Doha to Abu Dhabi

Zoë and I are in the Abu Dhabi airport, waiting for our connecting flight to Vienna! Compared to Doha, the Abu Dhabi airport seems both busy and little lackluster. No offense to Abu Dhabi, it's just that the Doha airport has a rainforest inside...so...that's kind of difficult to compete with. 

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We spent the morning homeschooling, dealing with a power outage, and then heading to our friends' house to do our art and history co-op lessons. We left the boys there for a sleepover. Zoë and Phoebe and I went to the library for Arabic storytime, and then Andrew popped over from campus to pick up Phoebe and take her home while Zoë and I hopped on the metro to go to the airport (Miriam stayed home and then went to the orthodontist). 

We arrived at the airport plenty early, so had a little bit of time to explore the airport. We saw the famous bear statue (which I actually think is a little bit creepy—there are better statues in the airport):

Conference and crystals

With General Conference this weekend, we weren't sure if we would be able to speak with Rachel since Saturday is her P-day, which, as Phoebe described it fairly accurately, is "the day that missionaries don't have to do any very much work and can just do things like laundry." It's also the day missionaries are allowed to write their correspondence and—in this day and age—call home. 

But she managed to arrange a time to call us between her breakfast and the beginning of conference, right around 5:00 for us. I had just taken the kids for a pre-conference stroll...

Sleep schedules

We've been in our apartment for two sleeps now—two sleeps that just happen to coincide with the weekend, which is always quite busy on Gewan Island, and has left us wondering when, precisely, anyone here sleeps. To be fair, while we can hear a distant hum of conversation coming from outside—where people are up and active until late in the evening!—on the first floor of our house, we cannot hear much at all from the second floor of our house (where the bedrooms are).

When I say "late in the evening," I mean that there are still families walking up (and running, depending on their age) up and down the Crystal Walk until 10...11...12...1 o'clock in the evening, which is pretty incredible considering school hours typically start at 7:00 am (I know this is the weekend, so we might see fewer children out on weekdays, but I don't know). 

Here's a picture from about 10:30 PM and you can see all the cafes are quite crowded:

Alexander, A Valiant Servant

We are busy getting settled in our new apartment, figuring out all the ins and outs of everything, unpacking, and so forth. 

The island itself has an electronic "access card" that we can use for island amenities, such as entering certain beaches, but also just for entering our block of apartments. Currently I think Andrew, Miriam, Benjamin, and I have that card.

There's also a separate app for our front door. We have a couple of actual keys (made of metal and everything) but we can open the door remotely as well. Andrew was getting that set up this morning before we left for church and he mentioned to the kids that "everyone down to Alex" should have access to the door from their phones/devices.

We didn't get everyone's devices set up with this app, however, because we had to leave for church.

Choir was pretty cool! We love meeting with the Tagalog Ward! 

Slow down! You're moving too fast...

Happy Last Day of September to all who celebrate!

In our family we apparently celebrate by...moving...because today was the day we moved out of the hotel (more or less) and into our apartment and today was the day that Rachel moved into the MTC (missionary training center).

What did you do to celebrate? (If you didn't move, it doesn't count.)

Andrew, Miriam, and I stayed up far too late packing up virtually everything in our hotel room and getting it ready to cart downstairs. Here's a shot Miriam took of our things in the hotel room:

Shifting and walking scientists

Shifting, as they call it here, is no joke! Moving across the city is certainly easier than trying to plan an international move...but there are still a lot of moving parts.

And I'm one of them!

I have maxed out my metro card three days running (each card is charged for a maximum of three rides per day—anything after that is free...and I have certainly been taking advantage of that this week). 

Yesterday Miriam and I carried big IKEA bags full of sheets and duvet inserts from the hotel to the apartment...while also dragging Phoebe along. It was...exhausting. 

And then today I packed up a big IKEA bag full of towels to take to the apartment (because we sure wished we'd have thought of bringing towels to the apartment yesterday). The towels were actually far lighter and much fluffier than the sheets and duvet inserts (which were packed rather tightly), so it felt much better to be carrying that through the metro. 

But then I also had on my backpack so I could do some work at the apartment (I have a proposal due tomorrow and a review due soon and homework due...all over the place). And the kids each had a backpack on. Only Phoebe didn't have a backpack—she carried her stuffed puppy Titus.

And still I wound up carrying her half the time. 

Moving In, Membership Station, and Personal Storytime

We got the keys to our apartment yesterday and to celebrate we went and got gelato. Both Benjamin and Alexander chose the black vanilla flavour (coloured with activated charcoal). It was rather horrifying to watch them eat it, but they said it tasted just fine (and, in fact, I think most of us sampled a little bit from their dishes).

How bazaar, how bazaar...

We went back for round two of volunteering at the service workers' bazaar this morning. This time our task was to arrange items in the category-sorted bins (last weekend's task) onto tables for people to shop from. Clothes were sorted out by size and gender, our family did a lot of toy and book sorting (which was somewhat difficult for some of our children, who are, by this point in time, feeling a little thirsty for toys themselves—we haven't had "stuff" for months now), and there were also kitchen supplies, linens, office supplies, and so forth. 

Exploding with happiness and medieval dolphins

We went to a birthday party this evening for a little friend of Phoebe's. There was an inflatable water slide that dumped the kids straight into the pool. Zoë knocked herself in the forehead with her knee during a failed cannonball. Phoebe swallowed a bunch of pool water and threw up all over the deck. Alexander broke his watch.

But...

They had an amazing time! 

Phoebe was overjoyed to get a birthday bag. She sang about it all the way to the uber (such a savvy kid—we all stared at the elevator, not quite sure what to do, and she just walked right up, punched the G and said, "G for ground! Going down!" so that solved that—to be fair, we had G, M, C, L, A, and B as options, in addition to the numbers. But G was the right call). 

"I'm so happy, happy, happy!" she sang as she got into the uber, which made the driver chuckle. "I am exploding with happiness!"

Call to prayer quiet

I went to the library by myself this evening for a book talk—entirely by myself. I got to read on the metro (since I wasn't keeping an eye on children), which meant I was only half paying attention to where I was, and was surprised to find my body leaning into the rhythm of the trip. I hardly had to think about where to go—when and how to switch trains—my feet just took me there on autopilot. 

I had a lovely chat with a woman from Iran/UK who came in just after me. 

And then got to listen to the book talk without having any little people interrupt me for any reason. It felt rather unusual. Our only interruption was the call to prayer, which sounds over the speaker system in the library. 

The author was in the middle of answering a question when the call to prayer began. He finished his sentence, then turned off his microphone and held it in his lap. And then interviewer did the same. The audience sat in silence, just listening to the call to prayer. 

Outside of the event hall we could hear the thrum of activity in the rest of the library, the buzzing of voices in the cafe area, the footfalls of people walking past the doorway. But inside the event all, it was the picture of tranquility. 

I once wrote a poem about how much I love the call to prayer—specifically in Cairo, the land of a thousand minarets—and how, since it wasn't specifically scheduled, the call would come to me helter-skelter, with different muezzins seeming to echo one another. And how I learned to even appreciate the dawn call to prayer, which would crackle through my window (we lived quite near to a mosque with a terrible sound system) and I would be up with baby Miriam and would hear the call to prayer and it felt so comforting to me...to know that I wasn't alone being up at that hour, that all around me in the city people were coming together to pray, and how I learned to take that moment to remember to pray myself...

And it felt very sacred and beautiful to write all this down.

And then my teacher was like, "This smacks of Orientalism" and discouraged me from publishing it (and rather encouraged me to leave off, not even revise, because it was an unredeemable poem). 

And...uh...that was crushing...because I typically rather value(d) her advice. And it isn't like I was making up crazy stuff in order to produce and perpetuate stereotypes. The call to prayer is...kind of a thing...

So, uh, I revised the poem anyway. And it did get published. And I think it's probably fine.

I find myself still so taken with the moments the call to prayer makes for me. And here was another beautiful moment where I was surrounded by a roomful of people who were, like me, suspended in time.