Learning to Sail

I know that I haven't posted in a while.  We have had some good times recently and we also moved to our new villa.  At times life in Doha gets me down and I suppose I didn't want to write about it all.  But after posting a couple of weeks ago about how proud I was of Iain and his attempts to learn to sail I thought I would write me about it here.

Iain, through his school, is learning to sail at the Regatta Sailing Academy, which operates out of the Intercontinental Hotel in Doha.  This is his second term and he is really starting to make progress.  The lesson last 90 minutes.  For the first 20 minutes they have a chat in the boat house with their instructor where they are told what they need to achieve on the water for that day and any how-to and reminders.  Then they go out water for 40 minutes.  Then they com back in, but the boats away and have a wrap up chat in the boat house.

In the first term he primarily went out with 3 other students on fun boats, which are very stable and easy to sail.  Now he has progressed up to a Laser Pico.  This past week Iain sailed they entire lesson with one of his friends, but his friend didn't want to do any of the work and was happy to be along for the ride.  Michael and I are so proud of Iain and the progress he has made.  We think that if there is one sport to learn while living here in Doha, then sailing is it.  You can truly sail in gorgeous weather 365 days a year.

                     Playing in the sand, waiting for the sailing lesson to start.

                                                               Getting ready to set off...

                                                      Getting everything ready...

                                                                      Off we go...

                                                                         We did it!

                                                     Looking every bit of the part...

                     And who can resist a photo of Arran and his good friend Hugo dancing on the beach....

Learning at home

Since moving to Doha, and probably because I no longer work full time, I have been able to focus more time and energy into the boys' education.  For Arran that means lots of playing with things and talking about letters, colours, numbers and shapes that may relate to the thing we are playing with.  This morning it was, colours, shapes and counting how many shapes we needed.  Toy selection here is Doha isn't fabulous, but our local Toys R Us does have a good supply of Melissa & Doug wooden toys and puzzles.  A while ago I bought a shapes one in which we use 4 shapes to create pictures.  Arran really enjoys working on this one, and now has making the pictures aced, so we have been working on naming all the shapes as he builds the picture, counting how many of each shape we need to make the picture and what colour the shapes are that we need.  We also did some work on the alphabet song and pointing to each letter as we sing it.  Needless to say mummy is very proud of her gorgeous, little 3 year-old!  That's right Arran is 3.  He turned 3 on March 18.  We had lots of celebrations and we were in England at the time.  Where does the time go...

The cutest thing I think Iain has ever said

We are currently in England for a week.  We are combining Iain's six month check up with his consultant dermatologist at Great Ormond St Hospital (GOSH) with a week of visiting friends.  It is just boys and I. Our day at GOSH is in a couple of days time so in the mean time we have been playing catch-up.

On Sunday we went to St Mary's, our church for the 7 years we lived in Watford.  One of my dear friends was speaking to Iain and thanking him for bringing some sun with him to Watford.  Iain's reply 'I packed some into my suitcase just for you.'  What a gorgeous reply!

Books and the lack of them

I love to read.  I love to read to my children.  Iain is learning to read and adores being read to.  During the process of packing up our house in England and deciding what to bring and not to bring Doha, Michael was very clear on one point; bring all books.  Why? Well books; I should say good books, are hard to come by in Doha.  If you can find what you are looking for you will tend to pay 2 or 3 times the price you would in the States or the UK and there are no public libraries.

Our container arrived from England in mid October and we have all our books, the problem is we don't have enough space in the flat to put them out, or enough bookcases.  I have a wall of packing boxes in our dining area just waiting for when we move in April to a villa.


We also have a very long journey to and from school each day.  The round trip takes approximately 90 minutes.  This can vary by 10-20 minutes more or less depending on traffic etc.  I was starting to get sick of listening to music and particularly the boy's choices.  It got me thinking and I remembered that in April '09, in preperation for some long car journeys the boys and I were gong to make I had purchased a collection of 3 of Roald Dahl's books on cd.  The boys and I really enjoyed those.  I began to research online an economical way to continue to download books for the boys to enjoy.  That is when I stumbled across www.audible.co.uk.

For a reasonable £15 fee each month I can download 2 audio-book of my choice and get a good discount on any other purchases.   Considering that any book here in Doha would cost me at least £18.00 to get two for £15.00 was already a savings, a blight small, but it does add up.  The real bonus is that the books would be stored in my itunes so they could be played on the computer, downloaded to my ipod or burned to cd for the boys to listen to in the car or at night.

So far we have listened to three Tumtum and Nutmeg stories by Emily Bearn, The Battle for Christmas by Jeremy Strong, plus the Roald Dahl books numerous times.  Today I downloaded Peter Pan by J.M Barrie and The Treasure Seekers  by Edith Nesbit. Iain was very excited to learn this morning, as we had just finished the third Tumtum and Nutmeg story that I was downloading more stories today. 

Because we spend so much time is the car it is a wonderful was for the boys to be exposed to good literature.  It also keeps our car journeys calm and relaxed especially as I have to really concentrate on driving, because the standard of driving here is pretty terrible.  My one tip about audio-books, always, always download/purchase unabridged versions.

A Trip to the Hospital

In my last post I mentioned that our family motto for this year is to 'Try, try, try'.  Well I never thought a trip to the hospital and learning the ropes of a new medical system would be one of the first new things to try.

Two weeks ago, about five minutes before Arran and I were heading out to a friends for the morning I heard Arran fall in the hallway and start crying.  It wasn't major crying on the scale of things, just a soft 'I've hurt myself a bit crying'.  I was in my bedroom and I called to Arran asking him if was he OK.  He replied no, so I asked him to come to me so I could kiss it better.  Well he walked into the bedroom holding his hand to his forehead over a deep, gushing wound, with blood pouring down his face.  In less then five minutes I had to mentally change gears from going to a friends to getting something on the gash and to the local paediatric emergency centre. Isn't it great how us mums can change gears so quickly!

When we walked into the paediatric centre we were seen right away because Arran's face was covered in blood.  They didn't even ask to see our health card or what our names were.  We were taken to the treatment area where 2 doctors and 4 nurses fussed over him.  They inspected the gash on his forehead, cleaned him up and bandaged it as best they could, while he was screaming with his arms flapping about everywhere. Then they informed us we had to go to Hamad Hospital (the main hospital in the city).  So back in the car I went with Arran still crying and drove the 10 minutes to Hamad's emergency section.

We entered the hospital via the women's entrance and went straight to reception where they took one look at Arran, with a big bandage on his head and evidence of the large amount of blood on him and again we were sent straight to the triage area.  Though this time I did have to hand over Arran's medical card.  Within five minutes we were seen by the triage nurse and then a doctor who decided the would was to deep for him to stitch up and he was going to send us to a surgeon.

15 minutes later Arran was being stitch up by a surgeon who assured me that we was using the finest needle and thread he could to reduce scaring and that he would be doing to layers of stitches, one for the muscle and one for the skin to prevent the scar from being to think and deep.

Arran screamed throughout the procedure, even with local anesthetic.  He cycled through his favouite phases when he has to do something he doesn't like.  "Leave me alone.", " Get off me.",   "I don't like it.", "I want mummy.", and I tired.", which he only uses in extreme circumstances.  I just had to sit by the side and listen to all of this which I watch two nurses struggle to hold him down, even after they had swaddled him in a massive sheet.  He was still able to get his arms out and try and push the surgeon and nurses off him. 

Two weeks on and he is healing well.  The scar looks good, not at all raised or lumpy.  We are starting to rub bio-oil  on it a few times a day and when we get back from Scotland we will go see a plastic surgeon.  Since the world doesn't need any more Harry Potters and his current favourite movie is Bolt, we have takereferring to Arran as our own little Bolt.

This is the evening of the day it happened

This is the wound 2 weeks later, while enjoying a hot chocolate at The Pearl.

Qatar's Carbon Footprint

I found an interesting article today on the Guardian's website regarding Qatar's carbon footprint.  For the American's following this blog the Guardian is the left-wing, liberal paper that likes to publish the most articles on the environment.  It is not the only paper I read.  I like to read all sides of the argument so I typically try to read three different UK papers during the week.

The article talks about the announcement by Qatar Airways, the national airline, that they will start investigating the potential use of biofuels in their fleet, for use sometime in the future, if viable.  The author of the article argues that what is the point as it isn't going to reduce the country's carbon emissons because the airline is going to increase capicity.  It also states that;

Qataris have the highest carbon footprint on the planet. The country's per-capita emissions from burning fossil fuels are way ahead of any other nation, and almost three times those of everybody's poster bad boy, the US. This is all the more extraordinary since Qatar's electricity is mostly generated from burning natural gas, which has half the emissions of coal.

For a country of just over 2 million people this is pretty damming. The thing is being energy efficient in Qatar has no financial benefit so people aren't interested.  Qatar is the only thing that matters. 

For example the urban run-about of choice by Qatari nationals is a V8 petrol (unleaded) land cruiser which struggles to do 8 miles per gallon.  Fuel is subsidised by the government so we pay .12p a litre or $0.71 a gallon, there is no impact on your wallet to choose a fuel efficient car.  Our water costs are included in the monthly rent and we pay £10.00 or  $16.00 a month for the electricity we use (we have enough electrical appliances to fill a four bedroom house in a 2 bed flat, plus central a/c which is on for 10 months of the year, though we do turn it off when we leave the flat and at night,).

The article certainly makes for pretty damming reading, but the thing is the majority of people here just don't care. If you are environmentally minded it is difficult to make an impact.   I don't really know what we are doing to make a difference, however small,  though I did recently install energy saving light bulbs into all the lamps.  Oh and we don't leave the hot water on all day.  OK, that needs some further explanation.  In our flat we have three separate water heaters.  One for each bathroom and one for the kitchen.  They each have their own switch to activate and in order to have enough hot water for a shower, bath or to wash the dishes you need to switch on the hot water about 20 minutes before you want the hot water.  They do not have timers, and as most people can't be bothered to remember to switch on the heater the 20-30 minutes before you need it they leave it switched on all day.  This is the same as leaving an electrical kettle (with a never ending supply of water) on and the water just bubbling away, all day, every day.

As I said interesting reading about the very different place we are living.

A New Year and how to continue our new start...

If I had to sum up the year 2009 for us I would say it was a really tough year with lots of difficulties and changes that has ended with lots of positives.  I don't want to dwell on the things that were tough.  A lot of what was tough is a lot better now or no longer an issue for us and more importantly God has taught us a number of things during those tough times about us all and our relationship with Him.

Now onto 2010... I think you could say our family motto for this year is to try, try, try.  We are living in a unique part of the world which means we get to do lots of things we wouldn't have the opportunity to do elsewhere.  At the moment we are enjoying the sun, its glorious heat (which I know in 4 months time I will be moaning about), our crystal clear blue skies and water.  Hopefully you will have noticed the new blog theme, I think it accurately portrays where we are living in the moment; barren flat desert, palm trees, blue skies and blue water. 

So what have we tried so far 1 week into the new year?  Well last night, curtsey of Iain's school we got to attend the Qatar Tennis Open, for free!  This is now the first ranking event of the year on the ATP Tour and it was a very good evening.  We got to see Federer and Nadal win their respective matches quickly and in style.  We had good seats and I got some good photos of Federer.  In fact Michael and Iain will also be going to the semi finals on Friday, curtsey of Iain's school.  They are very excited.

Last weekend we did a lot of driving around the city, exploring new parts.  Well one of our goals for the day was to find the camel souq.  We succeeded and spent some time driving around seeing thousands of camels in all stages of life.  I say driving because the smell was completely overwhelming.  The boys really enjoyed it and on occasion were able to get out and get up close to the camels and also to the massive sheep market we found.  If you wanted to buy a camel or a sheep you just walked up and choose and then if it was a camel it was put into a trailer but the sheep were mostly for eating so they were carried over the road to the slaughter house and you just needed to wait while everything was done for you and the meat brought out all packaged nicely. 

Coming up I will be trying out a new hair salon, always a very scary moment for me as I don't like trying new salons, once I have found someone I stick with them for ages, but needs must in this case and my hair needs cutting!  Also I am planning on spending a day at a spa soon, Michael bought me some vouchers for Christmas to Sharq Village & Spa.  Michael showed me where it was last weekend and we went inside to have a look around and one of the consultants gave me a tour and it looks fantastic!  I promise a post about that day.  During the tour it made me think of three dear friends in England with whom I have had a few spa days/weekends with, and I thought that it would be the perfect place for a girly weekend away (Claire, June, Lizanne)!!

Personally, I have joined the women's bible study at our church.  Today was the welcome morning and study kickoff.  We will be working through Priscilla Shirer's One in a million.  I am looking forward to working though this study, I have the impression it will be rigorous and challenging.  I am also really looking forward to getting to know the women at our church here in Doha.  Some of you will already know this, but making friends here in Doha has been hard and slow but now that the holidays are over and people are typically in town until the summer exodus it should get better.  

At the end of the month we will be travelling to Scotland for my mother-in-laws 70th birthday!  We are really looking forward to seeing the whole Litster family, especially Michael as it has been over a year since he has seen his brothers.  We will up in the Highlands for 4 days then Edinburgh for 3.  It will be freezing cold but really nice to have  a break.   My wonderful sisters-in-laws are currently raiding their closets for Iain and Arran's winter wardrobe. Bring on 2010 the year of try, try, try!