Snorkeling in the Gulf of Oman

Another fun excursion we have had in the last week was a boat ride out on the Gulf of Oman/Arabian Sea. Some friends (same ones we spent Thanksgiving with!) had rented a boat for a few hours while friends of theirs were visiting from another Middle East country and they invited us along for the ride. And what a ride it was! We pulled out of the harbor--see below--and then the spectacular scenery along the coastline just made the trip!

Don, enjoying the ride

Friends that we went with

The goal for the afternoon was to enjoy the coastal scenery and then go to a cove for some snorkeling. Here are some fantastic coastal views.

Traditional dhow boat off the shore

Old fortresses mixed in with newer construction

We were at low tide; you can see how far up the mountain the water would come underneath the fort.

This is a park area nestled into some flat land in
front of the striking rocky coastline

The water is a beautiful clear blue, and again--what can I say? The pictures speak for themselves in all their majesty and beauty! On to snorkeling.....

We arrived at the cove, found a quiet spot and put down the anchor only to find it full of jelly fish. Here's a good picture of just one of the many that surrounded our boat:

Yes, the water was really this color in spots around the cove!
The jellyfish were a bright blue to purple while in the water.

We were questioning our guide as to whether they were dangerous or not. He said no, they weren't poisonous, and to prove his point, he picked one up! We took a quick picture then released it back into the water, where it swam away. They aren't as vibrant-colored out of the water as in.

                                                                                                                                                                                       

Up-close jelly fish. Must not be the same kind we have in the Gulf of Mexico!

And now, for the pics you have been waiting for: Don snorkeling and swimming in the cove!

If you can see his face, you will know that the water was a little bit on the cold side!
See how the water changes color? There was varying depth as well as a
small coral reef in the area. We observed lots of zebra fish in this location.

After getting over the initial shock of cold, Don took off to view the sights.

While we were anchored in the cove, a dhow (type of traditional Omani boat) was also anchored there, with passengers who were also enjoying the snorkeling.

Dhow

As we were leaving the cove area, we came upon this beautiful
arch in the rock formation surrounding the area.

This is the royal palace in Muscat. The Sultan does not live here, but receives
foreign dignitaries in this complex. I believe the building in the middle that is
turquoise and yellow is the actual reception building.

I'll leave you with this one last look at the cove. The rocks you see behind the beach area actually form an island. The mainland coast is behind us in this picture. Because of the island, there is a nice peaceful feel to this cove, as well as natural beauty.

Hope you enjoyed the boat trip!

Thanksgiving!

I've been asked a lot about what we did for Thanksgiving. For my non-American readers (yes, guys, I do have some of those!), Thanksgiving is a holiday in America that we celebrate as a time to give thanks to God for all the blessings of the previous year. It commemorates the early settlers in America who were thankful to have survived a summer with a good harvest, shelter, and provisions to help them through what was sure to be a harsh winter ahead. They had a big feast, invited their friends the Indians who had helped them, celebrated, and thanked God for His provision.

Anyway, we got together with some fellow Americans for a big family feast. They couple who invited us over have 2 teenagers, who wanted to invite their friends to show them what Thanksgiving was like. So there were 12 teenagers and 6 adults. Quite a crowd! And I had pictured us having a quite celebration here at home, just the two of us!

We had a pretty traditional meal: turkey, ham, dressing, gravy, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, pumpkin/pecan/apple/chocolate pies, cranberry salad, carrots and a cucumber salad. I think that was all! The American Club (club sponsored by the American Embassy) here sold cooked turkeys (roasted, fried, and one other way) and pies, so our meat and two of the pies came from there. The rest we made ourselves. All in all, it was a delicious meal, and we all ate ourselves silly!

Thursday and Friday are our weekend days here, so we were fortunate that we had the day off to eat, relax, and recover from the feast. We went to church, of course, on Friday. I am always in awe of the God we serve every time I worship with others from around the world. A great weekend all around!

The other Thanksgiving weekend tradition is Black Friday shopping. Never fear, if you were worried that I would miss out on that tradition, I did participate online. Julieanne was the sole benefit of my shopping--I guess Taylor and Anne know now to expect a package in the mail soon! Enjoy the last day of your holiday weekend, my fellow Americans!

Does the view from your Starbucks look like this?

Well, ours does! Or, at least the Starbucks we went to over the weekend does! The ocean is overlooking the front and the mountains are out back. Here is the Starbucks from down on the beach. We enjoyed a leisurely brunch up on the roof of the restaurant and took in all the views before heading down for a walk along the beach.

The view from up high on the top of the building was nice, but so was the view from down on the beach. This is going to be mostly pictorial today (I'm giving you a break from the history lessons!)

No, I didn't take a poor shot of the giant rock in the distance. It is always very hazy in Muscat; this was actually a pretty good day in that regards. And yes, the water is that blue!

Don walking on the beach.

This appears to be an old fortress ruin that has been swallowed up by the sea. It is low tide, so this is not probably very noticeable during high tide. I'll have to research and see what happened there!

Looking back towards the mountains under the bridge of the road that runs in front of Starbucks. This wetlands area is actually a flood plain.

 As we were driving around that morning, we stumbled upon this hilltop restaurant. It is very common for Omanis to decorate their green space  with floral designs. I thought this was unusually large and well-done and depicted a very nice design.

This is just one view from the top of the restaurant. They were closed, but we are definitely planning a return trip!

That's all I have today! Not much of a story, just a lot of exploring!

Well, ours does!

A Night of Music for a Good Cause!

I love living and participating in an international community because there are so many opportunities for a variety of activities. You get to meet so many interesting and entertaining individuals and share in some of their experiences.

Wednesday night, Don and I spent the evening at PCO (Protestant Church of Oman) for Fanfare, A Musical Dinner. Musicians from all around the world--Italy, Azerbaijan, Russia, Scotland, Europe, Canada, America, South Africa, India, Scotland, Great Britain, Oman, and more--that live here in Oman were on the program to share their musical talents. The music was outstanding and covered a wide variety of musical styles. Can you imagine young Omani men playing bagpipes with their teacher (from Scotland!), or a multinational mix of people playing West Indies steel band sounds. Or how about a classical musicologist/composer/performer playing a flute accompanied by a pianist from Azerbaijan?

The three Russian female professors from a local university (two violinists and one pianist) played phenomenally. Vocally, Italian opera and a local community-wide choir were represented nicely as well. There was even audience participation through singing and even in dancing at the end of the program. All in all, it was a superb evening!

Dancing to the steel band music

Why, you ask, did PCO host this musical dinner evening? For a very good cause: fundraising for the building project on another PCO campus here in the Muscat area. If you remember from an earlier post, PCO runs about 8,000 people through its facilities during any given week. These facilities are shared by numerous congregations. The main campus right now is in an area called Ghala. They are wanting to build a much-needed facility in the Ruwi area in order to reach even more people.


I would like to share the personal story of just one of the many people who come to the Ruwi church right now, and for whose benefit this new building is so badly needed. I will give her the name "Mary."

       Mary attends the Phillipino Pentecostal Fellowship, one of the church's attached congregations. She came from a small village in Andra Pradesh to Oman in 1999 after her young husband died. She's the only bread winner for her 3 children who live with her 75-year-old mother in India. Mary is a housemaid for an Omani family and earns a little over 40 Omani Reals (approx. $104) by working 17-hour days with one day off per month. Though the work is tiring, she is happy about her employers because they treat her well. Previously she was from a different religion and just came to the church to meet friends from her village. After her daughter got married, Mary believed it was church and Jesus that had blessed the work of her hands. Ever since then she has believed in Jesus and has been able to feed her children and build a small house for herself. In Mary's own words: "Coming to church gives me peace of mind and strength for the whole month. Otherwise, working the whole month makes me feel lsad and lonely. For me church is the fondest place. God is my best friend and comforter."

The church is not a building, but its people. However, the church here does need a building in which to meet. If you have been touched by Mary's story, you too can be part of the Ruwi Building Project by donating to this worthy project. You can contact PCO directly, or leave me a message on this blog and I will be glad to help you!

Just a little more on Ephesus!

Well, I just can't resist a little more on Ephesus! I've been holed up in the apartment sick for the last four days, so I have nothing else to write about anyway! (By the way, before I got sick, it was November, and I was still enjoying swimming every day! And the evenings are getting much nicer. Finally, the best time of the year is here, climate-wise!)

Ephesus

Okay, can you stand another history lesson? Ephesus has actually occupied three different sites on the west coast of Turkey. It was originally built as a port city on the sea. A nearby river deposited so much silt that it built up the land and changed the coast line. They moved the city inland, but the land between the city and the shore was a marshy swamp that attracted mosquitos and death. They finally moved inland even farther, and built up the city on the surrounding hills, which gave them some unusual architecture. The ruins of Ephesus today stand five miles from the ocean--one of the things that contributed to its demise and abandonment so many centuries ago.

Terrace Homes

They are currently excavating a section of homes built for the more affluent citizens of Ephesus. There are currently five homes uncovered. It was really interesting to walk through them and get a glimpse into their decor, lifestyles, and artistry. You can see below the process they use to excavate the ruins. We actually climbed up about three stories of steps as the homes themselves "climbed" up the side of the mountain. They have excavated only a small percentage of the ruins, so here is a look back in time!

The picture to the right should also help give perspective of the size of the rooms.

This is a large room on the lower level You can see bits of the marble still attached to the wall, used as a covering for the bricks. The marble varied in color, which tells us that it was imported from more than one location--at great expense, I am sure! Every time I see a Roman ruin, I am reminded that the more things change, the more they stay the same! I see the same architectural elements that we still use today, many of us without any idea where they came from!

Dining Room with frescoes on the wall and marble tile emulating a carpet design

.

Mosaic of Lion on floor

Wall fresco on wall--reminds me of wallpaper!

And now for my favorite picture. Even though there were obvious pagan symbols and pictures throughout the city, the Ephesians did one thing to demonstrate the effect of Christianity on the community. These crosses can be found all over the city as well, chiseled into columns and pediments everywhere after their conversion!

More on Turkey!

So, last time you got an overview of our trip to Turkey. Today, you are going to get a history and cultural lesson--once a teacher, always a teacher! I hope you find it as interesting as I did!

Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia is on of the oldest churches in the world--ranking in the top 10, and some of the churches making the list are just ruins today! There has been a church on the grounds since the year 360 AD, with the current structure being completed in the year 537 AD.

Its construction was the pinnacle of Byzantine architecture, and it remained the largest church in the world for 1,000 years. (Byzantine: later Roman Empire during medieval times, its capitol being Constantinople--or Istanbul--rather than Rome). Whew, that was a mouthful! Anyway, what sets this particular architecture apart is its dome. See how little the people are at the bottom of the picture. You have to go up to the balcony above ground level in order to truly understand the size of this dome. An interesting side note: we did NOT climb stairs to get up on the balcony. We walked up a series of ramps wide enough for a cart pulled by a donkey in order to transport materials up! You can see both Christian and Islamic symbols in the church--more on that later. In 1453, it was converted to a mosque when the Ottomans conquered the empire. The Ottomans copied the architecture of Hagia Sophia in all of the mosques they built in what is now modern day Turkey, hence the term Turkish mosque. The Turkish mosque has a distinctly different dome than mosques in other Islamic countries. In 1935, after the fall of the Ottoman empire, it was converted from a mosque to a museum under the rule of a new secular republic government.

Here are some things you need to know so that you can understand what you are looking at in the picture. During the Byzantine era, throughout history, and even today in some churches, it was quite common to see artwork depicting Biblical characters: Jesus, of course, the Virgin Mary, the apostles, angels, and so on. Since these are people, they obviously have faces. In Islam, it is forbidden to depict faces inside their mosques. This became a problem to be dealt with when churches were converted to mosques. 

Hagia Sophia was originally constructed with mosaic tiles, some covered in gold, depicting different scenes from Scripture. When it was converted to a mosque, those containing faces had to be covered. Fortunately for us today, they did not destroy these mosaics and paintings. They merely plastered over them! Since becoming a museum, some of the plaster has been removed to reveal the beautiful mosaics underneath. Instead of plastering over all of the paintings, they added their own paint to camouflage people/angels. If you look in the top third of the picture above, you will see an angel on the left and a matching one on the right. The one on the left has been restored to its original form while the one on the right is still in its camouflaged state to disguise the form and face of an angel.

Gold tiles in ceiling mosaics, uncovered

You can also see the large round medallions with Arabic writing on them in the picture below. They were added when the church was converted to a mosque. The picture below also shows another painting that has been uncovered in one of the side domes. The bare patches on the wall are just due to age! I would imagine that after 1,500 years, the building is certainly entitled to show a little aging!

 The picture of Don and I below gives a much better perspective
of just how big this building is. We are up only one "floor" from the main floor,
yet look how small the chandeliers behind us appear!

 

Notice the marble columns in all of these pictures. If you examine the pictures closely, you will see that there are many marble columns used to construct this building. They are mammoth. Yet, these are just the columns on the second floor. The columns that are on the main floor are mammoth! Not only that, they are recycled! The "modern" world thinks that recycling is all their idea, but in the 6th century, the builders of this church recycled marble columns from older Roman ruins. They can tell where the marble was mined, and they know for sure that some of the columns came from the Temple to Artemis not far out of Ephesus!

The red marble column in the picture below is one of the marble columns on the main floor that was recycled. They built this church in five years. There is no way that they could have completed this massive a building in such a short time without using "pre-made" materials! It would have taken too long just to make the columns required. Recycling old columns was a common practice; after all, the Romans used recycled columns in their underground cistern as well (see the picture on my post "Where's the biggest turkey in Turkey?)

The somewhat plain exterior of the Hagia Sophia belies the grandeur that the architects created on the side. They used a terra cotta brick covered with red plaster on the exterior. Some of the plaster has fallen off and exposed the brick underneath, which accounts for differences in color and texture -- again, it's holding its age better than I will! Now that you know how amazing this building truly is, I will share my last pictures of the outside of the Hagia Sophia--the Holy Wisdom. Hope you enjoyed your history lesson! I'll be sharing more on Turkey in days to come!

This is the museum entrance. This picture gives a good close-up of the building exterior. Over to the far left is a man in a pink-ish shirt. He is looking down into an excavation pit where they have uncovered foundation ruins of at least one of the previous churches built on this site.

Where's the biggest turkey in Turkey?

Yes, this is Don pointing at a real live turkey in the old town area of Istanbul,
population 15 million and counting, give or take a flock of at least 6 turkeys!

Marble/stone street through the ruins of Ephesus.

Don in the amphitheater where Paul addressed the Ephesians.

We just got back from a six day trip to Turkey. Now, I know that you are thinking: "Turkey? Why on earth did they choose Turkey?" It's not quite up there with Paris, London, Germany, Italy, etc. However, based on the time we had, the season of the year, rumors of violent conflict, and not wanting to do a repeat trip anywhere, it was the destination we chose. One really amazing sight to see in Turkey: Ephesus. To walk the same streets as Marc Antony and Cleopatra, the Apostle John, Mary, and the Apostle Paul was an incredible experience. To

sit in the amphitheater where Paul preached to the Ephesians was
thrilling. There was a British lady who did an impromptu singing performance for us while we were inside the amphitheater. The acoustics are still incredible today, even though half the building is gone! You can see her standing on the floor of the theater in the picture to the right. It gave us goose bumps to imagine sitting in the same seats the Ephesians sat in to listen to Paul!

Overlooking the path to the library (big structure at the end of the road).
This is a road that Marc Antony and Cleopatra used.

One last major attraction just outside the city walls of this Ephesus location is the house where it is purported that Mary, mother of Jesus, lived. John the Apostle is known to have lived in Ephesus for a time, and since it was Jesus' last command to them that John was to treat Mary as her mother, they are fairly sure she lived here, and passed her final days in the house we are standing in front of below.

In front of the house of the "Virgin Mary"

Don is very adventurous when it comes to trying out new foods and new cuisine. Although I had to talk him into trying his first Chinese food when were newlyweds, he now far surpasses my palate's taste for variety. I did finally succumb to trying some authentic Ottoman cuisine. We made friends with some of the  servers and managers of the restaurants in the neighborhood around our hotel. Every time you walked down the street, they were all out in front of their establishments, hawking their food/goods/services as if you were on the midway of the state fair. It kind of became a joke between Don and I. You won't believe how many friendly Turks there are when they think there is a carpet to be sold to a westerner!

One of our favorite restaurants in Istanbul, The Shadow. We made a major
impression on the staff when we told them we found their restaurant on TripAdvisor.
The employee who had suggested posting on TripAdvisor to the owner loved me when I said that
he should tell the owner that I said to give him a raise! We got excellent service and a few extra
free perks (baclava, tea) after that, with him having high hopes that we would return to
TripAdvisor with glowing remarks about the establishment--which we did!

Standing on the main road with our guide, Betul, a lovely
and very knowledgeable young lady!

In front of the library building in Ephesus.

I will leave you with just a few more pictures of our excursion to Ephesus (above) and a picture that Don took in Istanbul (below) at night of the biggest church in the world: the Hagia Sophia. It is a beautiful old building famous for its huge dome and the fact that it was the largest church in the world for the first 1,000 years of its existence.  Enjoy Don's excellent photography--from his cell phone no less!

The Hagia Sophia--second church on this location completed in built in 537 AD. The four minarets at the corners were added later, when Constantinople was conquered by the Ottomans and turned into a mosque.