Sunburn and Snorkling in the Gulf

Hello all, well a lot has happened and time has gone by. As some of you may have noticed, I have been relatively quiet as far as blogging goes for quite some time. This is for a number of reasons. First, because I left my charger at home and I could not blog. Second, because until I get my residency visa, I can’t sign any sort of contract, and the internet cafes here are not the place where I like to bare my soul and scrawl my virtual message on the virtual walls as it were. So I got a laptop from work (got dropped into my dept. at the college; more about that later. A couple of things I want to ‘spout’ about right now to kind of bring me up to date.
Oman is hot as balls right now. Good thing this is the absolute worst right now. In Oct. it will go down to the 80’s for the rest of the year. It’s supposed to be one of the nicest places in the middle to live. Other Arabs refer to it as ‘the pearl’. It’s totally georgeous !!! I’ve attached some photos of the mountains where I live and also the nearby (25 min) beach. The Al Suwadi (the beach) is toally cool. I went snorkling for the first time and it rocks. Oman is like in the top ten best places for snorkeling and diving (a lot of the other teachers I’m working with came here because of that). I was totally blown away, I’m soooo hooked. The water here is totally warm and I stayed in the water exploring the reef for about two and a half hours (which is uncommon so I was told, it usually gets too cold in most other places to stay in for that long). The guy I went with said I took right to it. I really did have an awesome time. I saw a large amount of fish that I had seen a few weeks ago at the New England Aquarium! I was so amazing, can’t wait to go again!!! The waters here are some of the best preserved and least impacted in the world!!! The beeches here are beautiful too (as you can see by the pictures). There’s wildlife practically everywhere here. There are goats, camels, wild dogs (and cats fucking everywhere!!!!), geckos, jackdaws run amok by the beach and many other things which I’m not too sure of yet. The Omani people are awesome!!!! They might be the warmest, sweetest, and most hospitable group of humans I have ever met. They are all curious about us (westerners), and always make ‘big eyes' when they find out where we are from. As my coleges tell me, they are known for their tolerance of other cultures and peoples, and even have their own brand of Islam, which is extremely tolerant and open. When you walk through the street people will say hello to you, they may even call you over just to talk. I was very glad to see that all of us (even us from the states) were very well received. Sometimes they want to talk politics, and make sure you understand that any one of them would kill our ‘executive idiot’ with their own teeth if given the chance. They do, however, make the distinction between a government and its people (a lot of times we do not), which is good, at least for me.
Its Ramadan tie here so everything is a little ‘backwards’. It’s a time of fasting, kind of in the same way the original Catholic holiday of lent was. From sun up to sundown the people do not take food, or water. At sun down there is a large meal (Iftar) and then you are allowed to do all the things you couldn’t do during the day. Even though we are not expected to fast, we are expected to do everything that is ‘forbidden’ away from the eyes of muslims and those fasting. This time of year seems to bring people and families together. It’s real interesting.
Well I’m gonna run. I’m going to make a real effort to try and post regularly. I would like to be able to save as many of these thoughts and memories as I have them and not ‘backtrack’ after long lapses of activity. Well until next time…