Rain storms and Ramly

It was cloudy this morning—a rare sight in Qatar! We saw reports that it was absolutely pouring in Education City, but we missed out because we were not in Education City...we were at home. Still, it was neat to see the clouds roiling in from the sea.

We had stake conference this week, so we didn't have church this morning. Instead we spent a good portion of the day doing various organizational projects. Our progress was interrupted when some of the kids heard thunder. We all rushed out onto the balcony to listen to the thunder in the distance, skeptical that the storm would truly reach us. Then, when I was taking a break in the kitchen, making some lunch, I looked out the window and noticed rain drops on the balcony:

"It's raining!" I hollered and we all quickly put shoes on and rushed up onto the roof to feel the few drops of rain coming our way.

We did not get a phenomenal downpour, but it was fun to feel the few drops of rain that we did.

The little kids and I did have to hurry inside to get ready to head to...Education City...where we found the rain had very nearly dried up. We were still getting some drizzles...

But things had been very wet while it was down-pouring. They placed these sandbags in front of the doors of the metro:

And we found a few lovely puddles to stomp in:

Even though it was on a Friday, I signed my kids up to see a puppet show performance at the library. Our favourite librarian was working today and she asked us if we knew about the puppet show and if we'd like to attend. We said that we would (we had already signed up)! Then she told us that Ramly was going to come in and invite the children to the puppet show.

"You know Ramly?" she asked.

"I don't," I said. 

"You will!" she said.

This...is Ramly, the Qatar National Library mascot:

I'm not sure I've ever encountered a library mascot before, but apparently they are a thing. According to this article at the Gulf Times, "Studies by the American Library Association have shown that mascots are effective tools for engaging children. Libraries that use mascots report increased attendance and participation in programmes, particularly among children and families." I'm not sure I have been able to find any studies by ALA in particular, but it seems that library mascots are actually a thing.

Now, do mascots really increase attendance at events? Or do libraries that consider creating a mascot (or that follow through on this idea) simply do more overall to promote their programming and thus have better attendance? 

Ramly (whose name means "sandy") even has his own theme song: "Ana, ana Ramly...ana, ana Ramly..."

That's the only line that I understood. But, the kids had a real boppin' dance party and everyone posed to take pictures with Ramly (except for Alexander and Zoë, who are too mature for such things). And then Ramly led everyone down to the big special events room and sat through the entire performance of Sarah's Adventures. 

It was entirely in Arabic, so we were a little bit lost the whole time, but we understood a little bit and it was fun to watch regardless. There was one point where she encounters a talking tree and was like, "But trees can't talk!" and the tree was like, "But I'm a tree and I'm talking" and I was immediately reminded of Téléfrançais. 

Phoebe was very glad that all the monsters were vanquished in the end and that Sarah and her friends were able to return home.

We picked out a few books to check out—now that we can because we (mostly) have our QIDs! Zoë wanted to find a book to read in French that was a translation of a book she's already read in English so that she can understand what's going on. She picked out the graphic novel Sœurs and a retelling of Mary Poppins. Alexander picked out a Minecraft novel. Phoebe has had her eye on a "How to Draw Fairies and Mermaids" book for several weeks (bordering on months now) and wanted to find that book to borrow. It took quite some time to comb through the drawing books to find it, but we eventually did. While we were looking for the very particular book on how to draw fairies and mermaids that she was seeking, we found a different book about how to draw fairies and she decided to check out both because they might both be useful. 

Here she is being squirrelly on the metro:

She loves when the metro fairly empty so she can twirl on these poles (and ignores me whenever I tell her stop—but she's pretty good at settling down when things get crowded).

We came home to the second half of the adult session of stake conference (we put it in our calendar wrong and I thought it started at 7:00...we also had the morning session on our calendar wrong, but now we know it will start an hour earlier than we thought), and then Miriam (and Benjamin) had some friends from church over to play games.

They had worked to clean up the house so it was company-worthy (it has been such a jumble since our shipment arrived) and Miriam even baked brownies (which she forgot to serve). It sounded like the youth had a great time playing Saboteur.