the three S's

I have gone through this week and thought..."ooh...that will make a great post." Or "I need to write about that!" When it got right down to it though the jet lag got the best of me. I think I actually fell asleep last night BEFORE my head hit the pillow. No, I feel certain of it. I felt my eyes roll in the back of my head, everything went starry black and I don't remember anything else. Somehow I was in bed when I woke up. Yesterday was the first day I forced myself to stay awake all day. Before that I would decide to lay down for a few minutes and end up asleep for half of the day.

So, I will write a few random thoughts about my experiences of moving to a new country with a very different culture. I do want to make a statement here in the beginning that though some of these things seem really weird, different and even stupid at times...I am not complaining. So the first person who says that I need to just move needs to just reread this disclaimer. I get it...things are different and I can respect that, but I do want to at least document things.

Alright..so here we go.

First, there are a lot of marble floors. My hotel room has beautiful marble floors. Many of the houses we have looked at so far have beautiful marble floors. We drove by a house today that had an exotic marble wall being built around it. Marble is hard. This is bad on little kids knees.

If you were to play a version of paper rock scissors and marble was the actual rock - it would win every time. Mostly since so much of our society is based upon good looks, but also because it is so dang hard.

2 days ago I was getting ready in the bathroom and Parker pulled over my bag and out spilled all of my things onto the marble floor. My first instinct was of course to get Parker away from any glass, and then I checked the marble. Not a dent, scratch or scrape. My Shalimar perfume didn't fair so well. It broke all over my bathroom and suddenly my sense memory was pulled back to our plane ride. I recalled sitting in the Houston airport and getting whiffs of B.O. I expected that. Everyone knows that under arm smell is something to expect for whatever reasons (don't slay me or say that I am being racist, this is just a fact.) But no one prepared me for the COLOGNE COUNTER ATTACK. Oh, this is so much worse than simple pit pew. Some people over here feel that they need to add an additional scent to the mix. The airline (Emirates...which was really nice by the way - and I DID get to fly business class...thank you GE! It made all the difference with children.) even gave out bags of cologne. In addition, they had several choices of cologne bottles on the countertop in the little bitty plane toilet room. This was particularly heinous because when your flight is 16 hours long, you will inevitable end up after someone else and they doused themselves with cologne so you got the full effect upon entering this small chamber and then being forced to close the door immediately. Oh, it was horrible! And the stuff some of these people put on is so cheap smelling...like 80's-little-old-lady perfume...on the men as well. Gagoriffic! I love a good perfume...in fact, it is a thing with me. I believe in layers of scent...but onion smell and pungent alcohol fumes do NOT mix. Everyone smelled like oniony drunks. And it made me so nauseous. There are perfume/cologne shops all over the place here. In fact, I am more likely to find a scent shop than a pharmacy. Did I mention how cheap it smelled? In fact, a little boy of maybe 7 years knocked on our cab door when we were in line at McDonalds and tried to sell us cologne for 1 rial. Right there in the drive through. Yep. Ridiculous. Honestly, not everyone is like this, but it is enough that I have had a pretty constant headache from the fumes.

Did I mention we took a cab through McDonald's? We did.

They don't like ice here. I love ice. I ask for ice and they put 3-4 cubes in my drink. WRONG! I need like 30 cubes per glass. I will never get used to this. They like to drink water hot. The water comes out of the tap hot. I gag everytime I brush my teeth with warm water. The good thing is that I can take a wonderfully hot shower. LOVE THAT!

David keeps converting rials to US dollars. It makes everything seem so expensive. I was so glad when we stopped at a store called Centerpoint and they had this cute little vest top for 3 rial...but David had to remind me that it was almost triple that price in US dollar world. I hate us dollar world. The girls barbies cost around $30 in US dollar world. But he bought them anyway ;)

They cover their pizza in ketchup. ewwww.

I love the sound of the waves on the beach and the beach is so beautiful. It is nice to watch people from my balcony walking and enjoying themselves. They organize football (soccer) games and the goal is about 2 feet x 2 feet. They are pretty good as well! Fun to watch while half asleep.

I have deep circles under my eyes because I am not sleeping well. I am worried about finding a house.

House hunting is so hard. The budget GE gave us isn't enough. We asked them for more tonight. House hunting is a pain in not just the behind but the entire body. The company that is supposed to be helping us with our relocation (which is everything!) is doing a really bad job. They were supposed to pick us up from the airport...but they didn't. The lady who is showing us around is always late by about an hour. And though the girls are in school, we are still on a schedule because Madelyn get picked up at 12:30 and Angelina gets picked up at 3:30...so our day is split and we can't afford to lose an hour here or there. Nobody has heard of this relocation company. NOBODY! We are the first GE people in the area, so GE's relocation group doesn't have a ground group here so they contracted out a relocation company...who in turn contracted out this company who is working with us. Yeah...you are getting the picture I am sure. Anyway, I am pretty sure they are trying to rip us off. They showed us after 4 days only 2 houses within our price range and keep pushing us in that direction. They refer to the people by names instead of "the house at this address." They tell us they have negotiated the price down. Today we went to see some beautiful houses, but they were just barely out of our price range. Why would they show us houses we couldn't afford? We made it clear we were not going over budget. I will tell you why because of course they tried to push this one villa on us. It is nice enough - sure, but not what we are looking for and clearly not in the right place. To top it off, we found out that we could probably furnish our entire home for less that 200 rials per month and this company is trying to convince us that it can be done for 450-500...and the land lord has generously said that he would furnish the house. Yeah right...with leftover mix matched furniture from his other rentals I am sure. So we are going renegade and taking matters into our own hands because this company isn't being honest with us. We told GE we were using different people.

Magellan doesn't seem to have any maps of Oman, so the gps we bought for the car is worthless. We are sending it back for sure.

I haven't noticed to much of this staring phenomenon...but perhaps I am not pretty enough. Or maybe they can just tell that I know they haven't got a right and won't put up with it.

The girls school is very very nice. I am very pleased with TAISM. I am also so glad the the company is paying. Pricey. I will add a note that as far as school supply shopping was concerned, I had to do hardly any. Usually there is this LONG list of items, but not this time. Maybe a handful...they supply everything else and I think that the things like 2 packs of pencils went to the classroom and are used throughout the year by everyone. Very neat that it is working that way. And yes, I am going to be a room mom. ;) Can you imagine? Me?!?!?! A room mom? Actually, I have done it before and was rather good at it...I will be much improved this time.

Parker is scared of the ladies in black. When I filed for residency I had to go into this little area for only women. It had about a dozen seats. 10 of them were occupied by women in all black from head to toe. He whimpered and cried the entire time. I tried keeping him calm but it really wigged him out. And they felt helpless as well. I could see it in their eyes. They didn't want him to be frightened, but I couldn't make him stop and I felt horrible.

Everyone seems really nice and helpful. Our flight went flawlessly. The kids were wonderful. They watched TV, ate and slept. It went off like a dream. My part did anyway. I sat with Parker and David sat with the girls in a different part of the plane. So, he might have a different story to tell. I will say that the business class helped. Very private. We have been working with Madelyn on listening and obeying. Mostly because I just knew that something like this would happen - and of course, it did. I have been especially vigilant recently on practicing these skills with her because I knew that I time would come when it would really matter if she listened or not. We were getting off of the plane and I had gathered what I thought was all of the carry on for the girls and David and we met up and started to head out. I told Madelyn to make sure she waited. But with a car seat plus two carry ons for each one of us carrying stuff was difficult...oh yeah - and Parker of course~ Well, they hold the coach area until all of the 1st class and business get off. Well we were so slow that they released them a little just in time for David to realize that I left his computer bag (woops, I didn't know he had stowed it in a different area so I didn't see it.) So, he went back. Madelyn and Angelina headed down the steep stairs off of the plane where a bus was waiting for us. The stewardesses helped them down with their bags. I had parker, a car seat and about 4 bags, but I had twisted them so that I could carry them and no one else was able to help me. So I took Parker and all of these bags down the metal steps. Parker...had decided it would be fun to leap down two stairs at a time. I struggled to keep him from tumbling. I could see David was still stuck on the plane trying to get through the crowd of coach people. Madelyn was at the bottom already. I yelled for her to stay put. One of the stewardesses asked me where my husband was and I told her...she said "oh no, you will have to take this bus and he isn't going to make it." I thought no big deal, we will just stay behind. Yeah right. I am halfway down the stairs straining every muscle in my body trying to keep my son from cracking his skull when I see Madelyn standing inside the bus with her bags. The doors started to close...I don't know how I did it, but somehow I grabbed up Parker, whisked Angelina the rest of the way down and hoped on that bus. Just in time for the doors to close. I was wearing 3 inch patent leather heels. Somehow super mom had arrived. I didn't know what to expect of course. The bus was packed. People stood up to let us sit, but I was so furious. I tried to be grateful. I tried to listen to what the announcer was saying. It was in arabic. Wait...English. I heard english. I think I need to take the first stop. My brain is frazzled. I wanted to whip Madelyn's hiney right there in front of everyone and probably would have too if my muscles hadn't been so taxed and if I wasn't tangled up in bags. I take Madelyn by the face and tell her" Look little girl. I love you, but you MUST do exactly as I tell you. I want you to take THIS handle (I put her hand on it) and when we stop you are to pick it up and follow me. Do NOT roll it. Pick it up. You have one instruction. This is really really important. Think of nothing else. Pick it up HERE and follow me fast. Repeat this back to me." She did. We were right by the door. Everyone else was behind us. We were going to be trampled if we didn't clear fast enough and I had a ton of luggage to manuever. Do you know the crazy kid STILL tried to roll it? BUT, the people. The people didn't trample us. They helped. They took our bags and smiled and piled them in one location, neatly and gently. They waited and helped.

The real estate lady wore a black bra under a white shirt. She tried to convince us that the car was too small for Parker and I to go along. David neglected to tell her the wife and child would be attending. She has worn more modest clothes and less makeup since.

She calls me madame. I hope she doesn't think I am the kind she is used to...

A huge company called PDO has a lot of families that live in an area of muscat that is being demolished...and of course, they are all looking for new housing in the same price range as us...thus making the hunt a bit more difficult.

There is a lot of racism here. I think it could more specifically be a caste system. I can't tell an indian from a sri lankan from an arab from a phillipino from a potato head but apparently it matters here.

I am officially a resident of Oman. I have a blue card to prove it!