Ice cream v. Stranger danger

On Thursday morning Miriam took the metro to the library by herself for the "creative threads" group while the rest of us stayed home to do our homeschool lessons. Then in the afternoon I took the kids to the pool while she stayed behind to fold laundry. 

She's been here for one week now and I think the hotel apartment is starting to feel like close quarters for her. She's craving alone time (and that's fine). 

We are the first "generation" of employees at GUQ to get go house hunting on our own. In the past people have simply been assigned a place to live. While people are excited about getting to live anywhere in the city...living in a hotel while waiting to find a place is perhaps less than ideal, particularly for a family our size. But, there are perks!

Apparently popsicles at the pool are more standard than we originally thought. We've been offered popsicles three times now! 

Yesterday the lifeguard (who I am guessing is Filipino, though I couldn't say with certainty—some places...like Carrefour...have a person's originating country on their badges, but not here at the hotel, so I'm just guessing) came right up to Phoebe, who was taking a swimming break in a swinging chair. He patted her head and pinched her cheek and said, "Hey, hey—what's your name? Phoebe! Phoebe—do you want some ice cream? Come with me, we will get you some ice cream!"

And I just...am not sure how I'm going to teach her about "stranger danger" here when every time we turn around someone is trying to lure her away with ice cream. And the thing is...it's safe here...to allow oneself to be lured away with ice cream. It's a little less so in other places, but generally fine here. 

Anyway, here she is with her pink guava popsicle, which rejuvenated her swimming spirit:

It has been less humid lately and yesterday was so windy (and still quite hot). We've only been getting up into the low hundreds (in °F) this week, which has honestly felt more manageable than when we're reaching into the teens.

"Your sweat is so shiny and beautiful!": Umbrella Park, the Corniche, and Monumental Play Area

It's 35°C (95°F) right now (10:00 PM), with a feels-like temperature of 46°C (114°F)—not too shabby!—so logically we took the kids to the park before bedtime. 

Andrew suggested we take the metro to the Corniche (a station named for its proximity to...the Corniche) and visit Umbrella Park, so named for its tunnels lined with umbrellas.

Vienna 🤝 Doha

When Josie and I visited Patrick in Vienna, he took us to the Vienna Central Cemetery to see graves both famous and interesting. One of his favourite graves to take people to see is that of Franz West, a sculptor from Vienna.

Here is his grave with this interesting worm-thing poking out of the ground:

And here is the sculpture we stumbled upon this evening in the park:

If a tree falls on your house but no one is around to hear it...does it still make a sound?

Well, it finally happened! Our house got hit by a tree.

Fortunately it wasn't a very big tree, but we will need to have that gutter replaced.

Luckily, our real estate agent called someone for us.

Emotionally Tuesday and a visit to campus

Yesterday was Sunday, which is the first day of our workweek here (so it felt like a Monday). 

Zoë in the hotel elevator

"Don't you want to have fun?"

Today we went to spend some time with some friends in a neighbourhood near campus. They very proactively gave us a tour of their home so we could see how nice it is (hoping that we'll perhaps come live near them). It was so lovely for the kids to get to play and enjoy each other while the grown ups commiserated over the hot weather. 

Rachel's friend Hailey is serving a mission in Manitoba right now and she mentioned that the weather is one thing that everyone is always willing to talk about. Our friend Tim mentioned a similar thing about when their family used to live in up in the northeastern US. He mentioned how when everyone was outside enjoying the summer weather it was with a note of...caution...mixed with gluttony—as if they had to hurry and enjoy every moment while it lasted because winter was always looming over their heads. 

Like, sure—we look happy now...but just you wait until winter gets here.

He described it like some monster lurking in the hills that everyone knows will descend and wreak havoc on their happy little community. 

And it is rather like that. 

Here it's the opposite and everyone we meet is apologizing for the fact that we had to move here in August. Blah. It's the worst...but we promise it's not always like this. It will soon get better. The beastly sun that is a stalking the land will be banished. 

November, I hear, is quite lovely. 

Anyway...

We went to the pool before bed this evening. It was 100°F (37°C), but the pool temperature was lovely. 

Packing casualties

Out of a grand total of 27 suitcases (once Miriam got here), we had...

• one bottle of children's liquid medicine leak somehow (not sure how because the bottle isn't actually broken)
• one bottle of hair detangling spray leak (fortunately both the spray and the medicine were double-bagged so all the mess was contained. I haven't even tried to rescue the detangling spray yet but/because we found detangling spray at the store. I will get around to investigating this leak someday soon, I'm sure).
• one suitcase open and inspected by TSA (Miriam's suitcase with all the Magnatiles inside)
• 18 suitcases get stuck waiting to load the plane in the pouring rain in Atlanta, but miraculously nothing that shouldn't have gotten wet inside got wet. We had one cardboard tube (with much-wanted posters inside) that got wet all the way through (like one end of the tube was completely soggy). I opened it up to check things out inside and the posters were all snuggled down at the other end of the tube, so they didn't even get a little bit wet! Incredible! Sure, we had to unpack everything as quickly as we could and lay out ten million articles of clothing to dry before they molded inside our suitcases...but nothing got ruined, which is pretty neat. All our carry-ons and Miriam's luggage were spared from The Great Luggage Sogging of 2026. 

Not too bad! 

I remember when we moved to Cairo we had a bottle of vanilla break and leak onto a stack of cloth diapers. It stained them terribly (but, I mean...they're diapers) but made them smell so good! (And also we were down a bottle of vanilla—but we consider that a tolerable loss as well). 

Pretty good luck, I'd say!

One week

We have now been in Qatar for a week—and what a wild week it's been! 

On the one hand it's quite the relief to be here—to have all the waiting and preparation work over and done with. It's shiny and new and exciting and everything feels full of potential. We look out the windows at the twinkling skyscrapers surrounding us and think, "Wow! We did it! We're here!" 

But on the other hand, we (or at least I) find ourselves asking, "What. Have. We. Done?!" We used to know what life was like—it was a patterned, predictable, stable. And now...let's just say that I'm beginning to feel overwhelmed. 

So I thought perhaps was a good day to share pictures of our old home (as we contemplate what we need in a new home, which has so far been a rather major stressor for me). I still can't believe we managed to empty this house. 

Here's Benjamin in his room upstairs. Several children also have claim in this bedroom. I think Benjamin, Alexander, Zoë, and Phoebe all were in this room at some point, in various configurations:

Wunderground...wunder...what?

I showed Andrew my earlier screen shot from Wunderground:

And he was like, "Where was that?!" so I told him and in that time that had elapsed between me taking a screenshot and him taking a screenshot (about an hour later) the temperature had risen considerably:

But a feels-like temperature of 165°F?!!

"That's the temperature you cook chicken to!!" Miriam exclaimed.

Google is much more conservative in their feels-like estimates—only 129°F (53°C).

Only.

Celestial Patterns and Perspectives and things

The children are taking an astronomy course at the moment and the first lesson focused on the difference between astronomy (a science) and astrology (a pseudoscience) and how the two terms are often confused. 

We also started reading a book called The Turtle of Oman by Naomi Shihab Nye. I read a poetry book of hers over the summer. She's Palestinian-American, but this particular book is about a boy from Oman who moves to the states for three years. So far the kids have noticed a lot of similarities in the preparation phase of the move (which we recently finished experiencing). 

Phoebe was surprised that Turkish Airlines was mentioned in the book because we just flew on Turkish Airlines! And then she wanted to know if Oman was close to Qatar because the book described it as being hot and close to the sea—and we are hot and close to the sea. So even though we looked at the map yesterday and pointed out where Oman was and where we were...we talked about it again. 

Considering she's still not 100% sure where her bedroom is in our apartment we probably can't expect her to remember where Oman is in relation to Qatar.

Anyway, we talked a bit about culture shock because Aref's mom said that the first day would be scary but then things would start to feel like home. The kids did agree that the first day was the scariest—both the leaving and the arriving—but they disagreed that things already feel like "home" because things still feel pretty new. 

So I mentioned how culture shock lasts from months to even years as you adjust to all the many things that need to be adjusted to. One thing that I like to do in a new place is to notice and recognize the signs of the seasons changing, like knowing that oak worms and Joro spiders start popping out in August in Atlanta. 

Here we keep hearing about the al-Nathra period, which we recently entered. This is typically the hottest period of the summer, when the al-Kulaibain star rises in the sky, but it also marks the end of the hot-hot season, because once the Suhail star rises...the hot weather typically begins (ever so slowly) to moderate (see here).

All that talk about different stars set off astrology bells in the children's minds. They said it sounded like superstition more than science.