Our first Thursday night! TGIT! Holy day is Friday so the work-week goes Sunday to Thursday. We loaded up the car and headed to "Souk Street" in the Seeb district. The street is about 9 blocks long and has many brightly lit storefronts to shop in and many restaurants to try authentic food. We ate dinner at the New Tasty out on the patio and then found a bakery to buy some Omani sweets to take home for the week. Layla is bugging us about finding a Henna parlour;...

We went out for dinner to the Turkish Palace, an amazing restaurant that serves the greatest Hummus and Baba Ganoush ever! It was here we met more of our colleagues and had a great night of laughs and stories. After dinner, we just had to head over to Sebastian and Julietta's house to see their birds; something Leanne was not too thrilled about. Layla got to hold them and feed them right from her hands. We left their house fairly late and got a little lost tryi...

Our first visit to the school had us going through a brief orientation followed by a tour. The building is definitely amazing and is much different than schools at home. We are looking forward to meeting the students for the first time and seeing their reaction to meeting us. We have 1.5 weeks of 'teacher time' before school starts on August 31. It will be a very busy time!

We got up early and met our school bus to take us on a tour of the Grand Mosque. It was an amazingly hot day and we were sweating just thinking of having to wear 'modest' attire. Our complaining was soon forgotten as we witnessed one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen. The Grand Mosque was built in 6 years and has amazingly ornate carpeting and wall panelling as well as ceiling carvings. The chandeliers are Swarovski Crystal and actually contain a m...

We arrived in Chicago to change planes and there we discovered that we were the minority and would be for a long time! We boarded the plane to Doha and from there, on to Muscat. It was on this very long flight (13 hours) that Leanne had coffee spilled on her by our flight attendant and was taken to the back of the plane to be looked at by a doctor on board. Our arrival in Doha saw a golf cart waiting to take us to the airport medical centre where Leanne was tre...