Feb. 29- Lunch with Dan Boyarski at the City Center Mall. My brother Henry arrives that evening in Doha. We unsuccessfully try to find a BBQ at Qatar Foundation Housing and then pass out.
Mar. 1- Bill Brown Memorial Ride early AM. I bike 46 km in total from Doha Golf Club to Simaisma Bridge. My brother- on the small loaner bike, rides 26 km to Lusail. See some pics from the event. Henry passes out and then goes to see 'Vantage Point' at the City Center Mall. I help LiveGreen (CMU-Q's student environmental group) prepare for the next day. I stay up too late preparing for my own speech.
Mar. 2- I give a ~20 minute presentation ('The Opportunities of Sustainability") 2 times at Qatar University's " Go Green. Change Our Future" كن صديقاً للبيئة. غير مستقبلنا Conference (Women only). I'm in at least 2 English papers and apparently some Arabic papers the next day (See The Gulf Times & The Peninsula). My brother heads back to City Center Mall with a student of mine, only to accidentally have my car keys in his pocket. We sort it out, do some food shopping, cook a veggie dinner and call it another early night.
Mar. 3- I give my presentation twice again (Males Only), teach my communication design class, teach my first section of 'Examining Sustainability in the Gulf', add another section of it, discover CMU-Q accidentally sent my textbooks back and we've now ordered them to arrive with the Pittsburgh students this Saturday. Henry and I play volleyball with the students, faculty, & staff. We then head to the souqs, Henry purchases souvenirs, and we have Iraqi food.
Mar. 4- I go to Arabic class, do some work at school, & swap my sedan with Darbi/Greg's SUV so my brother and I can go find the 'Singing Dunes'. I tell Henry I'm on my way home (we communicated via email, 2 American cell phones, 1 Qatari cell phone with mixed results). I leave Education City and pull into traffic too soon, getting slammed in the back, smashing up a little blue car driven by two Egyptians that don't speak English. We wait ~3 hours for the police to come to file a report. One tank of gas, one traffic department, 2 reports, 12 riyals, and 1.5 hours later and I'm finally back home to my stranded (and ill-informed) brother. In the fading light we attempt to find the Singing Dunes but no luck. Henry and I go with Greg and his visiting girlfriend Sophie to pick up Turkey Central. We eat at Greg's and then they watch movies at Greg's place. I work.
Mar. 5- We plan to get my brother to the Qatar National Museum for the morning and have him join me in the afternoon (after my classes). We have conflicting reports of whether the museum is open, closed, partially-open and can't confirm any details. We find the place deserted and later learn it won't be open to the public until November. After some phone calls- we learn the Weapons Museum is now open to the public and will be open until noon. We call, confirm, and then unsuccessfully try to find the place. Back at campus, we're given exact directions of how to get there- we head back out again and Henry books a cab for the ride back. We arrive- it looks nice- clean- legit. I bid Henry farewell and then he runs back, saying it's closed. I throw my hands up. At this point Henry begins to truly realize what it means to live in Doha and that while a decent place to live, Doha is not primed for tourists yet. I teach 3 classes (my sustainability course now has 20 students in two sections)- Henry relaxes. I secure a GPS from Justin & Marjorie and in the fading light Henry and I set out for the Singing Dunes again. 45 km from the city, we find the dunes and by flashlight we hike towards them on foot (as I have my sedan again and it would have not been happy on the rocks). It was eerie to make the dunes hum and vibrate at our footsteps and even eerier that we only had a flash-light at this point. We did see some fantastic stars.
Mar. 6- I skip out on Arabic class and Henry and I do tourist shopping. We purchase a photo book for Grammy and Henry picks up some foodstuffs at the Carrefour (as well as some helpful new sandals). We head back to City Center and pick up some carmel and stuffed dates at Bateel. We find time running short and Henry cheerfully suggests trying the 'McArabian' chicken pita-sandwich at McDonald's. I agreed because yes- technically it's a cultural experience. Like many McDonald's products- while initially tasty, the meal leaves us feeling disgusting. I'm done with McDonald's in Qatar. We're signed up with 5 others for an 8-hour desert cruise with QIA. Two others not from CMU-Q would also join us. We set up the night before for them to pick the CMU-Q folks up a little later due to other's time conflicts. The driver calls us up 45 minutes early demanding to know where we were. 
After some semi-heated phone calls and calls to the company, we clear it up and the 2 other tourists don't appear mad at us. We drive off, ride camels (20QAR each), bash dunes, feel like we're about to tip the car (it was our driver's first time- greeeeeeeeeaaat), collect sea shells, attempt to sand board (sounds like a better idea than it actually is) , hear a helicopter air-lifting someone who flipped their quad-bike on the dunes, have a BBQ on the beach, and then drive back in the dark.
Mar. 7- We got Henry to the airport (almost the wrong airport- Qatar is building a new airport and they already have signs up for it. Thanks Qatar.) by 6:30 am. I see him checked in, bid him farewell, drive home, and sleep for another couple hours. I think I plan to use this weekend to recover from his vacation.
Lessons learned:
-Very few of the students have environmental exposure.
-Give your expat host more than a week to plan.
-The tourist experience here leaves something to be desired.
-GPS in the desert is good.
-Wear sunscreen.
-Avoid McDonald's (my stomach still isn't very happy).
-Call. Confirm. But don't be surprised if things change.
-Always check your pockets.
-If you have to teach a difficult/boring/unpopular subject, offer it as a 4th quarter mini course so that students who fail other courses, drop those classes and then desperately need units pack your course.
Friday, March 7, 2008
My Brother's Visit to Qatar- the abridged version
Saturday, January 26, 2008
A Sporting Weekend-Part 1
In case you didn't know- Doha hosted the 2006 Asian Games back in December 2006. It was a big to-do here and prompted a large amount of new construction and general enthusiasm for sports. It was also the city's test to show had the potential to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. (Much like Chicago's hosting of the 2006 Gay Games to prove its worthiness as a 2016 applicant city. ....pause...
However, if you want to see real Qatari sporting enthusiasm- head to the camel, I mean, Land Cruiser, I mean, camel race track. About 45 km outside the city are the oval race tracks and the facilities that house the camels, their handlers and trainers. The camels use to be raced by exploited and often orphaned child jockeys (sometimes as young as age four) but the law changed only a few years ago outlawing the use of child jockeys. Today they use remote controlled robots with robotic whips on top of the camels. The owners then drive alongside the 5, 8, or 10 km long track in their SUVs (mainly Land Cruisers), pressing the remote to whip and urge their camel along.
Friday I joined up with a group of Carnegie Mellon faculty and staff to go on a guided trip to the camel races (100 QR, ~$27.5US), where our bus would have permission to drive along side the race track. We arrive at the course and we're told our bus could not enter, because the Prince (well, one of them) was going to arrive and perhaps after he arrived we could enter. We milled about for a while- annoyed that we had paid for what we could have done for free. Thankfully we had some Arabic speakers in the group and they convinced the officials to let us in. We drove in and piled out amongst the Land Cruisers and camel owners and found ourselves a few meters away from the Prince himself!
We crowded along the track, snapping pictures, and watching the handler's struggle to push the camels into place. Then we were told we better move as 1) the camels could bolt over the fence and 2) we were about to be run over by frantic Land Cruisers. No horn, no siren-- the large gate went up- the camels bolted, the handlers all scrabbled out of the way and the SUVs screeched after them. We didn't see much except for the start and anti-climatic endings of 2 races but then another official said our bus had permission to follow behind the SUVs along the track (I think the Prince had left). Next race began and we sped off after the vehicles. A well-trained camel runs at about 35 km/h and many of them eventually slowed to be more evenly spread out along the track. The SUVS were another story- they were the real pack and proved more entertaining than the camels with colorful robotic whipping humps. We drove right with them, jostling and honking and bumping along the road next to the course, dust flying in through our open windows. The races were all 8 km female camel races that took about ~7 minutes for the fastest camel. We drove around the track 2 times and watched another race from the ground before we headed back to town.
The environmental standards in me say I shouldn't have liked camel racing- it manages to combine tedious animal racing with emissions spewing vehicle racing. And yes, I'll admit I'm not crazy about the need to drive cars/vans around the track. But- it was thrilling- and yes, it is certainly a bit of culture you won't find in the States. It also proved to be valuable bonding time with fellow-CMU-Q employees. And for that, I enjoyed it.
