Getting Settled

I hope you all enjoyed your extra hour of sleep.  Qatar doesn’t observe daylight savings time, so no time change for me.  Shout-out to Lindsey for reading the blog from Italy.  Now when I sign-in my audience includes Europe.  It makes me feel pretty awesome.

When we sorted all our stuff in Houston, it was divided into three piles: storage, sea shipment, and air shipment.  Our air shipment was small but fast and the sea shipment is large and slow.  The sea shipment should arrive in the middle of December.  For the time being, work provided me with some kitchen supplies and linens to get by. 

Our air shipment arrived Thursday after work.  Jonathon packed the shipment after I left and added some surprises to the boxes.  He got me Just Dance 4 for the Kinect to make the neighbors regret spying through the windows and Ashley sent along the nicest drill bit in the world.  (If only I had requested the diamond studded bit.)   

I have never been so thrilled to see my tomato knife and Tupperware.  It is so hard to cut tomatoes with a regular knife (thanks Gma Fran for the awesome knife) and I love making one large meal and saving the leftovers for the next night.  I was busy unpacking the boxes and making our place a little homier before Jonathon comes on Thursday!

On Friday, my Doha friends and I went kayaking in the mangroves.  Mangroves are trees/bushes that grow in salt water.  The roots grow up and poke through the water to collect oxygen.  It was a fun excursion, but a little too short.  Next time we want to kayak out a little further and try to see flamingos.  

I had my first softball game on Saturday.  There are a lot of expats that are very good at softball and my team got pounded.  We mainly focused on having fun instead of winning.  I enjoyed meeting people outside of work and the weather was very enjoyable.  The sun is still very intense during the day, but after the sun goes down at 5pm, the evenings are delightful.

I got some groceries after work today and I must really like Jonathon, because I bought him something yellow and gross, mustard.  Eggs here look a little different.  They remind me of the eggs that Baugh Doctor Doc brought home from the Biology lab and then tried to hatch chicks out of with a desk lamp. (I still don't believe that chickens could have lived in our only shower shared by five girls.  You can have chickens in Quinter.)  Every time I crack open an egg I hope that it is just a yolk that comes out.  At the store today they only had containers of 6 or 30 eggs, so I will be eating a lot of eggs for awhile.

Now, I’m just busy working, reading (finished Atonement last night and started the new book club book What Alice Forgot), getting buff, and trying to keep my excited in check until Jonathon gets here.  I am constantly fighting the desire to jump for joy at the thought of showing him our new home and introducing him to Doha.  This week is already dragging on.  Thursday night please come quickly.