Down the rabbit hole

A lot of the time I am very quiet. I have a lot on my mind, but I don’t vocalise it.

 I battle to make friends because of it. I know shocking…I’m so personable and approachable. I don’t think my RBF or RMF, resting Mel face (as Chris likes to call it) helps me much either.  

I have noticed that we haven’t made a lot of friends here yet. Sure people are nice and friendly, but there’s not much of a “hanging out” culture…or other people are hanging out and we don’t know about it.

Well…I have been thinking…dangerous business I know.

Perhaps if I share some of my thoughts in a comfortable setting with friends and family I will get used to it and start sharing with other people…UGH, other people…see what I mean?!

So I have compiled a bunch of thoughts I have had while in Oman. I have even got some photos to go with my thoughts.

1.    Who would buy a car this colour? Gross (Seems like loads of people have cars this colour) Hmmm…Do they buy this car to be camouflaged in the dunes? Oh, I’ve got it! They don’t want to wash their cars so much, the colour disguises the dirt…smart.

2.    My students often do this to me. “Teacher one minute, one minute.” They hold their hand out like that…so if this is one-minute…then what is two minutes?

3.    I often see this bus outside our flat. For some reason it makes me think of Resident Evil. I wonder if the people that take the bus to work pretend that they are living in a post-apocalyptic zombie-infested wasteland. Which is quite appropriate if you can’t stand your job! And if you are a teacher because sometimes it feels like the students are "eating" your brain. 

4.    These are our curtains! I’ve become the box lady in the story my grandmother used to tell me as a child.

I don’t suppose I should share these thoughts with my colleagues. They might think I’m “cray” (as Jurie likes to say)

But I’m glad I got to share with all of you because even though you might think I’m “cray” you are stuck with me. And if you think of leaving me…I’ll find you.

Out and about

Wadi Bani Khalid

On Friday we drove about 2 hours to get to Wadi Bani Khalid. A wadi is a river. Not all Wadis flow and some dry up but apparently the water flows underground???? And then when the rains come (around May) they fill up again.

Well, to swimWadi Bani Khalid flows year round and people go there to swim. We arrived and it truly looked like an Oasis. We had a delicious lunch with our colleagues and then swimming. Jurie and I looked for the deeper area to swim but our colleague took us first to a shallow area. We saw fishies swimming around and we splish splashed. When we said we wanted to go to the deeper area we were asked if we could swim because the area we wanted to go to was 10ft deep. We assured our colleagues that we could swim and off Jurie and I trekked on our own. We didn't swim at the deep area because while we splish, splashed in the shallow area some other brave souls went swimming there.

I didn't feel comfortable swimming there because I noticed that everyone swimming were males. I know I'm not usually the type to shy away from stuff like that but here I get a weird vibe and so we walked back to our picnic site. We sat around until sunset and then went off home. We stopped for some tea with cinnamon in it, yum yum!

Movies in Muscat

On Saturday, we went to the movies. We both really wanted to see Logan. We set off to Muscat early in the morning, made it in record time and decided to take a quick walk around the park for Pokemon hunting. The cinema is about 6 minutes away from the park. We got to the shopping centre, got our tickets and looked around at the many choices of snacks. You can get Pepsi, Fanta and Mountain Dew as slushies!!!! Also, we could choose our flavour of popcorn, salt, caramel or chilli cheese and you can even order nachos. Going to the movies in Muscat is an expensive affair but still, the seats were super comfortable and I enjoyed the movie, Jurie not so much.  We then went shopping afterwards and finally stopped off at the park on the way home.

All in all, the weekend was quite a good one!

The Ibra Festival.

The Ibra Festival (I'm not quite sure if that is what it's actually called) started on the 2nd of March and runs until the 22nd. 20 days of pure fun. It is in the park that Jurie and I walk to work through, we saw them setting up before the festival even started.  The festival runs from late afternoon, 4 pm, until late in the evening, 11 pm.

We were both curious about the festival and waited awhile before we went, trying to avoid the crowds. I asked my students if they were going.

"Are you going to the Ibra festival this weekend?"

They all pulled their faces.

"Teacher, no!"

I was surprised. "Why?"

"Muscat festival is better than Ibra festival."

"I know but this is Ibra, not Muscat."

They still looked disgusted at the prospect of going. I just shrugged and said.

"Well, I'm going."

I was a little taken aback by their reaction,  proud of my student for using a comparative correctly (which they had just learnt) but still shocked. There is nothing else to do in Ibra, this is the most exciting thing that has happened here since it rained when we first came here.  Yet my students were not impressed.

Needless to say, Jurie and I set out for the festival on Friday night. It was really busy, the most people I have seen in Ibra. The entrance fee was 200 baisal each (R 7) and there were rides, a tent for people selling stuff, awesome lanterns, yummy food and carnie games.  It was almost like The Lion's Show in Sheppy except it didn't have a beer tent and let's be honest that's the only thing the Lion Show has going for them these days. But can you imagine going to the Lion's Show and the entrance fee being R7?

The festival wasn't big but it is something nice for families to do. The kids love the slides and this weird train thing called Nessie. I have a feeling all my students are going to go to this festival because like I said before what else are they going to do in Ibra besides study and drink tea?

Getting away to Muscat

It takes about 2 hours to drive to Muscat from Ibra. I'm sure I have said this before when we first came here. They are still busy building the highway to Muscat, since 2010, and there are sections of the highway that has been completed. This is the nice area to drive on. There is a section of road, about 24km to be exact, that winds through the mountains. It's a beautiful drive and we really enjoy it, what we don't enjoy is the speeding from the other cars and the overtaking around blind corners.

We went to Muscat twice in one week. We went once to go get our liquor license. That sounds like we are trying to sell alcohol here when in fact, it means that we are allowed to buy alcohol here. It's a little blue book, that you take with you when you buy alcohol from the select shops that sell it. You first have to get permission from your employers before you get the license, you give them a form to sign.

We might as well stick a sign on our foreheads saying "HEY WE WANT TO GET OUR PARTY ON IN OMAN!"

Then you have to take that form and other documents to the police station, you pay the amount you would like to spend on alcohol per month(the more you send the more you look like an alcoholic) and then TA-DA you have the license (and also a few judgmental looks from the police officers)

You then have to find the select stores that sell the alcohol. We decided to do that rather on the weekend. The weekend came and we drove halfway to Muscat and realised that we had forgotten the alcohol license!!! We had to drive all the way back to fetch it. Desperate times!

We had a good time in Muscat. Not because we were buying alcohol, but because we ate good food, we relaxed and we could play Pokemon in a park that had more than one Poke-stop.

I bought some cupcakes, we had some pizza. Then on our way home, we went to the alcohol shop. We got lost trying to find the place because it's tiny and doesn't even look like a shop.  Think the size of our kitchen in Port Shepstone.  That's how big the whole shop is. We bought our 60 Rials worth of alcohol for the month, (which isn't much) Then we went to the mall. Which also for some reason doesn't look like the malls at home from the outside it looks like a warehouse. They have an H&M, Pandora, a huge hypermarket, a Tim Horton's and so much more.

We don't think we will go to Muscat every weekend but it's a nice place to get away to. We had fun but Jurie says he likes the remote place, things are cheaper here and I suppose we will save more money because I won't spend it all on R160 cupcakes.

My very expensive cupcake but it was so worth it!

These horsies live at the park 

The famous liquor permit