One of the goals of this blog was to entertain, educate and, most importantly, reassure my friends and family back home that I was safe and happy here and not living in fear of terrorism. I've tried to share my experiences and some of the knowledge I've picked up by reading a lot and just being a nerd in general, but the single best thing I've read to date on why terrorism just won't be an issue in Oman is the recently posted article by Gary Grappo, "Saudi Arabia and Oman Have Different Experiences With Extremism". So follow the link and read an excellent article that's far more compelling than anything I could write.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
To Go Home
A couple of months ago someone posted an article on Facebook about whether one could ever go home again after being an expat and it's something I've been thinking about since, especially as I've been fielding a lot of questions from work lately about whether I want to stay in the region or go back to the US.
When you live abroad, whether it's for one year or ten, life moves on without you at home. You miss weddings and birthdays and births and other big life events. You miss the phone call from your best friend that she got engaged because of the time difference. You miss the impromptu calls from friends to chat about life or love or work. And while your friends might think of you fondly and miss you occasionally, they generally fill the gap you left in their social group and move on without you. And as time goes on, the calls and the texts and the emails lessen.
And sad as that might sound, my life has also moved on. In 2014 alone I visited 16 countries. Most of my American friends will never visit that many countries in their entire lives and, as the gap between our experiences and lives widen, it becomes harder to find things in common. I learned this at a very young age when I first started traveling - after returning home from a trip, I wanted to tell my friends all about every cool experience, only to find that many of them were immediately bored or were just jealous of my trips (and thought I was bragging). So when people ask about a trip after I return, I generally say something generic like "Oh, it was great!" or "I had a lot of fun but it was so cold!" The people who really want to know more (whether because they care about me or because they're genuinely interested in traveling or just because they're inquisitive people) will generally ask enough follow up questions to get me talking.
Most of my funny stories start with phrases like "So, this one time when I was camping in Uganda and surrounded by wildebeests and hippos..." or involve some story about my trials and tribulations of using a squatter toilet (in fact, if I ever wrote a book, I'm pretty sure the title would be something like "Ass Hoses and Squatter Toilets: One Girl's Adventures in Learning to Squat in the World's Shittiest Toilets"). Those stories tend not to be received so well in the US (except by my closest friends). And when I only traveled once or twice a year, it wasn't a big deal to leave those stories out of my dialogue. But now, after traveling this much, how do I go home and be myself and yet leave out such huge pieces of my life and experiences?
I imagine it's also hard adjusting back into American culture after living in a foreign culture. I've already talked about how sometimes I get offended on behalf of Arabs when I hear Americans say something ignorant, and I know it's going to be so much worse if I were to return home. Aside from the comments about terrorists and subservient women, there's plenty of people who have said/will say "Ugh, Oman?!?! Where the hell is that and why on earth would you want to go there?!? Did you have to ride a camel to work?"
And finally, living abroad makes you miss and appreciate America in ways that I took for granted when I lived there. I miss Target and Wal-Mart and Home Depot and other one-stop shops. I miss craft beer and Cajun food and southern BBQ. I miss real Diet Coke from a fountain. I miss Americans' sense of independence and pride and bullheadedness and belligerence and all the other adjectives that describe our upstart nation, both the positive and the negative. And I know that if I move back I'll just be frustrated by all these things that I miss (well, not Diet Coke - I'd never be frustrated by Diet Coke) and appalled at how insular and ignorant many Americans are of the outside world.
So no, I don't think repatriating back to the US is going to happen anytime soon. And as for going home? Well, I'm already there. Because as any nomad will tell you, home isn't a single place. It's where your friends are, where you put down roots (even for just a year), where your pets are (minus my happily retired dog who has permanently abandoned me for my parents), where the bed is that you long to return to after a few hard weeks on the road, where your local pub is, where the waiter at your favorite restaurant knows your name...
(Oh, and here's a really poignant blog post about this very same topic.)
(Oh, and here's a really poignant blog post about this very same topic.)
And while it feels like I'm channeling my 20-year old self, I'm going to leave you with some appropriate some lyrics from an old favorite band:
I met a girl who kept tattoos
For homes that she had loved
If I were her I'd paint my body
'Til all my skin was gone
For homes that she had loved
If I were her I'd paint my body
'Til all my skin was gone
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
On Being Female...and Other Musings
The question I get asked most often by people back home is what it's like living and working as a female in an Arab and Muslim country. And frankly, my answer is that it's pretty much the same, with the exception that I wear slightly longer skirts and cover my shoulders. Sure, sometimes I have to work a little harder to get the same respect as a similarly situated male colleague, but that's no different from my experiences in the US.
Most people are shocked by this answer and the next follow up question is usually something like, "But aren't women really second-class citizens over there?" (Not to mention that any time there's violence perpetrated anywhere in the world by an Islamic terrorist that my Facebook feed is rife with commentary on how horribly women are treated in this region.) As I find myself explaining over and over again how American media incorrectly portrays life in the Middle East, or as I try to explain the differences in culture, or describe how many women choose to wear an abaya/hijab, I feel a bit like an Arab apologist.
That's the phrase we used for our Middle Eastern History professors in college who were Westerners teaching about the Middle East and yet constantly trying to apologize for the Western misperception of Islam/Arabs. My Arab or Muslim professors tended not to apologize - they just stated facts and, if a debate started about the morality of a topic, the professors just shrugged it off as Americans' inability to understand other cultures. When we called professors Arab apologists, though, it wasn't a compliment. But I understand it now - to study or experience or understand a foreign culture, yet never truly be a part of it, can wind up alienating you from both cultures, as you're always trying to explain or defend one culture to the other.
So when I talk to Westerners about life in the Middle East, I wind up saying "Yes, but..." a lot and qualifying my statements.
- "Yes, some women are forced by their husbands to cover their faces, but they are the minority, except maybe in places like Yemen, Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan."
- "Yes, some women are still put to death for adultery, but that very rarely happens, except maybe in places like Yemen, Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan (and besides, how many women are killed in the US each year through domestic violence?)."
- "Yes, some girls are married off at very young ages to older men, but that really only happens in places like Yemen or Afghanistan."
- "Yes, divorce and child custody over here might favor the man more than the woman, but you have to understand that the culture is different. Divorce rates are much lower, not because women can't divorce, but because people marry for different reasons. Rather than marrying for "true love", people marry for a spouse that can support them, or that can provide them with children, or for companionship. Their expectations for their partner are lower (and clearer), so divorce rates are naturally lower."
And so I feel like an apologist, constantly trying to explain and justify my host country's culture. I also find myself getting offended on behalf of Arabs/Muslims when I hear Westerners say ignorant and misguided things about a culture that they have never witnessed or experienced. (Oh, and it goes both ways - my Arab colleagues think I'm constantly trying to defend American culture or politics, or diffuse claims that everything wrong with the world is somehow an American conspiracy). But as much as I might be branded an apologist, I also think that the only way Westerners are likely to change their perception of Arabs is by hearing it from a Western female. If an Arab woman told you that she wore the abayajab out of personal preference and that she did not feel like a second class citizen, would you believe her? Or would you instantly start coming up with counterarguments in your head, like she's only saying that because that's what she's been brainwashed with?
So I'll keep apologizing (for both cultures). Because I'm so lucky to get a glimpse into a culture so foreign to Americans and because there's a chance that when an American hears me say that my gender isn't an impediment to my success here, that maybe some of you will start to believe me.
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Finally, a post! And some updates...
I know, I know, I have been woefully remiss in updating this blog lately. It's a combination of being really busy, crankiness/expat frustrations (and not wanting to use this blog as a forum for whining) and trying to write posts that don't stray into local politics or things that could piss off the people who so nicely sign my checks every month. So I'll just ram the past few months into this one post and then I'll try to promise to be better in the future.
1. I Moved!
As you may recall, I had some serious maintenance issues with my former house. It turns out that living in a house with toxic black mold, unending plumbing issues and where your kitchen cabinets are lying on the floor can make you cranky. It also turns out that living in the middle of absolutely nowhere, 20+ minutes away from any conveniences, can make you feel even more isolated and homesick than you already do as a single expat in a foreign country.
I'll admit, I was willing to live with too many issues for too long because it seemed like living with the House from Hell was easier/less stressful than dealing with moving, so it's partially my fault for waiting until I was totally miserable. My final straw(s) was when my shower stopped working for like the 6th time and when my house completely flooded when we got 30 minutes of light rain. That was back in October and thus began a nearly two month endeavor to get HR to move me. (I actually wrote a blog article back in December on that whole seemingly unending clusterfuck, but then decided I sounded too whiny and angry. But if you ever ask me about it in person, be prepared for me to launch into an angry tirade since I still have some anger issues about the whole topic).
To make a loooooooong story short, on Christmas Eve I moved into my fabulous new apartment (which also happens to be the apartment I was originally supposed to move into, except HR accidentally gave it away to someone else), which happens to be in the heart of the expat area and is a 3 minute walk from an area with my favorite restaurant, a bar, liquor store, 2 coffee shops and a Western grocery store. Let me tell you what a huge sigh of relief this has been for me - I'm much happier here, much more willing to consider staying beyond my contract term of 15 months and much more social now that I can walk to meet up with friends.
[Side note: After moving out of the House from Hell I heard a lot of other stories from people who had also moved out of the same development. Turns out one of my neighbors had three huge, poisonous viper snakes in their laundry room and other people have reported poisonous vipers coming up through toilets. Turns out that as part of their botched plumbing construction, they've managed to let poisonous snakes into the pipes. Can you only imagine how I would have reacted if I'd had a poisonous snake come up through my toilet?!?!]
2. Christmas
Christmas in the Middle East is pretty strange. It's a normal work day, all the restaurants and shops are open, there's no Christmas trees or decorations and it feels like any normal summer day. I had offered to work on Christmas so my coworker could spend it with her family and it was so strange to be at work and to go out for lunch at a normal restaurant. Also, you know how in the US you're not supposed to say "Merry Christmas" anymore but instead have to say "Happy Holidays" to be politically correct and inclusive of all the non-Christians? Well, here there are no other recognized holidays in December other than Christmas and every Omani assumes that all white people are Christian. So pretty much every time an Omani saw me on Christmas, they exuberantly shouted "Merry Christmas!!!" and seemed pretty happy with themselves for remembering the white-people holiday. I found it charming and funny.
[Side note: I could give two shits about the whole "Merry Christmas"/"Happy Holidays" political correctness debate in the US, so please don't think that previous paragraph was meant to indicate an opinion on the political correctness of either statement.]
3. New Year's Eve
I traded working Christmas for getting off for NYE. My sole requirements for NYE were that I wanted to be somewhere cold and I wanted to not be in Oman. So I met up with a few friends from my Romania trip in Edinburgh, Scotland for the annual NYE street festival called Hogmanay. Two comments: I am too old for drunken street festivals and my body is too broken to handle a cold, wet Scottish winter. Everything ached for like a week even after I returned to the desert.
4. Naughty Nala
I got suckered into taking home a stray kitten that we'd been feeding outside of our favorite restaurant for a while. She's sweet and adorable and I think Zim is happy for the company, but she's in the naughty kitten stage where she races around the house and then knocks everything off every surface. She also has an obsession with smashing fruit all over the house (so far I've had an avocado, tomato and apple smeared everywhere)...hence the title Naughty Nala.
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| Zim and his mini-me, Naughty Nala. Yeah, I know, one day I should get a pet that isn't black. |
5. Winter Wonderland
All summer people kept telling me how awesome Oman is in the winter when it's not hot and gorgeous. I heard tales of rooftop bars and restaurants, nightlife only available in the summer and desert excursions that wouldn't kill you from heatstroke. I can finally say that while I would hardly call 75-85 degree weather winter, it is definitely a nice change from the scorching summer. And this is definitely a more interesting place to live from December-March.
Ok, I think that's it's for the major "catch up" and I'll try to get out some more substantive posts on my recent adventures soon!
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Oman's 44th National Day
On November 18, 2014 Oman celebrated its 44th National Day, which is the date of the Sultan's birthday and commemorates him ascending to the throne 44 years ago. In expectation of the event, the whole country was decked out in red and green banners, flags, lights and a sense of celebration. It almost looked like the country was decorating for Christmas...until you realized that Oman's flag is red and green and the color scheme is merely a coincidence.
A few weeks prior to National Day, the Sultan gave a video conference to state that he would be unable to return to Oman for the festivities due to the fact that he was seeking medical attention in Germany. Many of the Omanis I worked with seemed ecstatic that he was speaking to them via video and everyone tuned in to hear him. In the days following his video, it was all anyone could talk about and I started seeing cars around town that were emblazoned with the Sultan or with the Omani flag, further showing everyone's love for the Sultan and national pride.
I have to admit that as an American I found all of this rather perplexing. No matter how popular one of our presidents might be, I couldn't imagine Americans getting so excited about hearing a speech, nor could I ever imagine Americans decking out their cars with images of the president or of our flag.
The Sultan's speech and his inability to return to Oman for National Day also sparked some questions by international journalists and expats as to his health and what his failing health might mean for Oman's future. As far as I can tell, this is not something Omanis discuss, at least not publicly. The Omanis love the Sultan and wish him well and don't seem to speculate about his health or what the future of the country might be without him, especially not during a time of celebration.
Though November 18th was the actual National Day, the Sultan has historically wanted Omanis to stay in Oman for National Day, so people are not given the day off. Instead, the holiday is the following weekend, ensuring that Omanis stay in the country for the actual holiday and then get days off that they can travel with. This year we were lucky enough that the National Day holiday fell November 26-27, which meant that all of us Americans could celebrate Thanksgiving (which would otherwise have been a normal work day).
Since I learned my lesson about staying in Oman during holidays (and since my mom would have worried incessantly if I'd been alone for Thanksgiving), I flew to Doha, Qatar to spend the holiday with some of my friends who used to live in Oman and were relocated to Doha a few months ago. While I didn't get out and see much of Doha, what little I did see was such a contrast to Muscat. When I first visited the Gulf region, I found Muscat so much more aesthetically pleasing than the bigger cities like Abu Dhabi, Dubai or Doha. And while Muscat is much more charming than the other three, after living here almost 8 months I find myself missing the bustle of a big city and feeling a little bored by Muscat's sleepy charm. So a weekend in Doha was a nice refresher - not only to see good friends, but to also be reminded that Dubai isn't the only big city in the region. And since it's only an hour and a half flight away, it's an easy escape on the random boring weekend here.
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Halloween in Transylvania
So now that I've told you why I wanted to go to Romania for Halloween, I guess I should tell you about my actual trip. I took a 7-day tour of Transylvania through the tour company G Adventures, which was pretty much the perfect amount of time to spend in Romania.
The trip started in Bucharest, which I'd been warned to have pretty low expectations about. Supposedly Bucharest was called the "Paris of the East" in the 1800s due to its beauty, but 60 years of communism, repression and economic stagnation left it a bit wanting. Knowing there wouldn't be much to do there, we spent our one free day in Bucharest at the Escape Room, which I highly recommend. Basically you get locked in a room for an hour with a ticking bomb to solve clues to escape the room before the bomb goes off. Nothing Romanian about it, but it was definitely a fun way to spend an hour (and no, we did not escape the bomb, though apparently made it farther than most people).
We got out of Bucharest as quickly as we could and headed to Transylvania, which is a region of Romania bordering the Carpathian Mountains. Our first stop was Snagov Monastery, which is supposedly where Dracula was buried. Dracula gravesite or not, I can see why he liked this small Orthodox church so much.
We also swung by Peles Castle before heading to the quaint, medieval town of Brasov.
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| Snagov Monastery |
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| Peles Castle |
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| Brasov |
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| Bran Castle |
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| Corvin Castle - most epic Halloween |
We ended the trip with a visit to Poenari Castle, Dracula's actual castle. The castle was largely destroyed in an earthquake in the 1800s, but what remains is at the top of a mountain...and the top of a very strenuous climb up 1400 stairs. However, the views from the top were amazing and a good (though sweaty) way to end a great week.
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| Poenari Castle |
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| A view of the Arges River from the walkway up to Poenari Castle |
Now to go finish packing before I'm off to Doha for Thanksgiving!
Visiting Dracula
I've been terrible about updating this blog recently but I have been traveling more than usual and absolutely slammed at work in between all the travel. Which also means that I'm pretty much perpetually tired from the never-ending jet lag cycle. But I finally have a few days off work to relax, celebrate Thanksgiving and actually update this blog!
So about a month ago I packed some warm clothes and headed off to Romania to celebrate Halloween in Transylvania, something that has always been on my bucket list. But before I launch into a description of my trip, I should probably tell you why I wanted to go to Romania so badly. For starters, in my much younger days I was a "goth" kid and went through a vampire phase (fortunately this was long before the "Twilight" craze and I had respectable Anne Rice vampires to obsess about) and, as both a goth kid and a history nerd, I naturally researched the real Dracula, Vlad Tepes. And so began my interest in traveling to the region...
Dracula was a 15th century prince in Wallachia, a region of Romania that was on the edge of the Ottoman advance into Europe. His father had joined the Order of the Dragon, a Christian secret society committed to stopping the Ottomans, and so his father was renamed Vlad Dracul, dracul meaning "dragon". By adding the "a" to the end of Dracul it merely meant "son of", so the son became Vlad Dracula and, like his father, was committed to stopping the Ottomans, which was of critical importance to Europe after the Ottomans defeated and then claimed Constantinople in 1453.
Dracula was a 15th century prince in Wallachia, a region of Romania that was on the edge of the Ottoman advance into Europe. His father had joined the Order of the Dragon, a Christian secret society committed to stopping the Ottomans, and so his father was renamed Vlad Dracul, dracul meaning "dragon". By adding the "a" to the end of Dracul it merely meant "son of", so the son became Vlad Dracula and, like his father, was committed to stopping the Ottomans, which was of critical importance to Europe after the Ottomans defeated and then claimed Constantinople in 1453.
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| Vlad Dracula |
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| Poenari Castle - an earthquake destroyed most of the castle in the 1800s, but you can still visit the ruins after climbing a grueling 1400 steps to the top. The mannequins try to recreate the impaled victims that one would have seen when nearing Dracula's castle. |
In addition to cleaning up the nobility, Dracula also took very hardline approaches on theft, adultery and other crimes. Theft was punishable by death and his favorite form of killing was impalement, though he also employed a myriad of other ways to torture, kill and maim. Sometimes he'd impale people through the stomach so they would die quickly - other times he would have a blunt stake pushed through a person's anus until the stake slowly made its way through someone's body, eventually killing them after a few incredibly painful days. And often once he impaled someone he would leave the stakes up, as a reminder to others. He impaled so many people that another one of his nicknames is Vlad the Impaler.
But it worked. There was virtually no crime in Wallachia at the time and the story goes that he used to leave a gold cup at a fountain in the city square for anyone to drink out of and the cup was never stolen. And he was the only European leader of the time to turn back the Ottomans. In 1462, the Ottomans under Mehmet II were advancing on Wallachia. When they neared Dracula's castle they encountered the forest of the impaled - over 20,000 victims, many of them Turks, impaled on sticks leading up to Dracula's castle. Mehmet II was so horrified by Dracula's cruelty that he turned around and returned to Constantinople, thereby saving Wallachia from being overrun by the Ottomans.
Dracula was killed around 1476/1477 and it was believed that he was buried at Snagov Monastery, a monastery that he helped support and which he supposedly favored due to its remote location on an island.
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| Snagov Monastery |
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| Supposedly the location where Dracula was buried in Snagov Monastery |
But how did the story of one cruel Romanian prince in the 1400s turn into a vampire legend and make its way to Bram Stoker, an English chap in the 1800s who never even traveled to Romania? Long before Stoker told his tale, Germans, Russians and other Europeans were telling stories about Dracula, embellishing on his atrocities and creating supernatural causes for his tyranny. Pamphlets in Germany were printed during Dracula's lifetime and these early manuscripts, which became bestsellers at the time, tied him to vampires and demons and all sorts of supernatural evils. By the time Stoker turned Dracula into a household monster, Europeans had been telling the tale of Dracula for hundreds of years.
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| 1499 German woodcut showing Dracula dining among the impaled corpses of his victims - this also helped add to the vampire myth, since Dracula did drink blood and did eat food covered in the blood of his victims |
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| Carpathian Mountains |
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| Spooky Carpathian Mountains |
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| If you drive in Romania you have to learn to share the road with all the horse-drawn carts |
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