Kissin' Cheeks, Eatin' Food, Etc.

Salam aleikum, everyone!

First of all, sorry that I haven’t updated in a while! You can blame that on my extremely limited internet access since I have been with my host family.

Second of all, I found a soccer ball!

Thirdly, let’s begin. So where did I leave off… Oh yeah! I was just about to meet my host family for the first time that evening. I did meet my host family, and we had a lovely iftar on a traditional Omani sea vessel. It was actually one of the most uncomfortable, humid, disgusting (people were getting sea sick and vomiting everywhere) dinners of my life, but still, it had the potential to be wonderful. I have an eighteen-year-old host sister named Meera, a two-and-a-half year old host brother named Saif, and a host mom and a host dad, and a marvelous host housemaid named Lykshmi. For the most part, my stay with them has been fine. I’ve visited a lot of houses, salam aleikum-ed a heck of a lot of people, kissed hundreds of women’s cheeks, kissed the foreheads of two old ladies, and eaten way too much delicious food. I am feeling more and more Omani with every calorie of fried, wonderful goodness I put into my mouth.  

Now that I am more involved and intimate with Omani culture, a few things have stood out to me. Firstly, if you think Americans are addicted to technology, just take a little hop, skip, and a jump over to this country! I swear I have never seen people more addicted to their cell phones. To give you an idea of how bad this has gotten: My host grandmother, whom I’d say is around the age of eighty-five, has two cell phones, TWO! The grandparents I know back home can barely manage with one. My host sister has four cell phones… enough said. Almost every teenager in Muscat spends the majority of his or her time looking at their little LCD touchscreens. Omanis love their Arab soap operas, too. At first I thought the TV shows were attempting to satirize other episodic dramas, but then I realized these people were actually being serious. 

Furthermore, I’ve noticed that the driving in Muscat in absolute insanity. It’s common for one follow two to three meters behind a car going 120 kph! I have since given up gasping and gawking at the decisions being made by my driver and other drivers around me, and instead just shut my eyes and hope for the best!

Here is a list of fun (and not so fun) facts I have come to know about Muscat and Oman: 

1. Omanis have this strange obsession with Kleenex. They use Kleenex for everything, and Kleenex can be seen everywhere—on every coffee, bedside, and dinner table. I think I might actually miss this much Kleenex when I get home. 

2. During Ramadan, Omanis basically fry everything under the sun. I have literally never eaten so much fried food in my life—donuts, samosas, weird little cheese things that have become my favorite snack. Every day another girl in my program complains about her jeans not fitting anymore… I say YOLO. 

3. As I mentioned before, I kissed the head of two old ladies so far. It’s actually a sign of respect to perform a little hand, cheek, forehead kissing ritual with people over the age of seventy. I’ll show you guys the whole shabang when I get back. I think it would be very strange to go around kissing the foreheads of the elderly in the U.S., but I might give it a shot with my own grandmas and see where it takes me. 

4. Alhumdulilah, there is a lot of ethnic diversity in Muscat. Unfortunately, some men (typically Indian laborers) find no other solution but to jump in front of cars racing along the highway and commit suicide so their families can get money from the lawsuit. Meera told me that her friend has killed two of these highway kamikazes and was forced to pay fifteen thousand OMR (almost forty thousand US dollars) to each family for each accident.

5. To further dampen the mood, there seems to be plenty of human rights violations going on in this country. For privacy reasons, I will not get in to much detail at the present time of these injustices. However, I cannot ignore those Omani citizens whom are being taken advantage of by the system. Oman is generally a very friendly country with polite people and a warm atmosphere, but often one has to look just below the surface to realize that not everything is as the authorities make it seem. This is true of every country, undoubtedly, but it is a good reminder for me to not take everything at face value. 

I’m sure there are many other weird, interesting details of which I forgot to inform you all, but I probably forgot them because these strange details have become my norm. I would say that stereotyping is often not the best route to an accurate judgment of a person. However, in my experiences thus far, Arabs have fulfilled plenty of my pre-supposed stereotypes! They eat on the floor the majority of the time. They prefer to eat with their hands. Men wear elaborate headdresses and white dresses, and women are generally expected to cover-up. Although maybe not to the same extreme as other countries, there are definitely pre-determined gender roles in Oman—in traditional families, the women cook and the men eat. Fulfilling these stereotypes is not necessarily a bad thing, though; these are just parts of the culture, and whose place is it for us (Westerners) to say that things need to change in these unfamiliar places? Although I’ll be the first to advocate for the social equality of everyone, it’s an entirely different story to stomp into a foreign culture and demand a change in the status quo. It’s a tricky situation, you know?

Final thought: I have slept in one, two, three, four, five, six different beds since I left home!

Masalamah!

Biracial harmony can be seen in this photograph of mine and Celine's contrasting skin color. 

Me at the Bait Al Kubair Museum

P.S. Just because I am using these Islamic words like “inshallah” and “alhumdulilah”, it does not mean I have converted to Islam. It is a part of the culture to use such words, and I hear them everywhere used by everyone, Muslim or non-Muslim. Just wanted to clear that up!

First Week of Ramadan And The Final Days At Al Midan

This week wrapped up our stay at Al Midan Hotel. Tonight, we meet our host families for an iftar celebration and then disperse throughout Muscat to our homes for the final three weeks of the program. It will be strange to meet an Omani family for the first time, have dinner with them, then hop in the car and go to live in their house. Ariel just said that it's like we are all in an arranged marriage, and today is our wedding day. Weird.


Al Midan was good to us: My huge bed was always made when I got back home from a very long day, they fed us breakfast every morning, they baked our cakes when we had no oven, and they put up with the shrieking noise of fifteen (plus one) teenage girls for three weeks. I think I'll make them a card. I like to think of Al Midan staff as my friends now: I say hi to D-Paq (that's his name, don't ask me) at the front desk when we're going out or coming in and I exchange smiles with the Thai Basil Restaurant waiters whenever I see them. 


My experiences in Oman thus far can contrast with a speedy childhood development: I came to this country with absolutely no knowledge of what it was going to be like. I did not speak any of the language either. Thankfully, I had fourteen other people that felt the same way I did. I grew up in Oman with the rest of my group-- we began to venture out on our own eventually, and have picked up enough Arabic to be basically functional in society. I've made many Omani friends as well, such as the Juice Man, Myada, Ameera, and Majda. Now, our childhood has passed, and we move on to the next chapter where we find the need to be more independent and self-reliant. Sooooooooo... yeah, that was totally cliche! 


Ramadan has been cool. I love hearing the call to prayer boom over Muscat five times a day. I cannot understand anything the voice is saying, but it has this ethereal quality to it that attracts my attention. We have to eat and drink in secret during the day now. When I'm at the AMIDEAST center, I think twice before I start drinking a cup of water: I look around to make sure no one in watching me, then I turn my back to the room and down it, then throw away the evidence. I am planning on fasting during the weekends with my host family because I think it would be awkward to be the only one eating in the house. I have never fasted on purpose before in my life, so we'll see how that plays out. HOWEVER, this past week I got food poisoning, so I slept for thirty-five hours and ate nothing. I counted it as fasting. 

Final thought: I want to find a soccer ball.


Sincerely, 


Bekah

The Great Outdoors of Oman: Nizwa!

This past weekend we finally got to experience Oman without air-conditioning!

Small update on this past week: Had lots of classes, learned lots of stuff, went to a gorgeous park in the city with our Omani friends, and had the privilege of shopping at Lu Lu's, Oman's most popular grocery store that looks like a casino from the outside because of its a neon light extravaganza. Most importantly, we went to a Mexican/Karaoke restaurant and bar and our group of seventeen owned the microphone practically the entire night. I even serenaded Hannah with 100 Years, and I think she was really touched by my voice. The most random karaoke-er of the night was this decent-looking, middle-aged guy in a dishdasha, sitting alone at a booth smoking shisha, singing some heartfelt love song to no one in particular. 

Anyway, we started off the journey Thursday morning when we were greeted outside the hotel by five 4x4 SUV's that each had an Omani driver/guide. My driver was so cool, and I named him Chief because he was the head guy and our vehicle always led the caravan (I think the name was actually catching on with the other guides by the end of our trip). 

We drove through Muscat and reached Nizwa after a couple of hours, the fourth largest city in Oman that lies west of Muscat. Nizwa is known for its handmade silver craft, so we went to the souq and I bought some pretty cool stuff. (Mother: I got something for you, so don't you worry!) When you drive in Nizwa and around the mountainous area, you can't help but notice all the ruins of ancient villages and towers along the side of the highway; Chief told us that some of the ruins were more than five thousand years old! These ruins used to be the homes of the tribes in the Al Hamra region. These tribes would war against each other, and some of those thousand-year-old grudges still exist today among the descendants of the tribes; so if Ahmed wants to marry Majda from a tribe that Ahmed's tribe isn't exactly cool with, his family might be like "Aw, hell nah!" and protest to the marriage. There are some things I will never understand...

We went in our 4x4's deep into the mountains after the souq. Some of the inclines we drove up were quite alarming--we're talking sixty to seventy degree gradients here. I must admit that I doubted Chief's mountain-driving aptitude on some of those inclines, but I shouldn't have, because Chief is a mountain-driving extraordinaire. 



Our first stop was in the oldest village in Oman known as Misfat Al Abreyeen. Even though Sultan Qaboos has made it a priority to bring Oman into the twenty-first century, he also said that if people want to stay put in their ancient villages, like Misfat, they have every right to, and he will bring them water and electricity. Misfat was... absolutely surreal; it's hard to describe because of how timeless it is there. It was so quiet except for the sound of water running though the entire village in the intricate mini-canal system. It was built on the side of a mountain, so no cars can go through-- we had to park outside and walk to the village. The only person I saw was this old man with a long, white beard perched on a wall by a waterfall. It's almost frustrating to attempt to describe Misfat because one really has to go there in order understand what it's like. The few hours we spent walking around the tiny village of Misfat Al Abreyeen are some of my favorite moments on the trip thus far. 

View of Misfat... Date trees are everywhere!

After Misfat, we made our way up more mountains and had lunch on top of a very high mountain in a camp (It was only twenty-seven degrees!) and saw a lot of mountain goats. Then we went to our hotel/campground (The tents were not really tents, and each tent had its own bathroom and running water) and chilled there for the rest of the night. There were these two donkeys that Steph and I kept trying to touch but they were weenies and would run away every time we made some progress. Some of us also stayed up till three in the morning playing cards with our Omani friend, Matasum. We played our American card games and then we played an Omani card game. 'Twas quite the night. 


The next day we went to a wadi (mountain pool) by Nizwa. It actually reminded me a lot of Tucson because it looked almost exactly like Sabino Canyon! I was as free as a bird. We got to swim in the wadi for hours, and I actually got a tan, which will probably be the only sun exposure my shoulders will ever receive during my stay in Oman because I'm always covered from neck to wrist to ankles, especially now that Ramadan has started.


Nizwa was incredible. I can't decide which was better, Salalah or Nizwa. Maybe I just won't make that decision. Oman continues to awe me with the diversity of its people, culture, and landscapes. Bring on more adventure, dear country!

Celine and I in our "tent" being hardcore "campers"

P.S. As aforementioned, Ramadan started today, so we're not allowed to eat or drink in front of anyone that is fasting. It's actually illegal to consume nourishment in public during Ramadan in Oman. We finally get to meet our host families on Thursday, and then I will spend the rest of my time in Oman with them, except for school of course. My stay at the Midan has been wonderful, but I'm ready to experience Omani culture in a more intimate manner. 


Ramadan Kareem, everyone!

Ninjas, Blown Tires, and Camels, oh my! Salalah!

This past weekend was... indescribable. I don't think I've ever had a better weekend in my life. (Props to STEEFE for planning everything and giving us wonderful company ;)) 


I mentioned in my last post we were going to the smaller city of Salalah in the Dhofar region, close to Yemen. When we got off the plane it wasn't THAT much cooler than Muscat, but I could tell that the air was a lot more humid and it smelled cleaner. We got on the bus with our tour guide, Salam, and our driver, Ahmed, and went to a museum about frankincense, which is a huge export of Salalah. Frankincense is everywhere in Salalah and it smells awesome. I also learned much more about Sultan Qaboos and am now even more convinced that he really is what people say he is-- a great leader. He brought this country up from the ashes. In the museum there was a picture of Muscat forty years ago (before Sultan Qaboos took power from his psychotic father by shooting him in the foot... and yes I'm serious about that) and then a current picture of Muscat hanging right next to it. I couldn't believe both pictures were of the same place; old Muscat was almost completely barren; new Muscat was this booming metropolis. I have never seen so much construction in one city in my entire life. 


AND THEN WE GOT COCONUTS. 


Then we went to a festival and saw a bunch of women in full hijaab and abaya with their faces covered. Some people call them ninjas, because you can only see their eyes, but the women in Salalah are a lot more conservative than the women in the capital. HOWEVER, don't start thinking that they don't try to look nice because their body is covered literally from head to toe. They put on layers of eye makeup and white powder around their eyes, and coordinate all of their accessories exactly so their shoes match their purse which matches their abaya detailing which matches their nails which matches whatever else they happen to be wearing; it's great. I also got approached by a couple of young Dhofari women who spoke pretty good English and they were really curious about why we were at the festival (because they don't see foreigners that often). Omanis are some of the most polite and sociable people I've ever encountered. 


The next day we went to this archaeological ruins site and met up with our new tour guide, Ya'rob, a twenty-six year old Dhofari. The ruins were cool. Ya'rob said that legend has it those ruins are the place where all the witches in the world meet every Thursday night. We had a picnic lunch on the beach, we explored an old village near Salalah. That night we had a picnic off the side of the highway in a desert, which is a totally normal thing for Omanis. Salam, Ya'rob, and Ahmed were there, and after we were done eating some curry and bread (winning!) they cleared everything off the blankets/mats and started dancing. I have never seen a young Dhofari man belly dance so well. And I'll leave it at that. In short, that was the best dinner on this trip yet. 


The next day Ya'rob was not able to hang out with us, and we all missed him dearly, but we got yet another tour guide also named Salam. He was pretty cool too. We visited Job's Tomb (I'm skeptical of its genuineness, but it was still really cool) in the mountains. It was all misty and I couldn't see more than twenty feet in front of me. I was reminded of the last scenes in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, actually, because it was so surreal with the fog and greenery. Oh yeah, our tire blew out, so we were stranded in the middle of the desert for about an hour. Thankfully, Salam and Ahmed were there to save the day! We also went to the most beautiful beach ever and went to the Salalah souq. Everyone was staring at us, as usual, but as I bargained with the shopkeepers I felt more and more empowered. You can call Stephanie and I professional souq-ers now. 

Dinner by the highway! Photo cred to Steph

Gorgeous, right? T.I.O. (This Is Oman)! Photo cred to Steph

Site of Job's Tomb, plus a guy in a dishdasha! Photo cred to Steph

I was sad to leave Salalah--the people were amazing and the atmosphere was peaceful. However, today we signed the "language pledge", which means we're only allowed to speak Arabic to each other now. So, at this point, we're not saying a whole lot. People laugh at us when we try to communicate with them because we sound mentally challenged, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

Livin' The Omani Dream!

Waaasssssuuppp! A lot has happened since my last post, my apologies for not keeping you all updated! 


So. I left off after the crazy trip from D.C.. We didn't get our luggage for three days. And, of course, I didn't pack a carry-on, so I was wearing the same clothes for three days. I smelled like it too. It made me appreciate my clothes SO MUCH MORE when I finally got them, much thanks to Stefe! (There is no sound for a "v" in Arabic, so Arabic speakers replace the "v" sound with the "f" sound.)


I've probably eaten about five pounds of rice and curry since I've been here, so..... I have nothing to complain about! There is a lot of different cuisine here (Indian, Lebanese, Omani, Thai, etc.) and we get to choose what we want for dinner every night. Livin' the dream! So, as far as food goes, this trip rates on top.


Oh yeah, side note: Five girls have gone to the hospital since we've been here, and I haven't been one of them! *Knock on wood*


We started Arabic classes three days ago. I now know the Arabic alphabet, and some words and phrases. It's funny because a lot of words in Arabic sound a lot like American curse words. So when one of my teachers says some word in Arabic, I kinda laugh, then they ask each girl in the room to repeat the word they just said. So by the end of it, I've heard the word "/fuqr/" meaning "poverty" nine times, and everyone in the room is cracking up except for my Arabic teacher. One more thing about Arabic which is kind of depressing: Omani Arabic is different from Egyptian Arabic which is different from Moroccan Arabic which is different from Jordanian Arabic. Almost every Arab nation has very distinct dialects, so if I learn Omani Arabic and then try to go speak that in Egypt, I'll have a hard time being understood. Everyone uses MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) in newspapers and broadcasts, but I've heard that's more difficult to learn than the local dialects. 


Fifteen girls living together for three weeks.... Hmmmm.... That's a lot of estrogen. I'm just hoping the claws don't come out by the end of our stay at the Midan Hotel. Our poor residential coordinator Hannah has been acting as the fill-in mother of fifteen teenage girls. Whatta stud. It takes a VERY special person to take on that job. 


We had a tour of Musqat the other day. We got to see this hotel that was one of the most luxurious in the Middle East-- we're talking thousands of dollars a night. It was crazy. They didn't even want us to take pictures of it. But they served us qahua (coffee) and I felt really elegant. We saw Sultan Qaboos's palace, and it looked like a castle you would see in Candyland. It was super vibrant colors with this Middle Eastern architecture. Here's a picture...

Tomorrow we are going to Salalah, a smaller city in the southern part of Oman called Dhofar. Salalah is kind of like Tucson in that it has a monsoon season in the summer, so it's green, lush, misty, and cool. It'll be a nice break from the heat of Musqat. People in Salalah also speak a different language that's much closer to Hebrew and Aramaic. It's interesting to think about how all these different languages spoken throughout Oman (there's more than four in Musqat alone) evolved into what they are today. We're going down there while a festival is going on celebrating the khareef (monsoon season), which is so exciting. I'll let you guys know how it is, but I'm sure it's gonna be amazing. Also, I heard there's this hill in Salalah that supposedly is a magnetic enigma, where if you put your car in neutral, it will roll up the hill. I hope we're able to visit that. 

All in all, the trip has been amazing thus far. I'm looking forward to living with my host family (I have an eighteen year old host sister and and two and half year old host brother!) and the different experiences that'll come along with that. 


One more thought for the road: the majority Omani teenagers do NOT have strong friendships with the opposite gender, so they don't really understand when some of us say that our good friends are guys. It's either marriage or bust, I guess. 










Picture of the sea by the Muscat souq (market). Photo cred to Ariel Valentina.












Picture of some new friends and I at the Access program, which is a program that teaches English to underprivileged Omanis. 

The Most Hellish Trip of Them All.

I thought I had pretty good luck at airports, on planes, etc. I've never lost my luggage, had a really bad delay, or had any other serious situation occur. Until now. 

It began about thirty-six hours ago. We boarded our plane to Frankfurt in a timely fashion, but as soon as everyone was on, we were told to get off due to electrical malfunctions. Almost three hours later, after hearing a lot of griping and groaning from fellow passengers, blaming the airplane staff for this delay, convinced this was just a conspiracy by United Airlines to ruin everyone's trips, we finally took off. When we arrived in Frankfurt, we missed our original connection to Muscat, so we hastily booked another flight direct to Muscat on Oman Air. 

The food was great, the flight attendants were champs; it was a good flight. Until we landed. My friend Julie apparently passed out right before we touched down, and thus began an hour-long ordeal in the plane, trying to help Julie recuperate from exhaustion and low blood-sugar. After she was able to get out of the plane, we waited in the airport for another two hours until she was capable of being pushed around in a wheel chair through the Visa checkpoint. After getting our visas, we found out that our baggage was lost! So we chilled with the super cool baggage people at Baggage Claim for another hour or two until we finally filled out all the paperwork for our lost luggage. We went through customs and then out the door, into another area of the airport lined with people waiting to pick up their friends and family. I felt like a celebrity as I walked down the wide pathway lined with curious people staring so intently at the white girl that just walked through the door. We found the NSLI-Y team waiting for us at the end of the pathway. We were then shuffled into a bus outside in the one hundred degree heat (let me remind you it's three in the morning) and made it to the hotel in about 15 minutes. 

It smells different here. But I like it. I can tell this is going to a hell of an interesting experience. 

Poor Julie. 

Pre-Departure Orientation

Today I felt like I was walking a marathon. We walked to the American Councils office and talked there about the goals of the NSLI-Y program. We then took a taxi to the Oman Embassy and a couple Omanis gave us a presentation about their country. They gave us these awesome books as gifts too, so I'm already being exposed to the legendary Omani hospitality. We walked back to the American Councils office and went over more stuff about the program, then walked to the Oman Cultural Center and had a presentation given to us by another Omani girl, which was also really informative. Then a group of us went (walked) to see the White House, some of us (including me) for the first time. 

A couple things stuck out today regarding Oman. First, Omanis seem very proud of their country, and what's not to be proud of? The women there are treated with respect and are able to participate in the work force, including the government. His Majesty Sultan Qaboos has significantly reformed and improved their education system, and is willing to give more power to the Council of Oman as  a means of modernizing the governmental system. The country's religious groups live peacefully with one another. The list can go on and on. Overall, it seems like a very chilled-out, forward-thinking Middle Eastern country, and I am thrilled to leave tomorrow night :)

Here are a couple pictures I took at the White House too! DC was fun, but I'm ready for the real adventure to begin.