Another Reason to Love Shoes

And I do love shoes.  If had lots of money and even more extra time, I would be a shoe fanatic.  Not the regular cliche high-heeled kind but all sorts of oddball kinds.  In high school, I loved to take some of my random job money and go to downtown Austin (around 6th street) and shop for a strange pair of shoes in those funky shops.  But this isn't about me, it's about Christmas in a Qatar British School.

This email came today from the class parent:

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Dear Parents,

In line with the Dutch tradition at this time of year, we are hoping that Sinterklaas will visit our school over the weekend.  If the children leave a shoe/slipper in their classroom on Thursday, maybe they will find some sweets inside their shoes when they return to school on Sunday morning…

So, if you would like, your child can bring one shoe/slipper to school on Thursday to be left here over the weekend.

This is always a fun event.

Regards,

ClassParentPerson

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And it generated some good, healthy excitement from Hannah who is currently not feeling too great (fever and bronchitis).  We have good medicine and thanks to our friend Courtney, a nebulizer (breathing treatments calm the coughing), and she's doing better, but it was fun to see something light up her face.  She has some very glamorous pink glittery ballet flats from Target, and I asked her if she would like to leave one of those for Sinterklass. 

"No," she answered, "I'm leaving one of my [pink] cowboy boots, so there's more room for the loot."

God Bless Technology: First Aggie Football Visions in Two Seasons

We don't get most American channels on our basic satellite TV, and what we did get wasn't working earlier this fall when the one Aggie game was broadcast on Fox Sports (the one sports channel we receive). So I figure that I would have to be grateful for online radio (WTAW.com), the only way I've been able to follow Aggie football for the past two seasons. Yes, I wake up in the middle of the night (typically 2-3 AM), typically before a long work day, to listen to Dave South call the Aggie games.

So in my normal habit, I woke up at 3:45 AM, made a nest on the couch, fired up the computer, connected to the audio feed.  A minute or two in, I figured what the hell and went to ESPN to see if they were streaming the live video and how much it would cost me. No luck. Then I did a quick web search, and the second result got me the full streaming ESPN presentation for FREE without any accounts or info--I just went to the website and the game magically appeared. Serious win at 4:10 AM. 

At half time, I decided it was safe to wake up the house, took the computer upstairs, and used our magical cord to plug it into the large TV. The second half of the game (6-8 AM) then looked like this. EPIC WIN: 

Yes, the Aggies were outscored, but to have seen the "last" game in this historic rivalry. To have actually seen Kyle Field and the War Hymn swaying...made my heart sing. It was a fantastic game, worth arguing about (bad calls, intense playing, so. much. noise., last-minute scores). There was screaming and jumping in our house. I can't feel sorry about the outcome. Although I wish the Aggies had won, to end with this sort of all around drama is 1000% better than ending with a blow-out either way. Congrats 'sips.

Now we're off to the SEC, where we will become a better team and get better recognition...then in a few years, all the politicos will figure out a way to have the rivalry meeting again. And we will be ready.

Desert Turkey Day 2011

Well, last night I brought home a huge bucket of KFC, screamed "Happy Thanksgiving" as I walked in the door, and declared that as the sum total of my turkey-related preparations.  We were supposed to have a Thanksgiving dinner hosted by the school, so I thought I was off the hook.  Then the school's event was postponed...because it might RAIN here.  In fact, we had an incredibly lovely cool front two days ago, and now we are in the midst of perfection.  Low 80's during the day, 60 at 6 AM this morning.  Having been acclimated to the super hot weather, this actually feels cool.  

So the official T-Day dinner postponed left me non-plussed for today, the "official day."  To top it off, this morning, I watch this awesome video from Tanta Mary about cooking turkey.  So I decided at 10 AM this morning that I would, in fact, make Thanksgiving dinner.

We have a store called "MegaMart" that stocks all the magical Western things, or at least the extent of which you can get in Doha.  There's also a "Baby MegaMart," which is about the size of a 7-11 but chock full of all the important stuff, like fresh cranberries and Fritos.  So after work, I went by and bought two turkey breasts, stuffing mix, mushrooms, celery, oranges, fresh ginger, fresh corn on the cob, and two half gallons of Blue-freaking-Bell Ice Cream for the sum total of $120 USD.  We won't discuss that each ear of corn cost $2 USD or that the BlueBell was $9 per carton.  Because what matters is that in 15 minutes I had the fixin's for T-Day dinner.  Besides, gas is like 90 cents per gallon.  It all balances out...sort of.

So here's to our second Thanksgiving in Doha.  True to form, it involved three hours of cooking, 30 minutes of eating, two dropped knives, seventeen licks of butter straight off of finders, and three fights among the children.  But the turkey breast (Butterball!) was excellent, and the corn was sweet and delicious.  I just needed some more of the buttermilk pie and some of Mamaw's dinner rolls to finish it off.

Yes, that's gravy served out of a teapot. Desert practicality.

Happy Thanksgiving and Masha'Allah, y'all. 

19 Years and Pie

Nineteen years ago today, we got married in a hellacious rain/hail storm at a winery (no, Mother, it was not a brewery).  After the supposed outdoor ceremony was hastily moved inside, in front of a stone fireplace, standing room only, lots of people told us that the wedding day rain would be good luck: "one penny for every drop."  Well, maybe we don't have the exact penny-to-drop ratio, but we do have a very rich life in all the ways that count.  Thinking of our loved ones who were there and are still our support system, family who were there but are no longer with us, new friends who weren't there but who are still precious in countless ways.

So to celebrate, he had me some wooden shelves made for the laundry area, we took a walk together, and I made him a buttermilk pie...with buttermilk powder brought from the US back in May.  I've never seen buttermilk here...we have Laban, a sort of buttermilky-like yogurt drink, but who wants to eat "Laban Pie"?  Sounds like "Cow Lips in a Crust" and just don't work raight with a good suthern ack-cent.  It just ain't good and proper...and if anyone out there in Doo-hah saw buttermilk one Sunday seventeen weeks ago at MegaMart, remember that I don't play that drive-around-all-day-going-to-five-groceries-for-one-item-at-a-time game.  Now hush and enjoy the view of our first buttermilk pie in two years...

 

That's some sort of French pastry crust...looks like a pie crust but the damned label is in French...it is mighty fine flaky good.  And the powdered buttermilk worked just right.

Thankful and Shameless

I'm very thankful that our school picked a really great photographer for portraits this year.  I've never seen portraits this sort of "cool" or "informal" before, and I'm sold. 

Since I want to share with my people, I've shamelessly taken screen grabs of the proofs.  To pay back a little of the copyright karma I just burned, here's their website: https://www.pret-a-portrait.net/.  They have a great selection of products, and the prices are very reasonable.  I think they came to us from Dubai?!?  If you live in Doha, please consider checking them out and/or recommend them to your school! 

I'll, however, be making a substantial purchase...

Three @ Five,Inspired by 2011 School Portrait Proofss

Your correspondent here.  The Lecturer and I were looking at the kids school pictures (this year) this morning - Oldest is 13, Middle one 11, and youngest 5.  Here's a picture of the oldest when he was 5.

The Mama's groans at how grown up he is now was a moment of Mama realization.  Will post a current school pic soon, so you can see the boy, and you'll groan too.

The Lecturer says, "he's really perty."

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I (nrs) came back later and posted the middle's and youngest's photos, too.  Each one of these is at 5 years old.  This is what it would be like to have triplets...okay, now I need to go have an adult beverage...

RPH Redux: November 16 Blue Daze

These aren't really blue daze like we see in Texas, but they are very close and they make me think of my Momma, and they make me happy.  Know what's strange? I posted a picture of this same plant exactly one year ago today.  Without any memory of that, I saw the sunlight on these today, and they're what compelled me to get up from my work reading, to take the photo, and to do some end-of-the-day blogging. The plant is much bigger now than it was a year ago...What is it about November 16?

Don't Play with Sharp Knives...and Pay Attention to What You're Eating.

Thanks to this post from Adventures in Bentomaking, I laughed myself to sleep the night before Halloween.  It was to be a school day, and last year, I had busted out with the Mummy noodle bento (also thanks to Adventures) and then saw this recipe for "severed fingers."  The original recipe did not include the nasty fingernails, and I wished that my pasta shells had been one size bigger, but you get what you get and you don't throw a fit.

If you can't tell, that bun is pretty small.  Hank and Jack can each eat two of them for lunch.  So I packed Hannah one "regular" hotdog...no need to terrorize five year olds...well, maybe it would be fun, but I chickened out.  Then I packed Hank and Jack each one regular hotdog and one "severed finger in a bun."  Then I kept making obnoxious comments about "stay away from knives! Be careful with sharp objects!" as they got ready for school and walked to the bus.

Jack opened his severed finger at lunch, and one of his friends immediately looked over and said, "Um, that looks like a severed finger."  He came home acting appropriately disgusted. Score one for the freakshow mom!

Hank came home and I looked at him expectantly, waiting.  He unpacked his lunch kit and put it away.  I followed him, looking expectant.  "Well?" I said.  He looked confused.  "Well?" I asked, "Did you notice anything in your lunch?"  He looked confused and then a lightbulb went off.  I waited, holding my breath, hoping it had grossed him out or given him the heebie-jeebies.  "Oh, yea...Mom? Why did you put a raw noodle in my hotdog? That crunchy texture was an unpleasant surprise."  Ugh.  Fail.

I guess I'll take one out of two. :P

Happy Halloween 2011from Pinkalicious and Her Black Cat

The paper mache jack-o-lanterns from last year survived to see another season, which is a damned good thing, as you'll see later.

 But then I just couldn't resist temptation...in fact, I was on Target.com because I needed to order some blue school uniform pants/skirts for the kids...but the Halloween decorations were just right there...calling to me...in what seems to be fast becoming a tradition in our house--sort of like hanging plates on the wall or having 48,000 coffee mugs for one person--we had new orbs hanging overhead, these in the form of paper lanterns with a Halloween theme.

Did I happen to mention how thankful I am that my kids have always loved homemade costumes? From the fleece Jedi robes I sewed freehand in 30 minutes about 4 years ago to this year...we've sometimes bought or been given things but it has never been a "must."  This year, Hannah was "Pinkalicious," a little girl who ate so many ultra-pink cupcakes that she turned pink, and an interesting child-level commentary on the hazards of chemically enhanced foods (?!?).  We dressed her all in pink and then "painted" her face with basic pink eyeshadow. The boys chose not to dress up, but Hank took Hannah trick-or-treating, and Jack helped hand out candy.

 So maybe those paper lanterns weren't my only target purchase...maybe I also bought a six-foot long inflatable cat that lit up and moved its head...And maybe some of the foreign workers from places we see as so amazingly exotic (Nepal, India, Pakistan) were highly amused and befuddled by this decoration.  One of them stood in front of our house for 20 minutes watching the cat move its head back and forth.

 A wonderful expat organizes a big Halloween carnival on the tennis courts. The cost per child is about $15, but the "goodies" are amazing.  There are probably 25 games, each with a prize.  This does a reasonably job of filling in for the fantastic Halloween carnivals the elementary school used to put on back in Texas.

I have to say that, between the compound's effort at putting on/hosting this carnival and the wide-spread participating in trick-or-treating, we have a great time with Qatar's Halloween.  It helps a lot with the homesick.

Unexpected Rainy Day

 We had a lovely hour-long rain unexpectedly one afternoon in mid-October.  Thankfully, we were all home and could sit, breathing that cool, fresh air, and enjoy it.  A neighbor drove by on her way home and said she had just passed three different wrecks...sort of like Texans driving in the snow.

What to Do with Post-Frozen Tortillas?

When we moved here almost a year and a half ago (really? it's already been that long?!?), we brought 288 corn tortillas.  Flour tortillas you can find here...you can even find relatively good ones...but corn are non-existent.  There's some sort of bizarro Old El Paso corn/flour hybrid that tastes like cardboard, but no real corn tortillas.

So we brought our two gross with us when we all flew over and we put them in the freezer.  A strange thing about corn tortillas...they freeze fine but even a few months later, when I thaw them, they fall apart.  Must be the water content that's turned to ice?  I've tried thawing on the counter and microwaving, but the outcome is the same.  On the top picture above, see the strange shaped, uncooked tortillas on the upper left?  That's what happens to about 1/2 of them.  The other 1/2 are better but are still prone to falling apart when soft cooked for enchiladas.  This state of affairs certainly make rolling enchiladas very difficult.

But I refuse to throw away a corn tortilla.  So I made a sort of stacked enchilada casserole in a springform pan.  It's just enchilada sauce, cheese, and tortillas.  I didn't have any onion or I would have chopped some fresh for the top (the kids don't like onions, so throughout wasn't an option).  I also used "real cheddar cheese," which was also brought back from Texas because the cheddar here is all too sharp, and I made a pot of pinto beans (also brought with us).  This meal put a serious dent in our home-food stock...

We used to have a restaurant back in Texas that served "stacked enchiladas," one of the only times I've seen them outside of family cooking.  They put some salady stuff on top, too, which was delicious.  Only lettuce here is sort of a challenge...which is odd considering the amount of Greek salad and Fatoosh that gets consumed in this country...but good fresh lettuce is hard to find and I refuse to spend my days shopping at four different food stores only to pay $8 USD for a small head of it.

So some lovely pickled jalepenos were the perfect green accent on top of that soft-fried egg...First enchiladas since the May visit home.  Nommmmmm...

RPH: School Bus

 

On my drive to work one morning, the bus pulled up next to me, and there was a Hannah...

Cooking with Hank

The eldest boy has taken up cooking, and he's pretty darned good at it.  So far, he's made homemade hot pockets, noodles with butter/garlic, hamburgers, and tacos.

This night, he made omelettes.  He chopped the veggies and shredded the cheese and let each person adapt theirs to particular preferences (number of eggs, amount/type of ingredients).  I made the first one as a demo, and then he made them for everyone else.

Now who can I get to take up kitchen cleaning as a hobby?

RPH: Doha Trail Ride?

The view from my morning drive a few weeks ago...?
Cowboy hats and thobes...if only the wagons had been camel-drawn...

Acropolis DNA, Middle Eastern Home

Well, maybe there was a pine cone laying under a tree in Athens at the Acropolis...and maybe I picked it up and gently put it in my backpack.  And maybe we brought it back to Qatar...and maybe it sprouted and is growing in my kitchen...

Now if I could just pick up some of that ancient Greek philosophical smarts as easily...

Time for Maths!

2 cases of Ramen
72 individual packages
54,720 calories
100 days worth of sodium
2,000 grams of fat
17 pounds of dry weight

Free shipping with amazon Prime.
International shipping $10 per pound...

Because you learn that expat life sometimes makes sense only in terms of "tastes like home."

Breakfast with Compadres

Speaking of cheagles...While I was reading a couple of weeks ago, Wa'allah had breakfast with his outdoor cousin chickens.

JACKSMALL!

I remember naming each of the boys--they have a "grown up" name (real name) and then their nickname (daily name). I remember telling lots of people that "Hank" and "Jack" are good "porch-callin' names."  Somehow, though, in the process of all sorts of calling, we started sticking on their last names, too.  So JACK! became JACK SMALL! This must be yelled in a stairwell or out an open door (back door, bedroom door, shower door) and must be said all crammed together: JACKSMALL!  Different inflections are allows.  JackSMALL! JACKsmall! jaCkSmALL!

Beyond a good porch callin' name, apparently, at least Jack is a good bird-calling name.  Now, whenever I leave the room (you'll hear my flipflops in retreat in the video below), the bird starts yelling JACKSMALL! as a way to call to me (as the leader of the flock).  Now the bird is starting to get the inflection variations, too, although you can't hear it in the 30 seconds below.  At the end of the video, the bird says "Cheagle."  This Wa'allah's nickname, because he is a cross between a chicken and an eagle.  Cheagle.

 

God bless the middle child, who must now hear his name called dozens of times per day and who now gets confused, thinking I'm calling him downstairs, when it's really the bird calling me. 

Back to School for Year 2

Ah, what sweeeet relief when Ramadan and Eid had passed and it was time to get the precious little boogers back to school.  Jack started secondary, so he got new white shirts.  I can only imagine how much easier it was to return this year as compared to walking in as "new kids" last year.  We continue to be rather pleased with the teachers and the overall experience, especially with the difference in educational styles. Lots of blessings here.

61 Days

39 Days

Cigars, or, Oh the hypocrisy

Did you know that our esteemed 35th President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, delayed signing the sanctions against Cuba in 1962 until he could take delivery of about 1,200 H.Upmann Cuban cigars? This round of the embargo made it illegal to import cuban cigars, and he wanted to get ahead of the directive he was about to sign.

In 1999 our 42nd President, William Jefferson Clinton, expanded the embargo against Cuba, making it illegal for a U.S. citizen to even smoke a Cuban cigar, EVEN IF THAT CITIZEN IS NOT INSIDE THE UNITED STATES at the time? We won't go into his particular thing with cigars right here, but perhaps the same thing comes to your mind as comes to mine?

My point is certainly not that Castro's regime shouldn't be isolated and minimalized. It should be. And I really don't even want to start an argument about our politicians in the US.

But did you know, or at least I have been told, that Hoyo de Monterrey in Habana Cuba makes a cigar called an Epicure No.2 that is considered one of the best smokes on the planet?

I've been told that these particular cigars like 68 - 70 degrees Fahrenheit and slightly more relative humidity, say in the 72% range, than smokes from elsewhere.

Yes, indeed.

Grand Finale: Jack Trolls the Medi

Last Photo: Skipping to Ephesus

When I am an old woman with many cats, I will have a poster of this in my living room.

Last Words: Family. Outtakes.

We were fortunate to talk to my Mom via Skype when we were in Mykonos, and she asked me "what's your favorite part of the trip so far?"  I thought about all the immediate answers...the Acropolis, the Hagia Sofia, the Cistern, the food...but none of those resonated as THE favorite.  After a pause, I realized what the best thing was about the trip: being relatively unplugged and spending a LOT of time as a family.  The best blessings of all were the moments with the kids and with John, struggling with languages, learning something new together, being exhausted but happy, laughing at the ridiculous photos.  That closeness has been the biggest benefit of our whole life abroad.  Honestly.

So I leave you with some outtakes from the Summer Trip of 2011.  

Yes, in our joy, we were also a little crazed.