Such a Random Life, or Day 32 in Doha

Warning: today was one of those days were a million things happened and all of them are interesting!

First off, today was a very weird day for weather. After spending the morning Skyping and cleaning, I went outside and the first thing I see is a group of East Asians with dust masks on. I was immediately freaked out, thinking there was some crazy pathogen in the air that was making them wear the masks.

Thankfully, they were anomalies, though it was very windy and dusty, as you can see. The funny smog affected my mood more here than clouds do back in Pittsburgh and Seattle. I'm getting too used to the constant sunshine!

I spent the afternoon and evening around CMU: celebrating the new club space (by eating cake), working on a project, celebrating a birthday (by eating cake), and took a drive around EC with some girls I met at a Women Leadership Program lunch on Tuesday. As they invited me outside on the drive, one of the girls said, "Your life is so random."

You have no idea.

Anyway, they were explaining the licensing process around here. You hire a personal instructor, then take a much more intense test that we Americans go through. In fact, I think males are required to learn and test on a manual; us gentler sex are allowed an automatic**.

After the drive, I attend the finale of the "EC for Haiti" campaign. We had a goal of 20,000 riyals; we actually hit over 22,000 (over $6,000)! After a presentation about Haiti, a student band played (with my stunning roommate Khadeejah singing) while we wrote messages of hope to Haiti.

Next was the BAM football (soccer) game. "BAM" stands for "Body and Mind", and they are an EC-wide student club. This team included Rolando and David, two of the Texas A&M students, and a few others I knew (including the coach), so it was a lot of fun supporting them. Especially when they won against Cornell, 4-1, putting them in the quarter-finals!

Abdalla and I got a call from Zaid and Sidra, two friends we went out to dinner with before. I had connected with Sidra during the Haiti event and mentioned that we needed to go out again... I just hadn't realized it would be this soon!

After the shwarmas were gone, it was time for my first movie-in-a-cinema in Doha! Abdalla took me to see "The Men Who Stare At Goats", which has a whole slew of Hollywood actors. Half of the movie took place in Kuwait and Iraq, so it was fun sitting with someone who knew Arabic.

In the movie, Ewan McGregor's character is a reporter who wants to show his chops, so goes to the "war zone" of Kuwait (at least, that's how he describes it to his estranged wife). Now that I'm up on my Middle Eastern countries, I saw the humor in that; I also saw the similar grand hotels and impressive landscaping of a typical Gulf country.

Did I also mention that Ewan McGregor eventually begins reporting on these "psychic Jedi's" that the U.S. Army is secretly training. Well, Mr. McGregor (*cough* Obi-Wan Kenobi *cough*), you would know about Jedi's...

Well, I seriously thought my evening was over after that. I went home, felt the few raindrops outside, and started writing this.

Much to my surprise, I get a call just before midnight asking if I want to go for a drive. Apparently, it is traditional for Shakir and two of his friends, Aditya and "FeFe", to drive around when it is raining and sing Enrique. Since it was a thunderstorm, I guess they had to invite me, Fatima, and Maria along?

We ended up at bandar. I'm sure you are just shocked. And I got tea. Again, you must be in disbelief.

New to bandar was the lightning over the bay. Tonight's rain was fun to play around in; it never got too heavy, but my feet did get a little chilly.

We ended the night with a game of Charades... let's just say that it was better than all of the lame jokes we told in the half hour before that.

I feel you need a taste of it, so here's one from Fatima, the queen of the lame jokes: "What did the daddy tomato say to the baby tomato?" "Ketchup!"

I'm still listening to the thunder rumbling around outside. Different than the typical night sounds of the round-the-clock construction work... and much rarer as well!

**Correction by Rana: "Women can drive manual , and men can choose to do either automatic or manual :D :D :D Its not based on gender... But it makes more sense that we would choose automatic , its easier and any ways nearly most of the cars in Qatar are automatic, few manuals :D"

White Tigers, or Day 19 in Doha

It is Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, so I decided to be my curious self and go to the Fanar, the Islamic Cultural Center right by the souq. It is notable for its size, but also for the spiral minaret (tower), one of only two in the world.

We got there while it was open, but the "guy who answers questions" wasn't there yet. So I looked at the exhibits explaining Islam, the Prophets and Messengers, the Five Covenants, and so on. I got the guts to go to the prayer room (or the actual mosque part) upstairs.

I'm glad I've been "trained" on mosque-going, since, unlike all the tourist-friendly mosques in Istanbul, this one had no warning signs in five different languages telling you to take off your shoes and cover your head.

The prayer room area was, like in Istanbul, a segregated area about the men's area. However, in Istanbul, since the mosques were one large room with the balcony overlooking it, I could go anywhere (including the main/men's section). Here, because it was much more of a functioning mosque, I went in the women's entrance and walked into the carpeted room.

It was much less ornate, more like a peaceful, library-esque feeling, with a few bookshelves along the wall, the typical striped carpet (to help them face Mecca), and a patterned screen that allowed us to look down to the men's section and the front of the room. I think that mosques are some of the most welcoming places of faith I've been in; churches and cathedrals would be next, then synagogues would probably be after that. I've never felt uncomfortable in any of them (which is a testament to all religions that I've experienced, thankfully) but there is something about taking off your shoes to walk on the ground that gives an extra fullness to the experience. Who is going to argue and fight when they are barefoot?

My cultural exchange continued when I met my partner for my Islamic Feminism class. He's an Egyptian male, the only other non-Qatari in the class and the only male. We finished our summary quickly, then turned to the more interesting subject, which was what our feminist beliefs were. He told me what he doesn't say in class, and, while I didn't necessarily agree with what he said, he clearly had thought about what was important in life for him and how a wife and mother would fit in to help make that happen.

And, of course, my final cultural exchange of the night was with other American students. Texas is like a foreign country, right? Though us exchange students from the main campuses are all westernized, people hold passports from Singapore to El Salvador. We ate at a Moroccan restaurant in the souq, where I had my first taste of camel! It was kofta, which I will say is a sausage-like form of it. It could have been better seasoned, but now I have camel leftovers in my fridge.

And, like many, many nights out here, it ended with a short clown car ride to Bandar, and some tea. One of the girls mentioned that her friend saw a pet cheetah stick its head out a car window like a dog. This led to all of us brainstorming what our best exotic pet would be. The three winners? Tito, the macaroni penguin; Pistachio, a chimp trained to fetch beer; and a white tiger. Or any white big cat. Because who would mess with a guy with an albino leopard chilling on his couch?

While we were there, a wedding party passed through, and, while some of the others found the honked and chanting annoying, I am always excited to see something new and different.