Lately...

Well, hello there.  I've had a few anti-Muscat days recently and I think I'm less inclined to post on those.  

We are doing just fine.  The 5:30am call to prayer at the mosque across the street doesn't wake us any more, and the kids don't freak out at the 7:30pm one.  Once we move into our house, we won't hear any call to prayers.  Maybe we will even miss them.

I blame my anti-Muscat sentiments on the news that our shipment won't reach Muscat until the tenth of March, and afterward will still need to clear customs.  I have not been able to ask Eli how long we ought to anticipate customs taking because I cannot bear it.  It is discouraging and frustrating to face living in a hotel for another month plus.  (I must note that this has nothing to do with all the wonderful people working at this hotel.  They are so nice and love the kids so much.  It's about not having a washing machine and about not having a kitchen.  Shockingly, even I can get sick of eating an egg for dinner.)

But it has not been all bad, not even close.  On Friday (that's yesterday, and our Sunday; today is our Monday), we went with another family to Yiti beach, which is just outside of Muscat (to what I think of as north, but is actually west, I think).  It was really lovely and the drive was lovely and we had a great time.  The beach was great for the kids except for the people driving their cars on the beach.  There weren't too many, but enough that it got a bit annoying.  The family are Belgian and spend part of their summers in the same town on the seaside we went to visit in October.  So it was fun to talk about that.  Also on Friday, we had dinner with one of Eli's coworkers and his family and they were very nice and we had a lovely time.   Finally, on Friday, my friend Katherine gave us half a bottle of gin.  That's a big deal here.

Guess what happened today? On my way to take Tommy to school, the car behind me at a stoplight was rear-ended.  For the rest of the ride to school, I kept telling Tommy that it must be our lucky day.  Now I will certainly remember to leave a huge gap between me and the car in front of me at lights so that I can move forward if someone gets too close to me.  Road culture here puts an emphasis on tail gating -- it's considered desirable.

I have about a million things to write about but I want to post pictures with most of them.  It really is beautiful here, with the mountains.  I promise to post photos VERY SOON.