Christmas and return

We completed the first semester on the 2006-2007 school year on Dec 1st. Doha was hosting the Asian Games, the 2nd largest sporting event behind the Olympics, and most schools, etc finished the semester to allow for less traffic, etc before the 13,500 athletics and officials hit Doha. We left town on Dec 3rd to spend 5 weeks in the states, mainly playing with our grand daughter. It was great and she made it even harder to leave Tennessee, but ah we must.

Doha averages 5 days of rain a year, as luck or something would have it, during the 15 days of the Games they had 10 days of rain. It is still raining, so to speak, we had a big rain today, so strange weather seems to be happening everywhere. It was too bad about the rain for the opening ceremony on Dec 1st, but having watched the openings of other sporting events, I will say that Doha was one of the best I have seen. Watching the construction of roads, venues, etc for the last 18 months, I had questions if they could pull this off. This is not the world's largest country and at this time not one of the most advanced, but they made it happen with very few problems. They will be advanced before the next 5 years, money does buy technology and starting from scratch in 1995 means that they don't have to replace a lot of things because they didn't have them to start with.

The weather besides the rain has been cool for Doha, they have had night at 48/49 deg and highs of 60. Everybody bundles up like we would in TN if it was 25 deg. They are breaking out the coats, earmuffs, etc. while we think this is great weather. All the flowers are in bloom, rain has been great but we think these are spring days. The Qatari people have been so cold, they have sold out of heaters at all the stores, not a heater to be had in Doha during Dec and most of Jan. We have one we bought last year and have only used twice in two winters.

We were going to loan it to a friend that had a cold apartment while we were in the US but our key ended up in AduDubi with a friend that had stayed here while we were gone and walked off with it. Somedays stuff happens and people are cold.