Morgan Takes a Star Turn

This week was the culmination of a month-long preparation by Morgan and her classmates for their end-of-the-year musical, Three of a Kind. Year 1 through Year 3 students performed their show five times over the course of the last week for parents and administrators as well as the preschoolers and high school students. In the musical, a variety of fairy tale characters in groups of three search the woods for Baby Bear, who has gone missing. Morgan performed beautifully as Wise Woman number 2. As "the big kids," several of Morgan's best friends also had speaking roles: Alicia was Maid number 2 and Sean was Caballero number 2. Ella volunteered behind the scenes on set decoration and makeup with Sean's mom Denise and Riyah's mom Su'ad. The kids celebrated the musical's wrap with a party -- lots of chips, sugary soda and sweets -- I pity their poor teacher that afternoon!

Fun and Games in Doha

Since these posts usually come from an adult point of view, we thought it would be fun to give a little glimpse into the life of an eight-year-old American girl in Doha.  Not surprisingly, Morgan was excited to get all of her toys from home when our container arrived at the beginning of May, but she also has enjoyed finding a few new toys that are unique to the region.  Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here's a little clip that shows two of Morgan's favorite things that we have found so far in Qatar.

The first part of the clip is Morgan's Fulla doll, complete with abaya, saying her prayers.  To a Westerner, the idea of a mass-market toy with overt religious overtones is still a bit jarring, but not necessarily in a bad way--frankly, it seems a whole lot healthier than the body-obsessed toys marketed to young girls back in the States.  The second part, which we found absolutely hilarious, requires a couple of words of explanation since the video quality isn't great.  As noted in the titles, the music playing is a somewhat strange interpretation of the song Axel F (the theme from Beverly Hills Cop).  Also, the little Arab guy riding on the camel is carrying an electric guitar. Only in the Middle East!

Nesting - His & Hers

Our exciting news for the weekend--exciting to us, anyway--is that we finally finished putting together the furniture that we had delivered from the Dubai IKEA a few weeks ago and unpacked the last few boxes.  A few pictures of the fruits of our labor are below.

I've also included a shot of my new power drill, which was indispensable in putting everything together; somehow just having my first power tool for the new place made me feel a little more at home.  The experience of getting the drill was a little bit surreal--we went to a Carrefour hypermarket, which is a lot like a Wal-Mart Supercenter.  The strange part was going from the grocery aisles, where I was walking past locals in thobes and abayas, Indian and Filipino foods, Arabic sweets, and fresh-baked French breads, to the hardware section.  As I headed down the aisle with the power tools, I realized that Randy Travis was playing over the sound system (well, I noticed the fact that country music was playing and the DJ said it was Randy Travis).  Standing there looking at Black & Decker cordless drills, saws, etc., and listening to country music, when I ignored the handful of dual-language English-Arabic labels and the price tags in Qatari Riyals, it seemed like I was back in the Ozarks.

Morgan's Big Night

Last night, Morgan's gymnastics club had the opportunity to participate in a meet with three other Doha-based gyms. This was her first experience in getting scored by judges, and also the first event she had been in where it took more than showing up to get a medal. The gymnasts had to demonstrate 10 skills for the judges, and received a maximum of 2 points for each skill, scored in half-point increments; it took a score of 14 out of 20 to receive a medal. The judging was not easy--perhaps half of the kids from the other gyms received medals. However, thanks to the fine coaching of Shelagh Innes and the talent and hard work of Morgan and her teammates, Morgan and all of the other kids from Gymnastics Academy received medals.

Morgan thought it was cool that the presenter was supposedly a member of the royal family.  She also liked the outfits of the kids who helped with the medal presentation, ornate red and gold brocaded robes, which reminded me of something the Three Wise Men would wear.

A few pictures are below.

Are You Ready for Some Football?

No, we're not talking about American football, although I was momentarily confused last week when Saji, one of the administrative assistants on my floor at work, asked me if I was interested in football.  After a half-second of wondering whether the Redskins were making a world tour, I realized that he was talking about soccer, which is simply football to the 95 percent of the world's population that lives outside the US.  We managed to get five free tickets to the Qatar vs. Australia World Cup qualifier courtesy of Qtel, and went with our neighbors and new friends Sybil and David, who kindly drove us all to the match.  

While the match wasn't a great evening for offense--it ended in a 0-0 draw--we did see several amazing saves.  The people-watching aspect was by far the most entertaining, though.  From our rowdy Australian section-mates (is there any other kind?) to the sea of thobes across the pitch to the Middle Eastern version of a marching band/pep band, it wasn't an experience we'll soon forget.

Below are a few pictures.   Be sure to check out Sybil's blog (http://qatariadventures.blogspot.com/2009/06/qatar-vs-australia.html) for some photos that are a lot better than what we could get with our little point-and-shoot.

 

Watching history

While we don't have any intention of making this a blog about politics, we wanted to write a few lines about our unique perspective on President Obama's speech in Cairo yesterday.  I was fortunate to have the chance last night to hear excerpts from the speech, followed by remarks from the US ambassador to Qatar and then a town hall-style Q&A session at the Brookings Doha Center.

Whatever your political views, the speech was well-written and extremely well-delivered, so much so that a number of people in the crowd last night were already making comparisons to JFK's famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech (which I understand was actually "I am a jelly doughnut," but that's another story).  Our ambassador to Qatar is a very impressive man, and he delivered his remarks in Arabic, which was excellent according to the Arab next to me.  However, the highlight of the evening (other than getting to watch portions of the above-described speech) was the Q&A session.

In general, the comments from the audience (which included a large number of Arabs of various nationalities, as well as many Americans and other English-speaking expats) were favorable. Obama's speech especially resonated with the younger members of the audience; at least a couple of college students (one Arab-American and one Arab who had studied in the US) were particularly effusive in their praise for the President.

Some older members of the audience, however, offered some tough and pointed questions even as they also praised the evenhanded and eloquent speech given by President Obama.  For example, a Syrian engineer in the audience took issue with the fact that Obama had mentioned the Holocaust in the speech, as if to link it to the Arab world.  The gentleman acknowledged that the Holocaust had happened, said that he (and most Muslims) considered it a terrible, evil occurrence, but also said that prior to World War II Jews were treated far better in the Middle East than in Europe.  (I'm unfortunately not as well-versed in the region's history as I should be, but I believe that this is generally true.)  His question was essentially why Arabs, and Palestinians in particular, should have to pay such a steep price for the Holocaust by giving up their lands when they had nothing to do with it.  Another Arab in the audience asked why the US--which ostensibly supports democracy and free speech--supports some of the most repressive regimes in the Arab world.  (I didn't hear a response to that one.)

All in all, it was a fascinating and informative exchange, and I feel fortunate to have had such a unique vantage point from which to experience this historical moment.