Doha!

First off, it was sooo soo great to see Molly and Clifton and see how big Jacob has gotten and to finally meet Maddie. If you want to see my slideshow of the pics of the kids (I went a little overboard, but they are soo cute!) Click here. Second, this part of the trip was amazing as well! It was a lot more relaxing- we didn’t have to worry about planning, or driving, or getting anywhere. Thanks Molly and Clifton!

The first day Molly wanted us see the campus that she and Clifton work at. They both work for Texas A&M at Qatar which is part of Education City, which is a huge campus made up of several other campuses.

It is definitely a different learning environment than I am used to. For example, one of the sophomore level English classes was having a poster presentation in the lobby. Oh that’s not weird, huh? Did I mention it had a DJ?!! Playing house trance?!! Yeah. A little different!

After we toured the campus, we went to pick up Jacob from day care and to go grocery shopping, which lucky for us was in a mall. Jacob was just excited because he got to ride in a shopping cart in the mall (note his cute Sweden soccer jersey that Blake and I got him:

Not a normal mall mind you, a mall that was designed to be a mix between the Venetian and Bellagio, and appropriately named the Vallagio. It was complete with a canal and boat ride… no joke!

Later that day, after getting some playtime in with Jacob

Molly took me to go get some henna done. (Editors note: I googled henna and the wikipedia showed me this awesome picture of a camel eating a hand covered in henna. Look here for yourself.) Her friend Heather came with us, and we went to the local Saloon, where absolutely No Men’s were allowed:

I couldn’t take pictures once inside (it would be disrespectful), but we sat in a room and I stuck my arms and legs out and had a girl on each arm and one drawing on my leg. They do the entire design free-hand and it only takes them about 10 minutes- it is very impressive. It is sort of like a thick gel when it goes on, and then you have to sit there for awhile so that it doest smudge. This is my arm while it is drying (you can see you thick it is at first):

We had plans to meet one Molly’s friend, Michelle, for dinner, so we didn’t have time to wait for it to completely dry, so we had to face the dangerous sidewalk barefoot, and so that the designs on our feet wouldn’t smudge (which mine did anyways):

We went to a nice restaurant afterwards, but by then our henna was dry, and starting to flake off. (The thick gel dries, and then flakes off, and then you are left with a pretty design) So by the time we were done there was a huge mess of black stuff under the table. Opps. Oh well.

Here is a close-up of some of the designs the next day: