Week Four Updates

Ibri lifestyle

I'm now in week four of the Ibri experience, which means that it's ~midterms,~ always a fun season in the life of Katharine. I've been very busy and have been failing to update this as regularly as I had hoped (a two-month long program means that once a month doesn't work so well), but maybe I'll get better. Maybe I won't.

My host family's women's sitting room

Last weekend I stayed with my host family for a night, and got to experience Ramadan for the first time (it started on the 18th). My language partner, Noof, is a lovely Omani woman that I meet with three times a week to practice speaking Arabic and to learn more about Omani culture. I also will stay with her three times over the course of the program, and I'm looking forward to the next weekend already.

She lives with her husband's family, which means that there are always lots of people around, and it's not as gender segregated at some houses are, so we (Rachel, another CLS student, is also there) see pretty much everyone (other students do not have this luxury). There are a range of children, ranging from born in the last year to my age, as well as a large number of pet birds. The Omani lifestyle seems very relaxed, especially for women during Ramadan. We took naps, cooked food, slept a lot, walked around the neighborhood at night and visited a bunch of other women's' houses, and ate a lot at every one. I got a nose bleed for the first time in years (ever??) because the desert is slowly desiccating my body. Then we slept some more. I fasted for the day that I was with my family, but fasting all day isn't too hard if you wake up at 11 am and then take a 2 hour long midday nap. I did space out and drink some water, but apparently Allah mostly cares about intent, so I'm probably good.

There's work to be done. Also, I sometimes start writing English words backwards now, which is an interesting return to how I wrote in preschool.

Aside from that, we've done a fair few things lately, and I'm rather exhausted, but enjoying (almost) every bit of it. We visited a little castle in Ibri one evening, and explored and then broke our non-fast with falafel sandwiches; we went up to the top of a hill near the center to watch the sunset across a valley, and then had Iftar at our bus driver Mahmoud's house; and then had a calligraphy class. Helpful advice: don't bother going grocery shopping during Ramadan, there's always an Iftar somewhere that someone wants to feed you.

A glorious Muscat hotel Iftar, featuring Indian food and also a lot of other stuff.

Some hill in Ibri, plus Anthony

Finally, this weekend, four girls from the program and I went to Muscat. I think like twelve other girls also went, but we stayed in a different hotel and only ran into them briefly in the souk. We took the bus from Ibri, which was practically empty and air conditioned, so very unlike Moroccan buses, but not nearly as cheap (3.7 rials!). We stayed at the Ramee Guestline Hotel Qurum, since it was relatively cheap online and Oman doesn't appear to have hostels. Also, we have to send in travel request forms 48 hours before we go anywhere, so I can't do what I normally do and just show up and look for places too sketchy and cheap to have websites :(. It was a lovely hotel though, with a pool that we didn't manage to see, but that was ok because we were five minutes from the ocean and just went for a nice, modestly-attired (read "fully-clothed") swim there. We took the outside stairs to get back in because we didn't want the receptionist to judge us, which was a good choice because a. no judgement, and b. there were cool murals on the stair walls depicting jungles and Hindu gods that I somehow forgot to document. At night we went to the souk, because it's the only place in Oman to buy souvenirs, but I have a shockingly low tolerance (and high standards) for souks after Morocco.

Yup.

On the next day, we went snorkeling with the Oman Dive Center, which was located in the Yiti area of Muscat. It was shockingly expensive after snorkeling in Thailand, but it was beautiful, and nice to be able to wear a bikini and drink water during the day and whatnot. I saw sea turtles!

The crew: Yousef, Ahmed, Madeline, and Charlotte

After the snorkeling, we began a transit odyssey to get back to Ibri. We eventually got a cab to the place where we got another cab to Ibri, which turned out to be lots of fun. Our driver, Yousef, was kind of everything you don't want your taxi driver to be - 24 years old, on the internet on his phone, sitting with one of his legs up by the window, sleep-deprived, and hungry (fasting) - but he was very nice and didn't overcharge us, and we seem to have survived. Three of us sat in the back seat (all five of us could have gotten in, but that was unappealing to some members of our group for some reason), so the other seat was occupied by a 19 year old Pakistani guy named Ahmed who works at a barbershop with his family in Ibri. They spent a substantial portion of the ride arguing about why their respective country was better (mostly Ahmed explaining why Pakistan is great, and Yousef being like "...no"), and then Ahmed showed us all a lot of pictures on his phone. He specializes in very pointy looking haircuts, and there are apparently a lot of guns in Pakistan. Yousef stopped to buy Iftar snacks and forced us to eat dates even though he was still fasting, and then stopped again so he could actually eat, at which point we were encouraged to try Ahmed's Pakistani sweets, which we a bit too milky/buttery for me to enjoy, but I ate them anyway. Apparently in Oman it is safest to just always carry snacks with you, so when offered everyone else's, you have something to offer in return. Now I know.