More ~Fun~ Facts About Oman

1. The mold grows fast and dark. Consider storing your bread in the freezer. Definitely store your bread in the freezer.

2. Everything is castles. I was on the rather broad Wikipedia page for Islamic Architecture today (واجب) and it said that Islamic architecture is based on four forms of building: Mosque, Tomb, Palace, and Fort. In my expert opinion, Omani architecture is entirely based upon the latter. Every town has a fort (or several), and the roofs of most buildings are crenellated, and most houses are surrounded by thick concrete walls. Even the water tanks look like little watchtowers. It's great.

3. In 1970, right after the coup that put Sultan Qaboos in power, some observers though Oman would become a democracy (!!!). More interesting things about Omani history in this article.

4. Here are some random and questionably translated Omani sayings:
     الوقت كالسيف إن لم تقطعه قطعك - Time is a sword; if you don't cut it, it cuts you.
     يا غريب أديب - If you're a stranger, be polite (it rhymes in Arabic).
I have another one about camels, but I can't find it. Subscribe for updates.

5. I have five hours or so of homework every night. Help.

6. I'm bad at blogging consistently, especially without the (not-yet existent) financial incentive that IES provided. Asif. I've been around and doing things, but my camera's still broken and so all you can look forward to some sad image-less posts. We have a week left of Ramadan, Eid this Saturday, I went to a wadi last Saturday and it was glorious and I also managed to burn the bottoms of my feet on hot rocks. More updates to come (mumkin).

Week Two Is Done!

Chillin' (Photo courtesy of Kate H.)

Another week has blown by, unlike the predicted cyclone. Another 20 hours of Arabic class, 15 hours or so of homework and studying, not enough sleep, and a little exploring.

Highlights from daily life include: looking at kittens from four floors up.

I unfortunately came down with some sort of illness earlier this week, of the variety that only sleep could fix. Fevers are uniquely awful in a place where temperatures regularly reach (and stay near) 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Arabic classes are uniquely awful when you have a fever and 6 hours of sleep. So it goes.

No one else climbed to the top, so for a moment I was blissfully alone.

Aside from that, last weekend was absolutely delightful, and I have to write about it before I go to my host family's house this afternoon and get totally distracted by Ramadan festivities (رمضان كريم y'all).

I forgot to charge my camera for the first day's adventures... Oops. Here's a Jebel Akhdar pic.

Anyway. On Friday of last week we got up at 7:30 AM, like we had for every day of the program until this morning, when I slept until a glorious 9 AM (this is shockingly early for America Katharine), and went on a trip to a wadi (a valley that fills with water occasionally) and then the family farm of our wonderful center director, Sultan.

Swimming with Sultan (Photo courtesy of Kathleen W.)

This wadi, Wadi Al Thahera (spelling is questionable), was fed by a spring, and had some water despite only one brief spell of rain in the time we've been here. We walked to it along an old aqueduct and over a beautiful Roman (also questionable) bridge, and a few of my classmates and I went for a fully-clothed swim. Luckily it's rather arid here on the edge of the Empty Quarter, so I was nearly dry by the time we got to the bus. I caught some very un-danger-conscious frogs, and generally had a grand time.

Strollin' (Photo courtesy of Kiaya S.)

The farm was fairly close by, and we began with sweets and coffee in house, followed by a tour of the rest of the farm. There were goats, sheep, chickens, and camels, of course. At this point, after a year in Morocco including Eid al Adha, I'm somewhat less entranced by goats and camels than I might have been previously. The highlight for me was the ~plants~. There were tons of date palms that some of the students climbed using an interesting rope device (I was wearing a skirt, sadly); a giant fig tree, on which I found one perfect one; some fenced off and unripe mangos (also sad), and a bunch of other things. I'm now even more determined than I was previously to get a fig tree. I wonder if they grow well in New Orleans... After the fruit tree and animal tour, we went back to... more fruit! There were giant platters with more peaches, bananas, kiwis, mangosteens (!!!), apples, grapes, and oranges than all 26 of us could ever finish. That was followed by naptime, and then... more food. We had delicious probably sheep and rice, eaten sans utensils, and then headed back to nap some more while we digested.

Abandoned village lyfe

Saturday was an all day adventure to Jebel Akhdar, part of a mountain range near Ibri, and the site of Oman's last war, in the late 1950's. The name means "The Green Mountain," but, like so many places in Oman, it was rather brown and dry. That didn't make it any less beautiful though. It was kind of an odd place, half given over to military installations and half to tourists and villages. We visited a rose water factory where they make traditional Omani rosewater, which smells like barbecue and is rather expensive, and then an abandoned village above an empty wadi. This village had apparently been abandoned at some point in the 1960's, after persuasion from the Sultan to come join the rest of the country. We then returned back to the village with the rosewater factory to visit a beautiful spring with a few too many leeches for my taste, and then ate a picnic lunch with some goats that kept trying to steal our food. Rice and meat, no utensils, as per usual. We stopped at University of Nizwa on the way back, attempting to visit some sort of exhibition on the history of Islam in the area, but it had essentially ended by the time we got there. The last group gave us a little presentation anyway, and took a lot of picture of the random Americans in their empty exhibit, which reminds me that I should try to find their Instagram.

A stepped mountainside still used for agriculture

That trip made me want to explore more of Oman's nature, and we have our first free weekend coming up, so inshallah I'll find somewhere accessible!

I <3 wadis

Ten ~Very Important~ Things to Know About Oman

This is a misleading photograph of a Western Saharan palm tree because my camera battery died earlier today :(

1. If you take a date (ثمر) seed from a certain type of date (red or yellow) and plant it somewhere else, it might be a different type when it matures. If you want it to be the same type, you have to take a baby date palm and plant it in the new place.

Nice weather for a "Woo it's the weekend!" walk.

2. After a week of 105 to 114 degrees Fahrenheit days, 98 feels cool and refreshing.

Wearing very appropriate attire in my Arabic class.

3. Long means something different here. In America, a long skirt reaches past your knees. In Morocco, it reaches to your ankles. In Oman, a long skirt drags on the ground, and this is the only truly appropriate length for such things.

Camels from the souk last weekend. ممكن غالي جدا؟

4. A well-bred and strong male camel (بعير) can cost up to 100,000 rials. The بعير at Sultan's family farm (Sultan is the director of our center) cost 16,000 rials. Unlike many places in the world, a rial is worth more than a dollar.

A rare glimpse of our local Shell station.

5. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a litre of gas costs .116 rials, or about .30 dollars. This adds up to little over a dollar a gallon. To compare, a small water bottle costs .100 rials.

It's sketch to take pics of Omani women without their abayas, so here's a pic of me in an outfit I bought on my walk yesterday.

6. Omani women wear all black outside, and men wear all white, except for little caps or turbans. If you never made Omani friends you might think it was a sad, monochromatic country. But it's not! Inside and under their abayas, the women in particular wear absurdly bright outfits, a lot of them reminiscent of the ones I saw in Western Sahara last semester.

7. In some ways, Oman is very much like America.

Just off the main road, at the end of the block our apartment building is on.

8. Once, someone described Ibri as a major town with "worldwide fame" and a "bustling centre of commerce and administration...."

"Maybe the pharmacy is opening now??"

9. Shops here are open from like 9 to 12 pm, and then from around 5 to 12 am, because mid-day napping (قيلولة) is obligatory.

I forgot to buy candles. And water.

10. We might get hit by a cyclone tonight.