This is it. My final day in Doha. And today is going to be unusual, because this first post is going to be about leaving and goodbyes and things, where as today's second post is going to be telling you about the May Trip (as it has come to be called)!
People keep asking me if I'll come back to Doha. The world is pretty big, and, though I pretend, I haven't seen that much of it. If I do come back, I'd love to come back this time next year for graduations... wouldn't that be great, CMU? (hint hint, nudge nudge) But looking beyond next year, what I would want to come back to are the people, and, like most university students and staff and faculty, the don't stay in one place very long! This is a very dynamic community, and you can never come back to the same one you left. I'm sure I'll experience that when I'm back in Pittsburgh too.
(Was it Pocahontas that said you can never step in the same river twice?)
So what did I do on my final day?
I stayed pretty secluded to start with, getting this and that finished up and packed. I found another bag of things to have a friend take back to Pittsburgh for me, as well as food and things to give away to people sticking around a little longer than I am.
In some ways, packing isn't hard: basically everything has to go in. I did manage to make another little goodie bag for myself that Rishav will deliver to Pittsburgh for me.
But I'm was detached from it.
My semester ended ending this evening.
First was a "dinner" at Maya's, the chocolate restaurant, with a few of the CS people. Samreen, ever the chocolate lover, was present, as well as Rishav, and Nasreem and Amal, two other CMU students. We ate a lot, we laugh a lot, and it was a heart-warming goodbye with a card and some good hugs and promises to see each other in the future.
Afterward, it was another few, quick goodbyes to Zaid and others, then an hour of printing and finalizing plans for the "Epic May Trip." Then, Abdalla and I got news of a gathering over at Cornell with another of my favorite groups of people.
Sabrina convinced a group of Cornellians (and us) to come with her to Star of India. There was a lot of laughs (especially for the guys... don't know what it is about those kind of jokes that just set them off) and then, it was time again to say goodbye. Sabrina was making me teary-eyed; it is very hard saying goodbye to people that I may never see in person again.
And here I say, God bless the Internet.
After we got back, Abdalla scurried away to finish his errands, and I cleaned out the rest of my stuff from my apartment. Food went to Tina, trash went to the dumpster (I'm such a good roommate), and extra toiletries went to the social room with "Free" on them. Somehow, my apartment, which still has at least two girls still actively living there, didn't look that much emptier.
It was in the taxi, leaving Education City for the airport, that I realized that this was it. Having Abdalla along is delaying the shock of leaving all these people, but my last Doha skyline fading into the distance... that was real.
I've promised a few people some reflective blogposts, but this isn't one of them. The airport in Dubai is not quite a reflective place. Amman in a few hours!
I feel surrounded by love around here. I've met all sorts of people, from CMU faculty to CDAs, from Cornell freshmen to VCU exchange students. And, in these droves of people, I've gotten to know a couple dozen, and in those dozens, I've made connections that, insha'allah, will last far beyond my time here in Qatar.
Enough of the philosophizing. The day started with many, many errands, to get rid of as much of my stuff as possible and to be able to leave the country. I ran into Kaleem as I was heading home, and we shared some tuna sandwiches (in my last ditch effort to clean out my kitchen of food as well).
After lunch, I ran into Tina, who I then spent the next few hours with, making an unforgettable heart cookie. Just when it was perfectly positioned for a picture, it slid off the plate, cracking, like our hearts, into a bunch of chocolate-y, chunky pieces. With a bit of elbow grease, we turned it back into a heart-like shape. (Appearances are a bit deceiving, because it was still very delicious.)
A group of CS majors from CMU was headed out to Nando's at City Center, so I hopped into Rishav's car with Samreen and we enjoyed a bite with Tessa and Swapnil as well. Since, of course, Nando's is Tessa's favorite restaurant. I went home to sleep off a bit of the food (and the fact that I had to wake up early to talk to my parents this morning), then headed over to the grand production of CMU-Q graduation.
The ceremony was less than 80 minutes, the speaker had a clear agenda for her talk to keep it fairly brief, the Dean and President were eloquent as always, and the bagpiper reminded me of Pittsburgh. For over three hours, we ate and talked and celebrated the graduates. There were hugs, but no tears, and promises of future meet-ups for those coming to Pittsburgh this year. There were also the few people that I congratulated that I might never see again... but one never knows who those people are.
It was the last day of finals for most of the Texas A&M students, so after the seniors (graduates) had gone home so they could be up for the Qatar Foundation convocation in the morning, Abdalla and I went to see those students.
We caught them right as the restaurant was closing, and we weren't allowed to pull up chairs next to Ziad or Kelsey, but we stood and talked for nearly two hours. The boys were doing riddles, a few different groups ventured off to return with ice cream, and sheesha smoke was in the air. I left before the mass exit, but it looked like they weren't heading anywhere anytime soon.
Unlike me. Very soon, I'll be in Bahrain/Jordan/Egypt/Turkey/USA. Very, very soon.
I got in the spirit by wearing "traditional" Pittsburgh clothing - a fleece, a hat, a scarf, and gloves... not many people noticed, in the sea of beautiful, multicolored traditional dress. The great part is, people weren't necessarily even wearing their own country's!
KayKay in Singaporean and Urmila in Indian garb (I think).
Varun, his Desi self.
The Student Affairs staff (in random travel wear)
Tessa in something I'm assuming is from Brunei.
My beautiful Sudanese girls!
Boys from the subcontinent (and Shaza still looking gorgeous). (Note Allen's wrap! Knees!)
Arash in eastern Iranian wear (because apparently they differ... and I'm not sure if I got the east versus west thing right; it actually might be western Iran).
Samreen in her pantsuit (and I'm wearing pant I got in India)!
Mathew just wore a dress shirt (boring) but Shahriar (front left) got in the spirit with his Bangladeshi clothes.
Jimmy wore something from a Middle Eastern country... can't remember which one, but he didn't have anything from Kenya to wear.
Some of my favorite traditional costumes, though, were the ones where the guys were allowed to wear shorter skirts than I am! Besides just wandering around and taking pictures with people (and eating food), there was the International Day show that Fatima and Maria put together. Being on "Arabic Standard time", it was scheduled to start at 5:30. At 8:00pm, the first act (Mridula doing an awesome traditional Indian dance) was just finishing up.
There were other Indian dances, a Dominican song (sung by Melissa, our study abroad coordinator), an African dance, a Bangladeshi anthem, an English poem, a presentation about Azerbaijan, an impromptu salsa/latin dance session, more dabkeh, an Iranian dance (that was also performed at Coffeehouse), and I'm sure there are other performance I'm forgetting.
What I won't forget, though, it how people reacted to those performances. For a few of the dances, instead of just sitting and watching, people from the crowd stood up and joined in! The final dance, an encore performance of the "Desi Dancers", turned into a giant jumping mob. It was a bunch of fun.
As if that wasn't enough for a day, Abdalla gave me a ride to Ezadin Towers (yet another fancy hotel!) where Kelsey was throwing Ziad a surprise party! We weren't there for the actual surprising, but we were there for the cake.
When the cake was getting lit, the manager was having a hard time lighting them... so another guy with a lighter came up and started helping him. Then another guy. There were eventually half a dozen people gathered around these 20 candles trying to get them lit! We sang "Happy Birthday" in English and Arabic, then he blew out the candles.
Then, the photo shoot started. Ziad was wearing a striped shirt, as were another two or three guys at the party. So after the group picture, all of them jumped in together... someone yelled "Arab picture", and all of a sudden the photo shoot got "racist."
They didn't leave anyone out... there was the Africans, the East Asians, those from the subcontinent, the Khaleejes, the "white people"... Just goes to show how diverse this place is!
After the final photos, a few of us ended up at the souq, enjoying some karak and sheesha. They kept flipping channels on the TV we could see, but on every channel, Fred knew exactly what was going on. And I think Ziad (the birthday boy) had a good time.
If it looks like I'm blowing away... I am! It was super windy and actually sprinkled a bit. (The waiters broke one of the large umbrellas trying to take it down, and some of the sheesha stands - that weren't being used thankfully - got knocked over.)
Spent the lovely day doing lovely work, hanging out with lovely people in the lovely weather. It was lovely.
The major event of the night was dinner plans! The whole "plan ahead" thing never works out (people always manage to find excuses, right, Utsav and Carla?), but I managed to wrangle Salman and Tina out of their respective caves to come have dinner with Abdalla and me. The rest of those kids just chickened out.. they were ready for the fun we were going to have.
I've heard raves about Turkey Central, but Tina and I had never been, so restaurant choice was easy. They have a "mixed grill" plate with all different meats on it (very different from India and the lack of meats) that we all tried, in addition to some of the best hummus I've ever had and fries with Omani ketchup.
I also got a glass of kivi (kiwi) juice... The accent is funny to think about since the servers were speaking Arabic with Salman and Abdalla, who were both pointing out how Turkish they were. Tina and I couldn't tell Turkish Arabic from Egyptian or Khadeejeh (Gulf) if you had us at gun point.
Well, the raves were accurate; it was delicious. We saw a lot of tourist/ex-pat groups there, so I'm thinking it is one of those "clean but with a bit of culture" restaurant that are safe for "us white people." I wouldn't say it's the best or craziest restaurant I've been to around here, but now I know why people are obsessed with it. Besides that, I pretty much stuck around EC, doing work and chatting with people.
One of my fears coming here this semester was that I was going to get disconnected from Pittsburgh, disconnected from my college friends, disconnected from my "old world." I definitely go through phases where I'm in a box, and I don't know what is going on with anyone back in Pittsburgh.
But then I emerge from those holes, and Skype with Alex for three hours and IM with Rosie for another hour and some, and I'm right back to being so glad about having friends and family that care about me wherever I am, whatever timezone it is. These support pillars mean that I can dare to grow and have adventures around here without worrying about the fall.
Speaking of adventures, just booked tickets to Abu Dhabi this weekend. A bit spur-of-the-moment, but such is life!
I think I might have gotten a bit pink in the sun today... gotta watch out for those two hour Ultimate frisbee games. Also, I need to figure out where to get more free t-shirts, since my gray one is ambigious for the lights-versus-darks matches.
Utsav, of course, invited me along, and Salman was a great cheerleader, and Tina was pretty impressive for her first Ultimate frisbee experience. She touched the disk a few times (more than I did the first time I played.)
So I've been hearing about this Red Bull Crashed Ice event for a few weeks now, and a group of us decided to stop by. I heard about it through Facebook; some of the "Red Bull Girls" as well as a guy who works for them go to uni here, and I've seen them passing out free cans. So turns out that knowing someone who is working the event got us actual seats really close to the rink.
Now, this event is going to eventually be a full-fledged, contact-filled race down an icy slope in Canada. This preliminary round had a truck to jump over, some cones to slalom, and some large bumps that needed to get jumped over. The announcer elongated every name and was trying (with little success) to get the crowd riled up.
We did get a bit noisy for a few of the contestants, when they were struggling to get over the truck as the final obstacle and we cheered them on. Also, for a bit of "halftime entertainment", some BMX biker did some impressive balancing and tricks, while riding right along our toes.
After watching all 16 rounds of the preliminaries, Daedri, Abdalla, and I split off to go grocery shopping. We were running late to get back to EC (Daedri had some other people she was meeting up with), so it was a hurried trip.
When we got back to EC, and all my groceries were put away, I get a call telling me to come outside to help Abdalla fill out a form for the restaurant secret shopper job that he has. Well, thinking about food got me hungry, and what else is there to do when you get hungry at 11 then go get shawarma, and what fun is shawarma without adding another three people to the car?
So Maria and Fatima come along, and we convince Zaid that he needs to join us, and we get some food. Maria and Fatima get it in their heads that a new movie has come out, and we must, must, must go see it now. We end up at Villagio, and... the movie doesn't come out until next week. So we sit with our shawarmas on couches in the mall and chat.
I was surrounded by best friends... Maria and Fatima are attached at the hip; Zaid and Abdalla are "A to Z" on the Qatar Foundation radio and are each others "other half." Not only are they all very close, but they all speak Urdu. So multiple times during the night, I started dosing off while they chatted away in their Pakistani language.
That's before they decided I should learn how to speak it. I got a few phrases, one of which was, very appropriately, "chaddi-buddies." "Chaddi", as they explained to me, is like underwear or diapers, so "chaddi-buddies" have been friends since they were little. And while neither pair met before coming to university, both pairs now act like they've known each other forever.
I'll have to steal some pictures from Fatima tomorrow (and a video), so I can show you the reason that we were asked to leave the mall... I mean, what kind of mall doesn't allow students to skip around and be hyper at 2 in the morning?
A final piece of news... one of the pigeons hatched! We now have a "Junior" on our windowsill. We'll see what happens to Egg #2!
I just finished Skyping with my family, and, would you believe it, they accused me of being too happy? "Get depressed or something."
Well, I must say if my days continue being as productive and fun as today was, there is very little chance of that.
I'll skip the boring part where I graded homeworks, did my homework, got free food, and went to a group meeting.
I'll jump instead to the part where I stuffed myself at a delicious Indian buffet called Caravan. And I suppose we can also talk about the fact that I was with an awesome group of new and old friends. Remember that day with two dinners? Sabrina, Utsav, Salman, and Abdalla were all there tonight, in addition to a few of the CDAs (RAs) around here. I hang out with the resident life crew wherever I go, it seems.
My exciting food choice of the day was... balls. That is a bit easier to say than gulab jamun. They were spheres of what I thought then was dough and honey, but I know now as cream and flour in a rose-water syrup. No wonder the name means something like "rose fruit."
A trip to Doha is never complete without a stop for tea and talk at bandar. It intrigues me the kind of people that hang out there at all hours... since I'm definitely one of them. Most of the group headed over there after dinner to chat. While the group of us was shooting the breeze, someone (I think it was Salman) suggested a ride on a dhow. Now, these boats get lit up at night with strings of lights - much different than the tourist sightseeing cruise I took earlier. Also different was the bargaining. We were very insistent that we wanted the boat for half an hour, and we wanted it for 10 riyals a person ($2.70). So all the guys in the group gather around the dock attendant and assail him in Hindi, Arabic, English, and Urdu. He takes it all, dishes it back, and then some. (Someone told me the language that he added, but I'm not sure what it was... something about him being Bangladeshi?) And we end up with a stunning cruise for 120 riyals (which was 13QR per person... but totally worth it).
The guy who was driving the boat was also our DJ; played Akon and Kanye, Daft Punk and Rihanna. And some interesting mix of dance and Arabic music that was entertaining. We started a Doha dance party in the middle of the bay.
That's right. A dance party. On a dhow. In Doha. I was... delighted!
Coming home, we stood around outside the dorms talking about cadavers and "that's what she said" jokes until the final call of homework and classes in the morning pulled us apart. But, until another day, as Salman would say, "good story"! (EDIT: Salman says "Cool story." I'm embarrassed that I got his catchphrase wrong.)
restaurant, with a few of the CS people. Samreen, ever the chocolate lover, was present, as well as Rishav, and Nasreem
and Amal, two other CMU students. We ate a lot, we laugh a lot, and it was a heart-warming goodbye with a card and some good hugs and promises to see each other in the future.
nvinced a group of Cornellians (and us) to come with her to Star of India. There was a lot of laughs (especially for the guys... don't know what it is about those kind of jokes that just set them off) and then, it was time again to say goodbye. Sabrina was making me teary-eyed; it is very hard saying goodbye to people that I may never see in person again.
