The Return

I am back.

Every now and then a blog needs a year off and so I indulged myself and took the time to indulge myself. But now with life in Muscat beginning to churn again after a long summer away, I NEED to write. Or at least I tell myself that I need to write, since I am being pressured from left and right to pen something.

What I want to create is a top ten list of all of the things that have changed over the last year. I like top ten lists for the very obvious call out to David Letterman, but I also like them for the neatness and structure that they impart. As a writer I know where I can stop writing. As a reader you know exactly how long you have to out up with my blog.

However, I can’t think of ten changes to share. I only can think of eight. And really they are not top…they just are changes. So here are eight changes, in no particular order, that have occurred here in the last year or so since I blogged.

     1.) Puberty

          That’s it. Just puberty.

     2.) Sailing

The sailboat that sat in our driveway for nearly two years? If you visited us at any point between 2010 and 2012, you remember that boat. It was the one you practically had to climb over to enter our house. Last year we donated it to a sailing club here in exchange for the occasional sail session on it, and replaced it in our drive with a table which we have covered with skulls. Muscat has contributed to the look of the skulls by covering them with dust. It gives the driveway a very white trash sort of feel. Homey.  

     3.) Chickenpox

The Varicella fairy visited us during October. In classic American style, instead of treating the Varicella, we spent a lot of our time trying to figure out who was to blame. And with each speculation as to the responsible party, another eruption of pox occurred until Silas was covered in spots (this is what we do in Muscat when we have chicken pox...we go out for Indian food, which is probably why the virus has gone around town twice already since August).

In the end we eliminated most of Muscat and narrowed the suspected Varicella transmitters down to two individuals. Suspect 1 was a friend who had had shingles many moons before, but was the most obvious suspect because she had had Varicella and was foolish enough to admit it. Suspect 2 was some random British child encountered at a birthday party two weeks before the breakout. I blame the British.

    4.) The Black and White Cat

Harry the Cat has never gotten a mention on the blog and so I mention him now. We found him under the new expressway, probably having been thrown from a vehicle, and took him in as a favor to a friend, who promised to take him off our hands within a few days. Did I mention that this friend is British?

Harry looks like a Jersey cow. He complains loudly, drinks from the toilet, and has inspired Silas to write an epic which intertwines all of the pets in Muscat. Visit it at www.sisstoryblog.blogspot.com

    5.) A Contract! A Real Contract!

For one month this summer, I taught real students at a real school for one whole month, and was contracted to do it! Having been out of the game in an institutional sense for three years, it was validating to work in a concrete box again. And that sense of validation made me question my sanity. Trying not to think too hard and moving along…

    6.) Reading

Tehva reads. Finally. 

Poser.

Each morning she reports on the number of chapters she conquered in the previous 24 hours. This morning it was 57 chapters. I was not aware that we had 57 chapters in easy chapter books available in our house and so, while it is exciting that she is finally reading, it is questionable as to exactly what she is reading. This may be contributing to her growing penchant for racy material, whether it is in an online or paper medium.

    7.) Muscat International Airport

The construction site, just minutes from our house.

After gaining and losing a number of friends who were associated with the new airport’s construction but ran screaming from the country in frustration over how the construction was proceeding, it is comforting to see that the airport is coming along. To celebrate, Muscat Municipality has been closing lanes and roads throughout the area to enlarge them, reroute them, redecorate them, or sometimes to just erect little wooden men who have orange flags taped to their hands next to them.

If you are smart you can infer why I have included this in the list—getting anywhere on this side of town anymore involves some major road wrangling, which leads to the next change...

  

    8.) Socialization Opportunities

Many a moon ago when I started homeschooling, I was followed by the specter of potential unsocialization. No one was worried about my children academically, physically, or nutritionally, but I was questioned constantly about socialization. “What do your children do for socialization? How are you teaching them to relate to other people? How will they learn to play with others if they don’t go to school?”

And so, folding to peer pressure, we spend a good amount of time in the afternoons carting the children to socialization opportunities and our week is shaped by rugby, Girl Guides, violin and piano lessons, homeschool co-op classes, tennis and swimming lessons, pottery class, playdates, the Family Hash, and kid-only mountain walks.

In spite of all of that socialization, they remain who they have always been.

It is an expensive lesson, both in time and resources. Ah well.

So that is as things stand now. If I am as consistent as before with keeping up with this, you just might get to read a new blog post again in the next year. If you are lucky.

Social Opps

I know, it seems as though our existence here has lately been peppered with hazards left and right--the police, the snakes, the scary Egyptian men on the beach. Things continued somewhat along that vein this week, although not enough to make a blog entry.

However, thanks to the fact that Muscat absolutely crawls with expats desperate for SOMETHING to do with their every waking moment, compounded by the fact that liquor is, in comparison to, say, EVERY OTHER COUNTRY I HAVE EVER LIVED IN, very difficult to come by, Greater Muscat seems to have more than its fair share of things to do for expats.

To preface this entry, I must admit that I find it very touching that so many friends and family firmly believe that we are suffering here. During our time in the States this summer, I even bore witness to one woman who was nearly moved to tears by her supposition that we are doing mission work in the Middle East and that I make great sacrifices in regards to my personal safety and appearence in order to carry on said work. This particular blog will reassure you that we are not suffering at all. Part of me is sorry to prove these assumptions false but my consceince will be lighter having unburdened my soul.

As the days of the week roll past here, one generally finds the social calendar filling until Wednesday hits and the tidal wave that is Muscat Expat Society comes crashing down. Things creep along for us as the week begins. Saturday is the Hash, which ordinarily spawns a second activity--perhaps a playdate or dinner. This week, the Hash turned into a dinner party as a couple of folks pulled grills, dogs, burgers, and fried onions from their cars at the end of the run. The desert was a solid mass of black, punctuated by two trays of glowing coals and dozens of hungry hashers guzzling beers and scarfing down processed meats.

Sunday is the Mountain Walk, which attracts such an eclectic mix that the social opportunities that grow from this can be as varied as a longer walk on the weekend, a boat trip, or a date to go to a show at Muscat's new opera house. This week the Walk ended with discussions of water management in arid climates, climate change in Oman, who would be attending the Friday opera house performance of Don Quixote, and strategies that work best when teaching English to Arabic-speaking boys aged 13-14. One of the regular walkers approached me about having the kids act as flower-givers at the end of November's classical music concert at the university. Add another to the social calendar.

Monday normally is the day that we pack ourselves off to the American School for a game of ultimate frisbee with the under-30s of Muscat. However, this week we elected to stay home and watch a movie, which we had acquired semi-legally. And we never divulge our sources so don't ask.

Tian has a piano lesson on Tuesdays from her Japanese piano teacher who lives down the street in a true marble mansion. Our Tuesday afternoons used to be fairly monochromatic but now we are afforded options. There is a running club in Muscat that meets on Tuesdays and runs distances that vary, spanning lengths which begin at sane-and-totally-manageable and end at whoa-that's-really-far. There is also a group that explores the wadis in and around Muscat, and a third group that explores the ridges of those wadis.

Tuesday's ridge walking group is not a chatty group and so social opps rarely arise on Tuesday walks. We merely walk up and then come down, huffing and puffing as we traverse the ridges. If I watch carefully as I walk, I can see where the people in front of me have left drips of sweat on the dusty beige rocks. The quiet, chatterless afternoon segues into evening and then sundown. Tuesday walks get my head set for the weekend.

Wednesdays we go to Irish dance in order to bounce around in synch with a dozen others, and then the weekend truly begins. This Wednesday evening we attended a potluck during which we met the new minister for Muscat's Protestant church and his wife. The hostess very graciously opened her home and wedged fifty people into a space designed to fit eight comfortably but in spite of that, introductions were jovial. "I am from Ghana...I have been here 22 years...my husband and I are here from Taiwan...I teach mathematics...I am from Germany...I am in Oman for two months...we are from the Philippines...my daughter is here from India; she is a software engineer..." Tehva decided the men from Ghana must be kings due to the beautiful embroidery on their shirts, and told them so. Tian and Silas floated around the room offering snacks to people while they made introductions.

Thursday began with a 7 a.m. biathlon during which blue and purple jellyfish tried to eat the participants. I survived, did NOT finish last, and was treated to an English breakfast of eggs, beans, sausage, and toast, enjoyed outdoors under a thatched roof restaurant on the beach. The biathlon spawned talk of competing in the triathlon next month. Yet another social opp to place on the calendar. The biathlon was followed by a playdate for the kids, a book club meeting (add another date to the calendar for next week's meeting), and a baby shower, plus poker with the boys for Tony in the evening.

As we discussed the weekend, Tony said, "You know, I have come to the point where I no longer hear people's accents--I only hear what they are saying." I thought about this in reference to the week behind us and the week ahead which is, admittedly, not promising to be anywhere near as busy as this one was, and had to agree. Initially I protested: "No, no, I ALWAYS hear the accents." But that is not true, and nationality is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of the people with whom we share social opps here.

We spent our week, as we always do, in the company of people from Russia, Ghana, Egypt, England, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Armenia, America, Lebannon, Oman, Ireland, India, Pakistan, and the list goes on. Our lives here are full of social opps of the type that are difficult to explain to someone who is not living the expat lifestyle. Our interactions are those of ordinary everyday events, not generally colored by political tensions, but supported and developed in part by the commonality of living in a foreign country. These types of interactions have become so ordinary that it no longer seems notable to socialize with a Cambodian woman who grew up in absolute poverty or a man who spent his childhood memorizing the Quaran and now travels throughout the world as an engineering consultant.

We share much here with people from all over the world, including the commonality of being exhausted at the end of a week full of social opps.