Bernie

After months of missing The Little Man (our American dog), we finally broke down, went to the shelter outside of Doha, and came home with a Qatari sister for him! Originally, we were just going to foster her, but we got attached to her pretty quickly and now we've officially adopted her. Her name is Bernie (full name Ms. Bernadette Lomax--if you get the joke you're on our wavelength for sure).

Bernie is a mutt, possibly part Rottweiler, but only around 50 pounds. She is incredibly sweet and really funny. Lots of personality. She only has one functioning eye but she doesn't let that slow her down one bit! She runs around like a madwoman outside, but her favorite place in the world is cuddled as close to Jake or me as possible.


Here is a picture of Bernie all ready to work out (the clothes were to keep her away from her stitches from getting spayed:)


Dog food and supplies here are pretty hard to come by, so she's been living the high life--we make her some combination of meat, grains, and vegetables every day. Her coat is absolutely gorgeous as a result. We will definitely be feeding our dogs "real" food from now on.

Inland Sea

On October 26th, SFS-Q hosted a group of newbies on a trip to the Inland Sea, which lies on the border of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. We traveled by road for the first 45 minutes or so, and then we all had to get out of the 4x4s so that the drivers could let some air out of the tires--the rest of the trip was over the sand dunes! Because of Georgetown's insurance, we were taken on a more "sedate" route, but there were a couple of times, coming over REALLY steep dunes, REALLY fast, and driving along the sides of them, that I was convinced we'd flip over! It was a real adrenaline rush.

Once we got to the Inland Sea, we had a few hours to splash around and enjoy the gorgeous weather and scenery. It was incredibly peaceful, watching the sun go down and feeling the cool (?) breeze ("cool" here is all relative--I think it was about 95 degrees that day). The only thing that broke my peaceful, meditative mood was another little adrenaline rush--as I was wading in ankle-deep water, I came close to a big stingray who had been camouflaged and resting. We gave each other quite a scare!

Here is a pic of me with Rabia (a fab TA from the Arabic Department) with Saudi Arabia in the background:



That night, it was back through the dunes to a Bedouin-style tent, where we had a barbecue, smoked shisha (flavored tobacco out of a big water pipe), and played volleyball. I even rode a camel!



One of the best days we've had in Qatar, and one we're looking forward to repeating as soon as people come to visit.