Break Dancing, Storm Chasing, and Becoming a Card Carrying Member of the State of Qatar

Well folks, another week is in the books. What a week it was. I had the privilege of finally meeting Varun's cousin Nive (who is incredibly cool), received my resident permit, attended a break dancing performance, finished a season of the Newsroom (awesome show), went to a Carnegie Mellon talent show, and participated in my first major leadership workshop at HBKU.

Let's start with the break dancing performance, because it was pretty unreal. A few weeks ago Arooj and I were walking to lunch in the Student Center and tickets were being sold for a show sponsored by Red Bull called "Flying Bach". It is basically a break dancing crew that performs to classical music. Think Step Up if their soundtrack was a piano. Of course we bought tickets for it, and I am SO glad we did. Check out this clip about the show (ignore that it's not in English):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T6uTH1gkfc
Not too bad for your casual Wednesday night! We even ran into a work colleague, Bachar, while we were there and went out to dinner after the show.

A HUGE part of this week was finally receiving my Resident Permit. This basically means that I am officially allowed to live in Doha, despite already having a work visa. This is also the next step to getting a driver's license, which I am hoping to do this week. Not having a car is becoming more of an inconvenience as I am

desperately wanting to get out on some adventures. Although there is some limitations in the things to do in Doha, I want to try some things like scuba diving, kayaking, beaches, desert camping, etc. I should be able to keep myself entertained for quite some time. This Resident Permit also allows me to now apply for an exit visa to be able to travel out of the country. We have the second Eid holiday coming up at the end of October and I am looking to travel during that week. There is a slim chance that I will be back in the states at that time attending a conference in Denver and then swinging to JMU's Homecoming, but nothing has been confirmed yet. If not the states, I will start brainstorming some travel in the region for that week.

As you all may have guessed, weather in Doha is pretty consistent. You can basically bank on the fact that it will be sunny. Every day, nearly 365 days a year. Now to many this would sound AMAZING, no rain to worry about, being able to be outside most of the year, etc. And while the sunshine does have its benefits, especially as fall comes around you long for some overcast clouds and rainfall. And this weekend we got just that. Wil, Arooj, and I were at the mall trying to pick up a few items and we noticed it was overcast outside and the wind was picking up. Anywhere else in the world we would have been mad that it was going to rain the rest of the day, but we were PUMPED. We got in Wil's car and became storm chasers. The radio told us there was rain on Salwa Road, so to Salwa Road we went. As we chased the storm we caught a few glimses of lightning and found a few raindrops. In the end we didn't find the rainstorm we were searching for and headed back home. Immediately upon getting back to the complex, we noticed puddles all over the place! Evidently it rained pretty heavy at home while we were out chasing. Looks like we will have to wait another few months for some real rain action!

Another major event for the week was my first Doha hair cut. Not only was a hair cut 20 QR (basically $5) the barber was incredibly skilled and it was one of the best haircuts of my life. He was incredibly detailed used a buzzer, scissors, and straight razor for the cut. If I had wanted to add a complete shave to this experience it would have been another 20 QR! The same kind of service would be at least $100 back in the states. Add this to the ever expanding list of things that are much cheaper in Doha, which is balanced out by the things that are insanely expensive.

As far as the whole job thing goes, we hosted a Student Leadership Workshop this weekend. It was my first major HBKU event and it was organized in partnership with all the branch campuses. We had about 70 students attend and we facilitated a personaility assessment (True Colors) and then had student presenters for a variety of break out sessions. It was really interesting to see how leadership programming is done here as well as some of the views on leadership held by the students. From what I observed today, it seemed that students identified leaders based on positions or the person who was "in charge". There is definitely some work to be done to expose students to the idea of leadership being more relational and collaborative as opposed to positional. I am starting to work on a leadership program that will be HBKU wide, but this is very much in the early stages. I look forward to having more conversations with colleagues and students to develop some intentional leadership programs here in Doha.

That should just about do it for now. I have a big week ahead. Hopefully I will be getting my license and starting to go car shopping. We are attending an Oktoberfest event at the Inter Continental hotel on Wednesday night, and might even get into some desert camping this weekend. So stay tuned for next week to hear about all of those adventures. Looking forward to hearing from you all this week. Talk soon.

Are you ready for some Football?!?!

With the first day of Fall having passed this week it brought back a series of memories from back home. The crisp morning air, the changing colors of leaves, pumpkins, weekends filled with Football, Homecoming, and the incredible tailgates. With all that being said, we brought in the Fall season with a cool 100 degree Saturday afternoon here in Doha. To be honest with you, it has begun to cool down here as Doha approaches its "winter" season which will have temperatures in the 70s and 80s as opposed to the summer with temperatures in the 90s and 100s. Since my arrival the temperatures have been bearable and I missed the worst heat of the summer in July and August.

As I mentioned, Fall for me is synonymous with Football for me (American football that is). Saturdays are spent catching the best of College Games and following the JMU Dukes, while Sundays involve an NFL marathon from 1pm until Midnight. Due to the 7 hour time difference, football season has been mostly absent from my weekly routine. This week was a bit difference as I woke up at 3am (after going to sleep at 1am) on Friday morning to catch the Giants v. Carolina game live with the NFL Game Game Pass with a fellow Giants fan, Kevin from New Jersey. I met Kevin through work and plan on catching as many Giants games as we can this year. We watched the game, which kicked off at 3:20am, which we chowed on McDonald's, had a few beers, and drank coffee to keep awake. I have never watched a live NFL game while catching a sunrise...only in Doha!

This past week was the first time that I really felt comfortable at work and have started to share my insights and opinions more. It took me a while to navigate the systems that are in place at HBKU and I have at least a general understanding of how it operates. The branch campus model here is really interesting as each of the campuses operate some ways in complete isolation and very collaboratively in others. At the Student Center we are constantly looking for ways to collaborate and serve students from across all the campuses. This weekend we held a training for our student staff in the building and this upcoming weekend we will be holding a student leadership workshop. Looking forward to working on developing some new programs in the upcoming weeks and I have had some great conversations with students and colleagues about future directions. We also hired two student employees who I will be supervising to round out the Campus Life Team.

Earlier this week my supervisor Melissa and I were driving to work and she asked me if I felt comfortable so far in Doha or if I felt out of place. This is something I have thought a lot about since arriving here. In no way do I feel like I "fit in" here in Doha, but I am also not out of place. Doha is an incredibly diverse city and there is no real such thing as "normal" here. In fact, Qataris are a minority in their own country. I came across this interesting breakdown:

As you can see, Americans would fall into the 7% of "others" that live in Qatar. With this diversity of population, no one really seems out of place. Regardless of what you wear (with the exception of short shorts or tank tops) no one looks twice. People are incredibly accepting and  non-judgmental. Nearly everyone in the country has an incredible story and family all over the world. It really is an incredible place to live and work.

One of the few times I did feel uncomfortable occurred this week during a work lunch. I was a table of ten during this lunch. It was myself, eight Qatari men, and one Lebanese man. Naturally, everyone at the table spoke Arabic except for me (unfortunately knowing how to say Good Morning and Do you want to get coffee? were not helping me follow the conversation). Upon noticing the conversation in Arabic, my Lebanese friend kindly asked everyone at the table to speak in English since not everyone spoke Arabic. The reality was, only I didn't speak Arabic. This made me feel uncomfortable to make everyone speak in a language that is less natural for them, even though most of them speak flawless English. It is moments like these that I feel very privileged to have English as a common language of communication, while simultaneously feeling very guilty for not being fluent in any other languages. In the US most Americans only know one language, here people will know at least two, usually more languages. My neighbor across the hall is fluent in 5 languages!

This post is already getting long so here's some other entirely random thoughts:

• Cost of living here is cheap in some ways (food shopping) and wildly expensive in others (drinking at restaurants/bars)
• Still no car but I do have a QF ID!
• Wil (from across the hall) has a copy of You, Me, and Dupree in his movie collection. Did we just become best friends?!
• Skype: This is a life saver. Thank you to everyone who keeps checking in on it. I have spent literally 3 hours tonight Skyping with a list of people. I say this as Brennan calls me now. Tonight I was able to talk to my parents, Zach and Kristina, and the triple crown crew (Travis, Rielly, and Brennan) all in one sitting!
• Whatsapp: So there's an app you can download that allows you to text anyone with a smartphone for free. So all of you need to download the app and let me know when you get it. My cell here is 974 5563 5119. 

I think that about covers it for now. I posted some pictures on Facebook, most of which you all have seen. I will try to take more pictures as I get into some upcoming adventures. Doha life has been awesome, looking forward to sharing more this week!

Sabbah El Kheir!

Before I get started here, I want to share one BIG update. Ya boy has got new sheets! Although the lovely floral print you all noticed last post were beautiful, I opted for a different feel:

 I also grabbed a memory foam mattress topper because the bed was hard as a rock. Now that we have covered that transition item, on with the post!
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Sabbah El Kheir, translated means good morning. And even though it will likely be afternoon or even night before any of you even read this, I wanted to show off the very little Arabic I have been able to pick up over the past two weeks.

As you could have guessed, Arabic isn't easy to learn. Even learning basics has proved difficult as I need to train my voice to make sounds that are entirely foreign in English dialect. I have been fortunate to have patient teachers like Mohammed and Ameena, both colleagues of mine. Learning how to pronounce Good Morning in Arabic took me nearly a week, and to be honest I'm sure I still don't have it right. Each day when I come to work I try to pick up another work or phrase in Arabic to be able to use in conversation. At this point I am trying to master basic greetings and goodbyes before tackling the more complex topics. Eventually I plan on taking a course in Arabic while I am here but want to transition a bit first.

Speaking of those transitions, work transitions have been going really well, albeit overwhelming at times. Because we are creating so many different programs it can be difficult to determine where to start. In a Campus Life meeting today we discussed creating a Student Government Association, a Service Learning Office, a Leadership Initiative, and increasing our programming capacity in the Student Center. And this all is taking place....immediately. It is incredibly exciting to be able to create all of these programs but many times it is hard to figure out where to start. The start of the semester has been very busy with programs and events and I have rarely had the chance to sit at my desk for more than 30 minutes to really think about all that I am taking in. As they say, Rome wasn't built in a day. But here we are trying to build a University as soon as we can!

In terms of Doha lessons, one major observation I have discovered is that there is no such thing as a small errand in Doha. Although Doha itself is not a big city, it is very spread out and there is a lot of traffic. It will take you 20 minutes to get anywhere in Doha. This is both a good and a bad thing. It means that you will never travel more than 20 minutes, if you do you're in the dessert. But it also means that everything is 20 minutes away from each other.

For example, this weekend a friend (Shiela) and I went to run some errands. We left the apartment complex at 2pm and the first stop was QDC (Qatar Distribution Center). Now let's talk about QDC  for a moment here. QDC is the ONLY liquor store in all of Qatar, affectionately known as the "Harom" Store by the locals. Harom means sin. In this store not only can you buy alcohol, which is otherwise illegal in the country, but you can also purchase pork products (also not available anywhere else, but you can get all the turkey bacon your heart desires!). Nothing like a little bacon and whiskey for the weekend! Another observation from the store of sin is that everyone was stocking up on liquor like the world was going to end. You are given a monthly allowance from the government for purchasing alcohol that is determined based on your salary. So Shiela had 2500 Riyal to spend at the store (roughly $650 USD). This total is reset at the first of each month and as a fun fact this number is tripled during Ramadan because the store closes for the whole month!

After picking up the goods at QDC we dropped them at Shiela's apartment and went to pick up a couch for a friend. Seems simple enough but the couch was totally across town and by the time we finished up this task it was nearly 7pm! It took us 5 hours to go to the liquor store and pick up a couch. When you plan your day here making one shopping stop is often all you can fit in a day! Quite the change from having everything in the same shopping center back in the states.

I have started to reach out to make new friends outside of the workplace and am realizing how small of a world we live in. A good friend from college, Varun Lal, has cousins who live here in Doha. They introduced me to a few new people, some of whom I played Squash with this weekend (sidenote: Squash. Not easy.) and another who actually is a work colleague at one of the branch campuses. While I was playing Squash with one of these new friends, AJ, he mentioned that he rarely interacts with Qatari nationals while he works on building a new airport here in Doha. This made me realize how lucky I am to be able to work so closely with many Qatari colleagues in the student center. What good would it be to move all the way to Doha only to work with and spend time with other Americans? I could have done that back in the States. I have already learned so much from my Qatari colleagues and admire how open they are to my questions about their language, culture, and views.

As most of you have seen, there have been quite a number of protests recently in response to the Anti-Islam video that was produced in the U.S. depicting the Prophet Muhammed. A protest was held here in Doha as well, but much more peacefully than in other countries. Some basic information can be seen here:
http://dohanews.co/post/31519220522/qatar-residents-join-protests-against-anti-islam#axzz26ilR6KlZ
Doha still feels incredibly safe and there have not been any anti-American sentiments towards myself or any of my colleagues. The story has received a lot of coverage here and many colleagues have friends and family in countries that have demonstrated more violently. Many of us will continue to follow this story closely in the upcoming weeks to make sense of what all of this will mean for the U.S. and Middle Eastern relations, as well as the upcoming election.

There is SO much more that I could write here but I think this is a good snapshot of the last week. I may have to start writing more frequently to avoid these long winded responses. Thank you to everyone who continues to e-mail, Skype, facebook, etc. I was SO sad to miss the JMU WVU game this weekend and it looked like everyone had a great time. The game sounded ugly, but the game is only part of the fun. Looking forward to hearing updates from all of you. Will write again soon. Stay tuned!

Well It's Been...One Week!

As I approach my one week anniversary of my arrival here in Doha, I figure now is as good of a time as ever to sit down and put together this long awaited update. Right now the weekend is winding down (weekends are Friday and Saturday here) and I have had an incredible week transitioning here to Doha. My apologies for not writing sooner, which was so pleasantly brought to my attention (ahem, Drew Grossman).

I flew out of New York's JFK airport on Saturday evening and arrived in Doha at 7:00pm Sunday night. The flight direct and lasted just over 12 hours. I flew on Qatar Airways, an airline I will be using quite frequently while living here, which was incredibly comfortable. Although I had planned on sitting in an exit row, planes aren't really built for people over six feet tall, I still had space to enjoy the flight. We were fed both dinner and breakfast on the flight, as well as having an open bar. I was greeted at the airport by my new supervisor, Melissa Winter, and work colleague, Mohammed Fakhro.

Upon leaving the airport I was brought to my spacious new apartment. It is a beautiful one bedroom with a full kitchen, living area, and walk in closet. Here's some pictures to show it off:

Not only was the apartment fully furnished, it even included soft furnishings like towels, bed sheets, an iron, basic appliances, and even basic groceries (seen above)! The soft furnishings were a life saver and made transitioning so much smoother for my first few days.

Once arriving I wasted no time getting to work and had my first meetings at 8:00am on Monday morning. My position here will be working at the Education City (newly named Hamad Bin Khalifa University) in the Student Center as the Campus Life Coordinator. This is the building that I work in:

I work with an incredibly talented Campus Life team comprised on myself and seven other colleagues. We work closely with Student Organizations, programming in the Student Center, Leadership Programs, and more. They have been incredibly welcoming and patient as I transition into my new role. I have SO much to learn from them and cannot wait to spend more time learning about Student Affairs in this region.

Speaking of the welcoming spirit I have found here, I have been so impressed with the kindness not only of work colleagues but also all the people I have met so far. New friends like Wil Biddle, Arooj Rama, Katie Wildman, Moe Fakhro, and others have been so generous with their time while I have been here. I have also had the pleasure of meeting people from all over the world (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Greece, to name a few). It is an incredibly atmoshphere here in Doha where people come from all of the world for a variety of work experiences. The people that come to Doha are adventurous, incredibly intelligent, and have an appreciation for a variety of cultures. I have found myself in many insightful conversations about the many cultures around the world and can't wait to continue to uncover more.

The learning curve while I have been here in Doha has been steep. This is the first time in my life where I have truly felt like an outsider. I am working diligently to integrate myself with the community here and to invest in the many new relationships that are forming. It is a very interesting balance of being part of a community that consists of many ex-pats from all over the world in a country that has such a distinct and strong culture. I will be learning a lot about myself in this process and will be sure to share more about that in later posts.

The process of getting settled here in Doha will be slow. It will be some time before I am able to get a license, purchase a car, obtain an exit visa for travel, and other pieces that will allow me to feel more settled. I have done my best to embrace this process and work through it. Compared to other places I may have relocated to, my adjustment period will be significantly longer here. This makes me even more grateful for the incredible support I have found already in my short time here.

My adjustment here in Qatar has been very smooth thus far. I am so thankful and excited to be pursuing this experience. I look forward to getting more settled, planning some travel, and beginning to work more closely with the students of Education City. I have been trying to keep Skype up on my computer as often as possible. My username is witt.evan and feel free to give me a shout out if I am online. I will post again later this week as I continue to learn the ins and outs of my new job. Missing everyone back in the states, especially sad to be missing on Shea Kelly's birthday festivities but I have no doubts you all will be fine without me.

Talk to you all soon,
Evan