september


	Diary Entries West Coast Trip Basketball Fast Food Pittsburgh Drama Birthday Waffle Night Money

West Coast Trip

On our way to the coast we drove past the Camel Racing area. As we drove this strip of land we saw many camels in their pins just relaxing. One day we may take a trip to actually watch the races. The races are surrounded by controversy though. It seems that these camels are jockeyed by small boys. With the camels being a little moody this does not always make the best combination.

We got our little car and took it for a spin to the west coast of Qatar. It only took us 45 minutes to drive there. We were able to see a lot of the normal landscape...not the city that we see everyday.

To the left you see David next to a camel sign. These signs are everywhere...we couldn't resist taking SEVERAL pictures of them. We'll spare you from having to see all of them.

This is the Persian Gulf. We stopped at this little spot and had lunch and dipped our feet in the water. The water was very hot.

Sunday Night Basketball

One activity that we enjoy on a weekly basis is basketball. On this night we actually had 9 people there to play. We play in the Qatar Academy Gym located at Education City just a 1/2 mile from Carnegie Mellon campus. Click on the picture to your left to watch a short video.

Fast Food

Which one of these is not like the other? Answer: well, Toys R Us is not a restaurant and Applebee's & Chili's are not fast food...We are sure we could come up with more...but...we won't! This group of pictures is just to let you know that we are not hurting for things that remind us of America. This is also a great way to learn Arabic! By the way...they don't have a "P" sound here so it's Abblebee's. More? Ok, so the Toys R Us literally reads, "Towyz Ar Aus"

Pittsburgh Drama

Since our arrival we've had a couple of unfortunate situations. Or should we say the two (wonderful, awesome, really nice, cool) men renting our house have had some unfortunate situations. Dave and Lance have worked with Lanny's dad (Dale) to make sure that these incidents were cleaned up and taken care of. Thanks to these guys and our families who are helping give us peace of mind while we are so far away.

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(Mack sleeps at Lanny's feet while she's at the computer)

The first took place not long after we arrived. We had news from home that a lady had plowed through our front yard, taking out our hedges and landing in our neighbors yard. We were told that she swerved to miss a cat

Being animal lovers we can relate to that. This brings me to our second incident. Our little English Bulldog had to have emergency surgery a couple of days ago for Kidney Stones. Mack is recovering well and will be vacationing in Arkansas for the remainder of our time away. He'll be visiting his grandparents and 3 brothers and 2 sisters.

Birthday

We celebrated my (Lanny's) birthday with a BIG SEAFOOD BUFFET at a Marriott Hotel Restaurant called "Corniche". We forgot the camera so we ripped this picture from another website. Hey, it's free advertising for them! I must tell you though that we had a harp player instead of a guitarist. The harpist played fine, cultured music like the Rolling Stone's "Anybody Seen my Baby," U2's "One," and "Reason" by Hoobastank. It did add to the ambiance.

This was incredible food! We started off with a salad bar of sorts complete with Mediterranean foods (hummus, tabouleh, stuffed grape leaves, pita), cheeses, breads, caviar, octopus and smoked fish. FYI: octopus is a little chewy.

Next was soup (2 options here). I enjoyed a crab and corn soup. Nice, big chunks of crab floating within the warm broth. We can't remember what David's was...but it was yummy!

Ok, so next we moved on to the main dish side of the buffet. We feasted on grilled veggies, baked potatoes with "bacon bits", dirty rice, rosemary lamb, a beef choice and 2 other fish choices (one was sweet n sour fish). Now to the real Main Dish that we enjoyed the most. We walked up to a section of the buffet with iced, raw fish fillets. We could choose from Shark, Giant Shrimp, Barracuda, Red Snapper, Cuttlefish, Blue Crab, Salmon, Hammour and King fish. Keep in mind this was "All you could eat." Once the fish was chosen you could tell the cooks how you wanted it prepared (grilled, fried, broiled, sautéed....however you can cook fish they could do it). We even had 3 choices is the sauces we wanted with our fish...we both got Garlic Butter.

Are you on the edge of your seats wondering what we ordered? I thought you might be. David ordered grilled Barracuda, fried Hammour and fried Shrimp. I ordered fried Shrimp. They were just huge!

We finished up our meal with the dessert buffet. This was no skimpy deal either. We had 4 fruit choices, chocolate mousse, vanilla cake, peach cake, tiramisu, crème brule, chocolate layer cakes and bon bon type thingies. Oh and this section of the meal came with our choice of coffee or tea. David got a cappuccino. A highlight was that they actually had Splenda (sugar substitute).

The best about all of this? IT WAS FREE! David won this meal at the Corniche during our employee orientation for Carnegie Mellon. I'm glad he let me choose the time to use it. What a way to live high on your birthday!

Waffle Night

(From L to R: Lanny, Marjorie, Latife and Darlene...David took the picture and Justin couldn't be with us)

We invited the graduate students/teaching assistants over to enjoy waffle night! We had almonds, chocolate chips, cream cheese, whipped cream, strawberry syrup, maple syrup, various jams and peanut butter as toppings.

This night was filled with laughter and great conversation. We hope to have the next event real soon: Pita Pizza and Salad Night!

Money

Foreign currency is always so much prettier and more interesting to look at. We thought we'd show you the Qatari Riyal. You may notice that the left column is in English and the right column is in Arabic. It is very common to see things printed like this (one side Arabic, other side English).

The current exchange rate is 1 USD = 3.65 QR.

Coins consist of 50 dirhams and 25 dirhams. They are hard to come by though. We've witnessed customers of some stores getting packs of gum as change rather than the dirham coins. The coins have two dates on them. The three coins below on the right have the dates 1993-1414, 2000-1421, and 1998-1419. The first date is the number of solar years since Jesus was born and the second is the number of lunar years (12 cycles of the moon) since Muhammad left Mecca to go to Medina.

Oh and we should add that there is a 500 QR note... but we are only graduate students.