Gilgamesh Faces Off Against Humbaba

Heading back towards the road from the cottage is this muddy track through the sheep field.  On one of our outings, we inadvertently spooked this sheep into cornering herself at the gate. She made a fierce opponent as we crept forward, climbing up on the only rock along the way to improve her vantage point for attack.  

Finally, after copious pooping and a defiant bawling, she ran past us in a fury of flying  downy white puffs.  We decided she had faced down the big silver beast and was on her way to tell her friends about the epic victory.  As the week wore on, several of her sisters looked at us accusingly...

We called her Gilgamesh.

And since they all looked the same, we called them all Gilgamesh.

Texan Leprechauns or Scottish Trolls?

Yes, they are out cavorting in their pajamas.
We call it "laundry conservation" and pat ourselves on the back for being green.
Don't judge.

To Reside in a Painting

This is where we sat.

Pictures will not do this justice.

Our cottage was on the western coast of Scotland, south of Oban.  After arriving in the dark, muddy night after the stress of our diving and directional adventure, we woke up the next morning to one of the most amazing views I have ever seen.  We were on the side of a heather and grass-covered moor dotted with sheep.  At our feet was Loch Awe, a long skinny lake that sometimes looks bluish and sometimes is almost black.  Just beyond a clump of trees in the center of the view were the ruins of Finchairn Castle.

This is what we looked like.

Inside we had a nice wood-burning fireplace, but the best place to be was on the sun porch.  It rained most of the time--generally drizzling but occasionally a downpour--although on Christmas day the blue sky did make a glorious appearance.

Being here made me think of Georgia O'Keefe and her mountain/desert paintings.  The landscape was smears of color, and as the light changed from dark to milder to mild and back to dark, the colors of everything around us changed.  It was truly magic.

Here are five panoramas, taken at different times of day and different states of cloudy.  Notice how different the colors look.  Every time I walked out onto the porch, I got a fresh feeling of amazement at how gorgeous this place is.  This is a selection of what we saw...

Information on the cottage is here.

Boats Moored in Inverary, Scotland

Merry Christmas from the Family

More welcoming than I can describe.

Coming from a place that is warm, flat, dry, and without Christmas, we were beyond thrilled to be in a hilly, rainy, cold place.  Like our trip last year, I had brought along a little paper Christmas tree to build for our decorations.  But if you can imagine arriving at a place in the pitch black at night, cold and stressed from the drive, and still tired from the plane ride and general travel.  And you walk in and there is a Christmas tree with lights and ornaments. Yes, it's just a small plastic table-top tree.  But come on: it was a Christmas tree. And there was a little tinsel garland decorating the living room. I cannot tell you how much that meant to us.

We had two days at the cottage before Christmas and actually took one of our driving trips on Christmas Eve.  More on that later...but yes, indeed Santa did come see us.  Thank god for those GPS homing devices I had implanted in the Indian silk stockings.

We spent Christmas day eating homemade shepherd's pie and watching movies in our p.j.s.

Santa did find us.

Hannah lasted until 8 AM before waking us up.  Of course, it's still pitch dark outside. Santa brought wool blankets!  He shops to support the local economy...

Christmas in the Scottish Western Highlands.

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And then, just because you need to know.  

Here are the pictures I took trying to get the one shot above...

Sigh.

Off the Map

Our trek from Edinburgh out into the country went something like this:

Take Big Highway 1 away from the city.
Exit onto two-lane country lane and continue driving.
Turn off of two-lane country lane and onto one-lane (but two-way) road.
Notice pull-outs for passing.  Pray prior to blind corners.
At tiny village #42, turn onto a different one-lane-but-two-way road.
When the hedge stops, look on your right for a gate.
Go through the gate and over two cattle guards* on semi-paved road.
Go through another gate and turn left.
Open the barnyard gate, being careful not to let any sheep loose.
Drive up the dirt path to the cottage.

*Directions did not indicate that one cattle guard had been removed due to heavy machinery on the road.  In the dark, we searched for cattle gate #2 only to see it sitting next to the road in the light the next day.

Here's what the GPS looked like as we came up the road with the cattle guards:

After the stress of getting out of Edinburgh's city center, stopping at two liquor stores and a grocery, and losing all daylight at 4 PM, we arrived at the cottage at 6 PM to find a fireplace set for a fire as well as other lovely signs of (temporary) home.  Here are some pictures of the roads leading up to the place that we took in the following days

Entrance on the right.  Castle ruins on the left.

The one and only functioning cattle guard.

The barn yard.

The barn occupants.

The very soggy road from the barnyard to the cottage.
Please pause to imagine finding this in the dark and rainy night.
Carry on.

The cottage!

Panic on the Streets of Edinburgh

The driver prepares himself.

Let me tell you first that this story ends happily.  Your Correspondent was a safe and successful driver, even on the one-lane, terrifying Scottish country roads.  They're only terrifying when a big lory (truck), 18-wheeler, or bus is passing you from the opposite direction. But that terror is enough to stick with you.

Full confidence, coffee included.

We had never driven on the wrong side of the road or the wrong side of the car. In fact, we have grown to love public transport (buses, metros) in Europe.  It's a great way to get around and I don't miss having a car.  But to get to the country in Scotland, you must drive.  We talked to some friends who recently went to South Africa (we lead a surreal life) and they said that learning to do the wrong-sided thing was actually a little easier in the city because you could get used to it by just following the cars in front of you.

So we rented a vehicle.  When you see the pictures of the cottage, you will see why 4-wheel drive was necessary.  It was a very nice...very expensive (!!!) vehicle.  And we took delivery of it in Old Town Edinburgh. Where the streets are crowded and narrow and, oh yeah, there's that enormous construction project (trolley system) that has a good number of the major roads torn up.

A really nice guy named James brought us the vehicle and then had to take the bus back to his office.  Talk about amazing service.  In the course of conversation, James came to know we had never driven in this bassackwards system, but he either had full confidence in us or he was laughing to himself figuring at least we brought the standard insurance from the shop.

We seriously considered a sign for the window: "Beware. Americans."

I was very proud of Your Correspondent.  He was cool and collected, and he remembered that when I yell "turn left!" but point to the right, he should follow my hand and ignore my mouth.

The vehicle had a great GPS systemwhich wasn't terribly difficult in terms of buttons and options.  The problem was that a GPS is only as smart as the people who put the information into it, and apparently this one was not smart enough to account for navigating all the road construction, detours, etc.  We ended up driving in circles for about an hour before I found this really cool feature called "detour" on the GPS.  If you click "3 miles" then it takes you on a detour 3 miles out, which is far enough away to get around the construction.

Did I mention the roundabouts?

Edinburgh: December 2012

A great irony of living here is that it is less expensive to travel to Europe for Christmas than it is to travel back to the US.  Because winter break from school is only two weeks, going back to the US is very difficult--start by taking off four days for travel, then try to divide 10 days into multiple family stops with three kids, luggage, etc.  Many, many colleagues here have told us that going home for the holiday is terribly exhausting.

We were lucky to have a great trip home last August, and for Christmas we wanted a vacation.  This should be contrasted with a tour.  On a vacation, you meander and sleep late and spend whole days in your pajamas. On tour, you plan your days for sightseeing and restaurants, etc.  We needed a vacation.  Living here is living with a constant low level of stress, 24/7, and while we are free to acknowledge Christmas and can even buy secular decorations in the stores, it doesn't feel like Christmas here.  Even having lived in warm climates before...the absence of music and all-out decorations (including decorated houses) means that the holiday is not "present" here.  On the good side, we don't have all the awful commercialism.  Being away from that is a truly joyous thing.

So we decided to go to Scotland for the holiday, but to go to the country and be in the quiet and solitude.  It started and ended with one night in Edinburgh.  Most pictures are in the dark...that's because the sun didn't rise until almost 9 AM and set at 4 PM!

First stop was Stewart Christie where Your Correspondent bought a gorgeous tweed coat.

After a couple of other errands, we headed to Rose Street, which runs parallel to Princes Street.  Princes Street is the main street through Old Town, which is bordered by the Gardens and Edinburgh Castle. I love these little alley/streets where there is almost never any car traffic.  The lights for Christmas made it seem like fairyland.  It was about 4:30 in the afternoon when we took this picture.

To a pub for dinner!  Children aren't allowed in after 6:30, but this old pub (the photo above is from outside the front door) was awesome.  Fire in the fireplace, old fashioned wooden bar, comfy seats, and deeeee-licious fish and chips. Maybe a Scottish brew or two...

An Edinburgh "Close": This is a sort of very narrow alley way between houses built in the 1600's.  On our last night, we went on a tour of Mary King's Close, an absolutely amazing trip to an underground part of Edinburgh that was covered over with new buildings hundreds of years ago.  The original houses were like what you see on either side of the alley, and their tops were taken off but then their wall structures were used as the foundations and basements for a whole new layer of the city.  Over time, those old, built-over streets were forgotten.  The tour of this forgotten, buried Edinburgh is so popular that it sells out.  We were lucky to make reservations while we were still on our country travels, and it was a great decision.  Perfectly preserved streets and buildings from 400 years ago.  Amazing.  Unfortunately, no photos were allowed.  The website gives additional good info.

Waverly Station, near where we stayed the last night.

Snax Cafe.  One of the biggest challenges of traveling with family is when you are all freaking starving and no one knows where to go or what to eat.  We often ask advice of our flat owners, but we also know that--especially in big tourist cities--they will refer us to the higher end places that their colleagues run.  We like "hole in the wall" places both due to fun and expense.  This is Snax Cafe, which we literally stumbled upon as we were all starving and looking for breakfast (it's 8 AM and d.a.r.k.).  The breakfasts here were truly outstanding.  The place was tiny.  In front of the counter are 8 bar stools that face the window. But the place had a constant stream of customers.  Apparently it's one of the "hidden gems" of Edinburgh. Breakfast here was ~5 GBP per person ($7-8).  Let's compare that to KFC, where I took the kids for a snack that cost 30 GBP ($50...for a snack...ugh). Three ladies ran Snax, and if we had spent any more time in Edinburgh, I have a feeling we would have gone back there for many more meals!

This is the winter festival set up along Princes Street, starting near Waverly Station and extended for several blocks.  Behind the ride is the Walter Scott Monument. It was weird and fun to see the juxtaposition of the garish modern lights with the ornate architecture.  I was so. very. excited to see they had Christmas Markets--both a Scottish and a German section!  But aside from some stollen and gingerbread, we didn't find anything that called to us. Hannah went berserk wanting to go on the rides, but I simply do not do portable carni rides.  After much negotiation, I said I would go on ONE ride with her.  They were just a little too big to send her by herself (and the boys had stayed at the flat a few blocks away while we ventured out).

She picked the Ferris Wheel.  Now, let me tell you that the damned Wheel was tall.  Like maybe 3 stories.  Hannah loved that cage, dangling in the wind and rain.  I was terrified and spent the whole time clinging to the center pole in the car like a koala bear hanging on to the last eucalyptus tree after the apocalypse. And then they stopped the damn thing at the very top to let other people off.  It was like one slow motion heart attack.  I was so scared I couldn't really even speak. I just stared ahead and chanted in tongues to try to keep us safe. 

The first- and last-night stops in Edinburgh were really nice but the point of this trip was being in the country, and that was, truly, the highlight.

That Moment When You Yell OMG in the Store

We had some strawberries last week, and they were really good.   About 25% of the package was squashy bruised, so it went to waste.  But they were good enough to go back and buy some more.  I guess the first time I hadn't looked at the shelf very closely when I bought two packages at once.

I PAID 59 QR...SIXTEEN DOLLARS & SIXTEEN CENTS...for ONE pound of strawberries (actually, because I bought two, I paid $32.32).  To make it worse, I then proceded to toss 25% of them. If I had known, all people in my house would have been eating weeping bruising under threat of punishment.

People of Holland: WTH are you doing to your strawberries to make them worth this much money?

And for those clueless people (me) that don't take time to look...just to the left of these were strawberries for 16 QR per pound.  That's $4.38.  That's NORMAL Doha crazy.  Not slap-yourself-crazy.

They're Here...

Somehow, when I walk downstairs and see this:

I always think of this:

-------------------------

Hello

Valerie

&

Bryan

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(laughing)

BIRD

The Pediatric Hospital Visit

The Princess has the croup, mainly some sneezing, the barking cough, and a pretty stubborn and hot fever.  This is an infection, and even though I am conservative about antibiotics, I think she needs a course of them. So this morning (FriSunday), I was glad to have friends tell me that the pediatric hospital right down the road from our house was open and recommended.  So she and I arrived there at 9:45 AM. 

Here is what my experience was like--all of it very pleasant but, as I explain below, bewildering as well.  There was no talking except where I indicate:

Easily find location.

Easily park.

Walk in front door.

Greeted by Filipina hospital workers in pink standing at desk to right, "Hello!"

Waiting room is almost empty.

Another lady with child, in niqab (facial covering with eye holes) tells my in broken English, "get number."

Turn to lady in pink, get number.  Lady in pink smiles and points me to desk across the way.

Walk to desk across the way. Get out insurance cards.

Lady in niqab behind desk speaks almost no English, hands me a form and say "name, birthday, phone number." 

Fill these in. 

Offer insurance cards. She takes one and ignores the other.

Receive printout and another number.

"Room 4."

Walk to room 4, where a nurse says hellos and takes girlchild's vitals.

Emphasize persistent fever, still hot after Ibuprofin dose an hour ago.

"Room 2."

Time elapsed since entering the building: 2 minutes.

Walk back across to room 2.

Girlchild is told to lay on table, flat on her back.

Not-very-pleasant Dr. Man with very very thick accent (Egyptian, I think) walks up, says nothing to either of us, listens to girlchild's heart/lungs, pokes her belly, looks in her ears, and shoves a tongue depressor in her mouth so quickly and without any warning that she gags.

Dr. Man looks at me, "Any disease?"

-----Pause story-------

Now, at least I think I know what he means...like "does she have any history of major illnesses?" The real answer, thankfully, is no.  But the real real answer is that she has a sort of asthmatic reaction to dust and as part of having a cold where she coughs until she vomits.  Her US doctor has known this and we have puzzled over it and it could be a sort of asthma or not we're not really sure but is this a "disease"?  I decide to say no, but now I've hesitated, so I have to say something...

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Me: "Only allergies, especially to dust. But I know what she has now is croup--she has the seal bark. [insert seal bark noises and envision Dr. Man looking at me oddly] Her fever is bad. I need antibiotic."

Dr. Man says nothing and walks to a desk outside of the examination area.

Get Hannah off the table and follow.

He fills out a form and says things to me.  I make out "once a day" and "as needed" as he points to item 1 and items 2 and 3 on the list. He hands me a paper.  

Wonder where to go next.

Time elapsed since walking in the building: 6 minutes.

Go back to the helpful ladies in pink, who point me to window 3.

On my way to window 3, I pass a lady in a niqab with four very young kids.  The youngest is sick but still as cute as anything.  I smile at the eyes behind the veil, look at the baby, and say "jameel" (beautiful).  Her eyes smile big back at me and she nods.  As I walk away I hear her laugh good naturedly and said to her husband "jameel!" most likely surprised that I knew any Arabic.

Make sure to pick the "ladies" line, even though a man is standing in it.  The lady line is separated from the man line by a small partition.

A lady at window 3 takes the paper that the doctor has just given me and hands me back a page and a sticker. She says nothing.

Follow the man who had come to the window first to another window.

Hand the paper and sticker in through the slot.

After much calculation and figuring, the man in this booth says, "seven riyales" (<$2.00).  I give it to him.  He hands me a receipt.

Follow the guy in front of me back to window 3.

Hand her my receipt.

She gives me FIVE bottles of medicine.  

Put them in a bag and ask her "finished?" "Finished," she says.

Meanwhile, Hannah has made friends with the family I spoke to. She is sitting with them, and the little ones are looking at her with some adoring faces. I look at my girlchild. She has on two skirts, a long one under a short one to create her signature "wedding cake tiered look" and she has on a bright pink Old Navy shirt with a giant American flag on it.

We trade lots of smiles and gestures and "mash'Allah" (blessings on the babies) and "ma salams" with this family and then walk out the door.

12 minutes and $1.75 later, we are back in the car.

It's hard to explain, but this hospital adventure just reminded me of a feeling of clueless almost-no-control that I vividly remember from our first days her.  You go through mandatory fingerprinting, blood drawing, and other processes to get your residency permit in a world of almost all Arabic.  People point to places, and you walk there.  You suddenly feel weird, because you only know what to do when they tell you what to do. When they don't tell you, you are lost. You have to trust that people are good and kind and not out to make a fool of you or take advantage of you. Once you're settled, these experiences don't happen much any more (going to the police department after a traffic accident is surely another place these feelings happen, but that's different, too). It's good and humbling to have to stumble around trying to figure it out because there are non-English speakers who have to do that, too. I'm just lucky to speak the Lingua Franca. But the silence and the chopped exchanges and the lack of certainty over communication and the general surreal feeling of clueless grasping is an odd experience. The blessing of going through a full-service hospital visit and prescription filling for $1.75 is beyond surreal as well.

Then we got home, and I looked up the meds. I always look them up first because otherwise, I have no idea what drugs I'm giving my children...we now have a giant bottle of children's Claritin, 2 bottles of ibuprofin, and 1 bottle of acetaminaphen.  Despite trying to explain to the doctor that she has croup and a fever (and I need antibiotics), all he heard was my "disease" answer...allergies.

If girlchild is not better in the morning, we'll try for antibiotics again at another clinic.

Expats, Behaving Badly

After visiting the pediatric clinic this morning, girlchild and I went to Carrefour, a place like Walmart that I prefer to avoid...but people, sometimes you need your chocolate filled crepes which come individually wrapped in the refrigerator section.  It was Friday morning, which is Sunday morning because it's church/mosque time.  Carrefour is busy because it's the weekend but also closes at 11:30 so the workers can go pray (I love that and wish that US stores weren't open 24/7/365). So the lines are typically long and people are stressed...it's that way most of the time at Carrefour...even though their prices are 20% higher than my preferred grocery shopping location and even though Doha has many, many great neighborhood/coop stores ("Al Meera" markets).

So I had my 5 packages of 8-crepes-each (no, I'm not kidding) plus about 15 other things, and I happened to pick the line next to the 10-item line.  Behind people with very full carts, I was successfully practicing my "Sabr jameel" (Arabic for "patience is beautiful," also beautifully written in Arab this way: الصبر جميل).   Beside me, the 10-items or less line moved through quickly and, in fact, became empty.  All the other lines had at least three carts waiting, and I'm sure that the 10-item line would have had someone in it in 30 seconds or less except that...

...Mr. Fair-skinned Euroman with his very full cart (50+ items) walked up to the 10-item line.  The cashier politely said to him, "I'm sorry, sir, but this line is only for ten items or less."  At which point he kept putting his piles on the belt. "I'm sorry, sir, but this line is only for ten items or less."  And then he yells at the cashier: "This is ridiculous! Every line here is full and yours is empty! I'll take my turn right here!  " I mean he yells.  Everyone looks. His wife, who is standing 5 feet from me, looks mortified, frozen in her spot. The cashier looks mortified and starts to say again, "I'm sorry, sir..." When Mr. Fair-skinned Ameriman, currently in the front of the line in my cattle chute, turns around towards them and yells, "No! He's right! An Arab just checked out way too more than 10 things and you didn't stop him because he was Arab! That's how it works! An Arab can break the rules but a Westerner can't!"

Now I am mortified. I am shocked that these two men are acting like frustrated children and yelling at this cashier. I am shocked that they apparently never learned the "two wrongs don't make a right" lesson.  And I am horrified to hear an American acting like this as dozens of people take stock of this situation. Do these people think that there are only two kinds of people in the world, privileged Arabs and Those of the West? Do these two fair-skinned Western men not realize their places of privilege?

Morons.

I get really tired of representing the West and defending American politics to non-Americans, too.  I have bad days and get frustrated.  But in the end, the only way to leave a good lasting impression is to act in ways that make others want to be courteous and patient, too.

Outside Carrefour, as the grates are being lowered to indicate closing for prayer time.

Then afterwards, marshmallows dipped in chocolate made everything all better. Sort of.

Honkey

A HUGE cultural difference we've noticed is the use of car horns. In the US, if you push me to the point of honking at you, it either means there is eminent danger or that you have enraged me to the point that there is murder flaming in my heart.  If someone honks at me, then I feel instant shame over some driving mistake or instant defensiveness wondering if a confrontation is likely.

When we went to India, people honked to indicate they were there and to be careful.  Not necessarily friendly but certainly normal and pragmatic...a sort of "beep beep--I'm here!"  Of course, horn honking comes in all varieties, too.  The short "wake up" beep to the long "WHAT ARE YOU DOING" drawn out one.  Every once in a while, when exiting a roundabout here, I beep-beep to let the gnarly traffic that I'm about to cross know that I'm coming through.

But even as I've come to understand this horny communication in more subtle ways, I still can't get used to the beeping of horns that happens the instant a light turns green. It seems to come and go with the cycles of the moon...when people are more tense, the "beep beep hurry up the light is green move NOW" happens more frequently.  I've been 20 cars back from the light, and when that little speck on the horizon turns green, the nutcase behind me beeps his horn.  Traffic here is such a major source of stress and frustration--especially aggravated by Westerners' insistence on the formation of orderly and courteous lines being totally at odds with the Middle Eastern insistence on "if there's a space, I can take it and lines are for losers" approach.  So I've decided to just think of those "the light is green now GO" honks as a celebration, like "yea! beep beep for greeeeeeeen!"  Sometimes I even beep for the hell of joining in.

Sidenote: A horrible thing we see here regarding horns is people of privilege (of varied nationalities) pulling up a juice stall or fast food place and blaring their horns so the unfortunate staff has to come running out curbside to take and then deliver their order.  That's a whole other ranting post, but my general philosophy is that if you can't get your rump out of the seat, then you can't have that Quarter Pounder with Cheese.

WTH Moment #782: Baby Avocado Sticks

We've lived here long enough that I am now comfortably in my head-in-the-sand routine...so every once in a while, I have to remind myself to stop doing that and look around me at all the craziness and coolness that is here.  So my adventure last week was related to produce... I had seen these at Family Food Center where we shop and had wondered who in heaven's name would want to peel and pit an avocado for that teeny tiny amount of reward.  That spoon you see is a small coffee spoon. But then my curiosity got the better of me, and I bought a package.  They're not terribly expensive...that's 15 QR ($5) for about 1.5 lbs of sticks.  Well, actually, okay that is expensive when you consider the price for avocados in season in the US, but prices here are generally higher and for here, that's not too expensive.

They were hard as little rocks when I brought them home, so I left them on the counter for three days and when they softened, cut one open. And PEOPLE THERE IS NO SEED IN THERE.  You just cut it open and use a spoon to scrape out the yummy.

Do they have these in the USA?