Photos and videos from consumerism week, and friends

You know how Walmart often has smaller stores just outside the checkout lines, like banks or optometrists or hair salons? Well, the stores have those here, except they include things like jewelry stores. This is at the Lulu Hypermarket where Big E and I had checked out already and were waiting for Rachel to come to the checkout line. Note that Big E is actually looking at the Christmas lights, and not what's in the window.

 This is one of the roads leading downtown. The city is set up like a wheel with the harbor as its hub and spoke-like main roads connected with concentric ring roads. Instead of intersections with lights, most intersections are roundabouts, which become important landmarks for directions and usually have nicknames among the expats.

This is at City Centre Mall. If you refer to my last post, you can see the map, which gives you a sense of scale based on the size of this ice rink. This is at the center of the mall, and on most floors, there are wings branching out right and left from here several football fields long.

There's a great glass elevator going up and down next to the ice rink. Some floors have these escalators without steps over on the wings. They're like this at Landmark mall, too, and there are special grooves in them that hold your shopping cart in place so you can take it from floor to floor. Big E was in heaven.

On Wednesday night, our friends two doors down took our kids so Rachel and I could have a night out at The Mango Tree, a Thai restaurant at The Pearl, Doha's artificial island. Our friend from school drove us, and we really appreciated it. Again, everyone has been extremely helpful!

The Pearl used to be one of the few places serving alcohol in its restaurants. As is common in the US, that was a central part of most restaurants' business model. So when their liquor licenses were revoked a year or so ago, several of the big name ones tanked, and the ones that were left were forced to change their pricing and offerings in order to attract a larger crowd. Judging by our night there, the larger crowd doesn't come in August. We were one of three couples in the restaurant, and by the time we left around 8, we were the only couple in sight on the entire pier. No yachts around any of the docks. Only a few lights in the high-priced apartments overlooking the bay. Perhaps the crowds come back when the weather cools off.

 Here's a hallway connecting some of the larger stores at the Pearl.

 Big E and Miss A came with us to my school director's house for an open house he hosted for the staff and our families. There were tons of kids there. Big E settled right in with several on the couch to watch Tangled.

Miss A finally released her death grip on my neck and crawled around with a few of the other pre-toddlers. In our groups of friends both at work and at church, there are lots of kids their ages, which we're very happy about.

And remember to keep tabs on Rachel's blog!