Thirty-One, or Day 31 in Doha

It's official! I've been here an entire month. January 3rd, my flight came in from Istanbul; I didn't know anything or anyone. Now look, a month later and I feel right at home.

So the number of days that I've been here is the first appearance of 31. The second was at the CMU-Q versus TAMU-Q girls basketball game.

I've been meaning to go to one for some time now, but I didn't know the location, and often had another thing going on. But tonight, I turned down two other events to cheer on our girls team, which includes Jessica (#42), another exchange student.

So, I get there a bit late, and we are down by about 5 points, which shortly turns into 7. However, the rest of the cheering section (two staff members) and I quickly got us back in the game... and then we were winning! We were up by one or two points all through the second half, right up until... we started fouling the other team.

The TAMU team's weakness was their rough play, but we had had enough, so started answering back. A few free-throws and a few bobbled balls later, and we were down by two points. Fifteen seconds before final buzzer, a nice pass and shoot tied it at 30-30!

Five minutes of overtime were added, and again, we exchanged fouls. They made 2, then we made 1, then they made a final free-throw for an end score of Tartans 31, Aggies 33. That "31" was not as nice as the first occurrence, but we had good hustle and good teamwork and sportsmanship. I'm proud of you, ladies!

I had invited Sara, a friend from CMU main campus who transferred to Georgetown-Q this year, over for dinner, but I was late due to the overtime. We still made a delicious pasta dinner and chatted about life as a student and what I have and haven't done in the region.

Enter Salman. He calls me up for a favor, and the three of us end up sitting in the garden, eating the delicious crepes, bananas, and Nutella that Sara had brought.

Now, Sara and I ran into each other a few weeks ago at the "Brooklyn Beats to Beirut Streets" poetry slam. It was so good to meet someone else around here who cooks and climbs stairs and doesn't litter. Not that I'm generalizing... It's just nice to meet someone else who notices those Qatari quirks.

Salman, like many people, wanted to know what my perception of this place was before I came. What I didn't expect it to be like was Palm Springs, of all places. There is this city surrounded by scrubby, infertile desert, but it pours millions of liters (gallons) of water into the land to make the grass grow and look green. I'm so proud of them for putting down fake grass in some places... it looks just as good (better?) and costs much less, to both the environment and EC.

Well, since I did pretty much end my day with Salman, I'll have to sign out again with a "cool story."