Happy Merry Christmas

Nothing is more wearying than being reminded regularly that we are living in a volitile, dangerous part of the world, where holy soldiers lurk around hidden corners, conspiring to off us at the drop of a hat. It is not the American embassy that is giving us dire warnings, but folks back home. Most exhausting of all is to have well-meaning individuals who have no experience in this part of the world tell us what danger we are in by staying here.

Christmas has brought out more words of caution than usual, as if the birth of the Little Lord Baby Jesus evokes not only joy for the season, but paranoia as well. Friends back home warn us to watch our backs, keep the children close, take different routes in getting to and from work, and to NEVER give out our phone numbers or addresses to strangers. Duh.

Just to put inquiring minds at ease, here is what Christmas looked like here in Al Mawaleh, Muscat, this year. Christmas Eve saw lots of action in the neighborhood with well-wishes from the neighbors who wanted to know what we were doing for the holiday. We received cheery "Happy Christmas"es from many people whom we knew only by face.

The real fun began with the arrival from Sohar of our friends K and G, and Baby H. They arrived bearing dates (because what would a holiday celebration be here without dates?), gifts, and goodwill toward man. In the evening, more friends arrived for an early dinner in order that everyone could make it to church in time for the Christmas Eve service. However, lamb, drinks, and laughs prevailed, and no one made it to church. Ah, well.

We were fortunate that my parents sent "Twas the Night Before Christmas" in order that we would be able to enjoy the annual reading of the tome. We opened the book and were delighted to hear Poppop's voice recorded, reading the story to us as we turned the pages. What's more, he included the usual disgusting deviations from Clement Moore's version, much to the delight of all the children who listened to it.

Christmas morning arrived with the consumption of the traditional saffron rolls (slightly burned of course as tradition dictates), the opening of stockings, and the annual Santa search. Santa DID come, as evidenced by the runner marks and reindeer prints left in the dust of the roof. The prints were deemed authentic by our panel of experts as there were absolutely NO shoeprints or footprints around the Santa marks, which means that the Santa marks could not have been fabricated by parents or other interested parties.

Breakfast was a disappointment as one cannot find chipped beef here, and everyone knows that a Christmas breakfast without chipped beef is not really Christmas at all. Instead we ate beef sausages, eggs with toast, and fruit salad, with a hefty scoop of of moaning and groaning throughout. I know, I know, we all must make sacrifices sometimes, and this was one of those times.

The gift opening segment of the morning was the usual excitement. No one received a pony this year, even though there is plenty of space for one in this house. Nor did we have any camels pop out of boxes. We did end the morning with the traditional scavenger hunts, with everyone finding some big loot at the end. Santa brought us a flat screen TV so now we are almost cool--it's not a very big flat screen, so that's why we are just "almost cool" instead of "totally cool".

As an added bonus, we got to celebrate Boxing Day this year, since we are surrounded by English speakers who go in for such things. Boxing Day involved shopping, beach time, drinking, napping, consumption of leftovers, and movie watching. Apparently, if we had employed a domestic we would have had to give her the day off, along with a Boxing Day bonus.

See, no holy wars, acts of unspeakable violence, or volatility here. We all survived the day and are fatter and happier for that. Merry Christmas to all. Sorry, we have been told that we should be saying, "Happy Christmas to all" from now on as that is the proper way to do things. And well wishes for the New Year, too!

Parent Failure

Everyone in Muscat knows The Clock Roundabout. It stands like a sentinel at a cross roads--go one way and you are on the road that heads toward the ocean, toward what is known as As Seeb. Go another and you will find yourself at the airport, or heading toward Nizwa or Sohar. And likewise, because everyone knows The Clock Roundabout, everyone knows exactly where we live, because we live so close to the The Clock that we can hear it chime the hour during the school day if we keep our window open.

At the base of The Clock, there is the lush, green Sahwah Park, well within walking distance of our house. It is built in a sort of triangle shape, with rounded corners. In one corner there are stables where the horses live that pull the carriage through the park each evening. In another corner there are a series of fountains that shoot color-tinged water high into the air, and another series of more gentle fountains that randomly bubble out of the ground. Within the borders of the park there are mazes carved from hedges, stairs bordered by thick beds of petunias, and acres of green grass. And in that third corner of the triangle there is a playground.

During the day, the park and playground are not open (unless you know where the fence has been cut and bent in order to allow admission...not that I would know something like that). But at 4 p.m., as the sun is going down, the park begins to burble with energy. The people come in hordes...women wrapped in black abayas, pushing a baby in a stroller; men in their cool white dishdashas, holding a child by the hand; the nanny toting along another, older child; another domestic carrying a picnic basket; a boy with a soccer ball and a giant woven mat. These groups enter the park and set up a camp for the evening and, once their space is set, the children run to the playground.

The playground is not just a set of swings and a jungle gym. This is a pair of play structures--the grand-daddy of all playgrounds, with slides so high that there is no way they meet any sort of safety code. The sides of the play structures are riddled with climbing hitches and half a dozen towers are connected by rope bridges. In the chalky darkness, children skip through the cool sand, playing soccer, running through the towers, screaming in the dark.

The park has recently loomed large in my children's realization that I am a less-than-perfect parent. I do not carry snacks. I do not carry anything to treat impromptu wounds. I do not haul entertainment, spare change, or water. In short, I am the anti-mother, and this situation has become unacceptable to Silas. When we go to the park, Silas expects that, when he is thirsty, I will have a bottle of water for him because he sees all these other well-prepared families with their overflowing picnic baskets doling out goodies to their own children. When Silas is hungry, he wants a snack to magically appear from somewhere within my proximity. In short, I am a disappointment to my chronically starving son.

Last night, we visited the park; after two hours we were ready to head home. Tehva and Silas were thirsty and I had nothing for them except for the promise of water when we arrived home. In her anger at my lack of vital supplies, Tehva attempted to step on the hems of passing women's abayas and Silas collapsed into a dehydrated heap every three steps. "But I am THIRSTY!" **collapse** **stomp** "Mom, I need WATER!" **collapse** **stomp**

In the confusion of the masses around us, the whining messes next to me, and the Arabic language program being blasted from the speakers in the trees (Am I in China?), a blanket of self-doubt wrapped itself about my brain. "What am I doing?" I thought..."I am frickin' in the Middle East with three kids who are not in school. I am surrounded by people whose calves I have never seen and probably will never see. It is nearly Christmas and we are still running around in short sleeves. The people around me have their children dressed in scarves, hats, and down jackets even though the temp is in the 70s. This is ridiculous. What are we thinking being here?"

This self-doubt that comes and goes when adjusting to a new place has finally come to me. It will evaporate as quickly as it has come and I will emerge a person with a new attitude and understanding. And maybe then I will also know how to carry a bottle of water for poor Silas. Whatever.

Rolling Rolling Rolling

Tehva's teacher approaches me with her face drawn in concern. Her skin shines like chocolate pudding, although there is nothing yielding or soft about her demeanor. She is a force to be reckoned with and Tehva's stubborness is no match for her. Deep in my heart, I think Tehva should go live with her until she turns 16 and then, when she is more manageable, I might consider taking her back. "Tehva cannot roll her Rs," Teacher announces.

"Do you mean in Arabic?" I ask. Arabic has more than its fair share of sounds that English speakers normally never would consider legitimate noises to be made in polite company. There is even one letter that we refer to in our household as "Spit". It's the H-sound that you make way down in the base of your throat. See, now doesn't "The Letter Spit" explain it so much more succinctly?

"No, not in Arabic. In English. She cannot roll her Rs." I consider this statement and quickly cycle through the catalogue of sounds that we use each day in English. Rolling Rs is not one that pops into my mind. Have I ever rolled an R in English? Nope, don't think so. Should I let Teacher know that? She is not a native English speaker, although she a is a fluent speaker...maybe she is not aware?

And so I blurt out, "Well, in American English we do not roll our Rs. This is a new sound for her."

Teacher does not respond but instead glares and then turns her back to me. She returns to redirecting four-year-old Mohammed, who is holding his pencil like a switch blade, trying to write his name in English. Even if he cannot hold a writing implement without looking like he is about to commit a major crime, I'll bet he can roll his Rs.

"Mohammed, what are you doing? This is not how we hold our pencil. Look, Mohammed." Teacher points to a giant poster of a hand gripping a pencil in the approved manner. Mohammed looks at the THE HAND solemnly and then goes back to his labored name writing.

"Perhaps you could work with her on rolling her Rs at home." I want to snort at this obvious attempt at humor and then see that Teacher is not trying to be funny at all. So instead of making rude noises I try to picture myself skipping about the school room between math lessons and writing assignments, rolling my Rs in English words that should not roll at all--Rrrrrrrobot, Rrrrrurrritan, Rrrrreverrrrie. "Yes, we will do that," I resond and then pack Tehva up to head back to the Marble Mansion.

I spend the next week very puropsefully never rolling my Rs and, in my deception, I feel a tinge of guilty before the feeling slips away.

A week later Tehva will not stop rolling her Rs. She began rolling them spontaneously and constantly repeats, "Amerrrrican, Amerrrrrican, Amerrrrica. Arrrrrba, Arrrrrba, Arrrrrba," as she skips through the bedrooms on the second floor. She pats her shoulders and says, "Butt, butt, butt." She pats other body parts and pronounces their names in Arabic, too. All of the words she has chosen to practice (with the exception of "butt") have rolly Rs in them, but the only word I have retained is "Butt". I know, grow up.

Teacher smiled at me this morning when I dropped Tehva off for her 8 a.m. Arabic class. Tehva is the token Whitie in the class, studying her body parts, chanting snippets of the Quran, and rolling her Rs with the other little Omani kids who surround her. Teacher was pleased today that we worked so hard on rolling the Rs as Tehva can now keep up with everyone else when it comes to Rrrrrrrrrrrr. Whew. She can finally speak English properly.

Go Churrrrrrrrtle Go.

The Expat Box

Anything you want you can find in Muscat, except for fresh cranberries on the eve of Thanksgiving. Generally, though, if you have the riyals to pay for it, you can buy it. I have even run across canned corned beef hash several times, which should jar you into the realization that my previous statement is absolutely true, for the law of item acquisition overseas is, "If one can readily find corned beef hash in stores rather than on the black market, then one is in a place where ANYTHING can be had."

A second guideline of living overseas is "Find the box". That is, when you meet another expat you immediately converse upon a finite number of topics in order to discover which box that person fits into. Nationality is the most obvious first box one seeks out, followed quickly by how long one has been here, and previous overseas experience (always seek out common passport stamps). If the personality checks out thus far, the next box to explore is occupation.

Muscat houses an astonishing variety of jobs filled by an astounding array of personalities from countries all over the world. I have met communications people, international school teachers, botanists, biologists, tour guides, and engineers. Hand any of these individuals the homeschool bomb, though, and they balk. "Ooooh, homeschooling are you? (no, this was not Yoda that I met recently, although being British set him not too far from the mark--and he has big ears, this Brit) That must be amazingly difficult!"

From an older, childless British woman: "Ah yes, homeschooling. I didn't realize that anyone here was doing that. And what are you doing for your children's socialization?"

From an Indian mother of five whose youngest is 7 and oldest is 32(!) "Yes, I have heard that homeschooling causes immense stress for the person who is acting as the instructor. Is that so? Do you find this to be the case?"

And the best one was from an American man: "Well I have heard that your children are really doing well with the homeschooling and are literate, but that your son is a little bit lazy. It sounds like you are doing a great job! He will probably grow up to be a politician!"

Once we have run through the boxing exercise, I usually find that the conversation ends after I have revealed that I am homeschooling, and subsequent conversations revolve around that topic in a polite, removed sort of way. The homeschool box is a tough one to be in as everyone believes they know what it looks like on the inside yet no one has actually explored it. Nor do they much care to.

Lately, the box looks...well, you be the judge. Having recently taken on a colleague's child, who is also a No Child Left Behind refugee, our little school has grown to four instead of the three that I had started with.

The biggest change is that Silas no longer spends his mornings under the table. Eleven weeks into the school year, the genius finally comprehended that, once he has finished his material for the day, he is done whether it takes him an hour or ten hours. Now he views the underside of the table as a waste of his time and chooses instead to study. When he does go into hiding, it is in places that are far more sophisticated than a table. The roof offers corners and compressors to hide behind, there are five bathrooms to choose from, our furniture sits at odd angles to deaden the echos (and consequently offer rich hiding opportunities), and his bedroom has its own nooks and crannies.

Tian has become an academic workhorse. She most recently penned a five paragraph essay on the plausibility of Marco Polo's writings in his book, A Description of the World. Today she and Silas were spontaneously evolving lines to poems about dragon eggs, and correcting one another as they recited snatches of a speech by Abraham Lincoln. She has mastered long division, read extensively on the center of the earth, and is constructing a clay map of Eurasia. She is the homeschooled child I always want to make fun of. While she and Silas follow the same curriculum, Tian follows it with so much more finesse and abandon. She is something of a dweeb.

As for Tehva, we have shipped her off to a morning preschool program at the university. She was simply becoming too much of a distraction with her non-stop frittering and random abuse of her brother and sister. Once we took on the fourth child for daily schooling, Tehva's screeching rants drove poor Catherine to distraction and set her rocking, fingers jammed in her ears, in order to calm herself. An eight by twelve room is not big enough to hold Tehva and a special needs child and a boy who cannot figure out the concept of a to-do list and a hopeless over achiever and the homeschool mother whom everyone assumes is one beer short of a six pack for even considering schooling her own children in the first place.

A reread tells me why no one asks about much beyond the fact that I homeschool. TMI.

The Nots of Eid

So we just finished our first Eid holiday. I was perhaps expecting a little ornament, made in China and stamped with, "Foreigner's First Eid," you know, to put on our Eid palm. However, that is not what one does at Eid. To be truthful, we are still not quite straight on this particular Eid. However, we do know what there is NOT during Eid.

1.) No Traffic
On the morning of Day One we awoke to find our neighborhood looking fairly apocalyptic. No drivers out "washing cars" with dry rags, no maids out sweeping, no school buses shooting by blaring their horns, and, most shocking of all, NO GOAT HERD POOPING IN MY DRIVEWAY!

We packed our car and drove straight through Muscat without a single slowdown , passing through the golden horse gates at the south end of town, singing to the club music of 95.9 FM, and suspiciously eyeing every turn for the traffic jam that must be hiding around the corner. We made it to Seifa Beach in record time, pitched our tent, and sat gasping in the white sand, not from exhaustion but from the feeling that we neatly escaped the gridlock that plagues Muscat nearly 24/7.

Seifa Beach

2.) No Shortage of Good Help
We went camping with two other families and one maid. Really, who would even consider camping without at least one domestic along? As I crawled from the tent on Tuesday morning she cheerily chirped, "Cuppa tea, Mum?" Duh. Yes.

3.) No Goats
"Mom, the goats are gone," Tian stage whispered upon our return from our beach camping. The bleating that we had heard for days from over the neighbors' walls suddenly and inexplicably ended during Eid. Well, not so inexplicably. The neighbors brought us marinated, skewered, grilled goat meat on Thursday.

4.) No Clean Pavement
Benjamin and Laura called on Tuesday night and asking us to Misfat, an old town built into a canyon. We packed a picnic and drove two hours into the inland, to the Western Al Hajar mountains, unloaded our rowdy and generally unmanageable children, and began to hike into the canyon.

This is where the goats who survived Eid had been hiding, I suspect. We ran into them in shallow limestone caves, hanging out of neem trees while tearing leaves from the branches, and scrambling up and down piles of loose scree. Tehva, unimpressed by the goats, angled for bigger prey as a boy on a donkey slowly lumbered past, heading high into the hills. She bummed a ride for a ways until Tony made her disembark.

Back in the village we were impressed by the intricate canal system designed ages ago to allow equal irrigation access to all families. Every 10 meters or so there was a downspout dammed with a melon-sized rock and a pair of underwear to hold back the leaks. Star towers across the canyon mark where the stars have to "move to" in order for the next rock-underwear combo to be undammed and the current one plugged up again.

Also in the village we found evidence of what had become of the goats who had not been smart enough to take to the hills before Eid. Dark blood had soaked into the gravel and pavement througout Misfat and, as we walked past the remains of each puddle, shooing away the flies, Laura announced, "Ooooo, there's another Halal slaughter for Eid."

5.) No Rest for the Wicked
We ended the Eid hoilday with a Hindi Moviethon at Laura and Benjamin's place that lasted until 4 a.m. We brushed our teeth with our fingers and slept on their floor, only to have Tehva waken us all at 8 a.m. She bounced through their apartment as if she had slept 14 hours the previous night, forcing me to once again weigh up the relative merits of Ridalin.

We get to do another Eid after Ramadaan (next August), which is fortunate as we all are exhausted after this one. Pictures coming soon.

Kids' Games

In our first weeks in Oman I attended church regularly. It was a cross cultural experience, perhaps the cross-culturist experience I have ever had, and involved lots of people dressed in colorful clothing, speaking a Babel tower of languages. We had the Western women dressed in pumps and skirts, chatting in refined English, rubbing elbows with the women wrapped in saris, speaking a multitude of Indian languages and dialects. Next to them were the men wearing khakis and going on in German, jostling into the men wearing long African style shirts over loose, billowing pants, speaking French.

The first Friday church service I went to (Friday being our Sunday here) involved flags and dancing. The second was fairly straightforward. The third was a service of raised arms and hallelujias. All quite different from what I am used to without a doubt, but we went nonetheless (sans Tony after the flags, as he suspected that sacrifices might be on the agenda for the next week).

In the second week there was a call for volunteers to help run an event called Kids' Games. Billed as an event to help rid the world of heathens through sports and fun for kids, I jumped right on board. I wasn't so concerned about the heathen hoardes as I was about getting a day of socialization in for my poor homeschooled children. I was assigned a job as game facilitator, given a whistle, and asked to attend an organizational meeting the following Tuesday.

On Tuesday evening I rolled into the parking lot 15 minutes late as traffic toward Muscat had been especially heavy. No worries, though, as the meeting had not even begun yet. However, twenty others were sitting in neat rows in front of Aaron the Coordinator, who was calling off names of the volunteers who had not bothered to show to be organized at this meeting. As I walked in he checked my name off the list. "Now we will not have to call Rachel's name again." And then he giggled. The other twenty tittered.

This did not bode well.

After ten minutes more we moved into what I believed was to be the meat of the meeting--job assignments. I had arrived thinking that my whistle had made me a game facilitator automatically but not so--at this meeting women were turning in their whistles left and right in exchange for jobs either working registration or first aid. By the time I left an hour and a half later we had a room full of registrars and ad hoc nurses surrounding three game facilitators--me and two other suckers.

Oh no.

Aaron went on to reveal the things about which we should be most concerned as volunteers: that we would be working with over 200 kids, that we should pray especially hard for the 30 of them who were Muslims or Hindu, and that we had to let them all know that, if they lost a game, Jesus would still love them. My American brain really really wanted to hear about a schedule of events, arrangements for parking for the 200 parents who would be dropping off kids, how the three toilets in the church would accomodate the potty needs of so many, and how the kids would be organized.

Instead I got to play a practice round of the game I would be facilitating: Touch the Tail. In spite of the suggestive name, the game involved nothing more that forming two congo lines, tying a silk tail to the person in the back of the line, and then keeping the two lines intact long enough for one team to manage to touch the other team's tail without letting go of one another. My team lost in that practice round. I hoped Jesus was loving me.

Predictably enough, on the day of the event, organization was an issue. Lunch came late, no one knew where to go, kids wandred aimlessly between the game venues, and the martial arts exhibition was a disaster (who would have thought that a bunch of Christians would be so ticked about someone teaching them how to maim someone with a fountain pen?).

Silas contracted a rash from the iron-on decal on the event t-shirt, Tian complained that the kids on her team were rude and disrespectful, and the friend I had invited was roped into volunteering while her kids played the games. I fumed at the amount of standing around I was doing and swore I would never volunteer for this kind of poorly organized foolishness again.

But then the kids got to me. Most of the attendees were either Indian or Fillipino and began to call me "Auntie", as in, "Please, Auntie, will you help me get my hat adjusted?" or "Auntie, where should I go for my next game?" Silas cried and was comforted by a woman who said very gently, "Come, come, let Auntie help you. May I know your good name?" They walked off into the distance with Silas curled lovingly into her side. Tian, who was on the Ghana team, learned that, if pronounced with a British accent, "Ghana" rhymes with "banana", and spent the day cheering for her team, the "Ghana bananas".

And a good time was had by all. Especially the bananas.

Being Hosted

We opened sheets of newspaper and lay them overlapping to cover Mr. Achir's carpet. He apologized profusely as we did so, not about eating at a table made of newspaper but about us having to endure his housekeeper's cooking for this impromptu meal. "My wife is not here to cook for the children tonight and the housekeeper's cooking? Well, I don't know."

I had watched the housekeeper earlier dig balls of dough from a steel bowl and roll chippatis, an Indian flatbread. She had looked competent enough to me, simultaneously drizzling ghee (clarified butter) around the dough as it bubbled and rose in the cast iron skillet, monitoring the pressure of the ghosh (mutton curry), and setting up a pot of rice.

Mr. Achir bustled back and forth from the kitchen with bottles of water and big bowls of fluffy white rice. Then he followed with a bowl of ghosh, thick with brown gravy, and a heaping bowl of sauteed and spiced and shredded cabbage. Finally he set a smaller bowl down on the newspapers and, full of pride, announced, "My wife made that one. Green chile curry. It is a little spicy so maybe it is not fit for the children. Come let's eat!" I could make out some small green chiles and peanuts swimming in a dangerous looking red sauce, topped with more of the melted ghee.

We filled the dishes for the children while Achir chastised us for being so stingy with the size of our servings. He piled buttery chippati after chippati on our plates. His own children began to eat, left hands tucked neatly in their laps, right hands fully engaged in the art of mixing rice with sauces and gravies.

Tian dantily ate from her spoon, but Tehva stopped short. "Chinja is eating with his hands." The only thing missing from her observation was an, "Oooooooo! He's in trouble!" but her tone definitely suggested that she was expecting a spanking to follow shortly for seven-year-old Chinja.

As Tehva watched Chinja's deft one-handed eating, she dropped her spoon. Truth be told, the dishes looked even more delicious as Chinja mixed and pinched, and then neatly shoveled his food into his mouth. "Can I do that, too?" And before I could even respond Tehva was mixing and shoveling, too.

Silas silently eyed Tehva, Chinja, and Chinja's sister, Ruksana, and then put aside his fork. "Mom, I'm going to use my hands," he stage whispered, as if preparing to dive off of a cliff or wrestle a crocodile. If it is possible for a seven-year-old boy to look awkward eating with his fingers, Silas fulfilled that possibility. He gradually doubled himself over, all the while shoveling rice into his mouth, until his chest rest solidly on his criss-crossed legs. Then he folded tighter, his face just a few inches off his plate. Finally he decided to lay on his stomach and close that precarious inch between his plate and his mouth. Bad manners? Probably.

We wiped up the last of the gravy with the chippatis only to have Achir throw more chippatis at us. "No, no," I protested. "You're making me fat!" As fast as I could eat those buttery flatbreads I was finding more food on my plate. Then I remembered. Stop eating--leave things uneaten. As painful as it was to American sensibilities, I took a bit of mutton and a bit of cabbage, played with it, and let it be. No more chippatis came flying in my direction.

As we walked out the door later in the evening, the kids were astonished. "Wow! That was the best day ever and we didn't even know them at the start!" It was true. All three kids had been there since early afternoon and had been entertained, fed, entertained, fed, entertained and fed again. "The only thing better than lunch was dinner! That was amazing! And we had such a good time! We did they do that for us? In the United States that would never happen!"

I tried to explain cultural differences to Tian and Silas. I tried to explain the concept of karma and how some believe that good deeds come back to revisit those who lay a path of kindness. I talked and talked but in the end they set their own conclusions.

They decided that Mr. Achir and his family are good people and no longer strangers to us. And boy can they lay out a mean dinner spread.

Human nature leads us to make generalizations--sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. and I let them generalize away on this one. This is what they now believe--people from India are so nice--that equals out to more than 1/5 of the world's population being full of kindness!

What a nice mindset to have achieved in the course of just two meals and an afternoon of play.

Camels on Wheels and Other Charming Anomalies

For today's post we have something special--a song! I know, we all love songs, especially Tehva who has recently demonstrated a new love for recitations, turning all odd twists of phrase into song. "Star Wars Star Wars Lego Car Wars" is one that we all have come to despise. "Ahummmdulah praise Allah.... a hum banana praise Allah" comes shooting out at the oddest moments, which can be nerve wracking when we are in a public place surrounded by people who probably do not use "Allah" and "banana" together very often.

The song to be featured today is much more mundane. Sung to the tune of "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain When She Comes", it is catchy enough to dance to and ALL TOTALLY TRUE. Here we go. First verse:
Have you ever seen a dromedary drive? (Yee hah!)
Have you ever seen a dromedary drive? (Yee hah!)
Have you ever seen a dromedary, looking fairly ordinary,
Ever seen a dromedary drive? (Yee hah!)
Apparently camels only drive after dark in order to avoid pesky Westerners and their cameras because if it had been daylight, I would have shot a photo of this one, as would have any other English speaker who happened to chance across the driving dromedary.

The vehicle of choice? A Toyota Hilux (for those of you who lack male genetalia, that is a mini pick up). And, all right, the camel wasn't actually driving. But somehow the driver had folded the camel into the bed of the pickup and perhaps given it some camel-downers so that the beast actually looked like it was smiling and enjoying the ride. Additionally, it was festooned with a little camel cap and a hump cover, plus a little camel seatbelt to keep it from abandoning its joyride before reaching its destination.

Second verse:
Have you ever found a goat outside your door? (Have you?)
Have you ever found a goat outside your door? (Have you?)
Have you ever found a goat herd, dropping little goat turds?
Have you ever found a goat outside your door?

Yes, so we live in the big city here, just a block from a hypermarket (that would be a mall in the USA), yet we are apparently surrounded by enough scrub and brush to sustain a herd of goats. Right outside our house. And goats poop. A lot. In our driveway. Yet another reason to hire a maid.

Third verse:
Have you ever seen your children freaking out, (Eghad)
Have you ever seen your children freaking out, (Eghad)
Have you ever seen them freaking,
Whining crying screaming,
Have you ever seen your children freaking out?

We discovered this week that the shells the kids have been picking up are killers. Literally killers. They have been collecting delicate, white cone shells and have been clutching them in their hands, walking down the beaches. The beaches here go seemingly forever with no one and nothing on them but rocks, shells, and the very occasional fishermen.

A new found friend, who has extensive experience diving, was examining the shell collection, which lines one of our window sills. Frantically he cried, "You let them pick those up? They shoot poisonous barbs at fish and they can, frankly, kill a child. Don't let them put them in their swimmers."

So even though these shells had been sitting on our marble stoop for days and were anything but sustaining life, the kids danced and screamed and generally had a freak out.

Try not to get that little ditty stuck in your head. And tune in for another blog from the Land of Sand in a few days.

The Morning Run

4:40 a.m. comes early in Oman. We are surrounded by mosques in our neighborhood and the five-times daily drone of the call to prayer first comes at 4:40 a.m. I am up early enough to hear the shuffle of sandals and flip flops of the men making their ways to the mosques for the morning ritual--cleanse, pray, chat, and then shuffle home to begin the day.

If I really hustle and get my running clothes on, I can be at the door early enough to surreptitiously watch the prayers inside the walls of the open-air prayer platforms and mosques. However, now that I have adjusted to the noises of Oman, I usually sleep right through the moan of "Allaaaaaaaaah akbaaaaaaaaar..." and I stumble outside just as the sky is lightening--right around 5:45 every morning.

This morning the smells are overpowering. The odor of rotten eggs lingers in swirling dust clouds and as I walk I imagined myself enshrouded by a cloak of stench. But three steps later a cool breeze whips in off of the ocean, whisking away the reek and replacing it with a chill. Three steps later the chill has been beaten by the heat of the rising sun. It is a daily battle between the heat and the hint of a chill.

The sun here does not rise lazily like it does in Virginia. Instead it jumps off the horizon and rises impossibly quickly. As I turn to the east, I watch it rise behind the dome of the green-topped mosque. The sun looks friendly, like a giant orange eclipsed by a jaden ball, but it is a nasty orange--the temperature is already heading toward steamy.

The migrant labor population, mostly Indians, is up early, too, squatting in the ubiquitous pebble strewn lots, brushing teeth and hawking to spit into piles of broken bricks, scuffing at the dust with calloused feet and cracked shower shoes. They stare openly at my passing, not like the Omani men who nonchalantly avert their gaze, reminding me of falsely modest Baptist boys under the scrutiny of God and their elders.

As the sun rises higher over the mosque, the school children trickle into the street. The boys all wear the starched white dishdasha--a robe that extends from neck to ankle--and qimb--an embroidered cap. The girls wear tight white cotton pants and a white shirt overlain with a blue tunic. They also sport white head scarves that cover their necks and hair but leave all of their faces open to the world. They glance quickly as I run by but do not waiver in their intent bus waiting ritual. The hired help sits with the children, there to make sure that their charges make it onto the bus.

Now sun has risen enough that the workers have covered their heads with towels to keep off the sun. I start to hustle home, sticking to the shady spots cast by the date palms scattered about the neighborhood and the high walls that ring every house here. In just 45 minutes the heat has gathered enough strength to make me sweat through a t-shirt. The wind that delivered the ocean breeze is perceptible only in the shade so I linger for a minute in the covered walkway to our house, knocking the dust from my shoes.

Tomorrow I will follow a different route, trying to beat the sun's climb.

September 26--Learnings

Tomorrow is Saturday, which is to say that tomorrow is Monday. The weekends running on a Thursday-Friday schedule has put us into a tailspin of confusion, per this recent conversation with Tian:

Me: "Okay, so tomorrow you are getting up early because it is a school day."
Tian: "But it's Saturday! We don't do school on Saturdays!"
Me: "Yes, we do because it is really more like a Monday."
Tian: "But I thought you said it was Saturday! That would make it the weekend!"
Me: "No, Thursday and Friday are the weekend."
Tian: "No, Saturday-Sunday is!"
Me: "Where are you living right now?"
Tian: "Oh, yeah."

After taking a break from school for a week that spanned three continents, two oceans, two hotels, five visas, and thousands of miles, is it any wonder that Tian is baffled by the new schedule for the weekend, or has forgotten how to spell "story" or "happy"? (Neither one ends with "ie" for those who are wondering).

If these things have been forgotten, many more have been learned in their place. Instead of an automatic garage door opener we have a fancy iron gate that slides open and closed with the press of a button. We have learned to leave our gate open if we are hoping for visitors and to close it if we are not. We were desperate for company today so left it open all day and garnered the spoils--a jar of Omani honey, a bottle of cologne, two smiling boys, and two giggly little girls looking for a play date.

We learned all about the necessity of owning a car in Muscat. It is not a walker-friendly city so we have not been able to venture too far from our neighborhood, which is hemmed in by two causeways. However, today a kind American took pity on us, drove us about, and showed us what we have been missing: stunning beaches strewn with shells and colored rocks, marketplaces loaded with fresh produce and live poultry, and juice bars that sit anticipating beach goers.

We have learned the ins and outs of living in an enormous home. With three floors (tiled throughout), five bathrooms, four bedrooms, an HGTV kitchen with granite counter tops, and a marble staircase, we are all learning to mop and sweep, and then to scream to hear the echo bounce throughout the empty space.

We are learning but tomorrow begins the formal schooling upstairs in the maid's quarters turned school room. There are reportedly a handful of families who are homeschooling throughout the city. The next thing to learn will be their phone numbers.

The Mathematics of Travel

All right, in honor of Tian beginning a new and seriously involved relationship with multiplication this week, I pontificate upon the mathematics of travel here today. We are, collectively, scoring about a 40% on this test so far this weekend.

Problem Number 1
We'll start with an easy one. For how many days can one weak-bladdered four year old wear the same underwear and pants without reeking so horribly of urine that you must break down and unpack previously packed clean clothes?

Answer
One day. There is no other answer for this one, unless you are a chronic allergy sufferer. Then you may have answered, "Until my Claritin kicks in." Sorry if you got that one wrong. Maybe it wasn't as easy as I'd expected it would be.

Problem Number 2
How many ways can a mountain of school books and seven baskets of clean clothes be combined in order to fit into a given quantity of luggage (9 bags), without any one of those bags exceeding 50 pounds in weight?

Got the answer? Good. Now subtract out three of those shipping containers which the husband deems "inappropriate for air travel" and run quickly to a thrift store to see if they have some of those fancy rolly bags that will hold that additional 150 pounds. Now do it again the next day.

For extra credit, calculate the number of gallons of gasoline you burned running all over Gloucester County searching the thrift stores for cheap luggage to replace the "inappropriate shipping containers".

Answer
The only way to figure out this one is to drag out a bathroom scale and make your husband get on it, announce his weight, and then start piling bags into his arms, finally subtracting one number from another. The combinations are infinite, but I would estimate that we tried 768 combinations over the course of three days of packing.

And don't bother with calculating the gasoline. It gets too depressing.

Problem Number 3
If a family is housed for a night on the fourth floor of a hotel above an older, crabby gentleman, how many hours of jumping, skipping and pounding will the man tolerate before he comes upstairs, rattles the door, and expresses his dissatisfaction with the noise?

Answer
48 minutes.

Problem Number 4
All children need to be fed. However, some children need to be fed more often than others. Keeping this in mind, on average how long can you march three children throughout the Civil War sites in the City of Richmond, Virginia, before one of them complains about imminent starvation?

Answer
If you are a parent you will know this is a trick question. Their hunger level will directly correlate to how bored they are. Fortunately, the National Park system offers the Junior Ranger Program, which is exciting enough and offers enough incentive for completion that it staves off boredom. At the end of two hours of searching for solutions to questions, the kids are awarded with a plastic pin-on badge.

The answer to this one today was SEVEN HOURS!

Problem Number 5
If a family of five is passing through security, how many times will the husband have to run to the bathroom to empty water bottles? And how many forays into the bags will the mother have to make in order for all toiletries to be extracted from their four carry-ons?

Answer
The father will have to make four trips to the bathroom (since he is the only one who still has shoes on) and the mother will have to try three times to find all the toiletries. As an added bonus, the mother will also have to repack one of the carry-ons after the elder daughter dumps it all over the floor right in front of the metal detector. Extra credit for you if you got that bag dumping part.


Problem Number 6
Be careful with this last one as it is apparently very tricky.

If you receive an electronic voucher from the airline stating that your flight will depart Richmond International at 2018, what time would that be on a standard clock?

Hint: If you are tempted to answer, "6:18", like Tony did today, then you would be wrong. Calculate carefully because if you get it wrong you may have to spend many hours waiting at a largely empty flight gate.

Answer
Yes,that is right, the answer is 8:18 PM. We rolled into the airport at 3:15 expecting a very reasonable three hours during which we would check our bags, enjoy a leisurely stroll about the airport, and have a bite to eat. Instead we were greeted with barely contained snickers at the check-in counter and the observation, "You can certainly go ahead and take your time getting to the gate now, can't you?"

The desk crew then responded with a bit of pity by letting us check our bags in a little early and pointing us toward Applebee's. Now we are at the gate with our carry-ons open and spread throughout the entire area. United either hates us for the mess or loves us for the entertainment to be had from us.

How did you score? Not anticipating our mathematically-challenged brains' responses, I scored very poorly so congratulations if you know us well enough to have garnered a 70% or above.

We should be in Oman in 20 hours. Look for a new post next week (inshallah, as always!)

What We Miss

So the meaning of "you" was all of us and we are looking at seven more days in the United States until we, all five of us, once again assume the expat label.

A kindly woman who will remain nameless recently asked me, "What will you miss the most when you are there? Will you miss your freedoms you have here? You will have to cover your head, won't you?" She then rambled along, in a concern-tinged voice, about burqas (the head to toe covering required if women in Saudi Arabia) and camels and hedonistic, porkless lands far far away.

What will we miss?

Well right away we will miss a couple of days of school. Tian schools like a dream, interested in and diligent about everything, reading from extra resources,and using her artistic talents to create a detailed picture timeline of monks and kings long ago dead.

Silas schools like a sloth entrapped in thick, slimy mud. He barely moves during the school day. Instead he cries and whines, he slides from his chair onto the carpeting underneath the table, where he curls into a ball. If he had the vocabulary, he would probably swear a red streak. So some of us will miss school for those two days and some of us will be doing a happy dance.

We will miss Tony's birthday in the flurry of airplanes and connections and settling into a new country and a new routine.

We will miss our cats, Dory and Oscar, and Tian has already had a tearful evening when all she wanted was to bury her face in Oscar's thick black fur. "When I am sad and no one will listen to me Oscar always lets me snuGGGLLLLEEE! (WAH!!!!!!)" My suggestion, that she bury her face in the fur of my parents' archaic Siamese cat, Sydney, was met with another sob. "I would but Sydney smells bad! And last time I buried my face in her fur she licked my finger and when I sniffed it it smelled like POOOOOP!!!! (WAH!!!! GIGGLE!!!!!)"

And of course we will miss our families, too. That is a given. But what will we miss besides the obvious?

This morning Tony and I went for a walk. The morning air was cool and crisp and the sky was that unbelievable blue it turns only in the autumn. We saw the flags flying half mast for 9/11 and talked about what we had missed last time we were out of the country. We missed the shock and grieving of 9/11 while we were in South Korea.

We pulled together our memories of that night (if was night for us on that side of the world). Our telephone rang after we had gone to bed; on the other end we heard broken English, punctuated with, "I am sorry...I am sorry...your TV...I am sorry. A building...an airplane...hello." We turned the set on just in time to see the North Tower collapse; we were thoroughly confused by what we were seeing until we managed to find a CNN broadcast.

For a couple of days after 9/11, we caught glimpses of the towers collapsing as Korean Broadcasting replayed the footage. We had people approach us and say, "I am so sorry about your country." But it was over for us within the week. We heard nothing more from the Korean media, which allowed our sadness and concern to heal naturally and relatively quickly.

So as we passed the post office today and saw that American flag, its tip nearly drooping to the ground, we realized that what we will miss in Oman is the daily ebb and flow of life here in the United States. As we return at the end of our contract, we will be missing months and years of events that have occured on this side of the Atlantic while we have been away.

Okay, but when you come right down to it, most of all we will miss the cats. But only the ones that don't smell like poop.

And "You" Means....

What is the meaning of "you"?

I feel a bit like Bill Clinton (bless his heart) deliberating over the meaning of "is". But really, what is the meaning of "you"? Because this is currently what is puzzling me over our departure for Oman.

In English, there is no plural of you. No, wait, I retract that statement. Ireland, or at least Northern Ireland, uses "youse" to indicate the plural, and if our contact in Oman had written, "Youse will be receiving more information on your September 19th departure," I would know who, exactly, is leaving on the 19th.

If our contact had used the South's plural of "you", "y'all", I would know whether or not I should repack my clothing. However, all she said was, "Dear Tony, You will be departing for Oman on September 19th. You will soon receive more information...". Now to me, that sounds like the singular form of "you", don't you (plural) think?

This somewhat ambiguous information we have been receiving is reminding me of one of the greatest challenges associated with living and working abroad--language, and not the foreign one. My main difficulty is always with the English.

When I lived in China in the early 90s, I had a Chinese colleague whose English name was Kent. Kent was Mr. Cool. He wore stylish blue polyester pants, had a stylish mole, and had produced one son to carry on the family name. He drove a scooter instead of riding a bike and he spoke English communicatively. He was truly amazing.

Kent used to knock on my door in the evenings and make proclamations such as, "You had better lock your bike in the middle of the rack," "you had better eat rice instead of bread," "you had better clean your porch." "You had better" was the only imperative he knew and, coming from a guy who was the same age as I was, it rubbed me the wrong way. "You had better" is a phrase you use to scold someone, not make kind suggestions, but Cool Kent didn't know that.

We are not yet into Oman but we are already suffering from English that lacks the same nuances as that to which we are accustomed. Did that "you" in Tony's email mean that we are all going to be flying to Oman on the 19th? Or did it mean that Tony will be flying ahead and the kids and I will follow behind at a later date?

With the Eid holiday upon the Middle East, we will quite likely not know who exactly is going until the 18th.

Of course, it would be extremely helpful if we were to hear by tomorrow whether or not we are all going on the 19th.

No, no, wait...we had better hear soon. That's much more appropriate to the situation, don't youse think?

Really?

Homeschooling always has sounded like a sweet option for education, especially after reading blog after blog online, published by mother after enthusiastic mother heralding the sheer joy they find in their experience. "It is the most holy, intimate experience..." gushes one. "There is nothing you could do that would bring you closer to your children," squeals another. And my personal favorite is, "Every moment is a joy."

Really? Every moment?

We started school on Monday out of boredom. The day before, Tian had ridden more than ten miles on her bike, circling my parents' neighborhood at least five times, admittedly losing count after the fourth lap. Silas had taken whining to a new spine-tingling level of perfection. And Tehva kept indiscriminately punching people, which meant that she was bored.

So I dug out the textbooks, trade books, and curriculum I had meticulously packed in the preceding weeks. I extracted a tiny cache of supplies and lesson plans I had prepared during the early summer and set up shop (or school) in my parents' dining room. Tian did a happy dance, and Silas shrieked with excitement. "All right," I thought. "This is going to rock!"

On Monday we started and the day went like a dream. The experience was truly everything those blogging, home school mommies had promised--close, joyous, (I wouldn't call it intimate), wonderful--it was the perfect teacher and the students finished the day energized by the experience.

Then came Tuesday. Within an hour Silas was under the table, crying, and I was reduced to pulling out all the tricks I had saved up after fifteen years of teaching other people's children. They worked miraculously on my own children but left me shaken and cursing those silly home school mommies. We were not enjoying every minute. Not even every other minute.

This morning (Thursday) school started and then ended just as quickly due to concentration issues from Silas, who leaked tears from the corners of his big, lashy eyes. A break, some outside time, and then an impromptu art lesson all served to bring him back onto the straight and narrow. However, during his language lesson the first sentence he penned was, "I hate homeschooling." (At least he used a pronoun, which was the assignment!)

My more seasoned and experienced friends who have home schooled say that tears on day 2, and every other day, sounds just about right. Whew.

Tian, meanwhile, has been wallowing in the experience like a pig in warm, stinky mud. Subscribing to the unit method of study, she has made herself a medieval loom out of a cardboard box and, throughout the day, when she has a spare moment or while being read to, she weaves. She also has planned a medieval feast, memorized a minstrel song, and is quite likely planning a jousting tournament on the sly. All the while she is also excelling in her studies, jumping through any hoop thrown before her.

Tehva still indiscriminately punches us and then runs away laughing. Nothing much has changed in her dysfunctional world, except now she can tell us what letter "punch" starts with, and she can read the words "me" and "am".

In spite of Silas's disagreements with the course of his education, we are going to continue on this path for the next year. Thus we are pulling out all the stops and doing whatever educational nonsense strikes our fancy. Or my fancy. Or my and Tian's fancy. No matter what we do, Tehva will haul off and smack us and Silas will cry.

Next post I will attach videos and photos of what we have done this week! We are big home school goobers, even though we are not really enjoying EVERY moment.

Waiting...Waiting...Waiting...

My mother's sewing machine blinks and whirs like a UFO. It flickers blue and then beeps when it wants you to reverse a stitch. It whirs when you hit the "Cut" button. It truly nearly does all the work for you when you sit down to sew.

All three children gather closely around my mother as she sews new wardrobes for their various bears and dolls. It was Tian who started it. "Hospital Bear needs some new clothes so that the Omani bears won't make fun of her." (Some of you may remember when Hospital Bear was a boy...clearly the bear has turned androgynous since 2006).

And so my mother, Murmur, is squinting at minuscule stitches, fashioning a tiny head scarf and long robe for HB. Tehva crowds her elbow and Silas breathes steamily on her neck, watching each turn and whir of the needle.

When she finishes the first garment,working with sweat shop speed, she whips out a shawl for Silas's Purple Bear and then a modest cap for Tehva's Bitty Baby. Then she deems that all stuffed things should be appropriately attired for Oman.

Still without visas, tickets, or even a departure date, yet fully moved out of our house in Emporia, our days have recently grown cozy and lax. As there is no definite departure date toward which we are flying, I can find ten minutes here and there to lay on the futon and savor the children drooling on my mother, asking her whether or not she has ever sewn her finger.

"No? Well, why not?" Tehva persists, looking for a tale of gore and intrigue. There is none forthcoming.

In the last four years I have been afforded precious few days that have allowed this degree of lazing and reflecting. With work, school, after-school activities, countless opportunities for socializing, Y-time, a pool membership, homework....there has been no time for quiet, watchful seeing. I have had little time to journal or blog or write anything. I have had little time to sit and think.

The unexamined life that is not worth living has been, well, worth it. But I have missed the time to see and think. I am a little out of practice to tell the truth.

This afternoon on the futon, though, is allowing me to see how the children will miss their family while we are away. I can see how closely they are pressed into Murmur, breathing on her, licking her while she sews itty-bitty bear clothes. I can see that they are so comfortable moulding their bodies to hers.

As I remain prone on the futon, I debate the wisdom in making an overseas move once again, weighing the foolishness of our plan to take the children so far away from family for so many months. I stumble upon many good reasons not to go. Tian, Silas and Tehva continue to press and question my mother, oblivious to my doubts.

In my classroom last year I had a balance scale with a set of shiny brass weights. A handful of my students were fascinated with balancing those weights against all manner of items--a cupful of dirt, a spoonful of water, plastic toys. Always the weighing was preceded by debate..."Do you think this will be heavier? Do you think I will need more weight? This is going to be so cool!"

They would endlessly shuffle the weights, remove items, and change both sides just as quickly as they could get things to balance. Making those decisions, tipping the scales, and playing with different combinations and outcomes was FUN. And the kids learned while they whittled and weighed.

So we will go to Oman (hopefully soon!) and shift the balance of our lives, hoping that we don't cause things to fly too out of proportion too quickly. And at the end of the three-year contract we all will have grown. And all things will balance, I hope.

Bigger children will mean more drool for Murmur's arm!