New Experiences

Okay-- I'm going back in time to the first week we arrived here. I was truly overwhelmed by the strange smells, sights, and people. Of course, jet lag played a big part of that. It took about a week for my world to feel somewhat upright again! 

The pictures below are Don and I eating out for the first time. Two of Don's coworkers in the Expat Relocation department took us to see our apartment for approval and then out to dinner. This is a fresh fish restaurant, in typical Omani style. When you walk in, the raw fish and other seafood is in a refrigerated display cabinet. I didn't spend any time looking at it--did I mention it was the whole fish, etc.?  

We are drinking a wonderful fruit drink out of cantaloupe "glasses." Omanis are very big on fresh fruit drinks--and they are always very good!

You can see the fish on the platter in the middle of the table. They filleted it down the middle back, laid it out flat and grilled it. I was careful to avoid the meat around the eyes, but I did enjoy it very much! They also served us hummus--an eggplant hummus and a garbanzo hummus. I will let you figure out what I liked. By the way--Don has a very adventurous stomach and he likes everything!

Now on to our apartment; if you looked up the website I provided in previous email, you saw that they were advertising fantastic ocean views. As you can see from the picture below, that's not entirely true. We are, in fact, at least 5 miles from the coast line. You can see those views here in Muscat, but not at our apartment.

These pictures were taken off our small balcony patio. Those are giant stone mountains in the background. The ground all around here is hard stone covered with a layer of sand. The haze that you see over the mountains in both pictures is the sand that is always in the air. It is rare to have a perfectly clear sky--at least as I've observed so far. This was as clear a day as I've seen since arriving. Sometimes it is so thick that breathing is hard. I didn't think I'd experience much allergy problems here, since there is very little vegetation, but I was wrong!

The complex is nice; there are many more units under construction. It's a new area of development in Muscat, so there is construction all around us. That's okay--we like the newer buildings and it's very close to the new office site that Don is here to oversee.

My next blog: hopefully it will be about Don's first grilling experience here in the apartment with his "mini" kettle grill....