Lest you think I hate it here

In my last post I was having a bad day. Today, like most days, I am just fine. So you all don't think I am just miserable here, here is a list of things I like about being here. (In no particular order, of course).

1. The people. There are so many nice people here. So many people with open hearts willing to befriend and help people they barely know. We're all far from home. We're all a little lonely. And we're all willing to love each other.

2. The driving. OK I know in my last post I said I hated the drivers here because they are so very crazy, and oh my goodness they are, but in a way I feel like being here has taught me to be a better driver. You have to be so aware of everything around you, you quickly learn you absolutely cannot drive distracted, and you become aware of every car and you're able to anticipate some of the crazy things they might do. And I have to admit I kind of enjoy the excuse (because sometimes it's a necessity) to drive like kind of a jerk at times. :)

3. Being a minority. 8% of the population here is American/European. Dan and I actually play a game when we go out trying to see if we can find other caucasians. But it is interesting to see the world from a different perspective,  learn to appreciate the many and varied cultures around you, and to see what it is like to be the minority.

4. The chance to redefine/know oneself. I felt like a lot of the things that I thought composed my identity were kind of stripped away when I moved here. It's been hard in a way, but I feel it's helping me stretch and grow as a person to realize those things didn't necessarily define me and there are other facets of myself that can grow and flourish.

5. The desert. We have been having so much fun exploring the desert out here. Qatar is really small (if you placed Qatar over Houston it would reach from Montgomery county to Galveston) and you can drive across it easily in an afternoon. It's really fun just to take the car into 4 wheel drive and go out in the desert and see what we can find. It reinforces something I've always believed, which is "there is beauty everywhere." You just have to look around you.

6. The opportunity to travel. Really, this is 90% of the reason we came here. The world is just open to us right now, and it is so exciting. It helps me get through some of the things I don't like about being here to be able to have something exciting to look forward to. And there have been some very specific instances where I realize that it has been good for my kids. They are understanding the scope of the world- just how big it is- and getting to see other cultures and hear different languages and accents, and understand that people are just people wherever you go.

7. The appreciation of things you have. I took for granted how wonderful America is. I took for granted what good friends I have back at home. I took for granted how nice it was to live by family.  Being here has really helped me see and appreciate all those, and more wonderful things.

8. The boys' school. I am a little jealous of my kids' school. Like when George comes home and tells me about what he built in Robotics class... or when the kids came home from international day and told me about all the foods they ate, and the falcons they petted, the Palestinian dancers they saw, etc. Stuff like that. I love that even though it's an American school, the boys are in the minority. I always love seeing their class lists, too, with names like Noor, Gheed, Tameem, Mikaal, Booshi, Matheus, Shravan, Sedra, Leen, Anders, Hassan... you get the idea. I have also been really impressed with their grade level concerts. Decorated themed sets, dancing, singing, instruments. They are very well done.

9. The slower pace of life. School has early release every Tuesday. The boys soccer practice is all on Tuesday up at the school. The boys have after school activities on Mondays and the bus brings them home from those. Things have really slowed down for us and I feel the difference in my own stress level. As much as I miss our bikes rides to and from school everyday (and let me tell you my little heart positively aches for my bike and the bike trails) it has been nice to have the boys ride a bus. Henry is dropped off from preK at our door, so I don't even have to wake my little ones if they are asleep when he gets home. A lot of our activities (like a little music class I take the youngest boys to, or a photography group I attend) are on the compound, which makes it so easy to be involved in them.

10. The architecture. I have to admit, I really love going into downtown and just looking at the buildings. I also love seeing all the different mosques around town. There are intricate Arabic designs all over different buildings... I've thought of doing a photo series of them because they are so cool... (Maybe I'll attend my photography class for a few more months before I embark on that so the pictures will be any good :) )

I didn't take this picture, and it's not the full skyline, but it shows some of the buildings I like:

11. The events.  There are tons of free events to attend here. We went to a couple Ramadan events, a Porsche race at the international speedway,  a boat festival, the Motor show... there was a Nutcracker Ballet that we tried to go to, but unfortunately lots of other people tried to go, too, so it was full, but it would have been free :). Anyways, there are tons of free events around town, you just have to do a little research to find them (advertising is not always super good here). Here are a few from the car show:

Inside the convention center:

From the Porsche race.... See that little blur in the road? Super fast Porsche!

12. The choir! I'm so glad I found the Doha Singers. It has been so good for my soul to sing again, for real. I don't think I've really sung full voice for years. I forgot how much I enjoy being in a choir.

There is a lot to like about being here. And on most days, those things balance out the things I hate :)

Things I hate.

So.  One of my favorite sayings is "bloom where you're planted." To me it means wherever you are, whatever your circumstances, try to make the very best of it. I am a firm believer in this and it's how I try to live my life. I don't like to focus on the negative because I feel like that makes it grow in your mind.

Today, I am grumpy Melissa. So, I am going to make a list of the things I hate about being here, and then I will be done with them and back to focusing on the good of being here. Here is my mental dump, in no particular order:

1. Dust, sand, more dust, more sand. OOOH how sick I am of how dirty it is here. If the boys so much a step foot outside, they look like dirty orphan children. Anything that is left outside for any period of time is COVERED in superfine sand. I'm so sick of the feeling of sand on my hands and feet. I am sick of mopping the floor constantly.

2. Drivers. I have never seen anything like the drivers here. Just absolute madness. Seriously every time I get where I am going safely I offer a little prayer of thanks. And every time I go through a big, three-lane roundabout, where no one even remotely follows the rules, I get a surge of adrenaline and then a huge sense of relief when I exit the roundabout.

3. The house provided by the company. It's way too big. I never want a house this big again.

4. All of the appliances in this house. We are back to a "wash the dishes before you wash them" dishwasher, a clothes dryer that tears up clothes and takes a couple cycles to get them dry, a glass top electric stove, and oven that is about 30-50 degrees off temperature.

5. Most of the furniture provided with the house. Don't get me wrong, it was nice not to have to worry about furnishing the house, but they seriously got the cheapest, most impractical furniture for these houses. I could go on and on about this one....

6. Living in a compound with workers EVERYWHERE.  We live just a few houses down from the management office, and that's where a lot of the workers congregate. I seriously can't step outside my house without seeing one of the compound workers. I try really hard to smile and greet them because I want to treat them kindly, but it wears on me and I have a hard time feeling completely at home. They literally stare at me and the boys if we so much as walk by, and if we are outside playing a game of baseball or basketball in the street, we literally draw a crowd. It's so strange. If we go on a bike ride or walk, we encounter so many of them and I just get sick of it. It makes me sad knowing they are all far away from their families and lonely and looking at my kids and missing their own.

7. Water coolers. So sick of having to keep up with a water cooler. I miss my fridge where I could just get water out of the dispenser, or even just being confident that the tap water was ok. I am constantly running out of water cooler jugs and forgetting to get more, and I hate always having to hoist the 5 gallon jug up to the cooler. And I swear it always runs out on me when I don't have time for it to run out.

8. Being SO far away from home. It's just hard.


That's all for now. Now to get back to having a good attitude. Right..... now.....

The third time Paris has changed my life....

(Disclaimer: This has been much on my mind lately, and I think it's time to share. I am speaking of the world as I know it, and only of my experience.)

I'll tell you about the other two times some other time.... but for today:

Some pictures from Paris, and an epiphany.

These are some of the most beautiful sights from our Paris trip:

I liked these Paris sights even better:

But the real epiphany came when we got home and I realized, I like these sights the most. The every day, the "mundane". The most beautiful.

SO. The point of my story is this:

I was always jealous of people who got to travel. I was having babies and keeping a house and looked on as my friends traveled the world, enjoying young single-hood. I am getting my turn and it is really fun and I am glad we have had several opportunities. But there is something very important that I want to share:

Walking into a place like Notre Dame Cathedral, the Eiffel tower, or standing at the rim of the Grand canyon, or walking through a national park or wherever it may be that you're seeing the world is amazing. There is a rush of awe, feelings of wonder. But trips always end. And you have to come home sometime. For all the feelings of wonder and delight and excitement of traveling, they cannot compare to the soaring joy of being with the ones you love. People matter. Trips are fun. But love and people are what make life worth living. 

These little moments are where I find the true meaning in my life. I think it took a few trips and a few children for me to realize to the true value of what I have and how I have chosen to live my life. And the emotions I feel when I am living every day life with my family eclipse any I have ever felt anywhere else. 

I will close with a little paragraph from my journal a few months ago:

Tonight as I checked on my babies before going to bed, I was overcome with emotion. Somewhere, some time, someone must have expressed this better than I can... But the are times when the intensity of the love I feel for my children is so strong I almost feel suffocated by it. Like someone is reaching into my chest and physically squeezing my heart. It is almost overwhelming. The depth and breadth of emotion - both the joy and the pain- that I have felt since becoming a mother has made me feel intensely human... I have never felt more alive.

"The Help"

Let me start off by saying I am not a very good housekeeper. I have a hard time keeping up with the laundry, I barely can keep up with the dishes, and the rest kind of gets cleaned on an as needed basis. I have always thought how nice it might be to get some "help" but always been kind of against hiring a maid. Like it was against my principles or something. I SHOULD be able to do all this myself, but I never quite could. A few years ago Dan and I were supposed to move to Africa. The houses at the compound in Africa came with a maid. I remember sitting in my living room folding laundry and thinking, "I can't wait until we get to Africa and I can just have the maid do all this for me." I remember it giving me hope, like there was a light at the seemingly never ending tunnel of laundry. Needless to say we ended up not moving to Africa, and I remember that was one of the things that made me disappointed about not going.

Fast forward to the present... Before we moved to Doha I struggled with the idea of getting a maid. For some reason my mind could handle it thinking of Africa when the maid was just provided and the decision was out of my hands. Once the decision was in my hands I had a hard time. Before we got here I was pretty sure I wouldn't get one. When we walked into our house here I was somewhat overwhelmed. This house is almost twice as big as our house in Texas and it is just SO dirty here. The night we moved in, it only took a few minutes for all our feet to get completely black on the bottom- the floors were so dirty. I felt completely overwhelmed just with the move alone, and to come in to such a dirty house put me over the top. I got a recommendation from a neighbor and hired a maid within a few days. I posted my feelings about the first time she came to clean our house here (I'll paste the section I'm referring to in case you don't want to read that whole post:)

I finally caved in and from a recommendation from another woman in the compound, got an Indian woman named Geena to come to my house to clean for me. Can I admit something? It was really, really weird for me, and actually kind of sad. This lovely 60 something woman came in and cleaned my whole house. The house the company gave us is 4800 square feet (actually the main reason I conceded to get a maid... I raised up the white flag in defeat, it's too much for me) and she spent four solid hours cleaning and working so very hard. It kind of broke my heart. She had cleaned another house that morning and had to leave my house because she had to go cook dinner for someone else. I was tired just watching her. Meanwhile, she's fawning over my babies because they make her miss her grandbabies back in India. It stirred up all sorts of emotions in me, most of them I didn't like. I felt guilty, lazy, undeserving. It was such a strange day for me. While it was really nice to have so much of my house clean at the same time, I don't really think I'm looking forward to having her come back. It just made me so sad.


Well, those feelings never went away. I absolutely could not handle having someone else clean my house. I hated just having someone in my space, I hated feeling like I "needed help." I didn't like someone else touching my laundry, or doing my dishes. I started to dread the days she was going to come. Now don't get me wrong, she is a dear woman. So loving, so kind to the children, a faithful, religious woman, and we all like her. I just realized I am not cut out to have a maid. I am learning that i am just too fiercely independent. So I struggled and struggled with what to do, because I didn't want her to feel like we didn't like her or that she didn't do a good job. (and, honestly, I was maybe a little scared to have to clean the house on my own.) But it became more and more apparent that it was costing me more emotionally to have a maid than it would cost me to deal with the fear of letting her go. This all sounds so silly when I type it out (like the "first world problems"). Maybe it is.

I decided that I would feel better about the whole thing if I could find her a replacement job before I told her I was going to let her go. Literally the afternoon I made that decision, a person I had just met that recently moved into the compound asked if I knew of anyone who was available to clean houses. WHY YES! SO I told her about Geena and she wanted to use her. That took a load off my mind, and I had to gear up to tell Geena we weren't going to have a maid anymore. I literally had nightmares about it. I don't know why it became such a big deal in my mind, but it did, and the feelings were very real. So today was the big day, and I woke up with my whole body tingling with anxiety. When I heard her coming in our kitchen door I was so nervous I was shaking. I just told her we decided not to have a maid, and told her about the other lady who wanted a maid. She was very nice about it and very understanding and we parted with some kind words and a hug. We will still use her for babysitting and probably to check on our house when we go out of town, but we no longer officially have any "help." AND I FEEL SO MUCH BETTER.

I know I won't be able to keep the house as clean as she did, and I'm ok with that. But I will have that little piece of my soul back that died the day I hired a maid.

Wish me luck.