Nearing the end of Year 1 in Doha

Happy Birthday to Me, Happy Birthday to... no no no! That's not what this blog entry is supposed to be about!! After such a long silence, I've forgotten how to write a blog :-(   It'll be like starting all over again, only at the end of my first year here and not at the beginning. Weird. So, just to remind you all what I look like, here I am:

This was taken on a recent weekend trip to Muscat, Oman, with five excellent female friends. It was the perfect break we all needed away from.... Hang on, hang on, that's not what this blog entry is supposed to be about either!!! It really DOES take some work remembering what it is I meant to do when I started typing. I can hear those of you who know my age today snickering to yourselves... I'm NOT suffering from middle-age senility!!

The topic of this blog is one that's been percolating in my mind for quite some time, ever since my friend Steve sent me an e-mail asking what the things were I didn't expect to find or have happen when I came to Qatar. He asked me that before Christmas, so you can see just how long this topic has been on my mind. In fact, I even have two pieces of scrap paper with notes on the subject from way back then, in December 2010.

So here goes; these are the things I didn't expect when I came to Qatar:

1) That I'd always be cold. I mean, this is a desert country, right? How can I possibly be so cold all the time? Ah, Dear Reader, the answer is simple: air conditioning! I have four of them in my apartment and even though I have them set at 25^oC, my apartment is still chilly (for me!) The various buildings on campus range from fridge to freezer in temperature settings. I often meet colleagues going outdoors to warm up... and then hurrying back indoors to cool down ;-) The upshot of it all is that wearing layers of clothing here is as important as it in winter in Canada!

2) That I'd have to deal with too much water. I mean, this is a desert country, right? How can there be too much water? Well, partly for the same reason as with #1: air conditioners. They leak. Did you know that? Yup, they do, and it usually requires a couple of trips from the repairmen to get the water to stop! Then there was the overflowing bathroom drain. The first time I took a bath, the water gushed up the small pipe from the drain and onto the bathroom floor. Which totally negated the relaxing qualities of the bath I'd just finished and took an hour of me letting out small amounts of water at a time to safely drain said bathtub! And one trip from the plumber to make sure that the drain was unclogged and functioning properly.

3) That my Bluenoser accent would come back. I mean, I haven't lived in Nova Scotia for 23 years now, so I thought I'd mostly smoothed out my speech patterns to sound more "international". All it took was two weeks of orientation with a bunch of Bluenosers and Newfs to sound as if I were right back in Woodlawn! Again, weird. And here is a photo of some of those people I started with: (l-r) Richard, Hilary, Bonnie, Amy, Raigne (half-hidden!), Anne, Nikki (me) and Skipp. We're in the Sheikh Faisal....

Oops! Going off-track again... Anyways, it's funny how accents come back right some quick!

4) That I wouldn't have to much to do with Qatari people off the campus. Except when they drive like maniacs when I'm on the bus to and from the college or being driven somewhere in a cab or by friends... then they get MUCH too close for comfort! But seriously, other than on the campus, I don't come into much contact with Qatari people. We mingle in the shopping malls, movie theatres and restaurants, but I don't have any real social contact with Qatari people.

5) That I wouldn't have to learn Arabic to live in Doha. That's due to the fact that all the people who work in the service industry here are foreigners, too, coming from the Philippines, India, Nepal, Indonesia, etc. So they all speak dialects of English and we all communicate using English, even the Qataris! I had thought that by the end of my first year in Doha, I'd have a basic understanding of Arabic and at least be able to carry on a simple conversation. Nope. No can do. And no need to do so, either. Weird. However, I have resolved to start studying Arabic when I get back to Doha in September. Let's see if I actually follow through on that...

6) That having taught in Japan isn't a big deal. Nearly all the EFL instructors on staff at the college have taught in Japan at some stage in their careers. What distinguishes me from most of them is how long ago it was that I taught there. But let's not get onto that age thing having to do with which of my birthdays it is today, okay?!

7) That I could go skating in a rink in a mall. There are two malls with rinks, City Centre and Villagio. City Centre has a round rink, so you don't see too much hockey being played there. You can see some brave people learning how to skate on their ankles, though, just like at home. Or you can see something like this: young Qatari men with their gutras (headscarves) wrapped around their faces to keep them warm and their thobes (robes) knotted around their waists so they don't trip! This photo was taken in City Centre just last week:

The rink in Villagio often has hockey games scheduled and quite an active hockey league, too. Then, if you get tired, you can go for a gondola ride in Villagio, too. Now we're back to the topic of too much water in the desert!!

Which means that I must be just about finished this blog entry. But not quite.

I just want to let you all know that I've survived my first year in Doha. Although there were times in the winter semester I thought I'd quit and go home because my students were pushing me just that little bit too far, my belief that my choice of coming to Qatar was the right one to have made was restored by the fun bunch of students I had in the summer semester.

 

And here they are, with me, on the last day of regular classes.

The other factor that has helped me survive this first year has been the support of all my family and friends, new and old (friends, that is!) I've had a lot of interesting experiences and hope to have the chance to tell many of you about them personally quite soon. My summer vacation starts in just 6 days and I can't wait to be back in Canada!!! Yippee!!!

What am I doing here?!

I know, I know! It's been forever since I last wrote! Thank you all for your patience and for your e-mails telling me you want to read the next installment of this blog. To say that I've been busy since I last posted anything is an understatement... but it hasn't all been work that's kept me preoccupied. I also went to Vienna for the Eid Al-Adha week of vacation in mid-November and I had a FABULOUS time there!

See how happy I look? This is me at Schoenbrun Palace, with Vienna in the background. Schoenbrun was absolutely my favourite palace of the three I went to, but that's another blog altogther ;-)

What I wanted to write about today is my new workplace, the College of the North Atlantic - Qatar. So many of you have asked me for more details about my job here, what the campus looks like and what type of students I teach, that I've decided it's time to sit down and tell you about that, rather than the excellent vacation I had in Vienna. Did I mention I really enjoyed my visit there?!! ;-)

First of all, the college is a satellite campus of the College of the North Atlantic, the trades college of the province of Newfoundland. The State of Qatar (at the urging of the Emir's second wife, Sheikha Mozah) decided that it wanted to open a vocational college in 2000 and received submissions from many educational institutions eager for a foothold in Qatar. The College of the North Atlantic was chosen due to the similarities between Qatar and Newfoundland: an economy originally based on fishing and recently enriched by the discovery of petroleum resources, as well as a relatively small population and traditional society.

At least, that's the story I've been told several times since I got here!!
Whatever the case, the college started operations here in 2001 and has been growing ever since! The instructors are all Canadian citizens, with a large proportion of them coming from the Atlantic provinces. My Bluenoser (Nova Scotian, for those of you who aren't from the Maritimes!) accent has come back full-force after 22 years of living away. Sometimes I don't even feel like I'm in the Middle East as I listen to the conversations flowing around me on campus ;-) There are also support staff from Canada, India and, most importantly, Qatar. The most salient fact about the college for me is that it was the first co-educational college or university opened in Qatar. Schools in Qatar (except the ones catering to the foreign population) are strictly divided along gender lines, so new students to the college are usually encountering students of the oppposite sex in their classes for the first time. When you read about my first class here, you'll understand how significant that is!
The current campus was built only a couple of years ago and is comprised of about 20 buildings, so it feels quite intimate as you stroll around.

There are some beautiful water features, as well as trees, flowers and benches that make it a welcoming place.

The water features threw me at first: water flowing the desert?! But then, that's Qatar: full of contradictions. And again, that's the subject of another blog entry! Once I get back from my Christmas trip to Hong Kong, I'll have to catch up on all the things I've wanted to blog about... stay tuned!
Anyway, this is the building my office is in:

It used to be strictly for the School of Engineering, but as the School of Language Studies and Academics has ballooned in size to take care of the English-language needs of the student population, we've encroached on the facilities of other departments. And not all of them are happy to be sharing ;-)

And this is me at the door to my office:

My dad asked me to have this photo taken, as he's so proud of the fact that I'm finally working for an institution that recognizes the value of my education and years of experience :-)

We've been told to make our offices as welcoming as we can, which is why there are many pictures of my family and the important places in my life on the bulletin board:

It's really hard to make a concrete box into a warm environment, especially when the air conditioning is blasting! I've done my best for this session; probably next session I'll do what some other instructors have done and buy a lamp so I don't have to turn on the ugly fluorescent tube attached to the ceiling. And I might even get myself a small coffeemaker because the cafeteria is a bit of a walk and the coffee they make is... cafeteria coffee!!

"But what about your students, Jennifer?" I can hear you asking me. "Stop talking about yourself!"

Gladly!!

To give you an idea what they look like, here's a photo of me with my first class of students, taken on the last official day of classes on December 7th:

Aren't they handsome in their thobes (robes) and gutras (head scarves)?!

The observant among you will have noticed that all my students are male. My class this session was in the Trades Preparation Program, with all the students in that program being male and overwhelmingly sponsored by their companies to study at the college. After being tested to find out their level of English ability, the students are put into English-as-a-foreign-language classes to study the type of language they'll need to succeed in their trade program. There are three main trades programs offered: process, mechanical or instrumentation engineering. Suffice it to say I've learned a bit about each trade, but not a whole lot! My primary task is to get the students speaking and writing English better. After graduating from the College with a certificate in their trade, students may be chosen by their employer to study overseas and get an engineering degree.

Now back to the reason why having mixed-gender classes is such a big deal in Qatar and the impact it had on my males-only class. My guys were aged between 17 and 26 and for the most part have had very little unsupervised contact with girls or women. The fact that there weren't any girls in the class didn't mean they were any less of a distraction to my guys. Quite the opposite, in fact! For the first few weeks of the session, every time a girl in an abaya (black robe) would walk past the glass panel in the door, all ten male heads would swivel in perfect synchronicity to watch her walk past. I had to cover that glass panel after awhile, just to keep their attention on the lesson! There was nothing I could do about the large glass windows at the back of the class, however; when one particularly eye-catching girl walked past wearing an abaya with a sparkling red design on her head covering, the code word the guys used for Qatari female became "strawberry"!!

To sum up my experience this first session at CNA-Q, I have to say that it's been a fun and fulfilling challenge. Which is exactly what I wanted when I decided to leave Montreal in August, 2009. The challenges didn't always turn out to be what I'd imagined, but now that I've got one session under my belt, I'm looking forward to the winter session... after my vacation in Hong Kong! 

Well, I hope that this entry has satisfied your desire for more information about what I'm doing in Qatar. If you have more questions about the college or my work, just ask! And I promise my next posting won't take so long to appear!

In the meantime, have a most Merry Christmas!

Mosque tour

To my faithful (and patient!) followers, I apologize profusely... I've fallen behind in my blogging and I have no excuse except that I've been too busy and too tired to post anything new.

As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for because you just might get it! I wanted to get out of the dreary work rut I'd fallen into in Montreal and that rut is so far away now, I can't believe I was ever in it ;-) I miss my friends (and friends who used to be students) in Montreal deeply, but I don't miss the former CCL in the slightest! My current students tire me out with their immaturity, exasperate me with their inability to focus on work for more than 10 minutes at a time and irritate me with their multitude of cellphones, but they also charm me with their innocence, please me with their delight in seeing horizons opening to them through school and amuse me with their ability to laugh at themselves without rancour.

That being said, I've had some adventures since I last wrote here. The latest one was a tour to a mosque and the chance to see what happens during a prayer time, as well as to ask any questions I had about Islam. I went on October 1st and the tour was organized by a government body called the Qatar Islamic Friendship Centre, known as Fanar.

This is their headquarters, a lovely spiral building near the older part of Doha. We were met there by a group of volunteers who were very pleased to have the chance to share their beliefs with us. We were reassured that the purpose of the the tour was to make us feel comfortable living in a Muslim country and to help us understand that Islam means to the average Qatari. So don't worry, I haven't been converted to Islam!

And of course the women on the tour had to wear headscarves and the black robes known as abaya.  This photo shows the four of us from the group of newbies who went on the tour. Our nickname is the Doha Wives' Club, as we've gotten into the habit of going out with one or two of the married (or otherwise attached) men amongst the newbie group, thus creating the illusion that we're married! From left to right, you see Hilary, Nikki, myself and Desiree. Don't we look oh so Qatari??!!

The abaya didn't bother me at all, but the headscarf wouldn't stay on my head no matter what I did! Some of you reading this entry will be laughing because you know how much I hate wearing anything on my head ;-) Ain't this quite the picture?! I should try to find one of my photos of me wearing a kimono in Japan - they'd make quite the matched set of "Jennifer looking ridiculous in traditional costumes"!!

The group was taken by bus to a mosque in Al Wakra, which is just outside of Doha, not too far from the coast. This is the minaret and some of the detailed work on the exterior. Our tour guide told us that the funds for the construction on the mosque had been given by the local Toyota factory's owners and that most of the public facilities of the city of Al Wakra had been funded by private businesses.

Our guide explained to us that this protrusion can be found at the back of any mosque. Usually they're round; this one is unusual. The reason for the protrusion is so that if the congregation has filled the interior of the mosque, people can pray outside and know two things: which way is east so they can pray facing Mecca and where the imam will be inside the mosque. No-one can stand in front of the imam during a prayer service!

The guide also explained the interior features of a mosque, stating that there's nothing in the Koran that mandates what the architecture of a mosque must include. The features we know - the minaret and the dome - were developed for purely functional reasons. The minaret allowed the muzzein (caller) to be able to send his voice out over the village to let everyone know when it was time to pray. The dome is a natural amplifier, so everyone in the congregation can hear what the imam is saying. I thought that was really fascinating!

This is what the interior of the mosque looks like, before we all sat down to hear what the tour guide had to say. He also taught some of the more agile men how to do one prayer cycle with himself and two of the other volunteers. It was interesting to see the ritual of Muslim prayer and to know that the five prayer times per day are not all of the same length. There are long ones and shorter ones. At one of the Friday prayer services, the imam speaks to the congregation; the men pray here on the ground floor, while the women sit in the balcony, shielded from view by the arabesque. We didn't get to see a live prayer here, but did back in the Fanar building later in the day. It was quite moving to see the men and women going through the rituals. Our tour guide told us that men rush to get into the mosque and as close to the front as possible, as the angels pray three times for those that stand in the first row behind the imam, only once for those in the second row and not at all for those in the other rows!! What a great way to encourage being on time ;-)

And how do the faithful know the time for prayer? Traditionally it was by the position of the sun. In these digital days, there's a display board inside the mosque (this one, anyway!) The five prayer times are known as Fajr (pre-dawn), Shorooq (sunrise), Zuhr (noon), Asr (afternoon), Maghreb (sunset) and Isha (night).

And just as we were leaving the mosque to return to Doha to see the prayer in Fanar, the sun was setting and there were some actual clouds! I haven't seen too many clouds since leaving Canada, that's for sure, so these were even more beautiful :-) As was the dusk silhouetting the minaret, below. It was a fitting end to an enlightening visit.

 

For me, personally, the most interesting part was when the British-accented English-speaking wife of the tour guide invited the women to our own eating area for a snack after the prayer and took off her niqab (the full face veil). She turned out to be a British convert to Islam! She converted in order to marry her husband, so she had some fascintaing things to tell us about her life in Qatar and visiting England as a veiled woman. I don't have a photo to show you of her, as most women who wear the niqab and abaya don't like their photos to be taken. In fact, the tour guide told us at the beginning of the tour NOT to take photos of the women.

All in all, it was the most thought-provoking activity I've done since coming to Doha. I hope you've enjoyed reading about it as much as I have writing about and remembering it!

Apartment Update

As it's the Eid vacation for the College (though not the Muslim world yet!), I have some time to make some updates to this blog.

For example, Mark Hartt, one of my new buddies, came on the first day of the holidays to install the shower rod in my bathroom, so I can now take proper showers. The problem was that I needed an L-shaped rod, which wasn't easy to obtain. In the end, I bought three different shower rod kits and we made something workable out of two of them. For those of you who'd been to my apartment in Montreal, you'll recognize the shower curtain :-)

To give the rod extra support, Mark looped a cord around the light fixture, adding a dash of colour ;-) Thanks for your handyman experise, Mark! 

The other update to tell you about is that I had a roommate until this afternoon. Meet Jorge the Gecko!

Jorge and I had been startling each other in the various rooms of the apartment since I moved in. One afternoon after work, I found him in the kitchen sink, so I took the opportunity to snap some pix of him. Then I realized that he couldn't climb the stainless steel walls and was trapped. So I put one of the shower rod kits into the sink and hoped he'd use it as a ladder to find his way out...

He did, but then seemed to like the kitchen alot and was hiding under the stove (which was okay with me) and the coffeemaker (which really wasn't!) So this afternoon, I got Hilary, another of my new buddies, to remove him from my apartment using a plastic container. So now she's Hilary, Gecko Buster! Who're ya gonna call - Gecko Buster ;-)

The Ramadan Tent

Welcome to my third blog entry, in which you'll finally be able to see something that you might have expected to see when I told you I was going to the Middle East.

As you're no doubt aware, I arrived in Doha during Ramadan, Islam's month-long religious ritual of daytime fasting and nighttime celebration. Here in Qatar, it's against the law for anyone to eat, drink or smoke in public during the fasting hours, which run from sun-up to sun-down. Once the sun goes down, Muslims break their fast with a few dates and some water, then go to the mosque to pray. After that, the family celebrations begin and can last until sunrise the next morning.

The college arranged for all the new staff to experience what the celebrations can be like by taking us to the Ramadan tent in the Ritz Carlton. To give you an idea of how beautiful this hotel is, go to:

http://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/Properties/Doha/PhotoTourPop.htm?p19=DOHRZ

I took a few photos in the lobby, as I was astonished by the beauty of just that area. This is the chandelier that hangs over the lobby and some of the gorgeous flower arrangements there:

The "tent" was set up in the ballroom and was decorated in what I can only describe as Arabian Fantasy style. This was the VIP area, but nobody in attendance that evening was VIP enough ;-)

The rest of us ate at tables like these:

Sorry there aren't any photos of the HUGE buffet that filled the outer room attached to the ballroom... I was too busy stuffing my face with all the delicious European and Middle Eastern food!! My favourite offering was dessert: white chocolate and dark chocolate fountains with marshmallows to dip into the rich flowing decadence!!
 At the entrance to the ballroom anteroom was an exhibtion of Middle Eastern handicrafts. I loved the pashminas and this tea?coffee? set:

My apartment

Welcome to my second posting, everyone! And as the title says, this is going to be about my new apartment. The building I live in was recently given the name of "La Palace 5" and I can attest that it deserves that title :-) The floors have marble tiles on them, the furniture is quite comfortable and the owner really is trying to make the place into something worthy of living in.

To start with, here's what it looks like as you come into my apartment, #204:

This is the dining/living room. To me, it looks like something from a hotel room, but the longer I live here, the more I'll make it my own!

Here are two closer views of the living room. For those who know the TV I had in Montreal, take a good look at what I have now, which also has satellite cable:

As you come into my new home, on the left is the kitchen:

The kitchen is actually large enough to have a small table and chair set, but I prefer the more formal set in the open living area - closer to the flat screen TV ;-)

This is how small the washing machine/dryer combo is:

The drum can hold a bedsheet, a shirt and maybe a couple of pairs of underwear and that's about all! The washer takes about an hour, but the dryer can take up to two hours to get things nearly dry. The longest cycle is the cool down, which lasts forever and can't be skipped if you use the dryer function!

And on the right side when you enter my place, there's the powder room:

I haven't had the chance to make it more welcoming, but I did turn off the bidet water hose function on the side as I've been told by others who've lived here for awhile that the water tank feeding the hose can explode, gushing water all over the place!

There's a hallway leading to the main bathroom, guest bedroom and mistress bedroom. The main bathroom looks like this:

As you can see, there's an actual bidet in the main bathroom, and I've also turned off the water supply to that, just in case! I'm really paranoid about finding a foot of water everywhere in my place when I get home from work...

And this is the bathtub. Can you spot what's missing for the shower?

Maybe it's hard to tell with the door on the right, but there's no shower curtain! It's very hard to find a shower rod that fits this space, as it needs to form an L-shape. There are holes in the walls where another tenant has attached a rod, so it CAN be done. It's just a question of me finding the right shower rod on one of my many shopping trips!

And then there's the guest bedroom. Right now I use it more as a place to hang the laundry and store all the empty boxes from the small appliances I've bought, but if anyone comes to visit, I promise the room will be much nicer than this:

And here's the mistress bedroom. I've made it more personal mostly by casting my jewelry all over the top of the vanity. It actually has a stool! This bedroom is actually much smaller than the guest bedroom, but I prefer that because it's cosier.

And finally, just to prove to you that this is where I'm living, here's me this morning, doing a household chore:

And that's it from me for today. I hope you enjoyed this look at my new home. I will eventually take some photos of the outside area around my apartment building, but for the moment, it's just too hot and humid!! The forecast has been the same every day since I got here: sunny, hot and humid, with a temperature of 43 or 44 degrees celsius, with a humidex of about 50 degrees celsius. So you'll forgive me for not going out into the sunshine just to take photos ;-)

My first days in Doha

Hi there!
I know I promised to start this blog as soon as I could, and this is the time. I've been here for a week now and got a laptop on the weekend, so now I'm good to go.

The flights from Halifax to Doha took forever, it seemed. The flights were great, except for the one from London to Doha when I large family with several young children were seated right in front of me. All was well until near the end of 6.5 hours of the flight, when the kids got antsy and bored... only their cute Cockney accents saved me from doing some disciplining - the parents and cousins seemed oblivious to the noise.

All my luggage (even the one I paid extra to take along) made it all the way with me, which was a miracle. But I knew I wasn't in Canada anymore when my glasses fogged up as I walked from the plane to the bus taking us to the airport terminal. 

The first two days I spent in the Movenpick Hotel, which was heavenly. This was the view from my room window:

It's Ramadan right now, so these tents are set up where people gather to celebrate after sundown, when they break their fast. Apparently the college's HR people are trying to arrange for us to attend one of these celebrations soon. You can see the Corniche in the background, along with the harbour area.

And this is what I saw in one of the corners of my hotel room:

It's to show Muslims which direction Mecca is in! And as it's Ramadan now, it's illegal for anyone to eat, drink or smoke in public from sunup to sundown because devout Muslims fast during that time and we have to be respectful of their observances. So we all have to be very careful about finding a private place to take a sip of water or eat. At the university, they're providing us with an enclosed area where we can't be seen having coffee and lunch during the fasting hours. And Doha is very quiet now compared to what it's usually like... which is chaos on the roads, apparently! Once the Eid holiday is over, I'll get to see the real Doha.


What I have seen during the day is usually filtered through the heat haze. So everything looks like this:

This is the view from my hotel window, looking towards the centre of the city. According to what I've been told, most of these very tall buildings were built only in the past five years. When the college was originially set up here in 2001, there were only a few buildings higher than three storeys.


And that's where I'll end my first blog entry. I hope you enjoyed it and I'll let you know when my next entry is ready for viewing :-)