Have Mercy...Been Waitin' on the Bus All Day

The kids started to ride the bus on day 2 of school (that would be Monday, because we start school on Sunday, therefore Monday is our Tuesday...if you want to get even more confused, see this post).  The bus leaves at 6:10 AM.  School starts at 7:30 AM.  School gets out at 1:30 PM.  They get home at 3 PM.  Yes, that's three hours on the bus.  Thanks to the leadership of a wonderful friend who has been through this hellaciously long ride issue before, we are looking for ways to shorten the duration (as in looking for another bus company).

These are private buses that we pay for--they are not officially associated with the school.  The buses are air conditioned, have individual seatbelts (and nice padded seats), and have an assistant/monitor as well as the driver.  They are very expensive but probably much safer than driving in the insane morning traffic.  And Qatar Foundation generously reimburses us for the costs.  

Here's the going--the first time (ever) that any of the kids have ridden a bus to school:

John walked them across while I stood in the doorway taking the required photo.  Hank was a minute behind the other two.

And here's the coming home.

If the perspective (with the cars) is confusing, that's because I'm not in front of our house.  Instead, I walked across the street to join the other moms-in-waiting.  The middle photo above actually has our house in the background.  Like our new paint?  It reminds me and John of the San Antonio Mercado.  Viva Mexico! Whoop!

Hannah came storming out as soon as the doors opened, leaving poor Hank to serve as her mule.  He sure is a cute mule though, all rumpled in his uniform.  Jack survived just fine, too, and even made a new friend on the ride.

As I write this, it's Tuesday evening (just past Hump Day).  The kids are tired but happy, actually going to bed at 7:30 PM in order to wake up at 5:15 AM.  Hank and Jack are starting to understand what "challenging academics" means...  For example, they have both had an hour and a half of French and Arabic class, so three hours total of language per child, every week.  And Hank's French teacher did not start from scratch.  She picked up assuming some basic familiarity.  I know that both boys will start to catch on very, very quickly.  It will be painful/difficult at first, but I hope in the long run it teaches them confidence that they can learn and grow through serious challenges.

So far, we're okay on math, science, writing, and humanities...but the week is only barely half over.  I found Compass School's learning outcomes online (what a child finishing each year should know), and Franklin's schools seemed to do a good job preparing the boys for the switch.  That said, I can already see a clear difference in teaching and learning styles.  Again, the boys will have an adjustment period, but I think we are very blessed by this educational experience (among many other blessings).

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And now, your musical theme for the day.  The title to this post is a quote from this ZZ Top song.

Braggin' on the Man

John has a full-page spread in the Aggie Platform, a beautiful slick full-color quarterly magazine put out by TAMU-Q.  He's on page 40 of the digital version.  Here's a screen capture of it, but to read it, click here.

Yes, that is our own Correspondent, in the Qatari sands, wearing his flip flops.  Think his toes were burning?

First Day of School!

Hallelujah!  After 120 days, many with temperatures into the 120's, with 30 days of Ramadan (everything, even fast food is closed during the day and doesn't open until 7 or 8 PM), and with one week of Eid break, SCHOOL IS FINALLY STARTING!  [Pause now for me to do a happy dance.]

Here are some photos from today:

Leaving this morning for school...at 6:35 AM.  The traffic was so horrible that the normally-15-minute trip took 45 minutes.  Ugh.

Jack's teacher is Mrs. Burchell (from South Africa), and Hannah's teacher is Mrs. Hodge (from Britain).  Jack has 18 kids in his class, and Hannah has about the same in hers.  Hannah has one American girl in her class--I don't think any one else is American though.  Jack says that he is the only American in his class.  Great adventure!

Peeking into Hannah's classroom as they packed up.

I go in and get Hannah (we do this for the 3 and 4 year olds only...I think), and then we wait on Jack to come out on his own.  This is the tent full of waiting families.  After we got Jack, we raced to the other campus (15 minutes away) to pick up Hank.  Here's Hank's campus (a new acquisition!).

The building is finished, but the site around it is still under construction.  A pool, gym, and science lab are planned. John took Hank to his campus this morning (so I don't have a classroom photo)--and thank goodness for that because, with the traffic and time getting Hannah settled, we never would have made it on time....

Hank has 11 students in his class, which is 1/2 of the "Year 8" (seventh grade) kids.  I think it's pretty cool that they divided into two halves--what a great size for a group!  Hank thinks he's the only American in his class, too.  He liked all of his teachers but said French was the most difficult.  She talked mainly in French. :)

All three kids came home happy, hungry, and tired.  Tomorrow, we ride the BUS!

Hannah fell asleep within five minutes of leaving her campus.

Hair Cuts and Brotherly Love

I had been meaning to post haircut photos from several weeks ago...John took the boys to his Sri Lankan Saloon (barber shop).  They did a fantastic job!  Below are the cuts but what I found more interesting was capturing a typical exchange of facial expressions, which unfolded au naturel as I stood and snapped photos.

School Uniforms!

As promised, here are finally photos of school uniforms.  The school is "Compass International School," and it is based out of Great Britain.  It follows the International Primary Curriculum, which emphasizes creative thinking, problem solving, and inquiry-based learning.  A very different system compared to our Texas TAKS-driven system.  More on this later.  But now: los fotos!

Rules: we are learning what we must follow and what we might break.  For example, untucked shirts are fine.  Jack and Hannah can wear black "trainers" (tennis shoes) but Hank must stick to the official dress shoe policy.  Hank also has long pants, but they're getting hemmed--I'll post them tomorrow.  Jack also has shorts--they just didn't get photographed.  No, you are not imaging things: younger kids wear yellow knit shirts, but older kids wear pressed white shirts.

Small Day Trip, Step 1: SustenanceNo, I didn't say "nutrition."

When heading out on an adventure of unknown proportion, the first step is to bribe your three children into submission by pumping them full of donuts.  Luckily, there's a Krispy Kreme not five minutes from our house.  Even luckier, we've only stopped there twice in the past 11 weeks.

What you see above is just ONE  of the TWO boxes of donuts we purchased.  I think Hank ended up, over the course of the morning, eating seven donuts all by himself.

What do you get when you (1) purchase two dozen donuts and (2) take Hannah and Jack--still cute and fresh from the morning time--into the shop with you?  Well, of course, you get HATS.

RPH: From a Circular in a Major Newspaper

Habib Update: Scratchin' Action

Taken during my Friday morning blogging session as I was writing the happy dance post.

The Noodle Pizza Happy Dance

Only 14 Seconds, with almost no sound.  What's important is the movement.
Significant blackmail and trickery were involved in the capturing and sharing of this video.
[Sidenote:  When we watched this on the blog from our house, it was playing in double time with no sound.  You can still see the dance, and watching it in double time is pretty dang funny.]

Food here is still a little bit of an issue, mostly due to my lack of inspiration and ability to blame that on everything else but myself.  That is a whole whining post unto itself, so you gentle readers will be spared that for the moment.

Suffice it to say that we have an easy and inexpensive supply of pasta noodles and homemade pizza stuff (the Arabic flatbread makes quick and fantastic pizza.  Yea!).  So maybe a month ago, Hank started rewarding me for a meal-well-provided (a.k.a., something he was happy to eat in large quantity) by spontaneously breaking out in this dance.

The dance is aided by slippery tile floors, coated with a very fine (almost invisible) layer of powdery sand dust.  Although he starts out in flat-handed formation, at about 8 seconds, he breaks into the finger-snapping option.  Plaid pajama pants are not required.

The Pink Mennonite-Twirling-Dress Reformative-Scooter Queen

We've been trying to get each child something wheeled that goes on a road outside. Jack was first, with a traditional skateboard. We want to get Hank a bicycle, but bikes here are incredibly expensive (a new bike for Hannah, which would cost about $50 at Walmart in the US costs about $200 here...I haven't been brave enough to look for a Hank-sized bike yet). So for Hannah, we started off with a scooter.

Scooters are very popular in our compound, as they get you somewhere quick and are light and more affordable (if you buy the cheap kind) or more portable (if you bring one back from the US).

This scooter came from a large grocery store called "Family Foods." Family Foods reminds me of the Brookshire Brothers in Hearne, TX. It's large and stocked but not as fancy as other stores you'd find in a large city. I don't need any more fancy than is necessary for basic provisions, so FF is excellent.

They have a small toys area, and we bought this scooter for about $20. One of the bonus features was the packaging.



We are guessing that it's called a "REFORMATIVE" scooter because it collapses--the handle folds down for storage or carrying.  The "Plentiful colour and special personality character" on the box is obviously Bart Simpson, but once we opened the scooter, we were even more excited to find Barbie princess stickers.  I will bet you a dollar that none of these characters was "officially licensed" from their copyright-holding parent companies...

Thankfully, the little disposable wrench required to do some minor adult assembly was included in the package, so once we got home from the grocery store trip, John had it all assembled in under five minutes.  That's saying a lot, since the whole time, a certain four year old was jumping and dancing around the kitchen asking "when can I ride it? when can I ride it? when can I ride it?"

Watching her ride the scooter provides great entertainment, both in the level of joy it produces for its rider and in seeing that little body move with such powerful determination.  She doesn't center her body of the footplate.  Instead, she sort of hangs over to one side, as she is pushing furiously (and moving rather quickly as s result).  The first trip couldn't wait for shoes or appropriate clothing.  Off she went down the street, bangs in her eyes, flithy little feet pumping, and dress ribbons flying behind.

A musician named William Ackerman put out an album in the 1976 called In Search of the Turtle's Navel. It is an accoustic guitar album that, according to Wikipedia, some consider as marking the start of New Age Music.  Whatever it's historical importance, it is a great collection of songs.  One is called "The Pink Chiffon Tricycle Queen."  That is what we have here, only wearing her Mennonite Twirling Dress and perched upon her Reformative Scooter.

Did I mention that the wheels light up in the dark?

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Just for fun, here's one of Ackerman's other songs, from that same album:

RPH: Regional Flavors

Life in DOH!-ha: The Faucet and هاري بوتر

Both of the following stories are offered as illustrations of a general problem in Doha.  Stuff is available and gets done but is never quite right.  Sigh.

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The water here is "hard," which makes the sink and other fixtures degrade quickly. Our kitchen faucet had started leaking at the base due to this corrosion, and so John asked the compound manager if we could get a replacement.

Our previous faucet had not included a spray handle, so I passed along the message that I would love a unit that had a sprayer, even just an old-fashioned, black-handled sprayer off to the side.

News came that yes, I could have a sprayer, and that it would be one of the new-fangled types where you where the sprayer is part of the main faucet unit and you can pull the faucet out of its neck bar.  How cool is that? I was thankful and excited.

Just a few days later, the very nice compound plumber installed the new faucet.  You can see the black ring about 1/2 way back where the sprayer handle attaches to the neck.  You can even unseat the spray handle and pull it out about an inch.

But that's where it stops.  Indeed, it is a removable spray handle.  But the plumber did not understand how to make the spray handle fully functional.  When I asked him about pulling it out via the four feet of hose that is ready, hanging out underneath the sink, his answer was: "no pull, only twist" (as in rotate side-to-side).

So now I have a sprayer handle that doesn't function as a sprayer.

A while back, the boys had a set of Tops Trumps cards--I can't remember the theme--and occasionally they would get into a battle with these that was pretty fun.  Somehow that deck got lost/mutilated, and since that time, I've kept my eyes open for a Top Trumps set they would like.  These sets come in all sorts of themes: cats, dogs, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, baseball, football, soccer, Webkinz, etc.

Low and behold, at the Doha entertainment superstore (Virgin Mega, which is sort of like a Best Buy), we found Harry Potter (هاري بوتر) Top Trumps! Thinking that I could/would play this with the boys, I spent the $10 on a set.

Look closely at the two photos below.

The front of the package was totally in English, but once you open the cards, all the important info is only in Arabic...meaning we can't read them and, therefore, can't use them.

The View

Inside the walls: 

fresh paint, 

fresh road surface, 

new green grass full of automatic sprinkler system, 

trees and some flowers, 

lots of air conditioning, 

huge pool, 

cold bottled water, 

comfort, 

quiet.

Outside the walls:  

big empty field, 

powdery dust, 

rows of buses and machinery, 

a worker's camp: warren of shanties with questionable water, sewage, and electricity, 

traffic 24/7, 

Khaliji sunset, 

Indian, Pakistani, Nepalese, Sri Lankan laborers, 

the crack of the cricket bat.

RPH: Street Sign.

Nighttime at the 'pound

Hannah is all about the bounce, as described in Hank's post below.  First thing in the morning, as she goes down the stairs, she looks out the front window to see whose on the trampoline.  Then she proceeds to ask me once every 15 minutes for the rest of the day when she can go jump.  She monitors who is on the trampoline--they're approximate ages and relative sizes and how long they've been at work...because she wants to be out there all day long. 

The weather here is still warm (currently, at 1 PM, the temp is 102 with a heat index of 112), so we wait until after the sun has gone down to spend much time outside.

I took these photos while Hannah was bouncing the other night.  My Canon Rebel has the magical ability to take photos in very low light without things getting too blurry. 

Only our little ball of energy could not be wholly captured.

Sweaty girl, in front of the new fountain.

Date palm looking greyish from the dust but still pretty in the uplighting.

Bark o' the date palm.

Changes-By Hank

Recently the compound manager has been making some changes to the front of the compound, for example new grass, a path to the club house, and a fountain. One of the coolest additions, besides everything getting a new coat of paint, is the trampoline. After the grass was put in, the path and the fountain were finished they brought it in.


I think it's a great addition to the compound because it's something else to play on besides a small fort-thing, swings, and the pool. It's also in a great spot because it's right next to the entrance to the club house. That way its easy to go swimming, dry off and go have fun jumping around.

But this might not be the only pleasant surprise is store for Al Fardan Gardens II. My mom saw the manager, Eslam, and he said there was more to come.

A View From Our Front Porch

Bird's Eye View: Habib Update

Habib says hello.

The past week or so has seen some incredible progress with our friend, Habib!  It started when I was changing out a toy on his cage.  His Mum, Veronica, had spent a couple of weeks in her native South Africa and had returned with these wonderful parrot toys--something that we cannot get in Doha.  He had succeeded in tearing one to shreds, so it was time for me to hang another one.

The cage design is such that switching out the toys is a trick.  There's no good, easy opening from which to hang them to the top part of the cage.  And these toys are large and heavy, so you don't want to go terrorizing Habib--who is unsure about the whole thing--by dropping them in the midst of the operation.   So I had my fingers sort of entwined around cage bars as I struggled to connect the new toy...and he walks very purposefully over to my hand.  He wasn't attacking me but he had a mission.  If I could have quickly extricated myself, I probably would have...but that would have meant dropping the big toy and scaring him.  So I just froze.  He proceeded to very gently use his beak and tongue to examine all my fingers--no biting or pinching, just touching.  Then he bent his head down for a scratch!  Wow!  Can you understand how excited I was?  He came to me as if to say, "Hey Lady, don't be so afraid.  I'm really a nice guy."

Then yesterday, he was doing this same little "nervous dance" that our sweet El Jefe would do when El Jefe wanted attention.  Habib was on his stand and nothing was going on that should have otherwise made him nervous.  I was alone in the kitchen, and it was quiet, so I put my shoulder next to his perch and he immediately stepped up and made himself comfortable!  We walked around the house, talked about what all was going on, did some of the dishes together, and took a picture. (My hair is wet.) 

Today, he got on my shoulder again and then preened my hair a little (a sign of affection).  More wows!

He's also been more accepting of the kids.  He's touched Jack's hand from outside of the cage, he's interacting with Hank, and he was taking sweet peas off of Hannah's spoon last night during dinner.

He and John are doing fine, too, which is a good thing, as Habib had a love/attack relationship with his original Dad, Collin.  I think the relationship was more love, as Habib still talks in Collin's voice quite often and still talks about Collin a lot (in Vee's voice)...Now, before I end this post with the last piece of news, I have to say that I attribute Habib's wonderful nature to two things: (1) he is, in the words of the breeder that helped us with El Jefe and whose life of bird experience I value immensely, a "great bird."  Regardless of his original lot in life, which must have included a lot of fear, he is gentle and sweet and trusting and smart, smart, smart.  And (2) Veronica has a special gift.  She is kind and patient and just enough "fearless" to let her be the leader, even when being the leader means letting the bird accept things on his own time. I am the lucky beneficiary of her extraordinary work.

 Habib's Mum and Dad at a recent visit.

And the crowning achievement in mimickry.  Habib now yells, "COWBOY. YEEEEE-HAW!" Those who knew Cosmo, you will have special appreciation for this.