Countdown to Turkey

The countdown has begun. Our flight to Istanbul leaves Thursday in the early afternoon. That's less than 48 hours from now!

We visited with our friend who just returned from Istanbul (and Greece - during the rioting, but that's another story) last night and it reignited our excitement to see the city that everyone speaks so highly about. We don't have our exact itinerary planned for our 6 days in Istanbul, but we've got a long list of must-sees.

Then on Christmas Eve we're going to meet up with my long-lost friend and her hubby in the Istanbul airport and fly together to Ankara where they live. It will be so nice to visit with them again after over 10 years!

But first things first. We've got some numbers to deal with before we get on any planes:

• One day of work.
• Two loads of laundry.
• Four meals.
• Two "sleeps".
• One trip to the store for warmer socks.
• Thirty-eight kleenexes. (We're both sick now.)
• One taxi ride to the airport.
• All my warmest clothes packed into two carry-on sized suitcases.
• One thorough cleaning of the apartment. (I hate coming home to a dirty house.)

It's definitely manageable and before we know it, we'll be on our way out of Doha.

I wonder when the fact that we're not going to spend any time this Christmas with our family will hit us. Probably when we've got no way to access our Skype account.

Merry Christmas to you, my readers. I wish you all a wonderful holiday with your families and friends. I'll be back in the New Year with photos and stories from Turkey!

Christmas Shopping 2008

Usually by this time of year all I can think about is Christmas. According to the calendar there are 12 days until Christmas Eve. But really, nothing could be further from my mind.

There are only two indications that it's Christmastime around our place: 2 tiny wreaths printed on either side of the word "December" on my calendar, and a card from my parents on our bookshelf.

When we go into a shopping centre there are some decorations available for purchase, and sometimes even decorations on the walls. But there isn't Christmas music playing on the radio, there isn't snow falling, we didn't have a visit from Santa on the last day of class... Even the weather is working against us remembering the season.

I am not complaining, though. Being removed from the traditions and hype of Christmas has been really refreshing for us. There is no holiday rat race here. Althought there are lots of shopping malls, I don't feel the same pressure to have to spend, spend, spend. This is the first year I can remember not hearing "X number of shopping days until Christmas!"

For the past few years, Darren and I have been trying to reduce the amount of buying we do in relation to Christmas. Again we are thinking about the role that purchasing gifts plays in this holy time of year. Being outside of our culture has given us the ability to analyze more as outsiders and develop a balanced perspective on this holiday.

We've had some help. About a month ago Darren and I watched the documentary "What Would Jesus Buy?" While enjoying a laugh at some of Rev. Billy's antics, along with some genuine headshaking, the message of the documentary was a good one. Then Darren and I independently came across the Advent Conspiracy within the last few weeks. Immediately it resonated with something inside us. We decided to support it on the spot. As if that weren't enough, the Meeting House series "Don't Drink the KoolAid" we started listening to today began with a message entitled "Lie #1: Christmas is for Giving".

It seems that from every angle instead of being bombarded with the message "BUY!", we're being confronted with the reality of how this holiday has become another way to keep the great capitalist machine working. And the more we think and talk about it, the more Darren and I want to divorce Christmas from consumerism. So that's it, no more Christmas presents from the Conleys.

You might be thinking: "Sure, Larissa. That's easy for you to say. You're not getting togther with my family this Christmas. No one is necessariy expecting gifts from you from across the globe. And you don't have kids whose friends will ask them what they got for Christmas when they return to school in January."

You're right, and I'm exaggerating. In fact, this year I did participate in my family's "each of the 4 sisters buys for one sister" and "all the sisters purchase a joint gift for the parents" programs. But the gifts Darren and I chose were ones that also help people in need at the same time (a la Toms shoes, but different organizations; I can't give away the secrets until after Christmas!)

And I've got it easier than the average person in that my family has been trying to "downsize" Christmas for a number of years. This year I received one gift from my parents: a fabulous handmade calendar, and there's one more coming from one sister. But that's it, and that's more than enough!

I realize that altering a tradition can be sensitive. We're not sure how to breech the subject with Darren's family or what their reaction will be. To be honest, Darren and I aren't exactly sure what the next few Christmasses will look like for us in terms of gift buying and giving. But we do know we'd like to increasingly be consuming only what we need and giving away more of our excess. This is true in all areas of our lives, but particularly at Christmas.

Sick at Eid

I'm on vacation. And I'm sick. It's a frustrating combination.

When I say I'm sick I don't mean I feel a little under the weather. This is one of the worst colds I can remember. I think viruses are getting more malicious.

For a couple of hours yesterday I thought I had strep throat, which would require a trip to the clinic and some antibiotics. However, as the day progressed I became convinced that what I'm experiencing is just a regular virus; not a bacterial infection. That's a good thing because since it's Eid, the clinics are closed. The emergency rooms are open, but I'm not sure this is an emergency. I have a cold.

So, I've been spending a good amount of time in bed, with the intention of resting this cold out of me. Sleep has been hard to come by, unfortunately. The only times I have fallen asleep in the last 3 days has been when Darren was reading to me. (The idea was to put me to sleep; I'd already heard the story before!)

While it has been nice to have a really relaxing few days, I can't believe I'm wasting my vacation in bed! We had a number of things on our potential to do list for this week in Doha: visit the Doha zoo, check out the newly opened Museum of Islamic Art, enjoy the nightly entertainment at the Pearl, go on an overnight desert safari.

Instead my days have been filled with reading books, writing posts, drinking tea, surfing the 'net, and watching Prison Break. Oh, and lots of nose blowing, sneezing, coughing and even a fair amount of moaning. Sick people like to moan.

But let's keep everything in perspective. There are many places where it's worse to be sick - all of which were real possibilities for this week: at work, in a hotel in a foreign country (I know, this is a foreign country, too...but it's home to us now), at a friend's house, in a holding cell in Athens like our friend Michael!

Suddenly I'm feeling grateful for this week of nothing to do but relax and fight this bug. Ah, the mental healing power of a blog. Yes, I'm on vacation. And yes, I'm sick. And yes, it's frustrating...but it could be much worse!

Expelling Adolescence

Darren and I have done a lot of talking about adulthood lately. More specifically, we've been discussing what it means to leave adolescence and enter adulthood. Even more specifically, we're considering what it means to leave behind an adolescent faith.

Someday Darren's going to write a book on the topic, but it's years away, so I don't feel like I'm stealing his thunder by writing a little blog post.

This afternoon we watched Ben Stein's documentary "EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed". It's failry new, with a release date of April 2008. In it Stein discusses the following issue (taken from the documentary's official web page):

The freedom to legitimately challenge “Big Science’s” orthodoxy…without persecution.

He interviews scientists who have faced persectution for publishing or attempting to publish research that points to the possibility of Intelligent Design. He also interviews scientists who hold firmly to Darwinism - one adamently calling it a fact.

Stein's bias was quite clear and Darren and I agreed the documentary was too emotional, but he raised some very good points, the foremost of which is this: If Americans value freedom so much, why is there no Academic Freedom in this one particular area? Why are academics who try to talk about Intelligent Design ostracized from academia? While they are allowed to conduct research about ID, why can they not publish it?

One interviewee in particular (Richard Dawkins, biologist and author of The God Delusion) referred to the war between science and religion. But I ask: What war? What makes these two mortal enemies? Are science and religion irreconcileable?

When the two sides (science and faith/religion) are pitted against each other as diametrically opposed, it becomes a "one or the other" situation. That's when atheists fear the science classroom will turn into an evangelistic crusade, and when religious folk fear the science classroom with turn their kids away from God. But if we all were to seek truth, apart from political motivation or manipulation, I think it would work itself out.

That's where the spiritual adulthood part fits in. It seems to me (and to Darren; gotta give him credit as he was part of this discussion!) that as one grows, he/she loses the need for black and white answers and becomes comfortable with a bit of ambiguity and lack of clarity. This in turn allows a person to examine data and come to a conclusion based on it, rather than the adolescent method of allowing one's worldview to bias the data (thereby coming to a conclusion before looking at the data).

In the film, people on both sides of the debate were guilty of this worldview-informing-truth mentality, although many of these were well-respected, educated adults. No one, for example, mentioned the possiblity of an Intelligent Designer being involved in the process of evolution. I should not have been suprised though because, of course, that would mean that science and faith were both right, and opposing ideas cannot both be right.

If I were to design a science curriculum for a public secondary school which was not affiliated with any particular faith group, I would propose the following regarding the Origin of Man:

1. Present the evidence for the theory of evolution.
   
2. Present the holes in the theory.
   
3. Leave it at that.

As the evidence is weighed, students can come up with their own conclusions. Why can we not train our adolescents to think in adult ways...especially when the answer is not immediately evident?

Asking questions and seeking answers to them is good science. It's also good faith-building.

Dalia and the black group

For the past few months I've been very slowly reading a narrative non-fiction book called The Lemon Tree. It tells the history of the part of the Middle East that has caused the most conflict at least in my parents' lifetime through the stories of two families, one Jewish and one Arab.

I'm not even half way through the book yet - it's only May 1967 in the story - but already I'm beginning to understand the complexity of the issues that surround the entire area of Palestine/Israel.

The parts of the story that have stuck with me the most have been those that have involved individuals who were willing to stand up for the oppressed.

The first took place in Bulgaria during WWII. If you don't know the names Dimitar Peshev, Metropolitan Stefan, and Bishop Kiril, I encourage you to look them up. A number of events and people working individually ultimately led to thousands of Bulgarian Jews being saved during the Holocaust.

Just yesterday I came upon another similar story, but on a much smaller scale. The best I can do is to quote it here:

One day in the spring of 1957, Dalia was playing with her girlfriends after school. They were at a concrete shelter in Ramla, the same claustrophobic bunker where Dalia and her schoolmates had practiced air raid drills during the recent Suez crisis. Most of Dalia's friends had been lighter-skinned girls from Europe. But recently a new wave of olive- and brown-skinned Jewish children had come to Israel from the Arab countries, including many from Iraq, Egypt, and Yemen. No longer welcome to live in the Arab world, the newspapers reported, these 'Oriental Jews' (also known as Sephardim or mizrahi) were immigrating to Israel, which would grant them the safe haven it offered to every Jew. Among many of Dalia’s classmates, however, there was a sense that the dark-skinned schoolmates were 'bringing the class down.' They were considered dirty and carriers of lice....

Still, Dalia was stunned, she would recall later, when her Polish friend stood atop the concrete shelter and, hands on hips, declared her intent to expel the darker, Oriental Jews from their play group. There would now be two competing groups among the girls: a 'black group' - the cherniti, the schwarzes - and a 'white group'. The other European girls murmured their assent. The 'white group' would be made up of only the lighter-skinned Ashkenazi, plus Dalia and the other Bulgarians....

The Polish girl picked up a stone and threw it at a dark-skinned classmate. Other lighter-skinned girls followed. Dalia stepped forward. 'Where did you say you came from?' she asked the Ashkenazi girls. 'And remind me what happened to the Jews there?' She paused. 'Of all people who should know better,' she said. 'Of all people who should know how not to treat someone badly just because they are different. If you are going to have a black group and a white group', Dalia announced, 'then I am going with the black group.' The issues never rose again among her classmates.

The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan, pp. 184-185

Dalia, a Bulgarian Jew whose family had immigrated to Israel after the War had learned from her past. All the kids in the story were children of Holocaust survivors, but only one was willing to point out the shame in the segregation and oppression suggested by the Polish girl. Interestingly, the one who stood up for the oppressed came from an oppressed people who were shown grace. She then showed the same grace to the 'black group'.

This "pay it forward" mentality is not always the case, of course. If it were, there would have been no need for that story about the man who was forgiven a great debt and then demanded his small debt be paid. You know the one I'm talking about. But I like to think that if I were part of this story I'd be Dalia, and not one of the other light-skinned girls. But am I?

Canadian Politics' most notable hour - at least since the Quebec referendum nonsense of the 90s

I am a Canadian citizen. However, having moved indefinitely from my country, I am no longer a Canadian resident. So I do not receive any of the taxpayers' benefits (understandable since I don't pay taxes), I cannot vote in governement elections...that kind of stuff.

But that doesn't mean I am not interested in what goes on there. And right now is a good time to be interested in what's going on, at least politically.

I have to admit that I was pretty in the dark about the political events of the past couple of days (weeks? see, I'm not even sure when this all started). I understood the basic idea - the last elections' losers wanted to oust the current government with a non-confidence vote mere weeks after an election and instead of sending Canadians to the polls again, they were just going to take over.

This morning, thanks to a link to a CBC story I found at this post from 3rd floor balcony, I now have a better idea of what's going on. It's funny that it took an article aimed at a non-Canadian (more specifically, American) audience to help me understand my own country's situation. But I plead ignorance due to the fact that we can't get CBC Newsworld in Qatar.

Anyway, check out the story if, like me, you're a little foggy on what's been going on in my homeland. Especially if you're American. Or a non-resident. I'll even repeat the link for you here.

What's going on?!?

I just had to document this.

I got up this morning a little after 6, unable to sleep any more. Strange for a hardcore late-sleeper!

Even more strange is this: my darling hubby, the wake-up-at-the-crack-of-dawn-regardless-of-the-day-of-the-week-or-what-he-has-to-do-or-not-do-that-day type, is still in bed now at 9:15am.

I tell you, strange things are happening at the Conley residence!

Vacation Delay

We're on vacation. I guess I should say I'm on vacation, since Darren's vacation has been ongoing since mid-August. Anyway, it's Eid al Adha here in the Muslim world, the time when many muslims will make the pilgramage to Mecca. Everyone else just gets time off work.

My college gives us a week off (Dec. 7-11) plus, of course, the weekends on either end of it. Many of my colleagues have boarded plans in the last 24 hours bound for destinations in Europe, Asia, other parts of the Gulf, and even Africa. Many others have had to change thier plans last minute due to the crazy stuff that has been going on in both Bangkok and Mumbai lately. But Darren and I had planned to say here for the week.

This decision was based on a couple of factors. First, Christmas vacation is coming up very soon and we were planning on going somewhere during that time. But I have to work for 4 days in the middle of the month (Dec. 14-17). So it seemed overwhelming and irresposible to plan two trips back to back like that. Also, the weather here is so nice during the daytime now that we want to enjoy it while it lasts. We also toyed with the idea of taking diving lessons over the break, but ended up deciding to postpone that for now.

But the most important reason is this: Darren's former classmate from his MA program was coming to Doha! She emailed to ask for hotel recommendations, and we promptly responded saying there was no way she was going to stay in a hotel when we've got an empty guest room just waiting for her.

We hadn't planned an itinerary for the week, prefering to wait until our guest arrived and talk over the options together. But Eid approached, I got more and more excited about (1) meeting this friend of Darren's (I met most of his MA classmates but not this one for some reason), (2) playing tour guide for a couple of days, and (3) grilling her about life in Saudi Arabia, which is where she is living and teaching.

Unfortunately, as we were giving our apartment its first thorough cleaning in a fair amount of time, Darren received an email from his friend saing her bus had been cancelled. After being issued the boarding pass and everything, 10 minutes before the scheduled departure she discovered that there was no bus for her to board.

Something similar happened to me in Peru. I had a ticket to take me from Arequipa to Tacna but I must have been the only one with such a ticket. I clearly remember watching the bus start to pull out of the terminal as I sat in the waiting area. I ran outside and had a number of confusing and tiring conversations in Spanish that led to them ultimately putting me on a bus that got me to my destination, though not directly, and in 4 more hours than "my" bus would have. I had no way to contact the person whose service I had hired to take me across the border, so I figured I'd be stranded in Peru. But everything worked out and now I have a good traveling story.

Darren's friend's trip is not cancelled, but now we (all 3 of us) wait to see when/if she will get to Doha. I don't think the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is in the habit of running off with naive passengers' bus fare, so I'm sure something will be done.

In the meantime, Darren and I have to decide how to spend our next day or two. We don't want to do anything too cool or interesting without his friend. At the same time, the apartment is already clean, I finished my book last night, and we've explored most of the neighbourhood...what else is there to do at home? This is where all my years of living in Dunnville and the entertainment-creativity it fostered in me comes in handy!

And hopefully it won't be too long until our first house guest arrives and we're out and about together, enjoying all that Doha has to offer!

Doing my part

Since we arrived here in August I have been struggling with the issue of garbage. My struggle is with the amount of garbage Darren and I produce. We throw out probably one grocery bag of trash every 3 or 4 days. That's not SO bad, but we also throw out an armful of recyclable materials each week. This pains me.

I've heard rumours about a Filipino man who makes his living by collecting recyclable materials and bringing them somewhere for cash. The only problem with this is that it is a rumour. No one seems to be able to confirm the existence of this man or the recycling centre.

I think I've mentioned before that the college started a paper recycling program last year. So now I have options with what to do with all the paper I go through: that which is not of a sensitive nature and is blank on one side goes into a pile in my cabinet for reuse; the rest goes in the green bin which was recently delivered to our office during my ridiculously productive week.

According to the marketing department's web page, a plastic recycling program will be launched in the new year as well. I'm very excited about this as it bothers me to see all the water bottles that get thrown into landfills in this city - and even on this campus!

But being without recycling for the past 4 months has helped me rethink my relationship with packaging and containers. I've realized that the introduction of recycling as an automatic (automated?) way of life in most cities in Canada has made us forget that there are actually 3 Rs - Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, with Recycle being the third, and least effective of the group.

So I've been making a conscious effort to increase my involvement with the oft-forgotten Rs.

First of all, I've been trying to reduce the amount of waste I produce. This is difficult, but I've found a few small ways to do this:

• When I buy fresh fruit and vegetables at the local grocery store I tie the bag in a slip knot so it can be easily opened without ripping the bag - thereby allowing the bag to be reused. A much better option would be reusable vegetable bags, but they're not sold in Qatar...yet.

• When buying boxes of tea, I opt for the ones that don't come in individually wrapped bags - unless the individually wrapped bags happen to be organic fair trade tea, in which case I think it's justifiable. (And besides, these bags are staple-free!)

• I've been trying to reach for a cloth rather than a paper towel whenever I spill something. I think I should actually put the paper towels in a high cupboard as added incentive.

• The tap water in Qatar is desalinated sea water and we've been encouraged not to drink it. that means bottled water. (sigh) While my preference is to drink water from our 5-gallon bottles, carried in my reusable ethos water bottle, sometimes we're out and we have to buy water to drink. In these instances, Darren and I will order a large bottle, rather than 2 small ones. I don't know how much less plastic is used, but it's got to be some!

• We made sure to get some sandwich-shaped food storage containers early in our time here so we weren't going through so many zip-lock baggies.

• As we leave our apartment on a grocery shopping outing, I try to remember to grab our reusable Carrefour shopping bags so we don't have to use the plastic ones they love to give out at Family Food Centre. In fact, whenever we're shopping and what we're purchasing will fit in my purse, I give the bag back and stick the item(s) in it.

My choice of pronouns in this post was deliberate. In a lot of ways I'm still working on getting Darren on board. He's definitely in agreement with my choices and actions in theory, but he usually forgets that we have reusable shopping bags, for example.

But remember there are 3 Rs. I've also tried to find creative ways to reuse containers such as spaghetti sauce jars, cashew cans, styrofoam meat plates.

I've currently got sea shells drying on a styrofoam tray in my bathroom. On my desk there is an empty coffee can that holds my scissors, ruler, staple remover and used metal paper fasteners (I might call them duo tang clips). There's a 2L water bottle on my dining room table with its top cut off that is displaying my beautiful birthday flowers. And my flour, sugar, pasta, rice and oatmeal is being kept fresh in cleaned spaghetti sauce jars.

Now none of this means I don't want to recycle. In fact, I spent about an hour today looking for a location in Doha to bring my plastic, glass and cardboard to for recycling. I didn't find such a place, but I did come across Rashid and Dana the Recyclers! UNESCO has been promoting environmental activism in the Gulf for a few years now, and the Rashid program was recently launched here. I'm glad they're teaching the kids about the value of the 3 Rs, but they don't make it easy to find out where or how the average Qatari resident like me can participate! I've sent a few emails asking about recycling depots; I'll keep you posted!

I also realize that these small changes I'm trying to adopt will have very little impact on the environmental situation of the world. But I've got to do my part, even if it means tacky-looking vases!

Birthday Shoes, Christmas Shoes

I've been thinking a lot about feet lately. More specifically, I've been thinking a lot about shoeless feet.

For my birthday Darren and I got me a pair of TOMS boots. They're quite unique and I've been wearing them at work to keep my legs warm in the over-air conditioned office. What I love about TOMS, besides the shoes themselves, is the fact that when you buy a pair of shoes from them, they give a pair to a child who has none. It's beautiful - two pairs of shoes for the price of one!

Counting these new boots, I now own 10 pairs of shoes. And this comes after the major footware purge I did in August just before moving to Qatar. I don't feel like I have an excessive amount of shoes, and every pair I own, I wear. But there are people who don't have any. Never have. Not a single pair of shoes.

Shoes are not the most important thing in life, but if your life depends on searching through landfills for discarded items to sell or walking for miles to fetch water for the family, or working on a non-safety-conscious construction site, they quickly gain importance.

This is where Soles4Souls comes in. They'll take your unneeded shoes and give them to someone who does need them.

I love the idea of cleaning out the closet of gently used shoes and sending them to people who need them. But for those like me who live in places without distribution centres, donations can be made online. It only costs $6 to donate 3 pairs of flip flops. And $10 will supply a new pair of more sturdy clogs.

Soles4Souls is trying to collect 50 000 pairs of shoes in 50 days. They've got under 30 days and over 42 000 pairs of shoes to go. Why not join in? If you live in the US, you can find a distribution centre here, or shoes can be shipped to one of their three warehouses. Or click here to donate new shoes.

There are organizations around the world that help people in various ways. But for me, right now, as the recipient of a brand new pair of shoes, it seems fitting to support Soles4Souls (and also TOMS). If I get birthday shoes, why shouldn't someone else get Christmas shoes? Especially someone who actually needs them.