Qatar 5 – Final Day

This morning, I tried to send a post card. I’m not confident it will get anywhere. I went to the front desk, but the person didn’t know for sure what to do with it. I probably spoke too fast. He called his superior, and I didn’t understand him but he said ‘7 riyals’ somewhere in his sentence. That was fine with me and then he left. I asked the original person if I just leave the money with him, and he gave me that same confused expression I’m so used to by now. He called another guy over who said that it would be 10 Riyals. But I said the other guy said 7. He was ok by that and then walked away. The original guy and I were still confused. Do I get a stamp? Do I just leave it? I didn’t know. Fortunately, the other superior came back and was probably asking why I was standing around looking like an ignored loser at a high school dance. The original receptionist said that I was wondering if I got a stamp or something. He explained I just leave it at the desk and his colleagues will mail it for me. So here’s hoping… Darn it, I should have taken a picture of that postcard. Here’s a picture of money instead.

I had breakfast this morning. I wasn’t hungry but I had some eggs and some rice. I can’t resist eggs and rice. I cannot recall what else I had. I didn’t have any spongy nuts. Although, I wonder how much cashews cost here. If they are cheap, I should have bought some.

Afternoon was a lot of fun. They ordered some camel for me! Huzzah! I was excited, I had never eaten camel before. I was scared that it would be too gamey for me. And when the food finally arrived, I got this:

Look how huge that is! I couldn’t believe it was all for me. And it was small size. Other people got medium. How the heck did they expect me to eat it? In the end, I only ate a 1/5 of it and I didn’t even finish all the camel. I was sad. Camel doesn’t taste gamey at all, nor was it tough. It had a pleasant taste. Darryl likened it to pork hock. Here are some more pics of lunch. Darryl’s family has disowned him once they learned he ate it.

The rest of the day continued as normal without me having any time to get on the Internet. Once training was complete, we went to ‘The Pearl’.

The pearl is a man made island which is one of many expensive construction projects they do in Qatar. It is filled a lot with expensive shops, yachts, and empty apartments. Even though there are all these empty buildings, and they are constructing even more buildings, housing is very expensive. No one understands why.

We stopped at a chocolate bar. From the looks of the place, it is some famous chain from New York. We took a picture of us sitting by the table eating one cookie. Eventually we decided no to be so cheap and I got myself a coffee gelato shake. It was quite good. It tasted a lot more creamier than I would have expected gelato to taste. I was going to be on a plane later that evening for over 24 hours and I didn’t want my lactose intolerance powers to kick in, but what can you do?

After that, we went back to the Souq Waqaf. I just like writing that out because of all the ‘q’s without its accompanying letter. However, it still isn’t as fun as saying ‘Industrial City’. I learned something though, ‘industrial city’ is more a place for labourers. There are a few industries there, but it’s a place where you get your car fixed, or where the labourers live. I think. I know some of the guys working there are reading this, so I don’t know why they don’t correct my erroneous views on things. 🙂

There are a few areas where you can buy birds, or puppies or dogs. Look how crazy this is, they have coloured bunnies! How awesome is that? It probably goes against some animal rights to do this, but in my current ignorance, it is very cool.

Anyway, Darryl wanted to buy this armrest thing. We were accompanied by Omar, Shadi and Adel. At one point in time, there were the three of them all bargaining with the two shopkeepers over this thing and a carpet made out of camel hair. I didn’t understand a word, of course, but it was fun to watch.

Things aren’t super cheap, however. The prices are on par with what you would expect to pay in north America. I bought two bracelets that cost around 60 riyals each. Darryl paid for them for me though. Not that I was that cheap, but I didn’t have enough riyals and he wouldn’t take my American money when we did the exchange.

The bracelets were authentic and not made in China. I know this because he would make them in front of us. I could have chosen bracelets that were sparkly, but in the end, I stuck with these funky ones that were made out of some type of clay. I think. I don’t really know.

After that we went to a Lebanese restaurant. Omar wanted to catch the game (apparently there’s some world cup thingy happening. I don’t really know much about these geeky sports things that happen). At one point, the announcer was changed from the English translation to the Arabic translation. He wanted to change it back because in the Arabic translation, all they do is just talk about tangential things and sometimes don’t even focus on the game. I found that funny, sounds like something I would be able to do very well. This would be me:

“So now that guy kicked the ball. Again. That reminds me when I played soccer baseball when i was a kid. Once in awhile, you would hit the sweet spot on the ball,and it would go flying. It would knock itself almost out of the schoolyard and for that one fleeting moment, you felt Ike a star. You would run around the bases, you would know all eyes were on that ball wondering how it got kicked so far and although fleeting, you hoped this changed your pitiful rank within the school hierarchy. Which it wouldn’t, but it felt that it could. Oh wait. I think someone scored a goal. I don’t understand this game at all.”

We also ordered Moroccan tea from the restaurant across the street. I ordered some delicious dishes which I wish I could remember the names of! I took a picture of the menu, so I hope the dish I like is in there somewhere. I really have to check out some restaurants when I get back to Toronto.

They are very hospitable here, by the way. They drive us all over the place. They won’t let us pay for anything when we eat out; it is insulting to them (or they were just saying that, I’m not too sure). And they are very friendly. We learned a lot about Qatar, and I feel we learned a lot about the real Qatar, not the tourist one. Heck I got to go to ‘Industrial City’! Here is the group posing in front of the Qatar Scientific Club.

It’s also very safe around here. You can leave your valuables locked in the car and fear nothing. However, a lot of the you people are bored. They don’t have anything to do. Adele is a musician. He taught himself the guitar but there isn’t any resources to get more advanced. They don’t have open mic night at bars, so he wants to start that up. He is only 19 but he wants to start up the music scene in Qatar. Very cool. When I was 19, I think was trying to increase my Welltris skills (3d tetris for those of you not in the know)

Anyway, it was great to meet all of them, and now is the 24 hour trip back. Yay.

EDIT:

I’m BACK! Huzzah! Oh man, all that traveling with only about 4 hours of uncomfortable sleep. I watched movies the whole time. Anyway it’s great to be back. Thanks for reading!