December dating

I back-dated my blog entries for Nov-Dec, trying to catch up while keeping the entries chronological for my own journaling purposes.  If you are a person who keeps track of friends by most-recently-updated blogs, then you've probably missed our family's updates for a couple of months now, since they are showing up as older posts.  Ooops!  Sorry about that.  Please keep scrolling for posts from our fun Nov-Dec! 

David presented at an Education conference here in Muscat, and I was able to attend.  He did a great job!  I was proud of him.  At the end of the conference, a banquet was held at Muscat's fanciest hotel, the Bustan Palace.  There was a lot of good Arabic food as well as live traditional music and dancing.  We arrived a little late, and were invited to sit at a table of 5-6 Omani men.  It was an interesting social situation for me, because Omani men and women generally do not sit together at public or private parties.  At this particular banquet, the attendees had naturally segregated themselves into tables of Omani women, tables of Omani men, and mixed tables of western expats and other middle-eastern expats.  As usual, the men at our table respectfully averted their attention from me, unless I was speaking directly to them.  As usual, David was friendly and surprised/impressed everyone with his knowledge of Arabic.  By the end of the night he had exchanged mobile numbers with one numbers with one or two people, and was invited to visit homes and villages should we ever be in the area.

I left the banquet early with one of David's co-workers to attend the wedding reception of another Omani co-worker.  Omani wedding parties are really just for the women... hundreds of female friends and relatives attend, and no men or cameras are allowed so that the women can be free to let their hair down (figuratively and literally!).  Unfortunately, we missed the big moment when the bride arrives (around 9:30pm) and we had to leave before the groom came to pick her up (around midnight).

My birthday was Dec 20th, and we celebrated by going out for panini sandwiches and icecream at a place called 5th Avenue Deli.  It almost felt like being in the U.S., except our kids were given way too much attention and icecream by our friendly Filipino waiter.  We were pretty much invited to sample each and every flavor before we left!  We will surely miss kid-friendly Oman when we return to the states.

The day before my birthday (mid-December, mind you) we drove an hour north to Sifah beach, known for it's white, sandy beaches.  My first thought when we arrived was that it wasn't much better than the beach two blocks from home, but it was secluded enough that I could actually wear my swimsuit and get in the water!  (I suppose I could do this at our local beach, but not without an audience of male workers).  It was a lot of fun, even though I came home with a major sunburn.  I never got sunburned when it was 120 degrees outside, because I never spent more than a few minutes outdoors.  Now that it's winter time, it's easy to spend a couple of hours in the sun!