Adventures

Whenever I told anyone we were moving to Qatar, 90% of the time they would reply something containing the word "adventure." We have had a couple so far, some not necessarily the type I was expecting.


Our first Saturday here we took a driving tour of Doha. We went to a HUGE shopping mall with all sorts of indoor activities for the kids: a roller coaster, ferris wheel, bowling alley, go carts, a gondola ride, an ice skating rink, and more. It was kind of amazing. We will be spending a lot of time there, I think :) Our tour guide also drove us all over town and showed us all the major points of interest. I am most excited to visit the souqs and barter with the Arab vendors. So those will be adventures to come.


One of our unexpected adventures kept getting better and better as the night wore on. This house is huge and bare, and there are 3 keys to every single door in the house. It took me like 5 minutes to open the door for someone who stopped in to see us that morning because I had to sift through 50 keys to find the one that would open the front door. So Dan decided that to make it easier on us, we should just leave a key in the lock on the inside of the doors to our house. That night we decided to go to IKEA to try to make our house more homey and since we don't have a car we have to hire a driver to take us anywhere we want to go. Aaand since we have so many little beasties we have to take 2 cars wherever we go. We loaded up the car with 4 carseats and a stroller and I shut the door to the house behind us. I tried to lock the door behind us and I couldn't turn the key. I had Dan come over to see if he could and he couldn't either. We were locked out. We decided to just deal with it when we got home since we had everyone all loaded up already and the drivers ready to go. So off to IKEA we went.


When we arrived we unloaded the kids and then the drivers started unloading the car seats. When Dan made the reservation they asked if we wanted to have the drivers wait for us or leave us and Dan said for them to leave us! He hadn't realized we would have 4 carseats with us. Siiiiigh. So we walked into IKEA with our 5 kids and 4 carseats and asked the security guard where we might stash the seats. They were actually really nice about it and opened a little secret passage where they keep wheelchairs and let us leave them there. We let the big boys play in the play area while we went shopping, and they give you one hour of childcare. IKEA in one hour?? Ready, set, go!!! If you have ever been shopping with Dan you know that he can spend an hour on one ITEM, much less a giant monster store like IKEA. But he felt the urgency and we were able to move at a pretty good clip. That hour went by pretty fast, then we went to pick up our boys and have dinner at the IKEA resturant. IKEA really does an excellent job of making their store family friendly, even down to having a specialized cart to carry three foods trays at a time. So I was able to go buy food for the family and actually bring it all back to the table in one trip!


I posted this on facebook, but for those of you who didn't see it: Cultural lesson of the day: I bought what I thought was a little bottle of milk for Jack and when I opened it, it looked and smelled rotten. I took it back to the counter and asked if I could switch it out. They let me and I got another bottle. It, too, looked and smelled rancid. So Dan took it back to get another one and the clerk realized what was going on... It was not milk that I had picked up, it was "fresh Laban" which is more like very runny plain yogurt. It's supposed to look/taste like that! Now we know.




Anyways, we needed to call our driver 30 minutes in advance to pick us up. So we called and finished up in the store and went out to the loading zone to wait. (Another cultural lesson: Qataris take the words "LOADING ZONE" to mean "Great Parking spot for my LANDCRUISER." (They seriously ALL drive Landcruisers)). So, we stood and waited and waited and waited with our 5 kids, 4 carseats, and 2 carts full of stuff waiting for our driver. When we finally found him (4 phone calls to the taxi company later...) it had been almost an hour. The driver had gone into the underground parking area instead of to the exit. We finally found the second driver and loaded up.
When we got home we unloaded everything and sent the drivers on their way. Dan had told the security guards at the front gate that we had locked ourselves out and they came with a key to the front door and one to the garage entry door. But since Dan had put keys on the inside of both of those doors, they couldn't get it in either one. It was almost 10pm by this time and the boys were getting restless, so I walked them down to the mini market to get a treat or something while they worked on getting us in the house. Even though the mini market says it's open until 11, it was closed when we got there. Grrr. On our way back the security guard passed me in his van and said he had gotten in. When I got home I asked Dan how they had done it (fully expecting to hear that they had broken a window or something..) and Dan said they had just gone to one of our kitchen windows and shaken it up and down to loosen the lock and got right in. Good to know our home is nice and secure! Oh well, we got in and could finally put our beasties in bed. WHAT A NIGHT!