindwee which is the beach area nearby. We found this beach, completely deserted except for some young Qatari men who had got their Four wheel drive stuck in some soft sand on the other side of these rocks. We offered our assistance to try to get them out, but after handshakes and smiles all round they pointed to their cell phones as help was already on the way! So we went off exploring the beach for a while. There were some large birds on the salt lake where the boys were stuck, but once their friends had arrived, the revving of engines soon sent the birds on their way.

A little further up the coast were some more mangroves with the fruits turning yellow now.

This is the closest to a dinosaur we have seen in Qatar! Quite an interesting rock formation. There were signs in the area to make sure dogs were on a leash and we did not disturb the turtles. We saw no signs of sea turtles but presume we weren't looking in the right places or probably the right time of year. We will have to do some research to find out more about that.

Along this whole area of the coast were many abandoned ancient villages. Mostly they were fishing villages, some were pearl fishing villages. No sign of pearls on the beach unfortunately! This was an interesting shot Derek took with the beach umbrella perfectly framed in the window of the old house. I read in the paper just the other day that there has been quite an effort to put up a number of these umbrellas on the beaches up and down the coasts and to clean up the garbage washed up with the tide. The garbage is mostly plastic water bottles and plastic shopping bags. I really hope they continue with this as the beaches that have been cared for are really beautiful and the water is so clear. We had quite an eventful ending to the day which I will continue tomorrow.

2009-09-16T21:51:00.000-07:00

Ramadan is fast coming to an end, so thought I had better get out and take a few pictures of how our local mall has been decorated. I had only heard of the fasting part of Ramadan before, but there is a lot of feasting and family get togethers, sharing food with neighbours and donations of food and money to the poor. Eid is celebrated with gifts and more food. The Malls right now are crazy, just like the few days before Christmas at home, with last minute shoppers. Things shut for three days for Eid and a lot of people are going away although we have elected to stay put and now the weather has cooled a little, spend some restful time on the beach.

These pictures are from the City Centre Mall, our nearest shopping centre, and are taken in an area over the skating rink. Yes, there is a circular skating rink at the bottom and then on all four levels, there have been swags and tassels hung and then in the centre, above the rink, there are these huge lantern like structures and moons and stars. Nearer the grocery store, there is a little tableau with old type buildings and moving models of Qatari people in the olden days with moving heads on camels etc. I had better go back and take pictures of that as well!

While the City Centre decorations are somewhat over the top, here are some decorations in a back alley in the souq. Just a few lights and a lamp. Still attractive at night.

Last night we went for a nice walk around the neighbourhood and tomorrow I will put up some pictures, but this is a picture of the new Movenpick hotel near us, with its Ramadan decorations. Again the moon and stars. I cant read the writing, but suspect it is Ramadan Kareem which is the Ramadan greeting. Of course the moon plays a huge part in Ramadan as it starts and ends on the sighting of the new moon. It was a lovely evening and although we were hot by the end of our walk, we had managed to walk quite a long way as things are definitely cooling down. There was very little humidity yesterday as well and from the gym you could see for miles.

2009-09-11T20:52:00.000-07:00

Here are a few more pictures from our day at the beach. We saw quite a few cormorants both on the beach and in the water. This one flew down the beach to join his friends and they all stretched out their wings to sun themselves but they were to far away to photograph. We saw them diving a little further out to sea as well.

This was a little further back from the beach. These trees are so graceful, the leaves are small and almost feathery and just blow in the wind. When they are a little taller, there is space to sit underneath the spreading branches which look rather like an umbrella.

After spending our afternoon on the beach, we drove along the beach on the "road" and came to the main part of the beach, which was the other side of a fairly high outcrop of rock. The rock is very porous and holey. There were lots of cars here and it looked like the water was deeper and no rocks. However this was a younger crowd and they had their seadoos and boards, we had seen a parasail as well. So I think we were better off on our quieter shallower beach. There is a large beach resort further along the beach. You have to pay for the privilege of sitting on the beach there, but it is well cared for with restaurants etc. There are several of these large resorts up and down the coasts but with many kilometers in between.

At the far end of the beach above there were some mangrove swamps back from the beach. There was not much water there, so a big of vegetation had grown inbetween the mangroves. These looked like the usual samphire type greenery, but this time there was some pinky coloured plants as well which are quite attractive. Well that's it for our pictures of the day out. I took various pictures during the week of the fabric souq and the shopping centre with Ramadan decorations so will put them up during the week. Can't believe that the end of our time here is fast approaching. It will be really sad to leave.

2009-09-11T11:13:00.000-07:00

This was the view out of our window this week - the humidity had arrived! It looked just like rain on the windows, but in fact it was the warm humidity condensing on the airconditioned windows. When you went outside, it was like hitting a wall. Fortunately it didn't last very long and the next evening it was actually a lot cooler and it has been much cooler for the last few days with temperatures below 40. Wow, what a difference that makes. We decided it was cool enough to start venturing further afield which meant driving through the desert, which we had stopped doing during the really hot temperatures, as you could really get into trouble if your car broke down.

So today we took a trip up the coast on the east side of Qatar up to a place near Fuwairit beach. This beach just had a few people spotted along it. It was really nice and clean and there were garbage pails strategically placed along the beach so there was very little litter. Where the dark spot is at the end of the beach were some rocks going into the water. Several fellows were there digging for clams. Derek had a go and bought me back a couple to see - just like the ones we find at home. I just lay down on the beach and left him to it!

You just drive off the dirt or rather sand road and onto the beach to claim your spot.

This was the view behind us. It looked like there had been a village there once upon a time, but they were all crumbled down now. It looked really interesting though, they were made with rocks that were piled up with mud over top of them which baked in the sun. It was a really lovely afternoon and really relaxing. We came home very salty, sandy and windswept. I had a swim and it was almost refreshing instead of like a hot bath and Derek had dug for clams - a really good day. I will put some more pictures on tomorrow of some other things we saw.

2009-09-05T21:57:00.000-07:00

A few more pictures from our beach trip. We came across a group of Herons that were wading in a pool beside the ocean. They wouldn't let me get any closer to take a picture before they flew off to join another group further down the coast. They are beautiful to see in flight with their large wings and long skinny body.

The place was absolutely full of shells and cuttle fish, and the sand itself seems to be made up of tiny shells. We really enjoyed wandering along the beach looking at all the different coloured shells

We stayed until sunset and turning the other direction, the moon was visible over the ocean. A really beautiful evening. The sunsets here never seem to last a really long time, but they have their own beauty with such a wide expanse of sky in the desert. Even though there are no clouds to bounce the colours off - there is a lovely warm glow over the whole sky which was beautiful , reflected in the tide pools.

I have no idea what this bird is - we will have to do some research, but it is absolutely stunning and nothing like we had ever seen before. We had a great day, just exploring and will definitely go back. Next time we will take a beach barbecue and stay and have supper on the beach. This time, we drove back and had dinner at Al Bandar in the souq, Derek had a hankering for a tray of hors d'oevres of the usual humous, moutabal, babaganoush etc. folowed by a mixed grill and washed down with lemon-mint drink. While we were sitting at the table outside, a parade of children all dressed in national costume came by singing the equivalent of "halloween apples"! It was the festival of Garangao where the children celebrate the 14th day of Ramadan and go around collecting chocolates and gifts. They all looked wonderful in their colourful dress and we saw a proud father taking a picture of his young son, probably not much more than 1 1/2 years old, the little fellow was dressed in the white outfit complete with headgear and he looked so cute. The same scene could be played out in many countries with many cultures. I always like to see the similarities rather than the differences.

2009-09-04T21:53:00.000-07:00

It has started to get a little cooler, so we thought it was time to go exploring on a beach. This beach is near Wakra which is a small town about half way on the drive from Doha to Messaid, to the jobsite. Doha is of course like a thumb sticking out into the ocean so you dont have to go very far to find a beach. As you can see, we pretty much had the place to ourselves. You did see other cars going along - but everyone spreads out, so you have lots of room. There are no facilities of any kind - just water and sand - oh and quite a bit of garbage. I think it all washes up on shore from the ocean. There are huge garbage containers back from the beach, so I think that there must be an effort to clean the beaches.

Now, I have seen lots of footprints on a beach before, people, birds, crabs etc. but never before have I seen camel footprints!

The idea of driving to this particular area was that there were mangrove swamps not too far away and there was supposed to be great birdwatching there. We did in fact see lots of birds, ones we had never seen before. I will put some pictures on the blog tomorrow of some we saw.

Ah! these were where the footprints came from! They were just sauntering along in a line when you looked away from the beach, back in the direction of the main road. There are no real roads there, you take a reasonably well travelled looking track off the main road in Wakra, and just head out in the direction of the ocean. There are many tracks just heading along the sea shore and you just stop anywhere you think looks interesting. There were certain places where the sand was quite soft and you had to be careful not to get stuck, but generally it was fairly hard packed and was made up of tiny shells and pieces of shells. I will put some more pictures up tomorrow.

2009-09-02T22:37:00.000-07:00

A few more pictures of our trip to England. We went to stay a few days at the house in Budleigh, the weather wasn't the greatest but we managed to fit in a few trips to the beach. The above picture was taken in Sidmouth, a place we had gone to for years as children. The picture was taken from Connaught gardens, which are even more beautifully kept now than they were went we went there as children. They have a theatre there in amongst the flowers where I remember Morris Dancers performing. There is also a nice tea place for a clotted cream tea. The beauty of the place is when the tide is out there is a huge sandy beach and the water is shallow, so it is a great place for kids. Many a sandcastle was made there and shrimping in the rock pools.

Now he is finally relaxed! Shades of the retirement time to come.

This is a picture of Budleigh beach and the reason it is quieter than the seaside places on either side of the town. The whole beach is made up of pebbles and there is a fairly steep drop off into the sea, so it is a great beach for fishing, you see lots of fishermen down here in the evening with their lines in the sea. Lots of crab pots are usually out in the bay and you can always gets fresh crab and fish at the little local fish shop. The walk along the front is about the only flat spot in Budleigh, the rest is hills which probably accounts for the ages reached by most of the residents from walking up and down them to the village. Two neighbours lived until 102 and 80 is still pretty spry in these parts.

This is the next beach to Budleigh, called Ladram bay. There are some interesting rock formations in the ocean and at low tide you can go around the point and there is a fantastic collection of rock pools - you have to keep an eye open for the tide though as it is very easy to get trapped when the tide is in. I think it is possible to climb up the cliffs in a pinch, but not something I would like to do. I ended up not joining the rest of the gang for this day as I took the opportunity to go to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham. It was rather a lot of travelling for one day and my foot hadn't recovered fully. Still, I had a really fun day and worth the travelling. It was interesting to see what kinds of things people in England were making and they had displays from the European Quilt guild as well. It was actually quite overwhelming, almost as bad as the one in Houston. It was held in the NEC in Birmingham, the exhibition centre. There was a direct train from Exeter to Birmingham every hour and then you went one stop on a local train to the Exhibition Centre, so it was very easy. Train travel is so great - you have a comfortable seat and lots of windows to see the countryside. They have a trolley with sandwhiches and snacks that comes along and the coffee actually was not bad. They even serve beer. There are lots of plugs for computers and the like and even have "quiet" carriages where no cell phones are allowed. I managed to get stocked up on a few things I couldn't find in Qatar and also bought a few books to learn a few tricks. The others had a great day in Ladram Bay and I got home to a great meal already prepared for me at the house. We managed to squeeze in quite a bit during our few days at the house and of course managed a cream tea at the mill in the next village. We also seemed to polish off the tub of clotted cream we bought at the grocery store. Time to get back up to the gym and the weather is cool enough now that I might actually venture out onto the Corniche for a walk. It should be nice and quiet during the day as last night around midnight, when I couldn't sleep, I looked out the window at the corniche and it was packed with cars and traffic - night becomes day during Ramadan.

Trip to England

2009-09-02T04:14:00.000-07:00

We got back from England on Sunday where we had a wonderful family time with my daughter and her family and we also met up with my nephew and family who were visiting from the States. So, it was all a little chaotic, but lots of fun, all planned around baby naptimes with lots of sticky hugs. We were wined and dined royally.

I had never spent much time in the Oxford area, so enjoyed trips to various places. The picture above is from Buscot Park. It is a National Trust garden and they had a really interesting mixture of gardens. This picture is showing the paths that went off for ages, very straight, but intersected by other paths and water gardens, there was really a long way you could walk around with interesting statues, ponds and water features. There was also a walled garden where they had an interesting mixture of fruit trees trained up the walls and flowering shrubs mixed together with runner beans and cabages amongst other things. Really, mixtures of plants and vegetables I would not have thought of mixing, but they actually looked quite interesting and sculptural together. Something to think of in future garden plans.

Another day we went to see the Uffington White Horse, which you can barely make out in this picture, but it was visible for miles around as it was cut into the chalk hills. We walked up the hill to see it close up and see the spectacular view of the countryside from the top of the hill. It was so lovely to see the green of the countryside and we even enjoyed the clouds and sprinkles of rain - something we have not seen since April in Doha. In fact, I dont even think there were clouds when it sprinked with rain there - it just seemed to come out of the blue sky. I took lots of pictures of clouds while I was in England and lots of pictures of green fields and trees!

Another place we went to in the area was Avebury, where they have huge stone circles made out of smaller rocks than Stonehenge. They are really spread over a wide area and we walked around quite a bit of it. Interesting to see a few stones missing where there was a lovely stone house nearby - I gather the same thing happens near the great wall of China! I had wanted to visit Avebury for a long time and was well worth the visit. It is certainly a very historic area with excavations that looked like it might have been a moat and barrows in various places in the countryside. A very ancient place.

We also went to Oxford. I had been there a very long time ago and had gone to the Ball there with an old boyfriend. I really could barely remember it although I am sure it hasn't changed much. The buildings are just as old and lovely as always. One place I hadn't been to before was the Pitt Rivers museum which is the picture above. You get to it through the natural history museum. The Pitt Rivers is mostly about different cultures, but it is arranged in an interesting way with like items together, so you will have a case full of baskets from N. America, Africa, etc. then the next case will be pottery from different places. An interesting way to display it. It was the complete opposite of our museum in Doha, here there was so much stuff, everthing was crammed together. It was so dark you took flashlights with you to shine on things to see them. We had very little time before they closed, so plan to go back. The Natural history museum was also crammed full with tons of dinosaurs and rocks and various bits and pieces, stuffed animals, you name it - even a dodo bird. Definitely a place you could spend days in. The Ashmolean museum unfortunately was closed for renovations, so look forward to going there when it opens again. It was really interesting to explore a different part of the country as we usually just go straight to Devon. However, we spent some time at the house there and tomorrow I will show some pictures.

2009-08-14T22:55:00.000-07:00

I went with a friend and her daughter to the gold souq this week. We travelled on the bus as they had not been on one before and fortunately we got one of the newer buses and I think they will use it more often, now they have seen how clean and easy it is to use. It ends right at the gold souq, so it is very convenient. I could not believe how many little shops there were, in 2 1/2 hours we had only done a small portion and already we had found a lot of things we were interested in. No purchases this time, but we had more of an idea of the prices. We were so busy looking I forgot to take photographs, so will have to do that next time. Afterwards we met the guys for dinner in Souq Waqif which is just across the road and found a new restaurant which is my new favourite called Cinque Senses. We had never been in before as it looked so formal and expensive with high backed chairs and tablecloths. However, the food was Italian, not nearly as expensive as the big hotels and really great food. Above is a photo of Semifreddo with nougat and almond sauce - absolutely delicious. But everything else we had was excellent and when we left, the staff all line up at the door to wish us good evening. A really classy place and definitely one destined to be our new favourite.

On the way home we stopped off on the Corniche to have a breath of fresh air and to try taking some night time shots of West Bay. Everyone makes such a good use of the Corniche, especially after dark when it is cooler. You can see families out walking, people even jogging, and people just getting some exercise and being sociable, or just sitting and looking at the ocean.

Last night we didn't end up going on a road trip, the humidity has finally arrived. We had been told about it, but it really does hit you like a ton of bricks when you go outside, and your glasses instantly fog up. There was a leaving/thank you party for the family who has organized a lot of the desert trips. I just thought it was interesting that the hosts had moved their living furniture outside on the patio for the party! You just never think of rain ever here, so it is quite logical to be able to put good furniture and carpets outside as you would never have to move it inside in a hurry - in fact you could leave it outside most of the year. It might get a little damp with the high humidity now though. Good time for us to go on R&R.

2009-08-07T23:04:00.000-07:00

Although the weather has been much cooler recently, we decided to stay in town today and go to the Museum of Islamic Art as Derek had only been there for a short time and he wanted to see more of the museum. I think it will take a few more trips for him to see it all. It was hard to get him away from his seat in front of the huge fountain as he was enjoying sitting in the spray, getting cooled off! Some friends went on the desert trip this weekend after it was cancelled last weekend as it was too dangerous to go. It had been really hot and humid, plus there had been a sandstorm and you could hardly see the buildings out of our window. Really though, I haven't found the heat too bad for the last while, although I am told this has been a really cool summer. A bit earlier in the day I had gone back to the silk shop in the area where all the workers congregate on a Friday. This time we found the place in a complete mess as the block near the shop is apparently going to be torn down. The little tailor shops are all moving to another part of town and the place where I get my threads etc. said they are turning off the electricity today. This place is certainly in a state of flux! I had read about it in the newspaper but hadn't realized it was to be quite so soon.

I have been interested recently in all the different styles of woven designs found in the Islamic culture - the similar design is found on windows, doors etc. in fact you find it everywhere. So this time I went to the museum, I focused on looking for the different types of this design and on this little box it looks almost similar to a celtic design.

This is a closeup of a door and the design has 12 points, although they are not really points, the windows of the mosque I put in the last blog had 10 and you often see 8. I tried sewing one and it actually is a continuous line if you sew it in a certain way. Something for me to explore further.

The same design is found on the circular light found in the museum - very modern, but using the same ancient design, using 8 this time. It always forms a star in the centre and you often see the same type of star on pottery or tiles. By the end of the day, my ankle was starting to complain, but it is definitely on the mend and the swiming I have been doing seems to be helping.

If the temperature stays down next Friday, we are thinking of doing more of a day trip somewhere as it has been a while since we have wanted to risk getting stuck in the heat. Pretty soon we will be off for our holiday and when we come back we will be in the middle of Ramadan. Everyone is getting ready for it and the grocery store is full of all kinds of dates; fresh, dried, honeyed, you name it. There is also a huge display of nuts and all kinds of ingredients for cooking. I understand after the fast during the day, the meal in the evening becomes a party and people stay up really late. At the end of Ramadan, Eid there are parties and gifts etc. The mall is decorated with giant swags of fabric in maroon, like the flag, with giant gold tassels. I understand there will be spectacular lights in the town centre, and during the evenings there are tents set up along the corniche serving food and there are firework displays by the water. Should be an interesting time.

2009-07-27T06:32:00.000-07:00

It has been a fairly eventful couple of weeks since I last put up a blog. The above pictures is of a martial arts group who put on a demonstration in the local mall. They were amazing, particularly the young boy in front, who was able to do the most amazing contortion feats. They got a good crowd out to see them as the new Harry Potter movie had opened the same week. Four of the movie theatres in the mall carried the movie, so there were lots of young people about.

This Friday, Derek and I joined a mosque tour, put on by the Islamic cultural centre. They provided a bus to a mosque which is in a nearby town. We were encouraged to bring our cameras and questions, and they lent the women in the group abayas (not sure of the spelling) to wear to the mosque. They gave us a demonstration of the call to prayer and the prayers in the service. A friend of mine from the stitch group had told me she was going to be there, but Derek also found a couple of fellows he works were there also with their families. It seemed a fairly modern mosque, but the details of the design were beautifully done.

The bottom of the mirhab (? I think that is the name which is the direction of Mecca) was an intricate tile mosaic

Here is a closeup of the tile. We went back to the centre at the end and they provided a traditional meal - men in one area and the women in the other, divided by a partition. The food was very good, but I had difficulty managing sitting on the seat so low to the ground and managing my flying black robes, so in the end didn't eat a whole lot. It gave me a new appreciation of how the local women seem to manage their dress with elegance. However, I met a women who was part of a group of Islamic ladies visiting from Germany, studying arabic and being toured around Qatar. I was amazed to be invited to join the group the next day on their tour. I accepted their invitation of course, but while I was on my way to meet them the next day, I stepped off the curb awkwardly and ended up in a heap on the sidewalk. The next moments are a blur, but I was helped to my feet and found myself shortly in a taxi being taken back to the apartment. So I have spent the last few days with my feet up, icing my sore ankle. Again, the groups of ladies, both the visiting germans, plus the local ladies who invited them here, paid me a visit in our apartment, bearing gifts of beautiful roses in the colours of qatar, and a huge, and I mean huge and beautifully wrapped display of chocolates - just like the ones I had seen in the stores and been amazed at how beautifully they were arranged. I was quite overcome by both their generosity and their concern for my well being. I am hoping my ankle will have healed sufficiently to attend their going away party next Friday.

2009-07-15T00:04:00.000-07:00

This isn't the greatest picture, but I hope it gives a bit of the sense of chaos that we found in this area. We are setting ourselves the task of finding new areas of town to explore on Fridays and I particularly wanted to find this area as the Bombay Silk shop is here, which I am delighted to say we found and it has become my new favourite place. Downstairs is full of beautiful silks and upstairs is full of cottons and linens and saris with beautiful wedding saris. I could spend hours there poking around. Opposite, to the left of the picture is a little side street and it is full of tailor supply shops mixed in with bicycle shops. Quite a mixture. One shop we went in had cotton threads from my mother's era or even my grandmother's! with enough dust that you could hardly tell the colour. However, the prices were really cheap and I got a new pair of knitting needles for 8QAR, quite a bargain. Although they look like they may have been previously owned! The other interesting thing about this area on a Friday, it was absolutely packed with mostly Indian men, you could barely drive down the street for the people wandering about. I found out later that this is the area of town they congregate in and find their friends on Fridays. Most of the men work on the construction sites and this is their one day off. Pretty chaotic, but certainly interesting. I asked my Indian taxi driver yesterday for what he thought would be a really authentic indian restaurant and he suggested the restaurant next to the Silk shop, so I can see we will be visiting the area again soon.

It is way too hot to be out much during the day but we went for a walk down to the Corniche the other night and it was a beautiful night, less hot, but still warm enough that walking the block there and back and a bit of a walk on the Corniche itself was enough. It was way more humid down by the water, but then there is usually a bit of a breeze as well. Local people were greeting people they knew as they walked along and it was a generally fun atmosphere. A number of the new buildings now have their lights on and this particular building changes colours all the time, from blue, to red to green. Very colourful! There are lots of others nearby that are lit up as well and I will have to spend one evening taking pictures of them all. Here is just a teaser to start with!

Yesterday I went to Villagio Mall, which is way the other end of town. We had gone here on a Friday once before, but hadn't been back since. I found out that there is a taxi stand here, so knew that I would be able to get back. A problem here as it is really easy to get places, but not so easy to find a taxi to take you back. Anyway, I thought I would try it out and had no problem. This is one of the newer malls and is built on an Italian theme as you can see. They have gondolas you can ride in and the whole place looks like Venice. I had a great time wandering around the shops - the usual mixture of mostly British and North American shops. There was one whole wing with very high end shops including all the Designer shops as well as Tiffanys etc. Oh to be 20 again and to be able to wear the beautiful gowns in the window of Ralph Lauren, they were stunningly simple and elegant.

Everywhere you went in the mall were these beautiful mosaics in the floor. I had nice time shopping there and stocked up on some workout wear from Marks and Spencers for the Pilates class which starts tomorrow and a few other things that were on sale. With so many people away for the summer it is was quite quiet and pleasant. I will have to be more adventurous and try some of the other malls I haven't been to yet.

2009-06-26T22:38:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of the new Convention centre being built in Education city. It takes the Sidra tree for its inspiration which is the symbol of the Qatar Foundation and is designed by Arata Isozaki. The Sidra tree is also known at the lote tree (ziziphus spina-christi) and is mentioned in the Quran. It is a symbol of knowlege of the divine and also a symbol of life in the desert. Aparently there are stories of scholars and poets who used to sit under the shade of these trees to talk and write poetry. It was also a source of traditional medicines. It is actually an amazing sight to see as it is so huge and quite innovative construction. Yet another example of the different styles of building going on in Doha.

This weekend we didn't do much, and although the temperature didn't seem too bad we had been to a party the night before, held as a joint celebration for St. Jean Baptiste day and Canada day. It was really nice, held outside at the Intercontinental hotel. Lots of people from the company go there for the fitness facilities and they hold fitness classes, step aerobics etc. This time of year it is nice to take a class and then go and sit on a deckchair on their beach. This was the first time I had been there and may look into taking a class. It was a beautiful night and they had tons of little tasty things to nibble, all bought around by their attentive staff. However, the music was loud and it was the end of a work day for Derek, so we decided to walk around a bit to look at the pool area and the deckchairs looked so inviting under the palm trees, we just thought we would sit down for a bit. Well, I had been chatting away for a while, before I realized that there were no comments being returned and so he snoozed while I enjoyed the breezes looking up through the palm trees at the stars. You know you have turned into old fogies when you prefer sitting and looking at the stars instead of being at a party! Which brings me to Dates. Summer is the season for dates and these are the dates on the palm tree where I stand in the shade waiting for my bus. I noticed at the hotel, they have put netting around each individual clump of dates as I guess they can make a big mess.

We decided to check out the Wholesale markets on Friday. We went to the fruit and vegetable one and bought a few things and then drove around the animal one - lots of sheep, goats and camels for sale. At the back of the wholesale markets is the Omani market where we found the dates for sale. It is a small market and more authentic and old fashioned. You can buy plants for your garden here and big pots to put in your garden. There had been an article in the newpaper talking about the different varieties of dates and the prices you can expect to pay for them. Mupsri, Kanagi, Nagal, Sagai and Tamai are some of the types of dates they sell. All have to be tasted before purchase and not much bargaining goes on as most sell at the same prices.

Here are some of our purchases. They will keep for a while as they are only partially ready. They are ready when they are all brown and fairly soft. They are very sweet and fleshy, not at all like the dried up ones we get a home. They are utterly addictive so we will have to put them out of sight. The prices apparently get higher the closer to Ramadan you get. Dates are one of the traditional foods eaten first when the fast is broken each evening. There are quite a few palm trees with dates near the building, so think I will go on a photography trip during the week to get some shots as they are starting to ripen.

2009-06-21T06:21:00.000-07:00

A few more photos from our desert rose expedition. Here is the way you have to get them out of the ground. There were a whole lot of holes dug previously. You need a pick axe to actually get them out. It was way too hot a day to be doing this. We will go again when it cools off.

We saw lots of camels in the desert. They didn't seem to be wild, but rather that they were put out to pasture like cattle. This was a camel ranch. They had camels in these pens, over and above the ones out in the desert.

I just had to take a picture of this. The only green patch for miles around, seems to be a tennis court in the middle of nowhere.

This was just a small sample, but it is really a nice one and shows why they are called desert roses. The aim is to go back and find a big one of these!

2009-06-19T23:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we went for another adventure, this time we went with some other people to go to a place on the way to Um Bab, close to the village of Al Kharsaa where we were looking for desert roses. Once we had turned off the highway, we pretty quickly were into the normal desert around here, not like the dunes from the other trip. The desert you find mostly is pretty flat with scrubby shrubs and quite rocky. We saw several of these lizzards during the trip. They were yellowish skinned and this one was about 1 1/2 feet long. Pretty ugly looking. There are supposed to be snakes and scorpions in the desert, but we haven't seen any. We usually wear sneakers or in this case hiking boots just in case!

On the highway you often see camel signs and this is what you see. It is amazing they find enough to survive on in the desert, but you see them eating the little shrubby plants. I dont think they are really wild, but rather like the cattle you see on the prairies. Some of them have brands on them and some of them are hobbled so they cant wander too far. We went past a camel farmer which I will put on the next blog tomorow.

We drove by lots of camels and they just kept on chewing and paid little or no attention to us. When we had just turned off the highway, near the village, I saw a camel scratching himself on a guide wire from a telephone pole. He was having such a great scratch! I was amazed he didn't pull the whole things down he was being so energetic!

This is what we were looking for. Most of them you had to dig for with a shovel and pick axe. The fellow who had promised some tools to us on the jobsite unfortunately didn't come through, so this time we were mostly observers, and borrowed some tools from our companions. Anyway, we were there by about 8 am and it was still so hot we had to sit in the car after a bit. So, I think we will be doing this again in the fall when the temperatures get nice again. There were some amazingly good samples just lying beside the holes that they had been dug out of. Surprising to me that these were rejects, so I am interested to see what the good ones look like. It was a fun trip though and one I look forward to doing again in cooler weather. The other ladies on the trip were telling me that when we get to the nice weather in the fall, we wont want to leave as it is so pleasant here, sunny with ideal temperatures. One told me it is like spring again in the fall as the plants along the corniche are all replanted when the weather cools and things come to life again. I look forward to that!

2009-06-13T21:20:00.000-07:00

Some more photos from our trip to the desert. The sand was carved into really interesting shapes

We stopped at an inland lake and there were tons of hermit crabs. The children weren't interested in holding one, just looking from a safe distance!

The camp we went to had many varieties of tents to sleep in. This one right on the ocean and up from any creepy crawly things looked the best to me.

This was where we had our swim, it was a protected area. The sandbar was covered when the sea came in a bit further. But it made a giant swimming pool, quite shallow, but deep enough to swim without touching bottom in some places. Very warm and salty as I said before. All in all it was a really fun trip.

2009-06-13T06:27:00.000-07:00

This Friday we went on a trip to the desert to see the inland sea, with a group from the office. We thought we were going to camp overnight, but due to a misunderstanding we came back around 9 p.m. which was just fine. It gave me enough of a taste to know that I want to do more! It was so much fun. Above is our driver letting the air out of his tires - the first step on a trip to the desert, I gather you get better traction that way. He was a great driver and showed us some amazing moves. Not only did we hug the contour of some of the sand dunes, rather like a bike in a velodrome, but at one point we went downhill backwards on one of the steeper parts! It was really exciting. Definitely something you want to do with someone who has experience of the area. I gather there are regularly accidents with expats thinking they can just take a 4 X 4 and go for a drive in the desert. Experience counts.

This is what it is all about. The scenery was truly stunning and so vast that photographs don't really do it justice. Some parts were really carved by the wind and breathtakingly beautiful. We stopped several times to take photographs, but it just left me wanting more.

Here is a view from the car, we would go up this seemingly innocuous hill, only to find we were on the edge of a precipice on the other side! we would go swooping up and down, just like a roller coaster.

When we got to the camp, we had time for a leisurely swim before being served a delicious traditional meal. I have never been so hot - the humidity by the water was astounding and I couldn't believe I was instantly soaking wet. My glasses fogged up instantly on getting out of the car - rather like Canadian winters in reverse. The camp was equipped with change rooms, showers and portapotties - albeit somewhat primitive, it did the job. The sea was just like a warm bath and very very salty, but when the sun went down it was refreshing and we sat out having our meal with a nice breeze off the water. This is a picture of where we could have sat to eat and probably sleep, but it was much cooler eating at the tables by the sea where it was open to the breeze. We headed back home again, fairly sedately compared to the drive out and after filling up the tires again, we were driven back to our cars for the trip back to town. It was all really so much fun. I will put more pictures on the blog tomorrow.

2009-06-03T04:28:00.000-07:00

I am back from my trip to Kansas City. I don't know what I was expecting, but just loved Kansas City. It is full of art and the Surface Design Conference was held at the Art Centre. Really close by was the Kemper Museum which was a small museum but full of modern art and a great restaurant. Also close by was the Nelson Atkins which was a quite large museum which covered art both old and new. They had just completed a new wing where the fashion show was held during the conference which was every bit as wild as the one at ACAD. We got to Kansas City during Memorial Day Weekend and on the Saturday night we went down to the old Station which is now a museum and the building in this picture. They held an outdoor concert with a mixture of the Philharmonic with jazz and blue grass bands amongst other things. Mostly patriotic music and the colours projected on the building were stunning, but this was the one I liked best. The public sat on the hill opposite which formed a natural amphitheatre and behind us at the end of the performance was a huge firework display. It was a gorgeous warm evening and the crowd was friendly and warm to complement the evening.

This was one of the many sculptural pieces outside the Nelson Atkins. They also had a sculpture garden at the back of the museum open to the public even when the museum is closed. It was full of Henry Moore's amongst other things. I just couldn't get over the amount of sculptures around the city, no matter what part of town you were in. We went to the older part of town which has been turned into lots of different galleries. It was obviously the seedier part of town, although it is obviously in transition. Even there, we found sculptures both formal and informal. A bike shop had stacked a whole pile of bikes and parts on a pole, which looked quite neat.

This was the dining area at the Nelson Atkins, it was a serve yourself kind of buffet but very upmarket. The town is twinned with Seville in Spain and for good reason. There were almost as many fountains as there were sculptures and obvious touches of spanish architecture and tilework all over the place. The Plaza which is a shopping area has a lot of elements where you would think you were back in Spain with lots of Moorish influences, so could have been back in Doha!

I dont know the name of the flower on this tree but was very orchid like. I have never seen so many types of trees in my life. The city is really green and lush. The conference itself was fantastic. I was surrounded by very well know people in the surface design field and in the lectures and events you could be equally likely to be sitting next to Alice Kettle and Jane Dunnewold as someone completely new to the field. It was a fabulously well run event and hardly a minute to myself with all the events. The class with Jane Dunnewold was really interesting and learned all kinds of new things. The evening lectures with other teachers were really interesting and the lecures and demonstrations were just teasers leaving you with wanting to know much more. Many of the teachers had concurrent shows in the galleries so the gallery tour was even more pertinent after meeting the teachers. The members show was really inspirational. The last day was an informal invitation to Jason Pollen's house which was full of his artwork. By the end of it all my brain was numb but I picked up all kinds of dvds and books to entertain me during the hot summer months in Doha. If you ever have an occasion to visit Kansas City do so and I am sure you will find it as enjoyable as I did and I really didn't have time to see very much. It is the home of Hallmark Cards, barbecues and Jazz. Apparently during the days of prohibition it was know as the Paris of the Plains with jazz and beer parlours. It was the home of Charlie Parker and is on the banks of the Missouri river. My flight home was long but uneventful. I think I am up to date with my movies now, you can fit a lot in on a 13 hour flight! On the flight from Washington to Doha I had all three seats to myself, which was wonderful.

2009-05-20T07:40:00.000-07:00

As the days get warmer and the further afield I need to go to explore new things, I find my blog is getting less frequent. There are lots of things I want to see and do, but heat definitely becomes a factor. On the weekend we went to an outdoor movie in the grounds of the Museum. As with every night, it was warm and breezy on the edge of the ocean. A lovely evening to be outside. The movie was called The Identity of the Soul. One night it was shown in Arabic and the next English. The film is on five large screens and is about revenge, reconciliation and the individual and is on a world tour - so see it if it comes to your town. In the English Version, Vanessa Redgrave is the narator. It is about two poems, one Terje Vigen by Henrik Ibsen and the other A soldier Dreams of White Lilies by Mahmoud Darwish. The picture doesn't really give you much of a sense of the scene. But what was equally as fascinating as the film were the white plastic chairs which were set out for the masses, then there were a few rows of the same seats but they had gold fabric covers and looked very elegant considering, then in front of that was a row of very elaborate plush high backed large armchair seats where the VIPs sat. Typical stratas of society around here. However, the whole thing was free and disappointingly poorly attended. However, the home team was playing soccer at the same time,and everything stops for that - so hopefully the night before was more popular.

Normally I can see the sea and quite a ways into the distance from my window, but occasionally we get these fogs or maybe sandstorms I am not sure which it is - a combination really. Walking outside with all the sand from the construction blowing in your face, I can see why people cover their faces here - it is a real necessity. It gets in your hair too - so covering your head isn't a bad idea. I bought a couple of cheap scarves for the next time. I didn't want a fancy scarf as it would just get covered in this very fine dusty sand that gets into everything.

We were going to go away for a break, but there really wasn't much time to fit it in before I go away and in the end we just stayed home. Derek still hasn't lost his touch for fancy breakfasts and this was a nice surprise to wake up to. The additional different fruit is guava, second from the top, and a very sour green plum on top(which we have a case of unfortunately - pays to do your research ahead of time). I will have to get creative to find a way to eat them. They are very crunchy, like an apple, but very tart and about the size of a crabapple. The guavas fill the house with perfume as you walk in the house. I will continue with the blog on my return.

2009-05-14T06:03:00.000-07:00

This is a little fish shop that we went to last week. It is just like a fish and chip shop as far as the decor is concerned and was on a little back street. However, I think this could become a really favourite place of ours. The fish is laid out as you see, in ice. You then pick out which fish you want and then you pick one of the numbered pictures above to choose the way in which you want it cooked. We went with a bunch of people and so there were a variety of choices of how they were done. We got to taste a number of them and each one was better than the one before. So I can see we will have to go back a lot of times to work our way along the list of flavours! Next time, we wont start with the soup as we just got too full. However, the soup was full of clams, fish, shrimp and crab legs like a bouillibase - a meal in itself.

I was waiting for a friend to pick me up in front of the building the other day, so thought I would take a quick picture. sometimes this bush is loaded with flowers and other days not. However, I have never seen a dead flower yet, the place is immaculately kept.

I went to the souq for my drawing class today and as usual I went on the bus. Sometimes the bus comes within a couple of minutes of me getting to the bus stop and sometimes it takes so long I have to get a cab to make it to class on time. Today the bus came early so had some time to waste before class, so went to the falcon shop on the way. There was only one lonely falcon there today as the owner said the season has finished and wont start again until the fall. There are rows of hoods made of leather for the falcons. Some are quite ornate and he wanted to sell me one as a souvenir but so far I have resisted. But they really are works of art and I suspect I will come home with a souvenir before long!

For my "arty" friends, this is what we drew today. Quite a change from my other art class, where we were encouraged to draw large and free with charcoal. In this class, we spend a long time drawing the same thing, refining it again and again - this took at least an hour if not more. Smudging to get shadows is not allowed - it is all to do with the different hardness of pencils and crosshatching. I was really very pleased with this. So much to learn - so little time. I came back in a taxi with one of my classmates whose husband works with Derek and lives nearby - so that was nice. Everyone is very friendly in the class. Some of them are doing amazing drawings. I think I will take the painting class next - but dont know if I will have to wait until fall. These are beautiful shoes, but I wouldn't want to walk in them!

2009-05-11T03:03:00.000-07:00

This was a picture I took in the souq the other day. There were a couple of horses riding along. I am not quite sure of their purpose, but they are certainly very colourful.

This is another fountain along the Corniche. You certainly appreciate the running water as the weather gets hotter.

I found this building again. I really like the old superimposed on the new. Truly the face of Doha with old and new combined.

This is the flower from yesterdays blog. It appears that is grows out of the ground yellow and turns into this brown plant. I haven't found its name yet. It looks like something called cistanche tubulosa, but can't be sure. We definitely need to find a natural history expert to fill us in on all the details.

2009-05-09T23:03:00.000-07:00

We went looking for Al Khor island last Friday. However, when we got there, we realized the information we had from the Natural History Group lacked the map which we hadn't realized didn't print off. Still, no worries for these intrepid explorers. We think we found the place, but when they said we would have to wade through a couple of cut throughs, we didn't bargain on wading up to our hips. See picture above. It was quite wide and hip deep. It is tidal, so had we waited around a few hours it might have got a little less. It might have also had a bit to do with the numerous little black crabs skittering about and I mean a lot - 50 - 100 just under the first rock. There were tons of small fish too - so it wasn't really appealing to wade through this.

It is basically an area of mangroves and supposedly a great bird watching area. We did see a number of different ones that we couldn't identify. I think we will have to join the Natural History society in the fall and go on some of their trips with people who know the local birds and flowers. This flower was growing on bushes in the swamps and reminded me of the ones at home as they had a very strong perfurme, with tiny flowers, like wolf willow. It must be in the same family.

This was growing out of the ground in various places and it turns into this brown crispy thing and you see lots of those. I will post that next time. This is very yellow and bright and waxy.

2009-05-09T01:01:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pictures of the outside of the Museum of Islamic Art. There is a picture of the actual building on my very first blog. This is a picture of the outside courtyard on the way to the education wing and library. It is a wonderfuly calm place, full of water and there are some simple fountains just out of the picture. You can see a view of the West Bay area through the arches. The ball is made of branches either bleached in the sun or washed up on the beach. I have more closeups I may put up on another day. It is a very tranquil place on a hot day.

This area is the actual corridor leading to the other wing. To the left, through the arches is the courtyard in the picture above. How do they get the trees to grow exactly the same? It would have made a better picture at a slightly different angle, but the man on duty was at the end of the trees and a lady was sitting in the arches to the right looking through the arches to the left and she was right in my picture. She looked so peaceful, she didn't look like she was going to move any time soon! I will try another photo another day.

This is the path leading up to the entrance of the museum. To the left of this are similar steps, but water running down them and to the left of that is another row of palm trees like this. This is my oasis in the city. Any time I want my artistic fix, and tranquility - this is where you are likely going to find me.

2009-05-07T07:19:00.000-07:00

I Went to my second art class today - boy, are they tough. We did the drawing upside down exercise, but the number of lines in the drawings were astounding. Mine was of a geisha girl with a million folds in her clothing - slight exageration, but I kept getting lost. She told us to just reveal a little of the drawing at a time and to work our way down very slowly. Very interesting exercise. Much more practice is required! This time I got to the class early and had time to chat with a few of the others who were early too. A first for me, as I met three people in the class - one who had been at the Quilt Guild meeting and I didn't recognize her, but she had thought she had met me before. The other girl is the wife of someone Derek works with and the third person was born in the same place I was in England. It truly is a small world.

After the class I went across the road to the Islamic museum again. I hadn't been back since the first day I was here pretty much. Since then I have got a book on the history of Islamic Art and Architecture. It is a small book, but packed with information. It was interesting to return to the museum this time with some understanding of the history and where the influences were coming from. Lots more to learn, but was fun to see things with a fresh eye.

I thought this time I would show some pictures of the museum's interior. The architecture is truly stunning. Lots of people who have been here have told me they don't think there is much in the way of art in the museum. However, I think if they have read some history, they would be amazed at how many important things historically are in here. What's more they are displayed in such a way as you can often see the underside or backs of things which are equally or more decorated. The top picture is of the inside of the dome -
full of different planes, like the rest of the building. The second picture is of the staircase, or at least the bottom of it. It really does seem to float and cause a pattern of its own.

This is the bottom of the staircase - beautiful tiling. I think this pattern has a name but am not sure if this is the bent palm one or not. Anyway, it is a stylized version of a design you see in a lot of places.

This is the ceiling in the hall way both to the washrooms! but also to the other building which will house the library and education centre. I am told this part will be open in October. I have some pictures of the outside area at the end of this corridoor of a beautiful courtyard. I will put those on tomorrow.

2009-05-04T07:44:00.000-07:00

A few flower pictures that I took a while ago. Bougainvillia - not sure of the spelling. You can see these poor bougainvillia bushes struggling to grow everywhere. There are some beside the shopping centre seemingly growing out of the sand. It seems to be a thriving bush, others seem to be having a harder time, but I never realized before how hardy they must be. They are certainly a lovely bright patch to see every now and again.

This looked like a secret garden to me - in fact it is the back side of the hotel near the water and I am told these bougainvillia bushes line the road to the carpark.

This is what it takes to get some plants to grow. These are regular petunias in the colours of the Qatari flag - purple and white. All the piping is drip hoses that keep these plants watered, I am told in some cases four times a day! The plants around our building all have irrigation as dense as this, but they obviously turn ours on, as opposed to these, where they are struggling.

I dont know the name of this flower, but it grows almost like a weed. I went to the stitching group yesterday and the hostess lives in a compound so has a bit of a garden in the back and this was growing profusely, to the point that she has to keep cutting it back. She is an Alberta girl from way back and was trying her hand at growing brocoli and green peppers. It was so hot the green peppers didn't get beyond pea size before they fell off and the brocoli grew so fast and went to seed hardly before she got a crop at all. However, we do get quite a lot of locally grown produce, particularly tomatoes, potatoes and some herbs. The local produce is always way way cheaper than the imported and tastes really good.

Hooray, Hooray! I successfully have found a reliable driver. He picked me up yesterday on time and was even early to pick me up at the other end. He was fairly pricey - but worth it to know I can have transportation at my beck and call. It is far cheaper than me renting a car and getting into an accident on a roundabout. If I was living here for longer I probably would want a car, but so far, I think the combination of bus and hired car with the odd taxi thrown in will work. At least I dont have the trapped feeling any longer as I can go where I want, when I want. He explained several times that he was available 24 hours a day!

The stitching group was really fun. There were about ten people, two from Australia, two Albertans, one from Norway and the rest were mostly from Texas. All were from the quilting group and are mostly traditional quilters. But boy, get a group of women together and as usual the information is just flying. I learned where to find the best endocrinologist in the area or in the world according to her (should Derek need one before we get home!), where to buy cranberry juice, what sewing machine not to buy in the local grocery store, where to buy the best cotton material, where to buy the best silk for cheapest price etc. etc. etc. Someone from the group is tasked to pick me up next week, so I dont have to worry about the driver whisking me off early. It's great. Well we are off for Indian food tonight as someone from the office is leaving. It is certainly a revolving door around here. Different people are here on different contracts for different time periods. One of the young fellows who is always cleaning in the lobby and helped us bring the groceries in; he is from Napal as are a lot of people we have met. He reminded me he is from the mountains and also is feeling the heat - he has been here a year and has another year in his contract. Lots and lots of expats here, far from home.

2009-05-02T04:51:00.000-07:00

This is the door to my drawing class in the souq. Aren't they lovely doors? There were several different nationalities of expats taking the class with me, which makes it very interesting. Judging by their drawing, most had had some experience. We started with doing various exercises to learn our tools but the exercise I have a picture of below was completely new to me. We had to scribble the shape of the vase one was the inside shape and the other the negative space. We had to scribble it from side to side and not do the outline. It was quite interesting as after a bit your brain shut off and you started to see it as volume. It was surprisingly hard to do. Several of the exercises were hard, so I think it will be a really good class. We even have homework to do - a drawing a day at least, does this sound familiar to my Articulation friends?

Yesterday was Derek's day off but it was so hot that we decided we would do what every other person in doha seems to do and that was to go to the mall! We went to one I hadn't been to before, called Villagio. In the centre of the mall there is a canal with gondolas you can hire. The place was crazily busy as there also seem to be a lot of sales on now. The ice rink was packed with kids on skates, I had no idea ice skating as as popular as it seems to be. There are ice rinks in several of the malls. These lights were on the way to the mall. I have never seen any like this before. Half the lights point in one direction and the other in the other. We came home at night and they dont seem to be terribly practical, but they certainly look effective.

This was just beside the mall where there seems to be a park area. It is as tall as a tall high rise and in the dark it has a screen on it showing ads. This was used as the torch in the Asian games that were held here a few years ago. They are like Calgary in that they were very proud of holding these games and there are lots of references to them with monuments and sports arenas. I believe they are hoping to get the Olympics and they certainly have the facilities to back up their bid and the money to carry them off. Apparently the flame was lit with a horseman carrying the torch to the top of the tower. Dont know how that was done, but it must have been spectacular.

This is the inside scribbling of my jug. I can just see this done in machine embroidery! maybe I do need a sewing machine after all, they are fairly inexpensive at the grocery store! Anyway, as you can see, it is really had to get the sides symetrical and she kept telling us to go slowly.

Before the class, I went early and got the taxi to drop me off at the fabric souk to poke around and buy some white silk for dyeing. It was a big nerve racking as bartering is not in my nature, but I did buy some and I did bargain a little, but I am sure I paid too much. It seemed really cheap, so I will have to do a test to see if it really is silk. I am told everyone is really honest here, so I am hoping so.

Getting home was a whole other experience. Taxis here are a real problem. Getting to places seems to be easy as there is a taxi stand at the local mall a block away. However, getting back is next to impossible. All the taxis you see are full, that is if you see any at all. Even at the souk, they do not allow taxis and so you have to go out to a neighbouring street to hail one. After my class, it was noon and over 42 degrees. No taxis stopped and I walked over to the corniche in the hopes of seeing some - walking home was not an option in these temperatures. Then I realized I was close to a bus stop and sure enough in a few minutes, along came a bus. It only cost $1 and it stopped right by my building. I was the only woman and a man stood up and let me have the front seat and even took my money and handed it to the driver for me. Very nice of him. I rarely see women on the busses, but they come frequently, they go to the places I want to go, and they are cheap. So I will certainly use them for my classes and getting to the souq and the museum. However, tomorrow is my stitch group and I am trying a limousine service for that. I am told they are not always reliable, but her house in not too far from a big hotel so figure I could always get a taxi there or I know one of the ladies would take me home if I am in a bind. However, it will be one more learning experience. Lets hope it works out all right then I can go further afield and be more adventurous. There are lots of places I want to explore as long as I have the transportation thing figured out.

2009-04-27T07:42:00.000-07:00

A few more pictures of what I have seen around Doha. This is FANAR which is the Islamic cultural centre. The building represents a light house and is intended to be a beacon of light for muslims. This is where we went the other day and saw the mosqe. Apparently you can walk up to the top of the building if you take a tour, which I will do sometime before we leave. This is where they teach arabic classes and also cultural classes.

On the Corniche is this giant oyster and pearl which is a lovely refreshing fountain. There is a quite large cascade of water on the opposite side, but I also wanted to show the back of the shell as well. It is quite large. The pearl is about eye level. Doha of course was originally a pearl fishing village. Around the time that Japanese pearls were flooding the market, oil was found which was very fortunate. The pearl is found in a lot of designs around town and there are some lovely flower containers also in the shape of an oyster with flowers cascading from them.

Here is another piece of graffiti on the wall of the corniche. Very artistic.

All around the city are large sculptures relating to the local heritage. This is a coffee pot and very large. There are similar sorts of sculptures in the middle of all the roundabouts, although this one was on the corniche.

On a different note - I noticed on the Google webpage today they had some morse code because today is Samuel Morse's birthday. Which reminded me of Banff ; while we were there in March, they held the finals of the competition for young composers. At the final performance, where the winners were chosen, the actual winner, Andrew Staniland, talked about his composition and the ideas that influenced him. The pieces were to be based on Evolution in recognition of the anniversary of Darwin and he had a recurring theme throughout his piece, taken over by different instruments at different times, but it was based on the percussion of the morse code of Darwin's name. Anyway, the Google page took me back to our wonderful time in Banff, and to that concert in particular.

2009-04-26T04:39:00.000-07:00

Here are a few more pictures from the boat races yesterday. Just to show what you can find in surprising places. This was obviously the podium to hold the cups or medals whatever they were. But how beautifully done, it looks just like smocking.

I walked around from the main viewing area and found another fellow photographer who had found a quiet spot by the tents set up for VIPs. Behind the tents were quite an assortment of items including these ornate chairs. I dont know where they were going to be, but they looked quite amazing glistening in the heat and sun - these very ornate chairs with gold and filligree on them.

Very close to the abandoned chairs, were all these carpets rolled up waiting for them to be used at the appointed time!

Also near to the lone photographer was this bit of graffiti on the wall that surrounds the corniche. I found another one the other day with pictures on it as well. I will add it another day, together with the beautiful flowers I discovered a little further on my walk.

Today I had my appointment, together with a number of other people from the company, to have my medical which is required by the Qatari government before we are given our identity card. A chest x-ray and blood test is required. It involves a dance of moving from chair to chair until it is your turn to pay, and then you have to navigate your way through with all the other women (men are in a separate area) as you get each procedure done. In all it only took about an hour or so, but it seemed very random. No taking of numbers - and some people went ahead of me who should have been behind and vice versa. There was a lady in charge who just nodded at you as you were supposed to do something and if you missed her nod - you had to wait until she nodded your way again. Then if an employee of someone important came in, they went to the head of the line. All in all, a very interesting exercise. As least we went early in the morning but there were still a lot of people to be processed. It just shows how many people are entering the country to work on a continual basis. The other woman from the company and I still beat the guys and we ended up having to wait for them, as usual in this country, there are a lot more men than women.

2009-04-25T03:05:00.000-07:00

There have been power boat races for the last couple of days, and they are taking place in the water virtually in front of our building. I walked over today while they were doing some training runs as I figured it would be really crazy around 3 when the finals take place. This picture is a little far away but you can see the numbers of the boats along the dock. The size of them, to put them in perspective is longer than the room I am in, which is about 15 feet. They are monsters and very low in the water. When they start up, they really vroom. The crowd is mostly male and they all smile when they hear that noise!

This gives a bit of an idea of the speed. They race around the whole bay twice, or at least they did for the training runs. They are fairly small specs when they get to the open end of the bay until they start coming back around the small island and back in front of the corniche.

They have a holding area on land where they keep the boats when it is not their turn. You can see, they are like the miami vice type of boats - or cigarette boats we used to call them.

To get them in and out of the water they use huge cranes. Quite a well orchestrated procedure. It was very pleasant with the sea breezes and then I thought I would walk back via the gardens a little way and it took no time for me to get boiling hot with a red face and realized it was time to head for home. It really takes very little effort in this heat to get very hot. I find I am good for a couple of hours standing still, which I was watching the races. But only about half an hour walking is my max. Amazing to think that when I first got here it was so much cooler that I could walk for a long time. I am curious to see how long I will last in the real heat - probably 5 minutes of walking!

2009-04-23T12:43:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pictures for my calligraphy friends. This photograph and the next were taken in the Museum of Islamic Art. This is written on a series of leaves. I can't imagine the amount of patience it must have taken to write this on a skelatonized leaf without tearing it.

This picture was also taken at the museum - they didn't seem to mind pictures being taken there, as long as it wasn't a movie. This is the Imperial Decree by Ferman of Sultan Sulayman The Magnificent, dated 966 from Turkey. It is actually quite large, but I am not sure of the size maybe 3 or 4 feet high. I will have to go and see it again to remember the size. I hope you are able to zoom in on this to see the detail as it is truly beautiful all in blue and gold.

This is from the small art gallery in Souq Wakif art centre. These calligraphic pices are done by an Iranian calligraphic artist and these pieces are floor to ceiling and then spilling over onto the floor. Each piece was about 3 feet wide. I have signed up for some drawing classes at the art centre, starting quite soon.

This is a carpet done in calligraphy by the same Iranian artist, Golnaz Fathi. I thought this was really beautiful. There were several other carpets, also black and white in a similar style. I am amazed at how arabic writing is used as a decoration, sometimes around the edge of tiles and I saw one shallow porcelaine bowl with just a few letters in black written across the centre of it - it is very old, but in its simplicity it could have been done by a contemporary artist.

Today I went to the Islamic Cultural Centre called Fanah. They have classes there teaching arabic and also how to write it. Some time in the future I may look into doing that. They also have cultural classes. Today we had a young english fellow give us some information about the Islamic faith. We also got to try on the traditional black robes the women wear and a young lady kindly showed us how to tie the scarf around our heads, so that we were able to go into an area of the mosque. We finished the rather intense day off by going to the souq for a latte and pizza. Truly a country of contrasts. We drove home by the Corniche where they are getting ready for the races on the weekend of some monster speed boats - the kind that used to be on Miami Vice. We can see the course from our living room window, but I suspect we will join the throng to see and hear it live and in technicolour!

Yesterday I went to my first quilt meeting of the local Quilt Guild. It was so nice to be with such a welcoming group of women. I felt really at home with them. They had the library books on the table, with lots of really up to date quilt books. They had a work bee on the weekend to make baby quilts for charity and all the usual challenges and demonstrations you would find at a quilt group at home. In fact a large amount of people were actually from Canada. Several people gave me their email addresses and phone numbers. The only sad part it that there is only one more meeting and everything shuts down for the summer. However, it will start up again in September and I will have a few months to meet the members then.

2009-04-20T23:59:00.000-07:00

Last Friday we went down to the steps at one end of the Corniche where the fishermen lay their fish out to sell. If you go early enough you see them taking the fish from the nets. We went down late by the usual standards, if you are not there before 8 am, you have missed the boat for the freshest fish, although you can actually buy fish all day, every day. However, it is out in the sun and probably wouldn't be too good later in the day.

Most of the fish I dont recognize and I went on the web to look up their names, and I still dont know them. However, I went for lunch at the Golf club yesterday and had Hamour, which was a very white fish, and was about an inch deep and the meat just fell away in strands. It was really good and will have to be more adventurous in trying the local fish.

Well, I recognize the squid in this batch, but that is the only one and I haven't been able to find the name of the colourful fish yet. There is a big fish shop at the back of the meat section in Carrefour and I am told all the fish are labeled, so I will have to go and take a photograph of them! There is a fish restaurant I hope we will go to soon, where you take your purchase from the fisherman early in the day and you go back at night when they will serve you your fish beautifully cooked.

2009-04-19T03:25:00.000-07:00

Here are some more pictures from our trip to the petroglyphs. This hawk greeted us after we had just got through the gate. Fortunately the camera was handy, although he took off pretty quickly.

This looks very much like it might have been used for a cooking pot, or perhaps a pit to put some hot coals in for cooking. It was about a foot across.

This looks like it could be a boat. Since this is really close to the water, it is quite likely.

This was the beginning and the end of the sunset. Sunsets here are really quick and early, by about 6 o'clock. The actual sunset lasts about a minute and is yellow, and not much pink. Still beautiful though in the way the sun catches the clouds.

Today was a very successful shopping day, after a pretty lousy day yesterday trying to figure out how to get our taxes done in a timely fashion and being let down by numerous types of technology, including my brain. However, today I explored the top floor of the City Centre mall and found to my delight a very well stocked art supply store with fabric paint, silk paint and dyes - mostly from Germany. All kinds of sketchbooks, paints, paper etc. everything you could ever want. Also I found a book shop, not huge, but with a great selection of different types of fiction and non fiction. I bought a book on shopping in Doha and a childrens book for my grandson and a how to book on writing arabic, together with a cd to listen to it spoken. It is a very very beginner book. I had already been given some great books, but this one is like a kindergarten one, which is more my brain level. I have already been trying to learn my numbers which is made easier by the fact that on car license plates they have both the arabic and western numbers so it is easy to compare the two. So when we are stuck in a traffic jam, it becomes a number learning experience

2009-04-18T00:23:00.000-07:00

Friday is the start of the weekend here, so we took the opportunity to drive up to see the petroglyphs at Jabal Al Jassasslya which is about and hour and a half drive north of Doha. The road all the way there is under construction, so it probably took longer than it would otherwise. Also, the instructions we had off the web didn't really do us any good as the road we were on, was basically not the original road, and the signposts seemed to be missing. Anyway, we persevered after a few mistakes - thanks goodness for 4 wheel drive cars here as off road driving in the desert is basically a dirt track with huge rocks in. Derek has had the practice of driving in the sand dunes so heading up rocky outcroppings didn't phase him, while I just shut my eyes. Also, our directions mentioned that we would find the carvings near the gate, only to find there were four gates when we got there! This picture shows the kind of terrain we were looking for, where ancient people have made these carvings in the rock. It looks a little like the Badlands in Alberta, but on a rather smaller scale.

This is one of the quite typical carvings. They are on top of the rocky outcroppings, on the flat surfaces on top. There are tons of them, so whoever the people were who made them, were either very prolific or they lived there for a long time. After we had been there for a while a couple of young archeologists came by and they said they had read that these carvings were thought to be made in the bronze age. I had read that they may have been later, but being the archeologists they probably knew more than I did. It is thought that some of them were possibly games, while others, the deeper ones ,could have been used for cooking. I will show some more pictures of them later in the week.

This one definitely looks like it could be part of a game. This was by far the most common shapes that we found. Some of them were together in a line and almost looked like a spine

This one, looks lke an insect, but there are ones that are larger and the centre part is more boat shaped and the lines could be oars. The archeologists were looking for one of a hand with long fingers, but none of us found that one before it started to get dark. We were there as the sunset on the desert. This area is by the coast where lots of people head for the deserted beaches on the weekends. As the sun set, we heard the call to prayer from a nearby compound which was really haunting in the desert with the sun setting.

We headed back into town to eat in the Souq Wakif and then headed home. However, the next hour and a half was spent drive up and down between a couple of areas by the Corniche. We would get to the roundabout, only to find the way we wanted had been closed by the police. So then we inched along, with everyone else, back to the way we came, only to find that roundabout had also been blocked and we were sent back the way we had come from - along with everyone else. Then we saw a bunch of cars waving flags, one car had a bunch of people sitting on top of the car with flags and a picture of the Emir, there seemed to be young men in their white robes riding on top of cars all over the place. We were just hoping none of the cars hit the brakes too fast. I still don't know what it was all about - just kids having fun on a Friday night in Doha, stampede style, or maybe their team had been successful, or as someone else suggested, a wedding! I will see what I can find out! I guess young people on a weekend are the same the world over!

2009-04-15T11:42:00.000-07:00

Just a few more pictures today of the buildings around where I live, some under construction still. This one is still under construction, but already you can see the local influence in the pattern on the outside of the building. It will be amazing when completed.

Again, this shows influence of the region, and yet it is still a very modern building. There is another building that is totally glass but has a similar old fashioned building superimposed on top. Hopefully we will go by it again in a day or two. It is hard to remember where I have seen some of these buildings - a lesson to take a photograph at the time.

This one is so tall and slim, almost like it is going to slice the sky -with interesting reflections in the glass.

I have no idea or the purpose of this ball - perhaps it is an elevator, but I haven't seen it change position. This is the shopping centre I go to quite a bit. There are a lot of English stores here, I have been to Debenhams many times in Exeter in England and several of the women's sections have the same clothing names. There is a Mothercare in this mall as well as Starbucks and the Body Shop, Nine West and Hush Puppy shoe stores. But then you get another section that sells the black robes that the women wear here, many of them with beautiful decoration on the edges in gold, and shops selling wonderful carpets. The first floor is made up mostly of Carrefour which is a huge grocery store, which sells household items, electrical goods and clothing as well as the usual food, fish, meat and a huge selection of vegetables. You have to have everything weighed in the vegetable section. I got to the cash the other day and had fogotten to have my bananas weighed - I ended up keeping the line up waiting while someone rushed back for me to weigh them. I won't forget again.

I have been watching Aljazeera tv station which broadcasts from Doha. The english language version is a mixture of BBC and CBC and I understand some of the people who run the english side were trained in those organizations. The news is very world oriented and the weather report is worldwide, which is just as well, since the weather in Doha doesn't change, every day you wake up, it is sunny and warm! The current news is all about the elections in India. Sounds like whoever is elected, it will be a coalition government. Tv is a mixture of western programs with arabic subtitles, arabic programs and some french programs with arabic subtitles. Makes for some interesting viewing.

2009-04-14T05:57:00.000-07:00

My challenge for today was to post two birthday cards at the post office. Which normally would not seem to be much of a challenge, but for me, everything is a challenge when it is for the first time in Doha. It would be easy just to get a cab, but that is much too simple, and being a good Canadian girl, used to hiking in the mountains - how hard could this be? So I set off to walk there via the Corniche, the walk along the sea front. This is one of the buildings I passed on my way from my building to get to the road I need to cross to get to the Corniche.

This is one of the flowers I passed by in the gardens along the corniche. Although Doha gets really hot, the grass and gardens along the Corniche are well kept and are always green and tranquil.

This is the imposing post office building. The tube like structures on the front and there are actually more a little to the right, which I did not capture are supposed to remind you of earlier days when mail was delivered by carrier pigeons. It makes for a very attractive building close-up. Like most places here, it is not easy to walk to. I went across at the cross walk, but on the other side, it is all dug up for construction. Fortunately, some of the constructions workers directed me around the pipes and how to get around the ditch! and I eventually got to the building. There I had a bit of trouble finding the way to go and after a false start where someone unlocked the door to the actual mail room and locked me in again - I realized I had not communicated correctly and someone else showed me the way upstairs to the main part of the post office with a whole wall full of wickets. After the initial wait in the wrong line, (like I said, I never seem to do things the easy way) I finally got to the right woman who gave me some very colourful stamps for a total of 7 riyals which hopefully will get my cards to Canada.

This is the crosswalk sign that you need to find to make sure you can get across the streets. You push the button and it usually changes right away enabling you to cross, much quicker than at home. A lot of people dont bother with this and they seem to weave in and out between the cars, which is a hazzard for both drivers and pedestrians, but it seems the custom here. As far as I am concerned, the crosswalks work for me. I can see that it wont be long before I change to taking taxis as by the time I got home I was soaking wet with perspiration and this is still a cool month!

2009-04-12T10:36:00.000-07:00

We didn't do much today - it seemed a very odd Easter. We ended up going to the LandMark mall which is a much more upscale place than the one near us, but not many people seemed to be there. They have a Marks and Spencers amongst other things, and a British Home Stores. We bought a few more essential things for the appartment like a tea pot! in a very nice but relatively inexpensive home shop called The One. It had a lot of very nice furniture and quite modern dishes and kitchen gadgets. The picture above is one of several really nice pastry shops in the mall. Yes, of course we stopped for a coffee and a pastry, although not at this place - maybe next time. There was also a Godiva chocolate shop and a Leonidas chocolate shop. This is obviously a mall after my own heart!

2009-04-11T13:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we drove to a new area just under construction called The Pearl. These were some buildings we saw on the way there.

This was one of the signs we saw on the highway going out of town today.

The Pearl is a completely new development full of high end shops, a marina and appartment buildings. There are cranes everywhere at the moment, at one point we counted about 60 of them. Everywhere in Doha is like that, the whole place is under construction. No expense seems to have been spared as you can see with the metal railing - even it is beautiful.

Today we went to the camel races which are held out of town. At first we attempted to find a seat in the covered vieewing area, but fortunately it was full and we met a woman from Chicago who had been to the races before and she led us to an area really close to the starting and finish line. We would have missed all this action if we had been seated. We then saw one of the pursuit cars that had room and we hopped in and went around the track beside the races. Each camel in the race has a robot as a jockey and the men in cars have controls to work the whip of the mechanical jockey. It is surprising that this convoy of cars with occupants shouting at their camels dont collide in the melee. In days gone by they used to use small children as jockeys, fortunately Qatar is one of the countries that have outlawed this practice. There were also a couple of very decorated camels that you were able to have a ride on. They had beautifully embroidered bridles and many tassels. I also saw one of the camels with a crocheted "snood" over its mouth. I have more pictures on our other camera and will post those tomorrow.

This evening, we were invited to a party beside the pool in one of the other buildings that people from work live in. A little bit of Canada in Doha. That is what I call a full day -more adventures tomorrow.

Derek on the Corniche

2009-04-10T10:56:00.000-07:00

This is the Corniche, which is the walking path around the Bay. Our appartment is located back about a block from the Corniche. You can see people walking here at all times, particularly in the evening when it is cooler. So far, there have been some lovely sea breezes and I am sure the as the heat becomes more intense, people will enjoy these breezes and the shade from the palm trees.

This is Souq Waqif. Part of this is like an old souq with people selling spices and all kinds of things. At one end of it are a number of restaurants where people are sitting outside in the warm evenings.

This is another of the new buildings near our appartment building. Such interesting shapes.

This is the Museum of Islamic Art. The architect is M.I. Pei, the person who designed the new part of the Louvre. He characteristically spends a lot of time studying the essence of the culture where he designs his building and brings together the old with the new. He was born in China and studied architecture in the U.S. during the time of modernism with influences of Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. This is a very imposing building, built on its own island. There is an avenue of palm trees leading up to the entrance, with water between and a fountain at the entrance. The ground floor is full of light from a large window. The exhibition rooms are dark and each piece of artwork seems to float in its case. Jean Michel Wilmotte designed the exhibition areas and it is truly stunning. The collection spans the area from Spain, central asia and India from the 7th to 19th century. with carpets, ceramics, calligraphy, metal work, textiles amongst other things. I really enjoyed my time there and will be back many times more, I am sure. The admission is free too, which ensures many more visits from me! However, next time I will not walk all the length of the Corniche there and back plus nearly three hours in the museum. I had blisters by the end of the day.

2009-04-10T09:57:00.000-07:00

This is my lovely first class pod which was the way I flew to Frankfurt. I think it is the first time ever that I have been able to sleep on an airplane. I could really get used to this.

This is the view from the workout room. I am sure the ladies from the Y will be jealous of my view over the ocean!

This is the pool, with a fabulous view of the city and the ocean.

Sorry I am new at the blogging and I dont know how to turn this picture around, but there are lots of lovely palm trees everywhere which give some much needed shade in the heat of the day.

I have lots more photos and will add some of them as the days go by. The architecture of Doha is stunning and there are cranes everywhere. It reminds me of how Calgary was in the 80s as far as the amount of construction is concerned. I will try to add to this blog each day as I discover more and more about this beautiful city.