Monday, January 31, 2011

The Bear went over the Mountain!

I know a lot of people complain about living in Qatar but I must scream out over those complainers that "Qatar is cool!!!!!". Last Saturday we went to the Sheikh Faisal Museum with some friends of ours from school. The museum is actually the personal collection of Sheikh Faisal, a near family member of the Emir of Qatar. It's a very large museum, it must be to be able to contain all the boats and cars, and even an airplane, he's collected. My favorite collectible of his was this torture device that was left out front. The boys had a fun time sticking their feet in and pretending they were trapped.



After enjoying the museum and saying farewell to our friends we went to explore the grounds. If you must know something about me it is that I love to explore. I must discover what that cluster of trees is hiding. I must know where that road leads. I must find a way to that mosque that looks like an LDS temple. I must walk through the desert just as the bear went over the mountain, just to see what he could see. It's reassuring to see things for myself. So many people see things so differently than me, that I find it difficult to take their words for it. The kids ran around inside those huge barrels and no one came to complain. Back and forth, back and forth. Then we entered the forest. There were irrigation ditches that the kids sent bark and sticks down. Atticus and I hunted the peacocks. Well, not really hunted. But we chased them so abruptly that they flew up into the trees. I'd never seen a peacock fly until then. They are gorgeous! We chased them over and over again. On our way out of the forest we walked along a row of eucalyptus trees, the trees of my childhood. I used to make forts in them with my friends. The smell of the leaves brought it all back. I try to share the smells with my kids. It's so strange how a smell can mean so much to me, but for them it has no meaning. Just a smell and that's it. As we chased our last peacocks we discovered hundreds of grasshoppers jumping through the fields. Now I know where to go with my glass jar before we go fishing. I've made these hats. The ugly red and green one was my first crocheted hat. I'm too embarrassed to wear it in public because my neighbor made fun of me when she saw me put it on. Red and green? Well, those were the only colors I had at the time. I'm becoming obsessed with crochet.


Hector helps me carry my watering jug. We've got 9 tomatoes growing on our plants. The plants look sickly but the tomatoes continue to grow. We'll see how big they get.
And lastly, in our great endeavors to raise these boys of ours, we are beginning a stuctured education towards manhood. Our first lesson:
How to make a "man with hat"(which is basically and egg cooked inside a piece of toast, with a toast circle on the top.)
Next lessons: all the other types of eggs and how to tie shoelaces




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