Narcoleptic Pigeon, or Day 4 in Doha

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It was a sunny (who would have guessed) 07:00 wake-up for a 07:30 bus to the Qatar Ministry of Health (or something along those lines) to get our visas all finished up so we can be temporary citizens.

But doesn't fate always smile on bureaucracy.

We arrived, and got off the bus. We gave our passports to Melissa earlier in the week, so we had copies that we were carrying around. All we saw were signs to the male and female entrances, so we split up.

At the entrance, a guard checked passports and visas. I didn't have a copy of mine; so he asked me for a phone number instead (phone number = visa? OK, Qatar...) Since I had gotten my phone (and so had all the others), we were let in. But once we were there, we attempted to wait in two different lines until Spencer called me:

Me: Hello?
Spencer: So the guy with our passports is here, and has your passports, too.
Me: What?
S: A Qatar Foundation guy gave us our passports back.
Me: OK, where is he?
S: We're over in the guy's side.
Me: Like, should we come over there?
S: I guess?
Me: Ok, we're heading outside now and going over there.
S: Wait, he just left.
Me: Left?
S: Yeah.
Me: So, should we still come over?
S: I don't know?
Me: Should we meet him outside?
S: He's cutting through the inside of the building with the other girls and the passports.
Me: Ok, so we are going back inside and waiting for him?
S: I guess?
Me: Ok, sounds better than nothing.

And we indeed were met by some guy in a thobe, who handed us all our passports, with some paperwork inside. Well, all but me.

My receipt had printed with Spencer's name on it, so I got led around to about three different waiting areas by this guy until it was sorted out. Then, somehow, I ended up in the company of Adam, Spencer, and some guys from Texas A&M. The guys from Texas had their pictures in the system swapped. Spencer had made friends with an admissions guy from CMU, and his picture didn't show up for the medical attendant who was going to take his chest x-ray (even though, according to him, he "had my shirt off and everything"), so his friend was trying to get that fixed. And Adam just drolly counted the times he was sent back and forth between two desks as his picture showed up in the system at the reception area, but not at the blood testing site. I figured out, about 15 minutes into this "adventure," that my picture was also not showing up (now that I had my receipt).

So, the five of us hung around waiting areas, rode some elevators in pursuit of our liaisons, and met another QF researcher, who was (thankfully) able to translate some of the chaos that was going around us in Arabic. Did I mention this was all happening in Arabic? (The researcher had joined our group when his picture was exchanged from some Egyptian females.)

We had arrived at the lovely hour of 08:00. We departed around 10:30, with the five of us (plus the researcher) having our problems unresolved. Did I mention that Arlie didn't even get an appointment today due to the computer problems as well, and so didn't come with us?

Speaking of Arlie, here's her blog. Might tell a bit of a different story. :)

So after the red tape of the morning, it was a relaxing pizza lunch and city tour with the other exchange students from the other campuses. Our lovely Moroccan tour guide, Jamal, showed us a few things from my bucket list, and a few things that would have been on there had I know about them, primarily:

• See trained falcons
• Tour an Olympic-level equestrian park
• Visit Sport City, and the Advance complex

Things that were already on my bucket list:

• Visit the Islamic Arts Museum
• Meet a student from every other school in Education City
  • VCU
  • Cornell
  • CMU-Q
  • Texas A&M
  • Georgetown
  • Northwestern
• See the souk

The, of course, memorable experience was seeing this pigeon-hen-bird, standing up, but with its head laying on the ground. The first time the group saw it, we were convinced it was dying, or maybe sleeping. When Jamal saw it, he goes, "It is drunk!" After he poked it, it staggered over to the water bowl on sea legs, then tried very hard to stay upright before... before... before its head got to heavy for it, and back down on the ground it went.

A meal in the LSA Building cafeteria (cheap and delicious... Sodexo in Qatar!), and it was back to the apartment for a productive evening. (Speaking of the apartment, if you want a tour, check out my brand-spanking-new Youtube channel. It's also got some Christmas and Istanbul stuff.)

Back to my productivity, I decided to try to watch some (or at least set up the) TV.

However, that played out similarly to this morning.

Obstacles:

• TV unplugged
• Satellite box unplugged
• TV cord too short to plug in
• Satellite box cord too short to plug in
• Outlets turned off
• Video and audio cables switched around
• Television menus were in Arabic (though that was actually the easiest one to fix. The first time, I went through two random menus and landed on English, very, very luckily.)
• Channels wouldn't display
• Pin number unknown
• Box model unknown
• Channel searching failed on low mode
• Channel searching failed on high mode

So then... I gave up. I moved all of the cables back, and began, again to use the satellite box cable for my computer charger (because apparently that's where it came from). So for the next tenant in the apartment, don't tell them I was the one that erased all of the channels off the TV. (It's not like they were working anyway...)