Dhofari FIFA

It's true, everyone in Dhofar is too busy with FIFA to do anything else but WATCH the games. Nadia and I have been watching on the big screens. Who are you rooting for?

Chicken a la Carte

This is a reminder first to myself, and to my dear girlfriends who shared lunch with me at Browniz yesterday. Maybe we shouldn't have tossed that pizza afterall?

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com

Random

Total writers block. The days are moving quickly with little excitement or enthusiasm to write. Everything in Salalah seems drab. Khareef is creeping up, the Ocean is vicious, the sky grey, the clouds thick. Although it is so warm outside, the grey sky puts me into winter mode and so I've been craving soups (the blasted AC doesn't help). God I miss a little cold, what I'd do for a cold breeze!. I much prefer the indoors for now, until Khareef truly comes. I hate the feeling of my abaya being stuck to me from the unrelenting humidity and the stickiness under my burqa. Arghhh the burqa!

Today I  thought I could relax a bit on Haffa before sunset and enjoy the view, I never made it out of the car. The ocean has moved in so close there is barely any sand to sit on and the humidity is simply unbearable. Apparently the weather has not affected the men folk of Salalah, for they are all glued to the tv screens outside watching football. One of these days I'm gonna pull up a chair and watch the game too on that huge screen darn it!! Better yet, open my own little restaurant for WOMEN ONLY and play chick flicks on the big screen.

The rumor lately is that another cyclone is coming...heading straight for Salalah? I haven't seen anything on the weather channel or news. I keep getting text messages to prepare for it, stock up on water etc. Why are people so paranoid?

What else?....Oh, still trying to fit in a much needed trip back home. Things are "busy" at work for Sam, so I have to be patient, but my patience is wearing thin and I miss ma' Mama!. I'm thinking of doing a layover in France, I hear the weather in Paris is nice.

Grand Mosque: They let me in!!!

Yesterday, I took two friends with me to visit the Grand Mosque... and we were let in!! I couldn't tell you if it was because the guard was in a really good mood, or the fact that all burqas were stuffed in our purses, or that we were unmistakably non-Omani looking, but we got in people!!!. I wanted to do a cartwheel in the courtyard but thought better of it. 

I still have mixed feelings though. Should I attempt next time to go with a group of Omani women, in burqa, and then see if we're let in? Maybe the last guard thought it was "ayb" for an Omani man to take his wife into the mens section of the Mosque? hmmmm.

Anyway, we enjoyed ourselves. We had the whole Mosque to ourselves. I was especially touched when my non-Muslim friend Nathalie decided to bow down on the carpet trying to take in the whole experience of prayer.

I think the chandelier in the men's section is pretty awesome!

This is what happened the last time I tried to visit the Grand Mosque

Pissed

So incredibly pissed.

Israeli troops storm Gaza Flotilla