Our first full week of school is over. We had a progressive entry, with kids coming in on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. They would leave by noon each day, which gave us the afternoons to finish getting ready. Everything was fine; I've got two groups of grade 10 math (boys and girls) and the same thing for grade 11. I'm fine with that. Jacqui ended up with two groups of grade 4 girls; it will be a drastic change over last year when she only had boys (and they were no angels). We are looking forward to a good year. It is so much easier starting a second year: we know the routine, we had a cleaning lady 16 hours after we landed, our phones and Internet connection are functional, we have a car and don't get lost when we go somewhere ... life is good!!
We missed out on a rain day as it poured on Friday afternoon (school would have been cancelled for sure). That was the first rain in Muscat since February 28th. It really came down for a while; we have a flower pot on our balcony and it received about 15 - 20 cm of water in a little over an hour. Rain ouotside also means that we had water coming in the apartment and that a lot of places around were flooded. Part of the roof of a mall collapsed because of the water on it (all roofs are flat), there were mudslides (I couldn't fill up this morning at my regular place as the gas attendants were cleaning up the area by the pumps which had a few inches of mud on top of the pavement), some trees were uprooted, the beach get torn to shit - the running water from the rain removed up to 3 feet of sand in some places and carved it into something we haven't seen before. The forces of Nature at work I guess. I imagine wind will restore it to what it was, with time.
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| Big black clouds over Muscat - can hardly see the mountains in the background |
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| Quote from Gordon Lightfoot's song "The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" - We've got water coming in!!! |
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| This pot had been empty for a long time - now 15 - 20 cm of water |
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| The storm is over |
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| The beach has been reshaped - dropped by up to 3 feet |
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| We used to walk straight across, now we have this new little river |
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| The beach used to be where my water bottle is |
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| A lot of sand has been moved back to sea |
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| There is still some parts of the beach that are OK |
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| Inside our apartment - great piece of design, if you need to multitask in the morning! |
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