Back In The Blog! October 2007

Well, I could spend the entire blog recounting a slurry of reasons why Riddles In Oman has been in stalemate for the past year, but I won't. Last year was tough all around.

I do want to dedicate this blog to the memory of our very close friend, Dennis Koi, who lost a 13 month battle to brain cancer in March.

He continues to be an incredible inspiration in our lives, and we miss him dearly.







To Catch You Up...
It was wonderful to spend time with everyone we had the opportunity to see this past summer, but when we returned to Muscat, we were ready to get here! And the weather upon our return was incredible! Really! I would check the weather in Texas, and many days it was hotter in Austin than HERE! Perfect for fruit popcicles:


From mid-August to early October, we only had about two or three weeks total of strong heat. And the days and evenings have been down-right pleasant for the past couple of weeks. The surf has not been what I have expected, but, well, when the weather is nice here, it is time to CAMPING! We've made two big excursions, one to the "green mountain", Jebel Akhdar, and another to a beautiful beach about an hour southeast of Muscat, Seifa (pronounced SEE-fa), on the coast of the Gulf of Oman.

Before we get into the wild adventures, we do have an exciting piece of news: Emma started school this year!!! And Kai is in kindergarten. Here are some cute pictures from the first day:




School has been going quite smoothly for all of us. Our classes are great and Kai and Emma LOVE their teachers. The hardest thing about starting the new year has been Emma's zeal for school--for the first month she was dressed and ready by 6:45 a.m., before I'd even had a sip of coffee!!



Jebel Akhdar, Mid-September
Jebel Akhdar, or Green Mountain, is quite a spectacular place to go. It's 2400 meters or so above sea level, meaning cooler temperatures in the daytime, and surprisingly cold temps. at night. It is where many of Oman's fruits are grown, most popularly, pomegranates. And MAN are those pomis tasty! The terrain is much like the Texas Hill Country, hilly and rocky, and the trees are brambly and rugged...and OLD.

We planned a small camping trip with a "few" families--41 people in total!! Despite the crowd, it was a fantastic weekend. The kids ran around like untethered savages, and the parents, for the most part, had an opportunity to relax and let the kids go wild in the wilderness. Strangely though, a few of the adults had brief flashes of scenes from Golding's Lord of the Flies, the way we were chased away from a massive, old tree the kids had commandeered. We all made it off the mountain, though, and lived to share the pictures:













Seifa, Eid 2007 (Mid-October this year for all of you non-Middle Eastern folks)


Mid-September also brought with it, Ramadan, the Muslim Holy month of fasting. Muslims follow a lunar calendar, so every Muslim year is eleven days shorter than the Western, Roman calendar. Thus, every year Ramadan comes eleven days earlier--it was October/November two years ago. And it is kind of hard to go camping and the such when we want to try to pay practicing Muslims some respect and not eat in front of them, so we took little trips to the closest beach and decided to make the second big camping trip over Eid Fitr, the celebratory end of Ramadan.

We spent two days camping with some South African friends of ours, although we made a few more friends during the trip!


The brittle star was one of a few "pets" we encountered; others included: hermit crabs (by the hundreds! Literally--one night Kai and Emma had two buckets full! If we only had tourist junk stores in the souqs here...We'd have been rich!!), sea cucumbers, sting rays, a sea turtle, a sea snake (yes, banded), spiny sea urchins, and loads of small fish. I had Kai snorkeling for the first time this year. He was gung-ho about it!
We would swim out with a body board and he would kick around over the reef until he was tired, then use the board for a rest break! Emma would cheer him on from the beach or the shallows. She had fun in little shore dribblers with the body board when we returned--yes! She's getting into surfing now too!! I'm so proud.





The "over feather weight" caught some surf as well:


(I am riding a piece of high voltage cable housing we found on the beach--remnant of Cyclone Gonu. Desperate times call for desperate measures...)

Sultan Qaboos al Said graciously extended Eid a day longer than anticipated, so we made the most of it and took a little 1/2 day venture to a couple of towns about 40 minutes away: Fanja and Bidbid. We basically just wanted to explore them, and we found a neat old city above Fanja and an old castle in Bidbid.





Well, that pretty much catches up with us, for this year anyway. This blog is really fun to put together; I am going to try my best not to allow the trials and twists life throws at all of us interfere with sending you a heads up about us from time to time. We have National Day holiday coinciding with Thanksgiving, so you might want to keep a look out for another issue of Riddles In Oman. Unless the surf picks up before then...

Cheers!