It's the Holiday Season: Saudi, Leadership, and waiting for BRENNAN!

Well, it's the holiday season. With the whoop-de-do and hickory dock. And nothing says the holidays like good old Doha. Over the course of the past few weeks I have been a part of a variety of holiday celebrations. First there was the Doha Singers holiday concert. This group is made up of Ex-Pats from various fields within Doha and they perform a holiday show each year. The concert took place at the American School of Doha and really had the feel of a high school auditorium. That same weekend myself and some friends in the compound put together a 14 hour Christmas movie marathon, yes 14 hours! We started at 10am and played through a variety of holiday films including Elf, Miracle on 34th Street, It's a Wonderful Life, Bad Santa, Rudolph, and more. We even cooked a holiday turkey for dinner and it was another one of those moments where I was thankful to have such great friends. This past weekend two different friends, Kevin and Imad, both hosted Christmas parties at their homes. I was able to find a Santa Suit at the mall in Doha for the equivalent of $10 so of course I bought it. And of course I wore it to both parties. Much lower quality than my Santa Suit from last year's holiday festivities, but you get what you pay for. 

On a work related note, I have spent approximately the last month working closely with students and staff from all the campuses here to create a comprehensive leadership program. Now I appologize in advance for those who don't work in student affairs because some of this might be confusing. But basically we have been meeting weekly as a group to envision a leadership program that all of the students from the different campuses can participate in. We wanted the program to be open to all students, how varying levels of commitment, and various entry points. Last week we finally started to put the pieces together and laid the foundation for a 3 year leadership program. The program will be a certificate program and offer a variety of seminars for students to attend. It is based on the Social Change Model of Leadership as each year is themed around individual, group, and community values. This was one of my major highlights from the semester and we will spend the Spring continuing to work on the program. In the Fall we will begin in full and I cannot wait to see the results.

The latest trip that I took was this past weekend where I went to Saudi Arabia with my friends Wil and Sulayim. Now, getting into Saudi is much easier said than done. Although the border is only one hour away it took about a month of planning for us to actually get there! If it wasn't for our friend Sulayim we would have had no chance at getting into the country. We had to apply for a transit visa, since you are not allowed to be there for tourism. Sulayim took our paperwork, passports, and passport photos directly to the Saudi embassy for us and after about a week we had our transit visas. Sualyim could not have been a more patient and gracious tour guide through Saudi. Since Sulayim is Qatari he is able to travel more freely between the countries. He was incredibly knowledgeable and fielded all of the questions Wil and I had for him. While we were there we spent time at his friend's Magilis, visited a camel camp, saw a camel and sheep market, saw incredible rock formations, went to a Souq, had a local meal, and even took a trip to the emergency room! There is no way that I could possibly do justice to the trip so I will simply give a basic timeline. Keep in mind this was a day trip. Check facebook for more photos from the adventure:

8am: Leave Doha for Saudi
9:30am: Reach Saudi Border
10:00am: Cross Saudi Border
10:30am: Magilis with Hammad and his family
11:30am: Lunch at Hammad's house
12:00pm: Visit to Hammad's camel camp
12:30pm: Watch camels reproduce
1:00pm: Leave Hammad's for camel and sheep market
2:00pm: Visit camel and sheep market
3:00pm: Leave for Hafouf
4:30pm: Check out Jebel Qarah Moutains
5:30pm: Check in at Hafouf Hotel
6:00pm: Watch Never Been Kissed with Wil
6:30pm: Nap
7:00pm: Souq
8:00pm: Dinner
10:00pm: Visit to Emergency Room

Now out of the many random events in there, I would say the emergency room sticks out above the rest (maybe with the exception of camel reproduction but I won't give details there). While we were in Saudi our friend Sulayim had some issues with his left eye. It was bothering him most of the day and after a nice dinner in the local town he wanted to stop by the Pharmacy to get something to alleviate the pain. Upon visiting the Pharmacy he was told to get it checked at the clinic across the street. Once he arrived at the clinic, he was immediately told that he needed to visit the ER. So they we were, Wil, Evan, and Sulayim, at 10pm on a Friday night in Saudi at the ER. The hospital itself was pretty nice but Wil and I were out of place to say the least. While Sulayim was getting cared for, Wil and I were quite the spectacle. We were the only ones in the ER not wearing traditional clothing and this brought us many stares. In particular children had NO reservations of staring and pointing at us. After waiting around for a bit we decided to look for a local coffee shop or restaurant to kill some time. The only place remotely near the hospital was a corner store across the street. So we were looking for some snacks and what do ya know...we found BUDWEISER! At first we thought this might be some speak easy is an unassuming area but upon further inspection we found the "NA". Regardless of having alcohol in it or not, we had to buy two cans. I can honestly say it was the worst drink I have ever tasted, although Wil seemed to have less issue with it. As we drank our NA Budweisers on the street corner Sulayim comes triumphantly from the ER room. He was fitted with a beautiful eye patch to wear home and we made our way back to the hotel. The following day he bravely drove us back to Doha, eye patch and all. Little did we think entering the trip that we would be brought back to Doha by a pirate. There are SO many more stories to be told from the trip but those will have to be shared at another time. Rest assured we made the most of our trip and I hope it isn't my last time in Saudi!

 

As we approach the end of December, it is also the end of my first semester in Doha. Since I work in education my mind still thinks in terms of semesters and I have been doing quite a bit of reflecting on this past semester. In this first semester there have been a lot of challenges both personally and professionally. I have had to make an entire new set of friends. I have had to build new programs from the ground up. I have had to assimilate to a new culture. I have had to foster an environment for student involvement. In both aspects I feel that huge strides have been made. I feel very fortunate to have found some incredible friends and support systems here in Doha, and this is still an ongoing process. The Student Center as a whole has made some drastic changes, hopefully for the better, over the course of the semester as well. As the semester ends I find myself in a new transition stage. My initial stage of getting settled and meeting new people has come to a close. Now I am learning how to navigate Doha more effectively, developing deeper relationships with friends and colleagues, establishing a routine and pursuing my interests, planning trips, and making Doha into my new home. As the semester ends, it was marked with major successes and major shortcomings. There is plenty of room for improvement but that is all part of the process. For now, I could not be happier to be here. And I cannot wait to see what awaits in the future.

As far as major upcoming events go...tomorrow is National Day. The closest equivalent in the US would be the 4th of July. It is a national holiday and the downtown area is flooded with people, parades, and celebrations. I will be sure to post pictures because I hear it is a pretty amazing event. My latest travel plans are to go to Dubai next week for Christmas and I just booked a trip to Kenya for the end of January. 

But the BIGGEST upcoming event is the arrival of the one and only Brennan D. Biddle. He will arrive early early on December 24th and I CANNOT wait for him to get here. We will have plenty of adventures to share and nothing says Christmas like a Qatar visit.

That's all for now. Will post more after Brennan's visit. Happy holidays to all and know that I will be thinking about all the friends and family back in the States! 

Desert Camping during Movember with Couch Surfer

Well, that post title pretty much sums up the last week. Movember has finally come to an end and what an amazing month it was. The money is still trickling in but as of now our team has raised just under $21,000 and ranks in the top 50 of all fundraising teams in the US. I am incredibly proud of the efforts of my team and thankful to all of those who have been so supportive throughout the month. A good friend here, Kevin, actually threw a Movember Gala at Carnegie Mellon Qatar as well. The event was attended well by students from the University and had prizes for a variety of categories including Best Mo. It was awesome to see students becoming involved in the effort and I am hoping to host some Movember events in Doha next year.

One of the amazing things about Doha is the amount of visitors that come to the city for conferences, business, or travel. While I have been here I have gotten countless couchsurfing requests from visitors looking for a place to stay. For those unfamiliar with counchsurfing, you basically make your home available for people to stay free of charge while they are traveling. This past weekend I hosted a Dutch guy from Swedan named Alexander who was visiting for a UN conference on sustainability. While in Doha Alexander was like a kid in a candy shop. His genuine awe and appreciation for Doha was incredibly refreshing. As we drove around the downtown skyline his head was tilted to the sky, with each person he met he was amazed at their stories, as I shared information about Qatar and Doha he continuously wanted to know more. One of the best parts of couchsurfing is being able to be an ambassador for your city. While Alexander visited we ran all over the city and the big highlight was camping in the desert.

Since my first visit to Doha last January I have wanted to go camping in the Desert. This finally became a reality this past weekend. A group of us, including Alexander, went to an area in the central part of the country called Zekreet for our camping experience. It was about 45 minutes from Doha and half that time was spent off roading through the desert. As we drove out to our camping area we passed beautiful rock formations, were awe stuck by the desert expanses, and raced sunset to get to our site before dark. Now what would a first desert camping experience be without getting stuck in the sand? This was the inaugural desert excursion of my new XTerra. I obviously have no driving experience in sand and deserts so I panicked when my car was all of the sudden dead stopped and tires spinning in the sand. Luckily our friend Riham is quite the desert driving expert and he had the truck moving in a few minutes. Once we arrived at the site we set up camp and started cooking dinner. We camped in an abandoned village beneath brick dwellings that no one really knows the history of.

 

While we were out in the desert Ahmad and I decided to do a bit of exploring. In one of the dwellings (I have no idea what else to call them) we saw lights and heard some people talking. As we approached we saw that it was a group of about 15 Qatari high school and middle schoolers. We chatted with them for a bit and they told us that they were practicing a skit to perform with another group of students. Ahmad decided we should go see these skits and the students not only agreed but asked us to be judges. After 15 minutes of walking across the desert we arrived at the students' campsite and were greeted with a welcome song, drinks, chocolates, and some hilarious skits. It is difficult to articulate what this experience because of how unique it was. In general, Qataris are very family focused and it is not often that I will have the opportunity to interact with this large of a group of specifically Qatari students. They were incredibly welcoming, intelligent, and creative. They performed their skits in Arabic but did their best to translate for me as the only non Arabic speaker. Although the experience was completely unexpected it was one of the big highlights from the entire trip.

That just about covers the latest. Other things that have been going on that I won't go into detail about are a visit to the Grand Mosque, International Fest in the Student Center, and planning a road trip to the UAE. I think we can start the official Brennan Biddle countdown: 20 days. Talk soon!