Day 64, Saturday - Dubai to Doha

Travel day!

After breakfast at the hotel, Asma took me to the airport for my flight to the last stop on my Middle East tour: Doha, Qatar. As always, it is hard to say goodbye to friends, but not so hard when you know you will see them again. :)

Entertaining Interlude:

Taken while waiting at the airport

I totally had a movie moment in the airport today: the Dubai airport has those moving sidewalks which are common in large airports. Now, every so often, there are breaks where you have to get off of one and onto the next one so that people can get to the different gates. Well, I had gotten off of one and was walking towards the next one when all of a sudden my heel got stuck. Turns out, there was a hole in the seal which connects the metal plate right in front of the moving sidewalk to the floor, and I had put my heel right in it. I tried to pull it out with my foot but it was too stuck, so I actually had to step out of my shoe, pull it out of the hole and put it back on my foot.

Then I continued on until I reached my gate where I sat for about an hour before I could go through the last security check to sit for another half hour or so before boarding.

While in Doha, I will be staying with Terry and Mary Anne Murphy who have been good friends of my parents for years and who come to Seattle about once a year to visit. They have been living in Doha for about nine years now and lived in Oman for many years before that.

Mary Anne met me at the airport and brought me back to the house.

"My" room

After settling in a bit, we went to visit their friends, David and Trish Seepy (I need to check the spelling of their last name so my apologies if it is really off at the moment, I have only heard it, not seen it written down) for coffee/tea.

They are all such kind people but it is a little funny for me to be back around so many Americans.

Doha will likely be a sort of “half-way house” for me in terms of transitioning back to American culture. ;)