It's Like Secret Santa for Marriage, or Day 10 in Doha

This morning, I finally cleared the health inspection. My picture (of me) showed up! As you might remember in Day 4, me and a few of the others all had to return because of photo mess-ups.

The system was a bit different this time; we had to pull numbers, which meant that we couldn't routinely skip lines like some did last time. Beside just the system, we had a completely full minibus (so about 20 people) that all had to do a similar process. So those that got little VIP passes (*cough* Adam and Spencer *cough*) had to wait a few hours for those that don't.

The good news is that Jessica (who's blog can be read here) and a few others with the picture missing/broken/whatever, we able to get it fixed or re-taken then.

While sitting on the bus for quite a while, some of the other CMUers and I started talking about travel. Flying isn't awful around here, but it would be so much nicer if getting to Dubai was less that $300. Driving, though, especially with females and especially especially with young unmarried students through Saudi Arabia (the only bordering country) is risky. Women must be covered, and Spencer mentioned that you can't be in a car with a male that you aren't married to. So, of course, there are two options: the professor turns polygamous and marries all his female students (which, I'm positive, would be completely ok with his current wife) or the four male architecture students would draw lots for the four female architecture students so they could take their field trip. As Spencer put it, it would be like "secret Santa for marriage."

So, 4.5 hours later, finally got home and got some food.

Now, I didn't do much today. There was an ice cream social to welcome people back to the dorms, and if I had been smarter, I would've taken some pictures of that.

But instead, I'm resorting to wandering around my dorm room (ok, ok, apartment castle) and taking pictures of a few things I brought and a few I bought that have some meaning. Pardon me for my girlishness, but two of the pictures are of shoes.

So, first up is the oldest thing I brought along, and the rattiest, but also one of the things I use the most. I got these sweatpants in 7th or 8th grade (which is about 7 years ago now) and wear them at night. Our team name was the Hawks. I think the fact that the letters are peeling off to spell "AWK" is very appropriate though.

My next item of interest is, of course, my love, my Rick Steves' guide. All through Europe a year and a half ago (and if you want more details, there are plenty on our blog) I used a Rick Steves' guide, and he didn't disappoint me in Istanbul either.

Next up has a great story attached to it, and now it is attached to me daily. As I was leaving Seattle, my parents dropped me off. Well, attempted to drop me off. My flight was delayed by two hours, yet I could still make my connection. With a bit of time to kill, we stopped at a mall nearby, where they bought me this watch. I've gotten compliments on it, and, after I started putting my phone on 24-hour time to see if I could get used to it, the 12-hour clock face came in pretty handy.

Next comes my first picture of shoes. In Doha, they do dress up more in general, but many people (including me) just get away with jeans and a cardigan. Which of course means I had to get a cute cardigan or two. But, when more is called for, such as the dressier Doha Debates yesterday, the perfect black pumps that Grandma bought me for Christmas (and that I agonized over for like 30 minutes) a not too long ago.

This next element is dedicated to Courtmew, one of the most generous people I know. When my phone was on its last legs (because I had *cough* accidentally put it in the washer *cough*), she came to my rescue with this one. Now, I unlocked it and am using the wonderful thing around here. Might I also mention she gave me two of the identical phone, so when the keypad on one stopped working, I simply switched it out. I think the pedometer in it is my favourite feature.

(Note, favourite is spelled British because my spell check is checking for British, apparently. And it is nice than to fight with that squiggly red line.)

My final item in this blogpost is those other shoes I was telling you about. I bought them over here for 50 riyals (which seems like a lot, but is actually less than $17) and have been wearing this red sandals for a few days now. Of course, they are fire-engine red at the advice of Daedri, my VCU fashion design friend.

Well, that was a little peek into my closet. I was thinking of having my camera be the final image on here, but that would be a little too meta (and a bit tricky to set up the shot I'd want) to try to take a picture of what is taking the picture. So I'll just have to say that my pocket-sized Canon wonder is high on my list of wonderful things in my closet.

This post feels like it should have a sign-off, but I don't think I've done that before... well, never late to start! Have a good day/night! *Insert "goodbye" in Arabic here*

Hmmm... maybe it's because I posted this one hours earlier than I normally do? Someone can psycho-analyse that if they want.