Sunday, March 27th - Happy Easter

Happy Easter to everyone! Wish we were there!

The past two weeks have been good. We had a quiet weekend last weekend. We went out for dinner to Crowne Plaza with friends on my birthday (it was also Mother's Day in Oman). My grade 11 girls class had organized a little party in class; it was sweet of them to do that!

We got half a rain day on Wednesday as kids left at noon because of the weather. On Thursday, we went to watch a soccer game between Oman and Guam, part of the World Cup qualifier tournament. It was pretty neat. We won 1-0!

Easter weekend was nice. We went to the Easter vigil, or parts of, on Saturday night. It was very different than what we expected. We thought it would be quiet with just a few people. Well, there were so many people, we were standing about 400 feet from the altar, and there were still a lot of people behind us. The church is outdoors, so you see people coming in with their lawn chairs, as they know there is not enough seating room for everyone. Cars were parked everywhere, in the parking lot, on the road, on sidewalks, in any open space they could find. We didn't want to be there when everyone tried to leave at once at the end of the vigil. It must have been a zoo. We took Sunday off (unpaid) to celebrate Easter. We've never worked on Easter Sunday and are not about to start now: it is a religious holiday where we come from!

We'll be off to Egypt at the end of the week. It should be a pretty cool trip! Details and pictures to follow in the next blog entry!

Below are some pictures of mollusks that we saw while walking on the beach last week. It's neat to see how they can bury themselves in the sand so quickly. Also pics from school and from our "football" match.

Diggin' in

Out of its shell

How to make soup: read from right to left for quick instructions!

Grade 11 math class on my birthday

Omanis coming in to the game.

Saturday, March 12th - An unexpected 4 day weekend!!

Weather has been weird lately. All last year, it rained about three times. In the last two weeks, it rained almost every day. Talking to students and to teachers that have been here almost 20 years, no one has ever seen anything like it. We had a wicked storm on Tuesday night. I had never seen dark clouds roll in like this before; it was quite something to see. So we found out at about 7pm that night that schools would be closed on Wednesday. With more rain on Wednesday, the Ministry of Education decided to close schools on Thursday as well. So we ended up with a four day weekend. I know that we don't close schools at home because of rain, but here we do. A rain storm here is a lot more dangerous than a snow storm at home. It causes a lot more damage that snow does. We get flash floods (8 deaths were reported due to flash floods), and water leaking into buildings. However, except for Tuesday night where we had water problems in the flat, it has been a nice relaxing weekend. Jacqui went to a colleague's birthday party on Friday. She ate bunny chow, a south african dish made of a hollowed out loaf of bread filled with Mutton-curry. She brought one back for me as well; it was very good.

We also finalized the booking of our trip for the first week of April (the equivalent of our March break). We are going to Egypt, spending three nights in Cairo and a five day cruise on the Nile. We are really looking forward to it.

Storm coming in from the water, located behind the mosque, about 40 minutes before sunset - it's pitch black outside.

Getting closer to us.

Freaky when you see it roll in like this

Picture taken from a friend (or wherever she got it from). Quite impressive.

Again, not my picture; we weren't crazy enough to be out at that time.

Preparation of Bunny Chow - the bread is being hollowed

The curry is being prepared

The bread is filled with curry

The bread that was taken out is put back on top. Voilà: Bunny Chow!

Sunday, March 6th - Quiet on the home front!

Our last two weeks have been pretty quiet. I've been fighting a bug (and not necessarily winning) for a bit and now it seems that it's Jacqui's turn. Work is fine and our weekends are quiet. We had rain on three consecutive days last week; never seen that before in the Middle East. We did not however get a rain day. We're hoping for one this week as they are calling for more rain. Time will tell.

We made lasagnas on the weekend and started planning a trip to Egypt for the first week of April; it will be our mid-semester break. Details and pictures to come later.

Sunset in Qurum - early February

A rainbow, rarely seen in the Middle East

Sun will set - early March. Compare to the first picture: quite a change in position.