Tuesday

Today we did the drive to school solo for the first time. Roads were busy as per usual with large and small vehicles jostling for position, making there own lanes, and large trucks and buses looking as though they are going to pull across in front of you. Most people don’t use their indicators and that is probably one of the problems. Also with only some of the roundabouts having the three lanes marked on them, people sort of head in various directions once on them. I think I am deciding that this is probably the way things are in most of the world, and perhaps we have just been a little sheltered… oh well it all adds to the experience now doesn’t it!

Ashur’s enrolment consisted of waiting around for a while and then handing over yet another form to the school registrar. With everything in order (to the best of our understanding) he will be starting school on Sept 4th in the Reception year.

The years confuse me a little because Pre-School is the children’s first year at school, followed by Reception. These two years are spent in the Early Learning Center prior to children actually starting primary school in Year 1. Now while that concept is logical as that would mean Reception is basically the same as the Prep-Year, there really doesn’t seem to be much difference between the level of structure in Reception to that of Primary… poor Ashur! He really is being thrown in at the deep-end (I am sure Kerry will have far more to say about this than I do though).

After making it home safe and sound we mutually agreed that we wouldn’t be driving that much for the moment… just start off with short local driving then slowly spread out from there.

Tuesday evening was our free dinner all paid for by AJA. All the new staff (and there seems to be a lot of those) were taken by bus to Al-Shamal (think that is right) near Ramada Junction (which by locals is seen as more or less the centre of Doha). For the next two hours we were provided with what seemed a never-ending stream of plates with various Arabic dishes, none of which I can remember the names of. All I know is we all ate far too much, and all of it was enjoyed immensely.

The only downer for the night was finding out there was going to be a delay of the rest of the Resident Permit process, and the medicals and fingerprinting won’t be taken care of until after school starts at some point in time. Also we will not be able to go off to get our temp driving licenses yet (not actually sure about this one but apparently has something to do with our visas). But that means we technically can’t drive after Thursday although we were reassured that apparently it isn’t really a problem at all as long as you don’t cause any accidents!

At the end of the day it would just be nice to get something more from the resident process completed and out of the way (I am not even 100% sure whether I can start looking for work yet or not). I guess that will be yet another adventure sometime in the not too distant future!