Weekend Update

The backyard from the corner of yard by kitchen; large water tank on right.

Looking back toward villa.

Along side the house (by dining room). Gate at other end leads to second car port.

Craig & Anna posing with one of many Orry's around town. Orrry is the official mascot of the 2006 Asian Games (he is an oryx).

I woke up at 1:15 or so because Anna was crying looking for her pacifier (no, I didn't go in). But, I couldn't fall back asleep. Anna woke up at 6:30 (yikes!) and I never did get any more sleep beyond the 2 hours or so. We all three lay in bed for a while though because Anna has never gotten up that early before and we just didn't know what to do with her (plus we were both exhausted).

We went to the Corniche again today since Anna liked it so much yesterday. We hoped to find a playground Craig saw last year that he said looked cool, but it was taken over by the Asian games. I saw some playgrounds yesterday but by the time we had walked to one end, it was time for us to walk back to the car and find some lunch. (I think the Corniche is 7km long? We didn't walk all of that today of course, but we did get some exercise in!)

I took a one hour nap and then went to Lulu Hypermarket to check it out and get some groceries and hopefully some essentials still on our list. Lulu was really crazy (surely partly because it was Friday afternoon) and a lot of the stuff upstairs was just clothes and everything else was kind of dusty stuff. I did get a little ride-on race car for Anna since her ride on toys are in the sea shipment. This one has a working steering wheel and it was on sale so I couldn't not get it. She loves it, of course.

The grocery store was OK, I did find several things I needed as far as bakeware, mixing bowls, etc. to help us survive until the sea shipment gets here. So far, Mega Mart has had the best selection but I was able to get some Australian beef and, best of all, Swiss Miss vanilla pudding cups (something I've not been able to find at Kroger or HEB for years now). I will try the other Mega Mart in town (the one not in the mall that had the fire) next.

I'm really glad I went alone because Anna would have gone nuts with all the waiting in lines I had to do. One upstairs to buy the car and some coloring books. One in the produce department to get my produce weighed. One to pay for the groceries. Fortunately traffic wasn't bad at all and I zipped there and back.

I'm really finding (so far) driving to be not a big deal at all. I don't know if it was built up too much or if I've been lucky so far. Yes, there are some crazy drivers but, there are crazy drivers everywhere! There are also less Land Cruisers than I was expecting—still more than you generally see at home, but I've felt perfectly safe in my Accord (it is pretty new so it has a lot of pep, something I haven't experience much in my own cars!). We stopped and filled up the car today, it was mostly empty and it cost about $10 to fill. I'll take actual liter and km and Qatari Riyal notes next time so you can get a true feel fro the price of gas here. Maybe I should get an H3 since gas is so cheap?