Shipping Cats from Oman to the USA--Step 2

Step two should have been to book our tickets on a cat-friendly airline. However, we had taken care of step two way before we started to investigate taking the cats back to the US with us. Up until about March, we had thought of leaving them here with nice new families, but nice new families who are willing to take former wadi cats are few and far between, so it looks like we are stuck with them.

Step 2 for us, therefore, has involved buying suitable crates and figuring out how to get the cats to the US with us, short of making them swim the Atlantic.

Crates
We bought a lovely set of crates at the mall for 22 OR each. However, Silas the Mathwhiz mismeasured the crates and, when we got home, we realized they were not IATA compliant (too small). Upon attempting to return the crates, we realized that we were not charged for both of them. So we returned one, but the other is still sitting in our front hall, useless.

Alternatively, the vet has some snazzy green IATA compliant crates that we will go out and sink some cash into this weekend.

Cost: 30 OMR/cat for IATA-compliant crates. However, subtract the 10 OMR I might get if I sell the extra crate at a yard sale before we go. So let's call it 25 OMR/cat.

Hassles?: Yes. Don't let the 11 year old do the measuring. And watch those shop checkout people carefully. Or not and get free stuff!

What to expect?: Expect to have to check the IATA website like a zillion times to get the measurements for the crate right. Then expect to totally mess it up and have to measure again.

Timeline: 2.5 months prior to departure

Shipping Cats from Oman to the USA--Step 1

You know what just ain't out there? Information about shipping cats from Oman to the USA. So you know what I am going to do for you all? I am going to track this venture from point A to point Z for you.

Step one 
The export process began with getting the felines checked over and immunized, which we should have been keeping up on more thoroughly but weren't. They needed a valid rabies shot to get in, and we opted for feline leukemia as well, just so that they would be shipshape.

Since the cats involved are one-step-removed-from-being-wild-bin-diving wadi cats, they had to be sedated throughout this process because the whole wrapping them in towels and speaking soothingly to them thing just wasn't cutting it. The sedation, which I highly recommend for difficult to handle animals and small children, seemed to get wrapped into the cost somehow--one of the miracles of modern veterinary medicine in Muscat.

Arm ripper # 1--Harry

Cost: 80 OMR/cat, including a quick physical, a blood test, deworming pills, rabies immunization, feline leukemia/HIV immunization, sedation, and the individual attention from a vet for 45 minutes. And we got some new nifty stickers in their record books.

Hassles?: None. The vet was very clear and helpful with all parts of the immunization process, even calmly explaining that, although both cats looked dead after he had sedated them, I should not get my hopes up (he didn't say that really, but I said it to myself...yes, bad, I know).

What to expect?: Going to the USA, expect to have the vet react with relief. Shipping cats to the US is reported to be a streamlined experience. Here's to hoping.

Timeline: 3 months prior to departure

10 Reasons Why Standardized Tests Are Not So Standard

So after a minor kerfuffle over the necessity of taking our annual standardized tests--

     Tian: Tell me why we have to take these again?
     Me: Because next year you have to jump back into the box.
     Tian: So.
     Me: The Man would like you to have some proof that you haven't spent the year sitting in front of the TV.
     Tian: But they don't show anything important about who I am. These tests are dumb.
     Me: If you don't take these tests, I will never feed you again.
     Tian: Okay fine. If that's what I have to do to be fed...

--the annual testing rigamarole has begun. This year, some of us were motivated to jam through the tests and just get them done.

Yes, he wins the highly motivated tester
of the spring award. Yes, I was surprised, too. 

Others of us, however, were not so motivated because this year's tests were hard. This someone who will remain nameless throughout this blog post (I am feeling generous with my doofus children today since we are nearly done with school) made me shoot back to my days at the School for International Training, and straight into my Testing and Evaluation Course which, at the time, I just did not get. Okay, so I got the Testing part, because what teacher has never given a test? And I got the Evaluation part, because that is just like testing, right? But all of the other stuff that went with this course? Most of it, frankly, was lost on me, so much so that I cannot recall much of the course content at all. However, two things have stuck with me:

1.) The prof told a story on the first day about a seahorse and its aimless wandering around the Pacific Ocean. The story ended with the seahorse never getting anywhere because he did not know where he was going. The moral of this story is that seahorses do not know how to read maps.

2.) There is no such thing as a national test, or even a state test, that is standardized.

You can perhaps see why this second part threw me for a loop because of course there are standardized tests! Scads of them! And they all have nifty acronyms! The SAT, the ACT, the GRE, the GED, the CAT, the list could go on ad nauseam.

So here is how THE test (I won't say which test we used, but I will say it was one of the biggies) missed the mark on assessing Unnamed Child this year because her reality is not the same reality of the group against she is being normed.

Really, it was fascinating.

1. Climate Conflicts 
When this is your daily reality

 

and then you are asked a question about dew in the morning, you think this at 7 a.m.:

2. Architectural Conflicts

When this is where the leader of your current country lives, and all important buildings are flat and sort of simplistic

and then you are asked to identify where the most important decisions are made in the USA, you are going to choose this place, 

which is also flat and sort of simplistic, saying as you do so, "This looks like a place the Sultan would make a good decision in" as you bubble in choice C.

3. Sporting Conflicts

When you play rugby in your spare time and hang with a million other little kids who play rugby or soccer, the words "baseball pennant" mean absolutely nothing to you, and when you are asked to identify the picture with the baseball pennant in the middle, you are left wondering both "What's baseball?" and "Are you talking about a pen?". Sad but true.

4. Signage Conflicts 

Let's say you are accustomed to seeing this sign

Let's also suppose that you live in a country where signs and signals are more or less optional. When you are asked, "Which sign means that you should continue to drive at a set speed?", which one will you choose? 

Yes, this one:

Your rationale will be that there is a similar one here that no one ever stops for. And you will also rationalize this sign, saying that you sure don't know what "Yield" means since you have never seen that word before, but it sounds like "Yes" and that means to keep going.

I am not making this up.

5. Dietary Conflicts

When you have half of your childhood in a place where corn comes pre-scraped from the cob, in neat little cups, where it has been seasoned with butter and salt and sprinkled with chili, talk of a corn doll only serves to confuse. "Do you mean it is a doll made from corn? Like yellow corn? Like with chili? What?!?" The rest of the question was lost on Unnamed Child since the thought of making a doll out of corn kernels was pretty incomprehensible. I am still trying to wrap my head around what she must have been thinking.

6. A Phone Book? Is That Like a Reading Book? But For Phones?

Enough said.

7. Educational Conflicts

    This is similar to the school that appeared in the test booklet. 

Unnamed Child thought it was a villa and so she was completely flabbergasted, missing the rest of the test question. I guess to the untrained eye it looks like an apartment building. I don't know, I guess it is hard to believe that schools look like that when you are used to seeing this in the private schools that we regularly frequent here:

British School Muscat

Royal Flight Muscat

8. Clothing Conflicts

If the coldest the weather gets for you is a summer day in Europe, then this kind of coat is going to throw you for a loop:

And why did Unnamed Child not choose this as an answer for, "Fill in the circle under the item you would wear if you forgot your hat on a winter's day"? Because, as she said, "Is that a real coat? I have never seen one like that. And winter isn't even cold. Duh."

9. Equatorial Conflict

"Fill in the circle under the number that tells how many hours of sunlight are in a day in the summer in the United States." She was completely floored by this question as here it is 12 hours of sunlight in a day almost all year round. So I totally unstandardized the test and said, "Look, think of Europe in the summer. How long are the days when we go to Germany? Or England?" That fixed it. 

Don't tell the testing service.

10. "What?!? You can have a license plate with your name on it?!?! What the..."

The information that followed, "Suppose you see a license plate with the name 'Susan' on it..." went unheard and unnoticed.

Okay, so I can already hear my mother trying to puzzle this one out. How can she not know these things? She spends almost three months out of every year in the USA! The best I can do is say that, when kids are young, what is here and now is what is real and what dominates their perception of the world. What was nine months ago is so, well, nine months ago. 

Yes, sometimes standardized testing is a necessary evil. But how much validity does it hold? Culture is measured just as much as information acquired. I hope next year's school administration is kind and understanding. 

And I hope they don't laugh too much at Unnamed Child for not knowing her behind from her elbow.  Thank goodness there was nothing about that on the test. 

What Comes of Not Knowing About Jackets

Today Tehva showed us why we need to go back to America, if only for a little while. Today we discovered that Tehva does not know how to put on a jacket.

The girl can read like a demon, swim with the fishes, and walk barefoot for miles, even on 120 degree plus plus plus days. But she cannot get a jacket on without the sleeves of her sweater riding up to her armpits.

Tian was startled at this revelation. “Mom! What is wrong with Tehva? Why doesn’t she know how to put on a jacket?”

Duh, live in the Middle East much?

She can't put on a jacket, but she knows her stuff
when it comes to mummifying chickens

Every summer for the past four years we have gone to the USA, and each summer, the kids are released upon American society. Short of the fiery religious debates in which Tian has engaged her Sunday school teacher, and the Hitler-esque manner in which Tehva has bullied and bossed the neighborhood kids there, they have generally done well.

She's fine...just fine...keep saying it...

Okay, so Silas’s continuing inability to tie shoelaces? And Tian’s inability to speak to an authority figure without pointing out every single error in logic or technique? Both are probably related to the homeschooling and the mamsy-pamsy way in which I deal with them on a daily basis. And who needs to wear closed-toed shoes in the desert anyhow? But generally I feel that they will effortlessly merge back into mainstream America without a hiccup when we return to ‘Merica. Or at least I hope.

Each year I have left the USA to return to Oman thinking that my kids are fine…that they will be fine upon the imminent return, because when you are ex-patting it, this is always somewhere within your thoughts. It sometimes even surfaces to dominate your thoughts for short spurts. But in the day-to-day of living and learning here, it is also easy to bury this thought, especially as the time away becomes more prolonged.

Yes, and he is also fine despite appearances

Life here moves quickly (thus no blog post in, like, a million years) and we are left with little time for reflection on such questions as, “Will my kid be a freak when we go back home?” Additionally, the answer is "Yes for a little while" and so no one wants to discuss it much.

The generally harmless peer group--or at least two of them

In spite of the freak factor, it has been a relief to let the grip of the home society melt away. For four years, I have not had to worry about my kids’ clothing or style choices, the contents of their lunch boxes, their test scores in relation to their classmates’ test scores or anyone else's, their peers (I know them all too well), their safety within an institutional setting, or the quality of the material that is theoretically making its way into their little heads. I have not had to worry about supplementing activities or boosting instructional time. And I have certainly not have had to worry about the implications of Silas not knowing how to tie his shoes, or Tian angering the wrong instructor.

I highly recommend it, y’all.

But in other ways, this squirming away from the grip of American society has left me, actually all of us, on the outs. I no longer know what is cool and what is not. I have no idea anymore about what my children should be able to do according to the Standards or the Common Core. I don’t know what has come of the FDA’s strangle hold on school lunch programs. I don’t know whether Tian’s constant use of the word, “Mank” to 

Totally mank. Totally.

describe unpleasantries is totally weird or totally in in the USA.

In the four years here, they have gone from being children who fit a certain mold—the one dictated by society and by me so that they would be more apt to conform to society’s wishes—to being something of culture-less individuals. And while there are certainly rules that must be followed in Oman (What do you mean I can’t wear my favorite sleeveless top now that I have boobs?) as everywhere else, in many ways we have been beyond the reach of those rules.

But that is all coming to an end. The countdown has begun.

Cucumbers, Rubbers, and Tehva

Here is how you traumatize S the Wondermaid--sex ed.

And here is how you play it off like those condoms were supposed to be in the toy box--Tehva.

But first a bit of background. We still enjoy the biweekly visits from S the Wondermaid who continues to astonish and amaze with her prowess in the kitchen, her kindness with the kids, and her thoroughness with the mop and bucket.

S's battle with the house is as never-ending as the quest for smarts undertaken daily by the Fantastic Four who darken my school room door each morning, which lends a lovely balance to my life. The house is like a mountain, stacked to its pinnacle with stones on the edge of tumbling over a precipice, threatening to take down the whole peak.

The Fantastic Four's battle with the daily regimen of reading, math, and thinking thinking thinking is contributing to this precarious peak because learning here in Oman while you are a teen apparently involves lots of eraser ash, crumpled tissues, half-chewed pencils, and tiny scraps of paper tossed onto the most immediate floor space. And it also involves extensive cutting, slicing, peeling, ripping, rubbing, and rolling. You know, just to keep it all fresh.

The scraps that result from all of these actions often end up tucked away in odd places--under the seats of the car, wrapped up on people's desks, and stuck in random containers. If the remnants are simply, say, flakes of paint, then S just gets on with things. But if the remnants are condoms? Well, then S pulls out the big guns.

When we returned from Jordan, we found that S had defrosted the freezer, deroached under the sink, cleaned the windows, bleached our socks, combed and primped the cats, and emptied Tehva's toy basket, scrubbing each item thoroughly. She then had replaced everything in its proper place, except for a small plastic tea pot. I found it sitting in a place of honor in the kitchen upon our return.

When I tried to remove it from its new showcase area, S lunged at me. "No! It is dirty! Do not touch that! I have boiled it and washed it with soap. But do not to touch it! I think you need to throw it. It is very dirty."

So I pulled back my hand like I had been burned because S has seen dirty in her day, and if she says this is dirty then it must be DISGUSTING. But no. It appeared to be the same blue plastic, moderately clean Fisher Price teapot that it had always been.

S lunged at me again. "No! Do you know what I found in there? THREE USED CONDOMS! Somebody in your house hid them there I think. I FOUND THEM AND SCRUBBED AND SCRUBBED! SO DIRTY! AND I PUT THAT POT IN BOILING WATER!"

The telling continued in this vein, cyclical in nature, peaking and then subsiding until it had been reduced to "Three condoms," and "Very dirty" along with frantic gestures.

And then it dawned on me. These were the absentee condoms--the ones that had gone missing during our sex ed unit when, in very American style, I went out and bought a box of condoms and a bag of cucumbers and let the kids have at it. Along the way, the kids also filled two giant white board with questions ranging from those of technicality to those of practicality. Tehva, being seven, was excluded from this event since she already has a horrible habit of blurting out the most inappropriate things and actually could have probably taught the unit anyhow. I nestled her in front of a Mr. Bean DVD and ignored her.

But the whole time I suspected that Tehva was lurking around the perimeter of the talk, and when I heard her running the water in the bathroom, I suspected that she was up to no good, since she, soap, and water are not friends.

And, indeed, poor S found the proof of Tehva's covert misdeed, shoved in the bottom of Tehva's beloved teapot.

When I confronted Tehva, she giggled and then laughed, pointing out that condoms make good balloons. When I explained to S, she giggled and giggled and giggled, but mostly she looked relieved. And when I reflected back on the whole sex ed talk, I had a sudden revelation as to why one-room school houses probably never tried to address sex.

Small children make talented condom thieves. And discarded play condoms make for an uncomfortable clean up crew. Just wait until we dissect those pigs!

Michael Row the Boat Ashore--The Music Video

Pete Seeger may be dead, but he has been stuck in my head since hitting the ground here in Jordan.  You know how sometimes you can get a song stuck in your head but then listen to a recording of it and it’s gone? Well I had this ridiculous notion that actually visiting the River Jordan might wipe Michael Row the Boat Ashore from my mind, thus curing me of the non-stop Pete Seeger concert in my head.

It didn’t work.

As a matter of fact, it has made things worse because now not only do I have the lyrics, but I have a visual to go with it—like my own private music video. Let’s do this verse by verse, shall we?

Michael row the boat ashore, hallelujah,

Michael row the boat ashore, halle-lu-u-jah,

If Michael could row a boat in the Jordan River, it would have to be a very small boat and he would have to be very skinny. Michael would also have to be careful not to inadvertently row the boat into the shore rather than ashore. The River Jordan would more appropriately be called the Brook Jordan, but that lacks the ring that River Jordan has.

Sure is skinny for a river, isn't it?

Michael’s boat is a music boat, hallelujah,

Michael’s boat is a music boat, halle-lu-u-jah

Michael’s boat may be a music boat, but it does have competition. The Jordanian side’s River Jordan-side shelter is a pretty quiet, simple affair, with a thatched roof on wooden stilts. It has the same charm that the rest of Jordan has—unpretentious.

The simplicity of the Jordan side

But the Israeli side is something fancy. There is a polished stone visitor’s center with stone steps leading down to the muddy riverside. And where we on the Jordanian side had a smiling, bomber-jacket-wearing, slick-talking guide, on the Israeli side they had a priest who appeared to be in charge of full time homilies. Frankly, we are not sure whether that priest hangs at the Israeli side for work or if the group of Russian Orthodox Christians brought the priest with them, but no matter where he came from, he was a source of song and prayer that would drown out that music boat any day.

Sister help to trim the sail, hallelujah,

Sister help to trim the sail, halle-lu-u-jah.

And what can we trim that sail with? How about a white piece of fabric? That makes a good sail. Fortunately, that sparkling white visitor’s center, in addition to a homilying priest, has an area where you can rent starched white robes with Christian symbols ironed on the front. I think the idea behind those robes is that they will preserve your modesty while you pursue a religious purge in the Jordan but I for one can testify that those robes do no such thing. I can also testify that Russians prefer striped tighty-whities to boxers and that the women see no need for wearing a bra during a religious purge.

In contrast, on the Jordanian side, only one of our party had come prepared for a Jordan River purge, and he had come that way only by chance. Clad in a black pair of trunks, he entered the river near the reeds at the edge of the wood and thatch roof shelter and doggy paddled parallel to the slimy wooden steps. Then he dunked his head in the silty grey water and emerged, pink and goose-bumpy.

Jordan’s river is deep and wide, hallelujah,

Meet my mother on the other side, halle-lu-u-jah.

Jordan’s river is neither deep nor wide, as was established earlier. And had my mother been at the other side, I could not have gotten to her. In spite of the religious significance of the place, and the peace of the river itself, it was very clear that we were standing on a highly contested border. We had passed curls of barbed wire on the walk in, as well as high flying flags—both the blue Star of David on the white background that symbolizes Israel and the red, white, green, and black that is Jordan’s. A Jordanian soldier snuggled with his gun and napped atop his amphibious vehicle under a camouflage cover, just out of eyesight of the people on the Israeli side.

In spite of this, the only physical thing keeping us from crossing the River Jordan was a length of black netting stretched across the steps down to the river on both banks. On each side, between the lengths of netting and the steps there was a very narrow corridor of water available for a Jordan River purge. In between the nets was about three feet of river water.  And as I said, my mother was not in Israel. Or if she was, she was disguised as a devout Russian.

Jordan’s River is chilly and cold, hallelujah,

Chills the body, but not the soul, halle-lu-u-jah.

In the end, peer pressure won out and I dunked my head in the Jordan River. 

Fellow dunkers unite

There was a small group of Americans on the trip with us, visiting from a Christian international school in China. It was one of their group that took the initial plunge into the river, and his example prompted Tian and me to do our own purge along with Alicia, another teacher. 

The Jordan is the only major feeder of the Dead Sea, and it is brackish due to its proximity to that body of water--the water has the same sweet-salty taste as the Dead Sea, but is much milder. As we dunked our heads in the frigid waters, my nose filled with the stuff, as well as the grey mud suspended in the greenish waters. My head ached from the cold and when I pulled myself out of the water, the cold air stung.

And, yes, Pete Seeger was right. My body was chilled. But not my soul. Halle-lu-u-jah.

You Can Ride My Donkey...But It Will Cost You

Tehva is the dirtiest child in the developed world.

If the theories on asthma and allergies are correct, and if they do in fact develop in some children as a result of an overly-sanitary environment, then Tehva will never develop these types of health issues. And neither will her children. In fact, I am currently questioning our decision to have had her immunized at all as I am pretty sure that she has been exposed to and developed immunity to all varieties of the pox and all major parasites. She is, in short, a mess, and nothing has brought that out more strongly than Petra.

We arrived in the cowboy town of Wadi Musa in the evening as everything was just coming alive. Poorly spelled, hand-painted signs were at every turn—“Highly Recommendeb Coffee” and “Enjoy You Tim Here” and “Wel Come to Petra!”—optimistic to the end, it felt like we had truly arrived at Jordan’s premier backpacker grotto. We parked the car, called our hosts, Vale and Ali, and then settled in to wait for one of them to turn up.

Tehva wandered over to a tree and summarily began stripping it of pine cones, alternating between shoving them in her pockets and tossing them cheekily at a group of Chinese tourists trying to flash photos of her endeavors. When she came back to us, she had a scalp full of pine cone bits, bulging pockets, and a scowl on her face. She growled at Silas but deigned to allow Tony to help her into the back of Ali’s pickup truck for the trip through town to their place.

The next morning we dressed all three kids as tidily as we could manage after a week on the road with less than a week’s worth of clothing and headed to Petra. After selling a kidney to pay for the entrance fee (“Well, at least it’s cheaper than a day at Disney Land!”—I really tried to put a positive spin on the price of admission) we entered into day one of, well, Petra. Really, I wasn’t sure what to expect, other than to pay a fortune for admission, to become dehydrated, and to be harassed endlessly by little boys with donkeys.

The donkeys minus the little boys

We wandered down through the Siq, which is a long, narrow rock corridor that stretches about 800 shaded meters 

and terminates here:

The Treasury, minus Indiana Jones

It is the answer to why the ancient Nabataens put their city where it did--nobody can get in or out of Petra without being seen and heard coming through the Siq. 

Within minutes of entering the Siq, fifteen people had asked Tehva if she wanted to ride their horses. One boy offered with a wink to have Tian ride his monkey. Tehva’s clothing went from clean to dingy by virtue of the fact that she was stroking each pack animal as we passed by, but by the time we arrived at the The Treasury, we had lost Tehva.

Not to worry, though, we found her here:

With her BFF, the Treasury-side seller

  

Now that we were in front of the Treasury, we had to contend with offers of camel rides, postcards, carriage rides, jewelry, Bedouin tea with sage, and tiny carved animals with even tinier carved animals inside. At the same time our attention was drawn to Russian touristas wearing high heeled shoes (how is it they haven’t fallen over yet?), Chinese tourists snapping thousands of photos with rapid fire, high-tech cameras,  Korean tourists demanding that their travel companions take another photo over here, and hundreds of Arab League nationals filling in the blanks. We never noticed Tehva bathing herself in the fine dust that drifts down from the stone walls.

The distraction of watching the world watch Petra

Even the locals enjoy the show

We walked further into the ruins and into an area with a coliseum carved from the rock itself. In the confusion of the open marketplace that has evolved in this area, we lost Tehva completely, found her again, discovered her jacket was gone, found her jacket, and then lost her again. She was in her element—in a half-cobblestoned, half-dust strewn confusion of color and motion. Within an hour she was completely camouflaged by the reddish-brown dust. Having smeared herself with handful after handful of the soft, cold stuff, she looked like any one of the Bedouin children who were prowling the area with pockets stuffed full of trinkets to pawn.

Here's a taste of Petra Day One--Find Tehva

What, you can't find her? Neither could we.

She disappeared completely for an hour and Tian found her trying to sell rocks for a dinar a pop (about a dollar apiece), standing next to the Roman ruin of a nymphaeum. She ran off again and then turned up at the very back of the ruins, near the Crusaders’ castle. She was on the back of a donkey, accompanying two boys named Omar and Abdullah. She had struck a bargain with the boys, promising them that she would help them attract tourists to ride their donkeys through the ruins. She had proposed a 30-70 split of the profits, with them receiving the larger share since they were the ones supplying the transportation.

Guiding the people in Petra

I gave up on Tehva for the rest of the day, abandoning her to the siren call of a life spent selling overpriced rides on pack mules. By the end of that first day, she had befriended the majority of the Bedouin children working within Petra, or at least manipulated them enough to allow them to think that they had been befriended. 

Tehva and her new BFFs, Rami and Monika the Mule

By the end of the second day she had her own puppy and was inexplicably riding a donkey named Layla through Petra freely, without a guide. When asked whose donkey it was, she just shrugged and said, “It’s my friend’s. If you want a ride, I will give you one but you will have to pay me 7 dinar.”

Her new best friend, Rami, had invited her to come live with him in the Bedouin village, and we considered sending her. After all, a trip there might allow her to find a new home for her puppy, and the possibility of a dowry loomed large in our minds. It just might help offset the cost of admission to Petra! But in the end, Tehva chose to come back with us. She even submitted to a shower, and sleeps at this very moment, clean and smelling sweet, across the room from me.

So I guess I should have started out by saying that Tehva was the dirtiest child in the developed world. However, she is also one of the cleverest. She managed to spend two days in Petra doing exactly what we all wanted to do—she spent 80% of her time on horseback/muleback/donkeyback and never paid a penny for the privilege. She ran with the Bedouin children, spent the entire day drinking sweet sage tea, and was indulged at every turn.

There is something to be said for being dirty. And for being Tehva.