Jacqui and Richard Abroad: Thursday, October 30th

This past week, like most others when we work, was fairly quiet but always interesting. Let's start with trying do register for online banking. Most people do it at home and register in a few minutes once your account is open. Should we expect that abroad? Maybe not. We got our bank accounts at the end of September, but since it was too late for our first pay to be deposited in it, there was no rush to sign up for online banking, as the account didn't have any money in it. So this past week, with our pay date coming up, I figured I would do it. So first, you go online on their web site and submit three possible users names. They will come back to you with the one that is valid in no more than 2 working days. So two days later, I get a message giving me my username and a note saying that I will have to drop by the bank in 4 working days to collect my password. So just like that, one week later, I will be able to check my balance from my home computer (I still have to wait until Sunday before going to get my password!). But we must also give them some credit; we receive a text and an email every time we use our bank card for a transaction. I think that it's a good feature to have.

Then there's the weather. Since we've been here (August 22nd), the weather has always been nice. We haven't seen rain yet, and hardly any "partly cloudy" days. But this week, there was a tropical storm in the Indian Ocean that was making its way towards Oman. The projected trajectory had it coming close to Oman on Wednesday - Thursday. So skies got a little more cloudier, and winds picked up a bit. And then on Thursday, we got rain ,,, for about 3 minutes, and just a few drops, not enough to get the pavement wet. But the kids reactions were something to see. You would have thought that Santa Claus had landed in town. They were running around and screaming to Jacqui: Miss, it's raining, it's raining. I guess our kids react the same way when we get our first snowfall. It was neat, as it only rains 3-4 times a year. We are also told that normally, when it rains, it does come down hard and it causes problems as they are not equipped with proper drainage for excess water. It did however rain a lot about 100 km away from here.

With the temperatures cooling off a bit (highs in the low to mid 30's, lows in the mid 20's), shrubs and trees are now in full bloom. Flowers are out and everything looks quite pretty