Family Qatar Trip! (Week One)

All right, since it's been over a month since I posted anything, I guess it's time for me to get on the ball and 
post about our AWESOME trip to Qatar. 
The adventure begins...

The five of us Hendersons left Green River on Sunday, February 27th and stayed with Denise and Gerry and their wonderful family that night.  On Monday morning, we packed up ALL our stuff (which was considerable) and flew out of Salt Lake City airport at around 1:00 PM.  We had a short flight to the Denver airport (about 2 hours), and then our long transatlantic flight to Frankfurt, Germany (I believe that flight was somewhere around 9 hours).   After that, we had our final flight from Frankfurt to Doha, Qatar with a stop in Riyad, Saudi Arabia (without the stop, this flight is about 6 hours.  With the stop, this flight becomes about 8 hours).  On the journey to Doha, we didn't have any long layovers.  I think our longest one was 2 hours.  That is nice when traveling, because the layovers add quite a bit to your travel time.  Our total travel time, from the time we arrived at the SLC airport to the time we landed in Doha was somewhere around 26 hours.

On the first leg of the journey.

Claire watching Megamind on her own personal screen.

The girls loved the airplanes, especially the first one.  Hallie loved being able to see "the whole world" from the airplane window. Since Evie was a lap rider, anytime we were taking off or landing, she had to be buckled in with me.  At all other times, she was sharing a seat with Hallie or Claire, or she was on the floor.  All three kids were awesome travelers.  On the long flights, the planes are equipped with detachable bassinets that can attach to the bulkhead.  So we always had bulkhead seats which have a bit more legroom than the normal seats.  This enabled the girls to sleep on the floor during the long flights, and Evie to sleep in the bassinet.  They all got some good rest on the flights.  Rob and I didn't.  Each of us probably slept for half an hour total.  The girls were great sports when we had to wake them up and make them sit in their seats for landing.  We were all tired when we got there, but in good spirits.  We arrived in Doha on Monday night, March 1st at about 11:30 PM local time, but we had left the girls' sleeping bag pets on the airplane so we had to wait another 45 minutes for the people to find them and shuttle them over to the arrivals terminal where we were.

Right before landing in Doha, after about 25 hours of traveling.  Whew!

 For the first few days, we were all pretty jet-lagged.  Claire woke up at about 4:00 AM and then fell asleep at about 2:00 PM, because her body thought it was time to go to bed.  Evie had a rough few nights.  The first day, Rob and I slept in until noon! I couldn't believe it!  Changing to a time zone that is 10 hours different from your own does weird stuff to your internal clock.

So that first day (Tuesday), my mom, Hallie, and I all went and got our hair cut together.  Hallie got about 10 inches cut off.  Now her hair is a couple inches below her shoulders, where before it was nearly waist-length.  I just got highlights and some layers, and my mom the same.  It was fun to have a girl's day with my mom.

On Wednesday, we went to Landmark mall for some pre-tailoring research.  I recently bought a formal dress that is a halter-top, so I wanted to have a small evening jacket tailor-made to cover my back and shoulders.  In Doha, there are numerous tailors, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to do that.  So we browsed around the mall for something that resembled what I wanted made.  While we shopped, Rob took the kids to Circusland, the children's play area in the mall.  Evie made friends with some Qatari ladies in their abayas (not an easy feat to get one of them to react to you).  It seems little ones melt hearts all around the world.  We took our pictures of what we wanted made to the tailors (all Indian men), and tried to make sure they understood exactly what we wanted.  Their English wasn't the best.  Rob also decided to get a fancy cuff-link shirt made.  It turned out really cool.  We then went to LuLu's Hypermarket (it's sort of like a Super Wal-Mart--department store and grocery store all rolled into one).  I love that it's called a Hypermarket.  Feeling low on energy? Come to the Hypermarket! Anyway, we had to buy a few things for my dad's 50th birthday party the following night.  It was great to see some of the signs in the store.  The English misspellings and grammar mistakes are one of my favorite parts of visiting Qatar. 

Someone get that fish a jacket, cuz it's cold in here!

I don't think hydroponically is a real word--but if it is, it's misspelled.

What's your favorite kind of cheese? Glass.

Thursday we explored Grammy's garden, went swimming at the Al-Anood pool on Mom and Dad's compound and just basically played at Grammy's house.

My mom explained to us that in Qatar, it gets so hot in the summer that it kills all her plants, so she has to garden in the wintertime.  Her growing season was just coming to its close. 

Playing pirates with Matt and Jess.  Yo-ho-ho mateys!

Makeovers from Aunt Jessica.  The girls got makeup, fingernails, and toenails painted.  So glamorous!

On the way to the pool, we stopped at the playground on the compound for a few minutes.  Look at those little dirty toes!

Hallie and Daddy on the giant slide at the pool.

The water was a little chilly this time, so after swimming, everyone laid on the cement to warm up.

That day (March 3rd) was my dad's 50th birthday! Happy birthday Daddy! He had to work on his birthday, sadly, but we had a rockin' party that evening.  Unfortunately, that was the dreaded "third day" of our jet-lag, and we were falling asleep here and there during the party, so we didn't get any pictures.  But it was a fabulous celebration for a fabulous man! I love you Dad!

Grammy bought the girls these adorable matching dresses!

Friday is the Sabbath in Qatar.  Their workweek begins on Sunday and they work Sunday through Thursday.  Then Friday is the Sabbath and Saturday is the day off.  So our first Friday in Qatar was Fast Friday.  It was really amazing to see the strength of the church there in Qatar.  The church is not allowed to proselyte or post a sign in front of their building, but they are allowed to meet.  They meet in a large villa (they call their houses villas in Qatar), and Sacrament Meeting takes place in a large dining/living room.  They set up chairs the way the pews would be set up in one of our church buildings, and have a small podium up front.  Their ward is far too large to accommodate all the members in that one room, so every week they set up a camera with a live feed going to a few other rooms throughout the villa (the Relief Society room, etc.) so that all can hear and enjoy Sacrament Meeting.  It definitely made me grateful for the blessing of a nice church building with enough rooms for all our classes and activities.  In the seven years my parents have lived in Qatar, they have gone from one branch to a ward, to two wards.  Elder Holland is visiting their ward again shortly, presumably to make more changes of that nature.

All the people at church are very friendly and quite a mixed crew, with members from countries all over the world including Australia, South Africa, Scotland, New Zealand, America, and many more.  It really makes you pay attention to someone's testimony when it's all you can do to understand the words they are saying through their accent. Overall, the church is growing and thriving, even in the Middle East, which is often portrayed as the least tolerant of places.


 On Friday evening, Mom, Dad, Rob and I drove down to take a walk on the man-made island The Pearl.  If you have heard of Dubai's man-made islands (The Palm and The World), this is the same idea.  I attached an aerial view of the Pearl so you can get some idea of what it looks like.  Those small buildings in the picture are actually massive hotels/condo complexes.

This was our view of the sunset from the Pearl.

 

View of the Visitor's Center from the Pearl.

Us on the Pearl with the Doha skyline in the background.

Some cool architecture. 

This is a real tree!

A HUGE yacht in the harbor.

A beautiful bridge leading to the center of the Pearl's harbor.  I know you can't tell, but those orange lights are actual torches.

 

The Pearl was definitely a fun place to see.  It is very upscale, and very beautiful with the fantastic Arabian architecture that I love about Qatar.  They sure know how to make cement look beautiful! 

Saturday: Desert Roses Day! 

We drove about an hour outside of Doha into the middle of the desert.  This is not the sand dune section of the desert, it's the rough, unattractive sand section of the desert.  But about 3 feet beneath the surface of this barren landscape are beautiful sand formations known as desert roses.  They are crystallizations of sand and water, and they form into round disk shapes that are all interconnected.  They look a little bit like roses.  So basically digging for desert roses consists of digging a big hole in the sand until you get to something hard, which is the layer where the desert roses are found.  It's very easy to find small pieces of desert roses, and much harder to break out large pieces.  When you find a large formation, it can continue horizontally under the sand for who knows how long, and so you usually have to break off an edge piece of it.  We found some small desert roses and some large ones. 

We saw tons of camels on our drive out to the desert roses site.  They are about as numerous as antelope in Wyoming.

Digging.

A bunch of camels tied together.  These are part of someone

's herd.

Hallie found one! This is a small desert rose.

The boys digging out a huge desert rose.

Uncle Matt and Hallie hard at work.

Grandfather was the luckiest guy of all--he got to dig with the three grandkids.  This is when Claire proclaimed, "grandfahver, you're my bestest buddy ever!"

Ben's desert rose hole.

Scott and Rob with "the big one". I know it just looks like a big hunk of sandy rock, but it cleaned up quite nicely.

Footprints in the sand

The freshly dug sand was nice and soft, so we could walk around in bare feet

Roasting Starburst on a little grill in the desert.

Grammy and Evie

And later, we cleaned up the big desert roses to unveil their true beauty.  Look at the different sizes of blades.  Some have large sand-dollar-sized blades, and others have tiny tiny bead-sized blades.  Very interesting and a fun desert outing!

 Saturday evening, Mom, Dad, Rob, and I went to walk around the souqs at night. Going to the souqs is like visiting an old-fashioned marketplace.  All the shops are small and close together and all the prices are subject to bargaining. It is a fabulous place to get a real feel for the Arabic culture.  We saw some cool stuff.  We went into a souq that specializes in model ships, Arabic style.  We saw a giant water pitcher and watched a man weaving a Persian rug--incredible! We ate dinner at a wonderful Arabic restaurant in the souqs called Al Tawash.  Their menu was my very favorite word-related thing we saw in Qatar.  Just fantastic.

No one really knows why they dye the chicks like Easter eggs.

The Islamic Cultural Center.  Most public buildings in Qatar are very well lit at night.

Standing in front of Al Tawash.

Sorry for the redness, I know it's a little weird.  But look at the cool canopies in the picture. There was one of these massive  fabric canopies over each table. 

The Dhow boat souq.  Before oil was discovered in the region, these Dhow boats were used by pearl fishermen to gather pearls, Qatar's main export. I love the triangular sails.

This is what it looks like walking through the souqs.  An explosion of color. There are dozens of hallways like this.

Beautiful beaded embroidery work on this decorative wall hanging in the rug souq.

A man weaving a Persian rug.  We were told that he had already been working on this rug for about a month, and that it would take at least three more months to finish it.  And this isn't even a big rug!

 Sunday we went for a walk and played at the Al Jazi Gardens playground.  Fun stuff!

And thus concludes our first week in the Middle East.  I was going to try to post our entire trip in one entry, but there's just too much! So don't go away, we'll be right back after these messages...