Doha Diaries, no. 5

Christmas in Doha

While we won't actually be in Qatar for Christmas, the season is upon us nonetheless, and it's to be found everywhere in Doha. Hubby and I have found this to be quite surprising. Decorations and lights line the Corniche, shopping malls have held various Christmas Market Days (complete with Santa Claus, Christmas cookies and trees, etc.), and even the nursery Eliza and Amelia attend is decorated to the hilt with snowflakes, tinsel, and ornaments. In a Muslim country, one in which any public display of religion other than Islam is technically illegal, how is this possible? I'm thinking there are only two possible reasons, but they don't necessarily exclude one another.

First, the possibility that the expat/Christian population is large enough that the powers that be feel like they should recognize and accommodate our most-revered holiday. Maybe....this is what Hubby thinks.

Second, and the one I think is more likely, is the seemingly obvious fact that money can be made from entertaining our holiday traditions. We'll buy decorations, we'll shop for gifts, and we'll spend good money to maintain a sense of normalcy here, especially during the holiday season and especially in the case of those who aren't able or willing to make the flight back home (wherever home is). I get the impression that the capitalist enterprise of the holidays seems fairly universal, and businesses in Doha want to exploit that just as much as businesses in the US and other predominantly Christian countries... but, I could be wrong. I'll have to ask around about this...

Doha Diaries, no. 4

• Well, the psychiatrist visit turned out to be a bust after all. When I took the prescription he wrote to the *one* hospital that carries the medication, they wouldn't fill it because it was issued by a private psychiatrist. They will only fill scrips issued by their own physicians...great. So, we get to do the whole thing over again when we're back in the States for the holidays.
• We *finally* got tickets home!! Did I already mention that? Don't remember, but I'm so excited, that I'll mention it again. Knowing that home is just a few days away--we leave Saturday, Dec. 12th--makes everything better. It was a completely horrendous process to get the tickets because our bank in the US has a limit on purchases made with a debit card during the first six months an account is open, so we couldn't use that card. Then, Qatar Airways--the only airline with a direct flight to Houston--doesn't allow debit cards to be used at all for purchasing tickets online. What did we have to do, you ask? We had to go to the bank, take out almost QAR68,000, bring it to campus, and pay a travel agent in the faculty lounge. Completely fucking bass-ackwards, but we got the tickets.
• We *finally* got our car loan! The new minivan has been with us since Thanksgiving, and Hubby adores it. When all was said and done, we got totally screwed because of the global recession and its effects on lending everywhere, including Doha. Even though our contracts are renewable (and this is indicated on our salary letters, which one must provide for the bank), they would only give us a loan for the term of our current contracts--a year and half (remaining time). Add to that the over-pricing that happens on vehicles in Doha, and our car payment...ready for it???.... $2,220/month! Now, we get a $575/month car allowance to help offset this, but holy shit! This will cut into our monthly cash flow in such a way that it will make the debt elimination process a bit slower. The flip side to this is a) we'll have it paid off before we leave, and b) when we leave, we'll be able to sell it for more than we would back in the US, and we'll get the vast majority of our money back. We can then use that money to pay off debt or to put down on a vehicle or house back in the States. I'm not happy about the way it all shook out, but it was the lesser of two evils.
• The Thanksgiving dinner party went really well...more food than a small army could eat, and good company. One of my colleagues is particularly fabulous and is now my Super Smart, Funny, Gay Friend :) He's truly thoughtful, hilarious, honest, and he's lived all over the Middle East. His company and conversation brighten my time at school, and I'm smitten with his Sri Lankan partner as well...Lovely guys!
• Amelia has had The Worst Cold in the Universe for the past four weeks. It has necessitated one ER visit, a visit to her pediatrician, one inhaler, and four other minor medications. She's pretty much healthy now...and getting her healthy before our trip back to the US was the important thing for me.

Doha Diaries, no 3: Small Steps

After meeting with the counselor at ASD and finding out that she could give me no recommendations for a psychiatrist, I wasn't feeling to great about how we would find one we'd be happy with. I'd noticed before that there was a sign on the same road as Hannah's school, fairly close to the school actually, that advertised the name and phone number of a licensed psychiatrist. So, after the meeting, I drove by the sign, took down the number, and figured, what the hell---we'll see how it goes.

I call and find out that he does treat children and he does see patients with ADHD---good so far! I set up the appointment, and we went last night, and to my endless surprise, I really like him. He listened to her entire history, asked all the right/relevant questions about her medication, adjustment to the relocation, behavior in school and at home, etc. Just as good, he agreed with my belief that it's time to increase the dosage of her meds. She's been on it for two years, and given her growth and the fact that she's approaching the age where hormones may start to be a factor, the medicine has become less effective and is wearing off earlier in the day. I couldn't believe that we walked out of his office last night with a new prescription in hand!

Unfortunately, we got home just in time for her to start puking her guts up! Looks like she caught the stomach bug that Eliza and Amelia had over the weekend. She'd already been home yesterday with a nasty cold, so this was just icing on the cake.

In an attempt to make the Thanksgiving holiday feel like a "normal" one, I decided to throw a Thanksgiving dinner party for some colleagues and friends. This first required me to poach a couple of friends from a colleague who has become a friend, but the point is that they're all people Hubby and I really like. I'm doing the turkey (Alton Brown's brined turkey!), dressing, a pecan pie, a pumpkin pie, coconut cake, and appetizers, and everyone else is bringing a side dish. We've got a couple other kids coming, so I bought a kid's table for them to sit at, and I'm even going to get some fresh flowers, a new tablecloth, and some decor for the house. Planning this has made me quite happy, despite the fact that I'll need to take Thursday off work to get started on cooking, cleaning, etc. We should have our alcohol permit by then, too, so yay for lots of wine!!

And then down we go...

...with the exception of one of the best things to happen in a long while: Hubby successfully defended his dissertation a little over a week ago!! We even managed to sneak away for two hours and go to Champagne on 2, a champagne and caviar bar (we had neither) at the Ramada Tower. But, a couple martinis were certainly what the doctor ordered (no pun intended)!

• Car loans: evidently, they are impossible to get in this country. We've been here almost four months, actively trying to get a car loan since September, and we get a new story, policy, rule, or caveat every time we go to the bank. I'm seriously at my wit's end with this one. I find it completely ironic that, during the brief time in our life when our combined salary is a six-figure number, we can't get a car loan for damn car (worth approx. $40K)!
• Every time I have to spend 4 hours to simply make it to two stores to do shopping, I get in a shitty mood. I wish this weren't the case, but it happens every time.
• The direct flight back to the US on Dec. 11th is full in business class. We've already purchased non-refundable domestic tickets back to Home State for Dec. 11th. We could: a) fly coach with three children for 16 hours in order to make our domestic flight OR b) fly business class on Dec. 12th and pay $600 to change our domestic tickets. I'm not a fan of either option, and I'm really sick of people acting shocked that we want to fly business class on an international flight. This is why we get our travel allowance, right?
• Oh yeah, then there was the lovely bomb threat to our building. The first one evidently. We laughed it off at first, thinking it was surely a student trying to get out of an exam or something. Then we found out that they traced the call to Kazakhstan, and the threat was considered serious enough to "make it to the upper levels of the US and the local government." Fabulous.
• I want out. Not now. Not this academic year. But I'm done. Hubby is officially on the market, and we've agreed that if he lands a T-T job, then we'll break contract and go home after just this academic year. As much as they pay me, it's not enough. For others, it's plenty. For me, I'm just not cut out for this. I hope things get better. I pray for this daily...but until they do, I feel like I'm on the edge of breaking down every day.
• I'm working my ass off with dissertation revisions. My defense is tentatively scheduled for April...God I hope I can get it all wrapped up by then.
• It is quite likely that we'll need to increase Hannah's dosage for her ADHD medicine. I shudder to think of what the process will be like in a country where they consider ADHD a "mental problem." Worst case scenario is that she can see someone when we go back home for Christmas.

Good Things--Finally!

A few good things have FINALLY happened. Most important, we celebrated Eliza's 3rd birthday! Having a party with our friends and other families from our compound made it feel as close to normal as it could have. We had tons of cake, lots of presents, and an incredible amount of noise (thanks to the party horns I bought for the kids). We officially have some memories--good ones-- from this place.



We also got a couple of boxes from the US, one from my Mom and one from Hubby's parents. The former contained heavenly things like beef jerky, Special K Fruit & Yogurt cereal (which costs $10 a box in Doha), Funyuns (which generally don't exist in Doha), children's Benadryl (again, non-existent here), trail mix, and my monthly Southern Living magazine--yay for wonderful things! You can't imagine how much you appreciate things like this until you're living halfway around the world from them. The latter box contained Eliza's birthday gifts, and she loved everything!



Our wire recall finally went through, and we got our $5K back in our US account. Now we officially have money in the bank...like savings. Our plan has been/continues to be to live off of one salary and put the other salary in the bank until we have our savings built up to cover 3 months living expenses, the cost of replacing our living room and bedroom furniture that we sold when we moved, and a few other things we plan to buy when we get back home. In the meantime, we'll still be able to pay off credit card debt as we go, with all of them paid off by the end of the year. Sometime in late Spring, we'll start whacking away at the student loan debt, which will feel so good!



Hubby, Hannah, and Eliza made some memories of their own yesterday, when they took a trip to the inland sea.

(Not our picture, but ours don't look much different). This view if from the top of one of the sand dunes, which surround the sea. I had to stay home with Amelia, as the drive is 2 hours each way, and there's no place for a baby to nap in the middle of the desert. They caravaned with several families from our compound and some friends who work for other universities in Education City, and the girls had a blast. Hannah and her friends slid down sand dunes on their tummies, and Eliza enjoyed watching everyone try to get one of the vehicles out of the "goop" as she called the sandy-muddy mess. The geological phenomenon there is evidently quite something to see.... Oil is actually percolating to the surface!! You can dig just a few inches in parts of the sand, and you start to see oil. Crazy stuff...

So yeah...I won't say things have gotten better for me in the larger sense. I'd simply say that we've finally had some good days. I got my debit card for our local bank account, and in about a week, we're going to apply for a credit card and two vehicle loans. We'll see how that goes....

Teaching the Muslim Student

Yeah, so I've gotten my first dose of "What the hell did you just write?" in a student essay.

In a response paper to an article that describes the relative inaction of Middle Eastern countries to do anything to recognize and prevent the spread of AIDS in the Muslim world, a student wrote the equivalent of, "we only have 3% of the total AIDS patients, so it's not really a problem...about 1 million people dying isn't a big problem." WTF??

All I could do was ask: "How many people have to be dying for it to be considered a 'problem'"?

And then we have, "Maybe the writer hasn't grasped the idea that being conservative is safer in a fight in a deadly disease"

I mean, really....where do I even begin?

Home/Work

Another week went dramatically downhill after I messed up the account number on a $5,000 wire transfer, trying to get money from our US account to our new account in Doha. The advice I was given by the US bank's rep was to simply "change" the account number online. Yeah, well, that duplicated the wire request, and POOF-- $10,000 was in cyberspace limbo.

Fast forward to today...I'm home sick. Nothing serious, just a cold and general tiredness. I have tons of papers to grade, so I figured staying home might help me get caught up. However, I've realized two things. One, I'm always tempted to do "home" things rather than "work" things when at home (cook, clean, etc.). Two, this isn't home. Even though it's the space I am sharing with my husband and three children, where we eat at least two meals almost every day at the dining room table, where we will all come closer together as we make it through the next 21 months--this is not home. There's just something empty in the marble floors, vast quiet (since the kids are at school and daycare), and infinite summer outside my windows. It makes me feel like a stranger in the house, like I shouldn't be here while the family who lives here isn't home. I tried lighting a Fall Harvest-scented candle to trick myself into a little bit more comfort, but it isn't really working.

From now on, there will be no more working from "home".