Qatar

I'm finding that one of the best parts of living and working in Kuwait is the the travel opportunities. Last week I was able to go to Doha, Qatar for a weekend with three friends to celebrate the birthday of my fellow grade five teacher Tylene. Even though Tylene had a horrible case of bronchitis, we were able to have a fabulous weekend away.

On the flight over I accidentally took a video instead of a picture, which you can see here, and hear the correct pronunciation of Qatar. Special thanks to Lauren Gioe for the magazine we are enjoying!

Qatar is a mere 50 minute flight from Kuwait. It's a small country that juts out of Saudi Arabia, and we found it to be very similar to Kuwait. Our first evening there we explored the old souq, or market. I think all of us spent way too much money there on items such as these Arab nesting dolls. :) We were also able to have dinner and chill out in a coffee house with live Arab music.

Mariam and Marisol, the two other members of our travel team, both speak excellent Arabic, and it was so nice to have their translation skills for the trip! We tried to be cultural and visit museums during our two days in Qatar, but since most of the city is under construction, we spent most of our time engaged in an authentic Gulf State experience-shopping at malls! The Villagio, which was built to look like Europe, complete with Venetian gondolas, and City Center, with a ice rink in the middle, both proved to be excellent places to spend lots of money.

Doha has undergone a tremendous amount of construction in the past ten years, especially to accomodate the 2006 Asian Games (we got to see the stadium where the gymnastics competition took place!).

We were able to walk along the Gulf, see the city skyline, and witness buses actually tilting because they were filled with so many people. Traffic in Doha is quite bad as the city struggles to build new roads to match all of the new buildings.

We also enjoyed really nice night out at an Italian restaurant on the Gulf, complete with legal wine!

Now there are only ten teaching days before I'm off to Lebanon and Minnesota for our winter break! I will most likely be moving in to my new apartment tomorrow, provided they are able to fix the elevators before then, so I'm very excited about that. Another exciting discovery was a Caribou Coffee at a nearby mall! Now I can coffee breaks a la AV in 2000 anytime I want!

I hope you are all enjoying the fall, I wish you a happy Thanksgiving, and I will write again as soon as I'm moved in.