dead date palms make for a monochromatic landscape

Since I last wrote to the "group formerly known as yahoo list", some medium-core excitement has happened here in the M.E., with lots of days just working, working out, cooking, eating, sleeping, repeat. Last weekend I joined the Doha Naural History Club on one of their weekly Friday 'rambles' to a small village with an abandoned date plantation. Apparently this plantation used to yield oodles of plump, sweet dates until the growing development of Doha lowered the water table sufficiently to starve the trees. Now the "farm" is an eerie field of giant de-fronded palm trunks curling over and pitching precipitously at loopy angles. It was SO COOL (see photos). Someone should really make a movie here. The dead trees looked like ancient dinosaur necks trapped in suspended animation. On the walk back I got an offhanded marriage proposal from a worker at a nearby (living) date plantation which brightened my day briefly. Of course, in the group of 30 or so people, the 6 of us there from the Cornell writing program were the only ones to (ahem) get lost on the way back. Well, we actually were on the right track but we had lagged behind so severely that a couple SUVs were sent to find us. (The fact that we were't actually lost was, however, pure luck.)

The next day Autumn and I went to a horse show where our riding instructor was jumping. It was at the Doha Equestrian Club, which was pervaded with a sense of under-construction-ness, but gorgeous nonetheless.

Did you all know I am taking riding lessons? I almost fell off my horse on Thursday during an exercise in which we had to take our feet out of the stirrups and then get them back while trotting. I got one foot back in but not the other and lost my balance, but i turned a potential fall into a graceful though quick dismount, which gave the instructor a good laugh. Hey. It's been like 20 years since I've had a lesson. Give me a break. (Can you believe it has been 20 years since I have done anything?? YIKES!)

Anyway, this weekend I mostly slept in and took naps. I went for a run in a wicked wind on the sand flats just outside of town where i had gone flamingo watching not long ago.



I felt thoroughly exfoliated afterwards. Or maybe sand-blasted is a better way of putting it. Then on Saturday Autumn and I decided to go shopping at the Souks, which are a kind of network of traditional outdoor strip-mall style shops carrying everything from veils to wooden camels to carpets to shoes to aquariums. I bought some really good honey from the "World of Honey" and in the course of Autumn's search for perfume we both were spritzed to the point of saturation, so much so that even after bathing we were sniffing each other for traces of the nauseating combination of florals and musks with which the vendors insisted on inundating us.

So now another work week has begun. I am getting to know my students and settling into my duties. Tutoring ESL students is exhausting but deeply satisfying when that light of understanding spreads across a student's face. And my colleagues are wonderful and sympathetic so we have fun together. I even threw my first dinner party for all the single and lonely TAs on Valentine's Day, which made Doha feel a little more like home.

I hope everyone out there in bloggsville is happy and staying warm in this cold front that is sweeping your nation. I miss you all terribly. Don't forget to keep in touch with my new email address!

with sandy love,
emelie