Traveling to Doha and first Friday

It's photoblogging time again!
We left Salt Lake around 1:50, having arrived at the airport plenty early and eaten our lunches there. The flight to Houston was uneventful, and the kids behaved about as well as they do at home. We were placed at the very back of the small jet where the engines were really noisy, but there was an extra seat for Miss A, who was ticketed as a lap child. We also met our first co-teachers going to Doha. They were very friendly and tolerant of our kids' occasional fussiness. Unfortunately, Big E woke up with a cold that morning and plenty of sinus pressure, which made the pressure changes on the plane particularly painful for him--and consequently, for us. But he made it.
In Houston, we checked in first, then had some burgers, grilled cheese, and corndogs for dinner.

Then we rushed back to board because we'd forgotten to set our clocks an hour ahead. We made it just in time for the end of pre-boarding.

They seated us at the very front of economy class against the bulkhead.

This irked Rachel at first until we realized the flight attendant had a bassinet she intended to attach to the bulkhead for Miss A to sleep in. It was like having an extra seat for her again, and we had plenty of room on the floor for her to play, and for Big E to sleep for a little while.

The on-board entertainment system gave us about 130 movies and TV shows to choose from, included in the price of the ticket, so after all the careful preparation we made to bring books and get movies for our kids on the iPad and computer, they didn't end up being used at all! Same with all the snack food we brought: they fed us so much on the plane I thought I would burst! I didn't end up eating any of the food we brought. Not complaining, though--the airline stuff was better than what we had prepared. Big E watched about 6 hours of Dora the Explorer, and I watched parts of about 8 movies, plus several episodes of TV shows. The kids slept quite a bit, though Rachel and I didn't, because we wanted to be tired when we arrived in the evening in Doha. Here we are about to land just after 7 PM (they don't do daylight savings time here because seriously, they have more than enough daylight!).

We were some of the first ones to get to immigration, so we didn't wait in line long. Then all our luggage arrived fine, though some pieces took significantly longer than others.

The baggage carts were free to use, so I loaded up two, and then realized that we also had a stroller with our kids in it and only two of us to push. But the carts handled pretty well, so we made it out of the airport with them fine.

One of the school staff helped push them once we met them after customs. Thanks, Sadaf! Most of the school administration met us and the other arriving staff and families (about 50 people in all) just after customs and helped us put all our stuff into busses and cars.

We got to our new house around 9:00 PM.

My principal and his wife took us out for a delicious dinner of hummus, baba ghanoush, muhammarah, and  assorted kebabs. Thanks, Francises! We got home from that around 11:30. Between between Tuesday evening and Thursday night when I finally got to bed around half past midnight, I had a total of about 6 hours of sleep. I was definitely tired enough to sleep the whole first night. Unfortunately, the kids weren't, so I'd only slept about 4 hours Friday morning when they woke up at 4:30. Then in the afternoon the kids were ready to kill us for waking them up from what they wanted to be their long sleep, but instead was just about an hour ending at 4:15 PM. Non-stop screaming for about an hour from Miss A, though Big E woke up enough to calm down after about half an hour. They both napped during and after church.

Thanks to the Francises and Pruitts for picking us up and bringing us home! We meet in a converted villa with a full congregation of people who I think we're going to get along great with. We even had a potluck right after our meetings. Before church, we went and had our pictures taken for our Qatar Foundation IDs at a school administrator's house. He let us call our families from his phone and lent us a step-down transformer until ours arrives in our shipment. Thanks, Howard!

I've said thanks a lot in this post, and I mean it. Everybody has been extremely friendly, helpful, and welcoming. We feel very good about being here among such nice people.

Now a bit about the brand new, fully furnished house (see it and other things I'll mention on this map I've made). They call it a villa, and you might think of it as a rather large condo. Compared to our house in Carthage, it's downright palatial. It's convenient to a Lulu Express supermarket (there's a Lulu Hypermarket elsewhere, which makes me just picture everyone in the store bouncing off the walls), to our recreation center, and directly across a field from the nearest mosque. We can hear the call to prayer if we pay attention, but it isn't loud enough to wake us, thankfully.
Here's the front with a car port to the right.

Next to the carport they're building a small play structure. The first story I ever made up for Big E was about him and Little Bear going to a playground and discovering that it didn't have any equipment. Then a semi-truck shows up, a man climbs out of the front, opens up the back and pulls out all the playground equipment, and E and Little Bear play on it all day until their moms make them come home. So both he and I were ecstatic today when that exact scene played out right next to our garage!

About five families with kids from Miss A's age up to adolescents moved into this compound last night with us, so our kids will have plenty of company, and so will Rachel.
This is our downstairs living room from the front door looking in.

Here's the dining room and parlor, which has another separate door kitty-corner to the front door on our porch. It's intended to be the place where guests are entertained so they never actually see the living area.

It has its own pair of sinks and a half-bath, too.

 Here's the kitchen.

 Looking back into the downstairs front room from the kitchen you can see our washer and dryer.

 Just around the corner from there is a downstairs guest bedroom with its own full bath.

 Next we go upstairs.

 Here's the upstairs living room.

 The master bedroom in complete disarray.

 The full master bathroom off our bedroom.

 Big E's room

 His full bathroom.

 Miss A's room.

So there you have it! As you can see, we have PLENTY of room for visitors, so now you have no excuse not to come.

This morning we went to have our blood types determined. Don't ask me why Qatar needs to know that about us. We just smile and go along for the ride. After that we went to our first megamall, called Landmark. We bought Vodafone cell plans and got sim cards for our phones, then exchanged our cash for Qatari riyals and went on a shopping spree at Carrefour (it's a megamall because it has a store the size of Costco in it as well as several city blocks of other stores).

We came home and tried going out to lunch, but the kids both passed out on the benches at the restaurant, so we just put everything in to-go boxes and walked home in the 106 degree, 63% humidity noonday sun.

Rachel went out to go grocery shopping next, at the Lulu Express just around the corner, while I worked with our compound's maintenance guys to get all the kinks worked out of our place. We're the first ones to live in it, so a lot of stuff still wasn't installed properly yet. But they've been very quick to respond to requests, and everything is taken care of now.
We anticipate our boxes arriving on Monday, and we look forward to that being like Christmas!
We've been chauffeured around in busses and our administrators' cars since arriving, and it will be a while before we're actually allowed to drive here, but traffic moves fast and the roundabouts are imposing. Many people from dozens of countries live here, and the driving reflects their different backgrounds. Most of the cars are white--guess it's just a popular color that doesn't show the dust as much. Many men wear thobes, and many women wear niqabs (a lot like burkas), but a good portion of both wear western style clothing. We didn't notice anyone staring at us, because there are just so many other foreigners here that we don't stand out a bit.
The whole city is under construction, so Big E is thrilled to point out all the cranes everywhere. And Miss A is just crawling and cruising and smiling and winning people's hearts. Honestly, the only hard thing about being here so far is dealing with the jetlag. We're quite content so far.
That's enough for now. Send us your questions and we'll try to answer! We miss you. We plan to be on Skype most evenings our time, which will usually be morning for you if you're in the US, and Rachel will likely be on most mornings, which will be late evening for you. Catch us then if you want to Skype or do a Google+ Hangout.