Charly's first swim

Today Jon took Charly in the pool for her first swim. She was a pretty good swimmer, but I don't think she liked being wet.

Looking tough AND symmetrical

There are some things in every culture that seem totally bizarre to those on the outside, but totally normal once you are familiar the history, the people and their lifestyle. However, there are some things that are just strange or silly no matter who you are. This is one of those things.

H2 and H3 Hummers are very popular here and are great for being a tough guy cruising around town or going driving across the sand dunes. Now, for a small fee, you can have the best of both worlds. There are auto shops that will spray mud on your car so that you look like you have been 4-wheeling on the weekend. The best part is it is applied totally symmetrically and cleanly over the wheel-well only. I can’t figure out who thinks this is a good idea or is fooling anyone.

Happy 27th!

For Jon's birthday we went to dinner with friends at our favorite Japanese restaurant. Jon loves it because it has a really good hibachi grill, but I am also luring him over to the dark-side of sushi addiction. Here are some pictures at our house afterwards. Can you tell Jon is excited to play games with me?! Charly loved it and only tried to eat a few of the presents. Jon was surprised and excited to have some presents sent from home. His big gift was his own buoyancy compensator for scuba diving.

Happy Birthday also to Kara Newman. Happy 28th!

A Mutt, through and through

On September 11 we got a puppy. We have been talking about getting a dog for a long time (Jon really wanted one), but the situation has never been right. I got an email at work from someone who had rescued a litter of puppies from a construction site next to her house. They were too cute not to bring one home. Our puppy’s name is Charly. Her mom is a Saluki mix—which is the most common kind of dog here. Purebred Saluki’s are like greyhounds, but most of the mixes are not that tall and skinny. We don’t know what Charly’s dad was, but the litter looks so different, we wonder if there were more than one father for the litter. Charly is definitely a mutt, but she is very cute.

This first set of pictures was taken by the lady who rescued the pups when they were about 5 weeks old.

Here are a few pictures I took of Charly once we got her home. In these pictures she is 7-8 weeks old.

Emily's first dive in the ocean

This weekend we went scuba diving on Saturday and Sunday. (The work week is usually Sunday through Thursday, but we had Sunday off because it is the National Holiday.) Jon has been diving with the club for a while, but I just finished my classes and pool sessions, so this was my first dive in the ocean. It was so much fun. I had a great time. I liked diving in the ocean MUCH better than the pool. It is a bit bizarre getting use to breathing underwater, but it is really cool too. We dove from the beach at a sight the club calls Old Club Reef. There is a manmade reef of old cars, busses, tires, and other random metal junk. El Nino wiped out most of the choral here, but it is starting to grow back. We saw angel fish and bat fish (see pictures) and a bunch of other fish I don’t know the names of. I held a sea urchin in my hand. I don’t particularly care for sea water in my eyes and mouth, but it wasn’t too bad overall. I am definately ready to do it again.

Qatar's Independence Day

Since September 3 is Qatar’s Independence day, I thought this would be a good time to share a little bit about the history and formation of Qatar as a country (Thank you to Wikipedia):

Qatar forms one of the newer emirates in the Arabian Peninsula. After domination by Persians for thousands of years and more recently by the Ottoman Turks, and finally by the British, Qatar became an independent state on September 3, 1971.

The British initially sought out Qatar and the Persian Gulf as an intermediary vantage point en route to their colonial interests in India, although the discovery of oil and other hydrocarbons in the early twentieth century would re-invigorate their interest. During the nineteenth century, the time of Britain’s formative ventures into the region, the Al Khalifa clan reigned over the Northern Qatari peninsula from the nearby island of Bahrain to the west. Although Qatar had the legal status of a dependency, resentment festered against the Bahraini Al Khalifas along the eastern seaboard of the Qatari peninsula. In 1867 the Al Khalifas launched a successful effort to quash the Qatari rebels sending a massive naval force to Wakrah. However, the Bahraini aggression was in violation on the 1820 Anglo-Bahraini Treaty. The diplomatic response of the British to this violation set into motion the political forces that would eventuate in the founding of the state of Qatar. In addition to censuring Bahrain for its breach of agreement, the British Protectorate asked to negotiate with a representative from Qatar. The request carried with it a tacit recognition of Qatar’s status as distinct from Bahrain. The Qataris chose as their negotiator the respected entrepreneur and long-time resident of Doha, Muhammed bin Thani. His clan, the Al Thanis, had taken relatively little part in Persian Gulf politics, but the diplomatic foray ensured their participation in the movement towards independence and their dominion as the future ruling family, a dynasty that continues to this day. The results of the negotiations left Qatar with a new-found sense of political selfhood, although it did not gain official standing as a British protectorate until 1916.

When Britain officially announced in 1968 that it would disengage politically, though not economically, from the Persian Gulf in three years' time, Qatar joined Bahrain and seven other Trucial States in a federation. Regional disputes however, quickly compelled Qatar to resign and declare independence from the coalition that would evolve into the seven-imarat United Arab Emirates. Thus 1971 marked the inauguration of Qatar as an independent sovereign state.

Since 1995, Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani has ruled Qatar: he seized control of the country from his father Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani while the latter vacationed in Switzerland. Under Emir Hamad, Qatar has experienced a notable amount of sociopolitical liberalization, including the enfranchisement of women, a new constitution, and the launch of Al Jazeera, the controversial Arabic language satellite television news channel. Qatar ranks as the 11th richest country in the world per capita.