Monday, September 21st - We have a nice long weekend - Eid Mubarak

By the time I write this, our workweek is over (2 days) while most of our Ontario colleagues haven't even started their workweek. It is Eid in Muslim countries, which means we have a holiday from Tuesday to Saturday - back to work on Sunday. We kind of like these two day workweek. Our past week was pretty typical; not much happening, except for me moving my office from building 7 to building 10 on Thursday, then getting in trouble with my principal because I didn't have her authorisation to do that (the VP had told me I had to move my office by the end of the week), only to find out this Sunday morning that most of my stuff had been brought back to my old office. Lack of communication, you say? Ya.

The weekend was nice - went out to the Irish Pub on Thursday, did a bit of shopping on Friday and walked on the beach, and went in the water, on Saturday. The water temperature must be at about 88 - 90 degrees F; it is so warm. We had lunch at Dolphin Village (there are no dolphins!), a gated community with a nice little restaurant by the pool in their complex. It was nice to discover another place that meets all of our criterias for lunch or dinner!!

We had thought of travelling somewhere for Eid, but there are still so many things we want to do in Oman. Our summer was pretty hectic so we decided that we would just take it easy and do whatever we wished around here. So Tuesday, we are driving to Duqm, a small town with beautiful beaches, about 600 km south west of Muscat. We'll check out the sites as we drive along, maybe even sleep on a beach one night as all beaches are public beaches and you can camp on them anywhere, anytime (we might also end up in a hotel!). It should be fun to discover this beautiful country. There should be more pictures in my next blog next weekend!

Jacqui's Google page on her birthday - so cool

The mountains, seen from the beach

The beach at high tide - not the same as before - the sand is soft and harder to walk on

Saturday, September 12th - A Wonderful weekend, and the reality of others

Another week gone by; we have one more full week before we get five days off for Eid (religious holiday). Work was fine, as usual. We got our satellite dish moved from one end of the roof of our building to the opposite side of the roof, so now we have TV again. Somehow, the news are still the same!?! Nothing changes.
Jacqui had her birthday on Friday; she was very glad to have it on a day off. She went for a massage early afternoon, then we went to the Crowne Plaza for a bit and ended up at friends for the evening. It was a very nice day.

Our cleaning lady comes in on Thursdays, and we drove her home this week. It was quite interesting talking to her, as her life is so different than ours, so different than what we know. She is a very nice lady, sweet as pie. She left her native India 8 years ago, when her two kids were 5 and 7 years old. The kids are still in India, living with family, while she is here working. Her husband is also in Oman, but in Sohar, which is about 200 km away. It's when we talk to people like this that we realize how good we have it. I cannot imagine doing what she is doing (yes, we are away from our kids, but they're all grown up), but for her, it's all part of normal life. That's just the way it is. Something to think about when we see our glass as half empty.

At school, we'll be getting our third timetable in three weeks on Sunday morning. They say change is good; I hope so!! One good thing is that students will now be done at 12:45 on Thursdays; gotta like that!!

Saturday, September 5th - It rained in Muscat

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.

Big black clouds over Muscat - can hardly see the mountains in the background

Quote from Gordon Lightfoot's song "The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" - We've got water coming in!!!

This pot had been empty for a long time - now 15 - 20 cm of water

The storm is over

The beach has been reshaped - dropped by up to 3 feet

We used to walk straight across, now we have this new little river

The beach used to be where my water bottle is

A lot of sand has been moved back to sea

There is still some parts of the beach that are OK

Inside our apartment - great piece of design, if you need to multitask in the morning!

Saturday, August 29th - Back in Muscat

Jacqui and I headed back to Toronto on Monday, August 24th. We got dropped off at the airport by Vince and Nic, and flew out to Muscat via Zurich at about 6:30 pm. The flight to Zurich was very nice as the person in charge of all the flight attendants was the mother of former students that Jacqui and I had taught in Cambridge. We therefore got treated very well - nice wine in real glasses, a travel pouch and a lot of catching up when she visited us in the economy section of the plane. The second part of the trip was on Swiss Air; their food was amazing - best food we've ever had on a flight! We got back to Muscat on Tuesday night and were at our flat by midnight. Since we changed flats at the end of last year, all our belongings that we didn't bring with us were in the apartment, but in plastic bags. It took a while to find the sheets for the bed, but finally managed to go to sleep by 1 am. Our car didn't start on Wednesday morning so we cabbed it to go to school. Since we didn't have any food in our flat, we tried to tell the driver to stop at McDonalds so we could pick up breakfast. Did not happen, worse, he dropped us off at a plaza about halfway to school because he had to be at work for 7:30. So we had to find another cab to finish our journey! Not a good start to our second year in Oman. We got the car boosted after school and drove it for a while, but after stopping it to check out a restaurant for dinner, it wouldn't start again. I walked to a nearby garage, got two dudes to come back with me to try and boost it and check the battery, and was told that we had to replace the battery - it was cooked! So I got back in the dude's car and he drove me to a place where they sell batteries, picked it up with another dude who was going to put it in, and went back to our car. The whole ordeal took about an hour, but we now have a functional car.

As for school itself, it hasn't changed much. We have a new principal (an arabic lady) who seems to be a lot more stern than our previous one, but the end result still seems to be the same. Organization is not always at its best. They told teachers on Thursday at noon which homeroom they would have for the year and expected to have those rooms decorated for students return by the end of the day, which was scheduled for 1:30! Everybody had to stay till 3 and a lot of people were not happy.

Our new flat is great; we have many windows and a view of the outside world, as opposed to seeing another building 10 feet away like we had last year. We got a cleaning lady to come in on Wednesday and Thursday as the place was very dusty and sandy after being closed for two months. We went to the Crowne Plaza on Thursay after school then went grocery shopping. Friday was spent setting up and unpacking our stuff. It was the first time since July 2nd that our suitccases were empty. It will be nice to not live out of a suitcase for a while. We had a great summer at home but are excited about being back. It will be fun!

Thanks Josée Seguin-Wouda. First class treatment in economy class!

It hasn't cooled off!

View from our bedroom patio door

Our living room, with sunshine coming in -something we did not have last year

Nice way to finish a very, very hectic 7 days - wedding, travel, school

Sunset on the way!

Saturday, August 22nd - Julie's wedding

This blog entry is not really part of our travels abroad, but considering its importance, I feel that it is quite appropriate.
What a weekend! It was so much fun to see family and friends rejoice in this great occasion. Jacqui and I had gotten to Ottawa on Monday, August 17th to help Julie with the last minute preparations. The week went by quickly but we still managed to meet with friends for lunch or dinner. Family and friends started to arrive either Thursday or Friday. We were happy to see Vince on Thursday night as he only got back from Asia on Monday but we had left for Ottawa already; we hadn't seen him since his graduation in June.
On Friday morning, we had breakfast with my brothers and their wives, and Chantal, our niece. It was very nice to be all together as this hadn't happened since 2001. In the evening, both families and the wedding party met in a room in a bar downtown for a get together. It was a great chance to get to meet Dave's family and members of the wedding party. We walked to the Notre Dame cathedral basilica for the wedding rehearsal. The place was absolutely stunning. We all went back to the bar after rehearsal to continue mingling, then headed to the hotel around 10.
Saturday  morning, I dropped Jacqui off at Julie's so she could get ready with Jul and the bridesmaids. I did a bit of last minute running around, then showed up at Julie's around 10:30. The girls were getting ready and all looked very beautiful. We all left her place in a limo and got to church on time for a noon wedding. Jacqui's brother did the ceremony; it was fairly emotional for everyone involved. After the wedding, we went for pictures at the National Arts Museum and in Majors Hill Park. It was beautiful as the weather was perfect - sunny, 24 degrees, no wind.
The reception was at the hotel. We had a great meal, some nice speeches and the party after was a lot of fun as the DJ was very good. Everyone had a great time. It was so much fun to have a chance to spend time with friends and family and to see everyone enjoy themselves so much. Julie and Dave were both radiant all day. They did a great job organizing this big event.
On Sunday, we all met at Julie's apartment for the gift opening part of the weekend. It was our chance to say goodbye to Dave's family as everyone started to head back home. We finished our weekend with dinner at Pub Italia, all very tired but thrilled with the weekend we had.

Picture is blurry but still gives an idea of the inside of the church

Saturday morning

Julie and Dave are now married!!!

Julie and Martine

Taken from Julie Hahn - their professional photographer

Saturday, July 4th - We're back (our bags aren't) and year summary

We are back in Canada, therefore this will be the last entry for this year; the next one will be after we get back to Muscat at the end of August.

Our return trip wasn't perfect, and we kind of expected it as some of the layovers were way to short to make the connections between flights possible. We left Muscat at about midnight Thursday night/Friday morning and flew to Abu Dhabi. We had about 90 minutes to change planes which might seem like enough time, but in Abu Dhabi, you get off on the tarmac and get bused into the terminal - same thing when you leave. This takes a fair amount of time, but that's the way it is. So our flight schedule for Edinburg to leave at 2:20 am left at 3:15. The problem with that is that we only had 60 minutes between flights at the end of this one, going from Edinburg to Toronto. Obviously, we did not make that connection. And then the fun started. They had to sent us back to London in order to catch a flight that would take us to TO. So they booked us (there were about 10 of us) on a flight with Virgin Airways back to London at 9:10am, and on Air Canada at noon, to Toronto. But first, we had to get our bags, check out at passport control (ie get into Scotland) then go thru security again and get our boarding passes. Our three bags never came out, and by that time, we barely had enough time to catch our flight to London. We arrived in London to late to make the noon flight to Toronto, so we got rebooked on the 3 pm flight, which we made. Our bags, however, never made it. We suspect that they were left in Scotland and that hopefully, they will catch up to us in a day or two (otherwise, we don't have any clothing to wear!). All that being said, it's very nice to be back!!!

It has been a pretty awesome year. The school is a little disorganised, but the people in Oman are very nice and we love the country. We did manage to travel a bit, even though not as much as our first year - we didn't feel the need to leave as often as we did in Kuwait. Here is a quick recap of our travels, our review of the year that was.

Number of ... 

- trips taken: 9 - Kuwait, Dubai (UAE) three times, Salalah (Oman), Jaipur and Agra (India), Petra and the Dead Sea (Jordan), Kitchener-Waterloo twice.

- airlines flown : 10 (Oman Air, Fly Dubai, Air India, Jordanian, Air Canada, Lufthansa, Turkish Airlines, Emirates, Ethiad, Virgin Airlines)

- countries visited: 4 (United Arab Emirates, Oman, India, Jordan; also stopped in Scotland and England)

- approximate distance travelled: over 90 000 km

- things we've seen: a whole bunch

- places like home: none! (but we are still going back next year as we are having way too much fun to stop!)

Thursday, July 2nd - End of a school year and coming home

Our week at school went by quickly. We worked on July 1st, which was kinda weird!. We finished the school year today (July 2nd) at noon. Spent the afternoon packing as we are changing flats when we come back. We therefore moved our stuff to our new place before leaving. Just about everything is done now; we will be leaving for the airport in about an hour. We'll be there in about 24! See you soon

À bientôt, from Muscat