The Roller Coaster Ride

...that is international relocation to the Middle East is at a high point for the moment. Two fabulous things happened today: our things arrived from the States, and Hannah got accepted into ASD (the American School of Doha)! She tested yesterday and thought she did well, but said she had some problems with the reading part of the test...just some words she wasn't familiar with. Evidently, she did just fine, because she's IN!

It's like Christmas in our house now! Eliza keeps saying how much she loves the boxes of her stuff....doesn't always even know what's inside, but she's so happy to just have her things here that she's smiling from ear to ear. Our own swing (not one borrowed from the neighbors), our own wagon, our other car seats, my kitchenware, which has been so very missed (the other night, I pounded chicken breasts with the bottom of a rum bottle).

HANGERS! Hangers with the clips on them! You have know idea how important these are until you move to a place where they don't exist. Pictures of my girls, our family, things that will finally make it feel like we're living in our home instead of a McMansion in the desert.

These first two weeks or so have been harder than I ever could have imagined. My days ususally start off hopeful and positive, but by the end of the day, I'm exhausted, depressed, homesick, and wondering if we bit off more than we can chew. I was warned this is how it would go...that this is all normal, but I don't have much patience for simply surviving it each day. But today--just for today--I'm happy to have the rest of all the little pieces of our life back.

More to come on: being in the presence of a Sheikh, what Eliza thinks about how people dress here, and getting a medical exam at a government-run medical clinic.

Pictures to come...

The madness continues.

Driving in this country may, in fact, make me crazy, but as long as everyone survives and leaves the country uninjured, I can deal. I must note, however, that I am horribly saddened every time I pass a vehicle with Arab children roaming freely about the seats (front and back). I can't imagine how many children end up hurt or dead from traffic accidents here because car seats (or seat belts) aren't legally required.

The worst of it? We still have no routine. No groove. Every day seems to be a tiny bit better, but there's no rhythm, we merely survive. More than half the children in our compound are still on holiday, so Hannah is a little disappointed in the slim pickings she has for friends right now, especially since she's not allowed to go swimming by herself. Eliza started visiting her Montessori this week, and she'll start full time next week. That will help, simply because we'll be forced to get up early enough to get her there on time in the mornings. The administrative workers are trying to get us "processed" as quickly as possible, but sometimes this involves calling us at 9:00 a.m. to let us know they need one of us there within an hour, which isn't easy with three kids.

I'm very happy to have a friend of ours over helping us for the week! She's the exact opposite personality from me, so she's relaxed, chilled out, and willing to do anything. Without her, I'd be in tears daily. We've gotten lost going to or returning from several places more times than I can count now, but I'm determined to keep trying. I still have no sense of my meal planning/cooking routine. After a week and a half, we've managed to eat two meals at their normal times, which probably isn't a big deal to anyone but me, but ya know?? It bugs the shit outta me!

On top of everything, Eliza got a quick stomach bug last week and we were completely dependent upon the driver from Human Resources--Mohammed-- to lead us to the hospital. He's from Yemen, so English is not his native language, and it turned out that he led us to an emergency pediatric clinic. He promised that this is the place where he takes his children and that "they speak good here" (as opposed to the other hospital where they send you from desk to desk and want lots of money up front). This man went beyond the call of duty as he picked up my vomit-covered child out of her car seat and carried her into the clinic to get us checked in. Within a minute she was admitted to a triage room and they began examining her. Because we'd only been in the country 6 days and she was exhibiting 2 of the symptoms (fever and vomiting), she had to be tested (the booger sucking tube) for Swine Flu. They gave her a shot for the vomiting, waited, then said if she could hold fluids down after 30 minutes we could go home. She did, and though the doctor wanted to put her on Tamiflu, I never gave her the medicine because I knew she didn't have the flu. The whole time, Mohammed kept a close eye on Eliza, making sure she was comfortable, getting her a blanket, asking the nurse questions to make sure he understood how they were treating her, and getting everyone to move promptly. When it was time to go, the whole thing (which took just over a couple hours) cost approximately $3.00, which he refused to let me pay. $3.00 freakin dollars!! This is an unfathomable contrast to what happens in emergency rooms back in the States. I still can't believe how kind everyone was. One of my worst fears was immediately put to the test, and everything turned out fine. Eliza was back to her normal self by bedtime that night.

There's simply too much difference, too many experiences, too many small details to fit into a few posts, so I'll have to be choosy. For now, it's safe to say that nothing could have ever fully prepared me for living here. It's not just another country. It's another culture, another language, and they are both completely foreign to me. Little things like not knowing the Celsius scale so I could give the doctor Eliza's temperature, or knowing how much lunchmeat I'm asking for when I say 250 grams, or taking for granted the all KFCs in the world serve biscuits....these have turned out to be huge reminders of how small my world has been my whole life. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret coming. But there are definitely some things I wish I'd thought about, learned about, and/or brought with me before leaving the U.S.

Dispatch from Doha - The Early Days

We're here. I've taken in an enormous amount of information in the past 48 hours, and there's too much to cover in one post but some of the highlights include:

• Children that did beautifully on the flight over (15 hours)
• Children that are just barely getting over jetlag. The first two nights, the oldes two woke up at 3:00 a.m. hungry and wide awake. They had pb&j's, eventually went back to sleep, and didn't get up until we woke them up at noon!
• Our home phone still doesn't work, and it costs a small fortune to make an international call on the cell phone. This sucks because I can talk faster than I type, and I can squeeze in a phone call much easier than I can the time to compose an e-mail.
• I've visited three separate grocery stores in two days, spending more than $800, and I still have a one-page list of things I need for this "furnished" house (i.e. dish towels, hand towels, bigger pillows, baskets, cereal bowls, etc.)
• It's 5:20 am here, and the baby still hasn't woken up yet, so this is very good.
• We can't find Amelia's formula here. They have several kinds of Similac, but not the Sensitive Formula for babies that are gassy. Our options right now are to ship it (expensive), use lactose-free (not sure we need to do that), or see how she does on the regular formula. I bought a container of the regular stuff for now, and a friend suggested that we look at a pharmacy to see if they might have it there.
• A new order/restriction is in place regarding driver's licences. There's a chance I might not be able to take my driver's license exam for more than a month. This is very, very bad for all sorts of reasons.
• We blew up the portable DVD because we didn't have a converter (just an adaptor), we are in dire need of expanded cable or immediate entertainment for the children. Hannah has already made a couple of friends, but one is leaving for Saudi today, and the other is kept on an unusually tight leash (slightly weird, but extremely nice, home-schooling Mom, who btw had three bags of toys and blueberry muffins waiting for us when we arrived!!) They'd also stocked the house with some basic items: milk, bread, crackers, peanut butter, jelly, etc. Then I came to find that she only has these items because she's been having them shipped weekly from the states. Evidently, one can't actually get grape jelly in Doha.
• The call to prayer is beautiful. It's a somber, comforting reminder that many people are stopping whatever they're doing to be dutiful to their religious practice, no matter how inconvenient. I gotta respect that. Don't get me wrong, I'm soooo happy that I can't hear it from inside my house unless the front door is open, but I do like listening to it.
• I drove for the first time yesterday. The roundabouts weren't as bad as I though they'd be, but it will still take a lot of getting used to in terms of finding my way back home and figuring out the consequences of not having left turns.
• I can't wait for our stuff to get here! I've done my best to make it feel like home, but right now it still feels like we're on vacaction in a luxury home in an American compound.
• Still no word on the American School for Hannah. Or, I should say, one set of people thinks she'll get in, one person yesterday said he didn't think any other kids that weren't already accepted have a snowball's chance in hell. Thus, we'll look at a couple of other schools and let her see the campuses.
• The first night here, on the way home from the airport, I did the unthinkable. I rode in a vehicle with Amelia in my arms. It's a long story, but it involved her screaming at the top of her lungs, projectile vomiting her bottle up all over herself because she was so worked up, and her really just wanting to be held. I not-so-nimbly flew into the backseat and picked her up and held her for the 15-minute drive home and prayed we didn't have an accident.
• Nothing could have prepared me for how different things are here...even our previous visit.
• Oh, and they don't really believe in tampons. That's just freakin great. I packed enough to get me through my next cycle, but I'll be having my friend stash extra in her suitcase when she comes over....and THANK GOD someone is coming over to help! We just need an extra set of hands right now.

This is just a nutshell version of the first few days. Today is my first day on campus, and the driver is coming to pick me up in a few hours, so I'm off to shower, make myself presentable, and get formula made for the day. I'm hoping to get to post more frequently once the kids get back to their regular schedules, but everything is just a bit crazy now. Until next time, the roller coaster ride continues :)

EconoLodge Limbo

The international relocation company has come and gone. Unfortunately, they forgot to get several drawers of clothes out of my dresser, which has left me with more stuff than my luggage can hold. So, I can either throw them out, put them in storage, or pay an enormous amount of money to have them shipped over. For now, I'm hoping the campus support office will make an exception and let me get by with shipping a box through them :)

The garage sale has come and gone. I had two wonderful friends spend hours and hours in the hot sweaty garage, setting the whole thing up. We did really well, clearing about $700, which isn't bad for a garage sale and doesn't include the $250 we sold our living room furniture for.

The moving crew came back yesterday to move our remaining stuff into storage. There were some kinks in the deal, a private arrangement between us and them...an off-the-clock kinda job. Luckily, everything worked out okay, and they wrapped our stuff air tight. I really think it will stay protected while we're gone.

Today was my birthday present: a spa day! Nothing like a Swedish massage and European facial to work off some of the stress of moving.

Good karma came our way when the orthodontist decided not to charge us the $350 to transfer Hannah's file out---woohoo! That definitely made it easy for me to make the decision to just hire someone to clean the house. Never mind that one of the people doing the cleaning is totally high on meth!! Yes, that's right. Totally wacked out, scratching her hair, sunken cheeks, hopped up higher than groceries. The whole story is that the assistant teacher in the baby's room at the montessori mentioned that her mother does housecleaning. I called, offered her $150 for the job, she accepted and said she could do it tonight. When she showed up, she explained that she'd brought a friend to help her do the job in order to make sure it got finished tonight. It took less than a minute for me to tell that this other lady was completely strung out. Don't get me wrong, she's on speed, so she's cleaning faster than Wonder Woman over there. And they both seem really broke and really shocked at the amount I offered to pay, so I don't doubt that they'll get the job done. I just still can't believe a freakin meth head showed up to clean my house....well, it used to be my house.

Now, I live in EconoLodge Limbo. We've set up shop, complete with bottles, formula, bottle drying rack, brush, way too much luggage, and a couple more boxes of stuff I need to figure out whether I need to take or not. What sucks right now is that I can't find my cell phone charger or a book that was lent to me by my department head....argh! Hopefully, they'll show up soon.

We still have a walk-through for the house tomorrow, I need to pick up medical files for myself and Hannah, and we have an emergency appointment with HR because there's some screw up with the benefit enrollment for Amelia, which should've been taken care of two weeks ago when we met with the HR coordinator!

At this point, I'm feeling more calm than I thought I'd be, yet there's still plenty of stress. I feel like I'm bound to forget a thousand things, and I'm just ready to be at my mom's house, spending a few extra minutes with her and going through the stuff that *will* fit in my luggage. On top of everything, we still have to take a look at the short-term housing units back in Home State on Thursday and re-pack all of Hannah's stuff after her being at her grandma's house for a week (with God knows how many shopping trips!).

A Brief Post from Home State

Yes, I'm still here...temporarily. We've been back in my hometown since last Friday, and the internet connection at my mom's house is intermittent at best. Finally, Hubby and I worked out an arrangement in which he got four hours to work at the local coffee shop yesterday, while I watched the kids, and today is my turn. Unfortunately, I actually have work to do and cannot sit here endlessly kvetching about all the drama that has unfolded over our one-week visit. Let's just say that it is no longer a healthy option for all involved to have my family of five invade my mother's home for any longer than a 3-day stay. There's just too much crazy and too little space.

Some good things have happened though:

• We have both a pack-out date and a fly-out date! The moving company will come to pack up our things on Friday, July 17th. We will fly out of Houston for Doha on Saturday, July 25th. I still sometimes can't believe we're doing this.
• Somehow, my 10-week old baby managed to sleep through the entire night last night! Seriously, from 9:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. Don't know what caused this, but man I'm a well-rested Mama today!
• We found a storage unit for the mani-van. We'll store it here in Hometown, and when we come back for breaks, my mom can simply use it to come pick us up at the airport, and she'll be able to drive it periodically to keep it in working condition. The owner of the storage place was willing to give us a really good rate, too, because we're willing to sign a long-term lease.
• We also got more solid information on the availability of a 3-bedroom, furnished corporate apartment. Since my hometown is about 40 minutes away from the airport (and capital city), this works out well for all sorts of reasons.
• I got to take a picture of all my girls with my last remaining grandparent, my grandmother, who has Alzheimers. To be honest, I don't think she even remembered that I had been pregnant. In fact, one of my cousins told me that she'd previously told him I'd had a miscarriage. Regardless, she was thrilled for us to visit, and she was even able to hold the baby. It did, however, cause her to break down in tears. Every birth of another great-grandchild makes her happy, but sad that my grandfather isn't here to enjoy it with her. The loss of her husband almost 20 years ago is the dominating memory in her mind, and she seems increasingly haunted by his absence from her daily life.

Okay, this will have to suffice for now. My task for today is to go through the entire dissertation and review my advisor's suggestions, questions, etc. and make sure I understand exactly what she's asking me to do in terms of revision. We've agreed to meet one more time before we leave the States, which will give me the chance to ask for any clarification I might need. So, to the real work.

Organized Writing and Thought Fail

Apologies in advance to the lack of organization (possibly coherence) of this post. I feel lucky to be getting/taking the time to post, so I'll take what I can get.

The chaos seems to be increasing on a daily basis. Some days are worse than others, and I expect(ed) things to get more hectic the closer we get to our pack-out date, but Holy Hell Batman! Yesterday was the absolute worst. It's the closest I've ever felt to what might be a panic attack. It's no one thing alone. Rather, it's all sorts of little and big things that fell on my plate at once yesterday. For example, the Sec. of State office sent us the wrong form to authenticate our criminal history reports (my job to figure out how to fix it); our relocation allowance won't be issued until our visa comes is (my job to see how we might expedite the process by having direct deposit paperwork filled out in advance); I was under the impression I'd be teaching a Rhetoric and Composition course for the fall (it turns out that it will be, for all practical purposes, more like a developmental writing course, my job to re-do all my prep work thus far)....you get the idea folks.

On top of these things, I met with the former liberal arts program coordinator for the overseas campus on Monday (he and his wife have recently finished their contracts and returned to the home campus), and he had all sorts of helpful, terrifying tidbits of information. Things like....

• there is no cold water in the villas...water tanks are kept outside, so the temperature of the water is, um, hot, hot, hot. To avoid ruining clothing one must either let the water sit in the washing machine until it's room temperature or pour additional chilled water in the machine. I'm guessing the same goes for bathwater for the kids.
• the sand gets everywhere. I'd heard this, but he explained how this relates to other things, like not being able to help keep your car interior a tad bit cooler by rolling the windows down because the sand will invade your vehicle.
• and Ramadan...I knew about that, we'd heard how it gets tricky to get/eat food during this time, especially in public, but I he explained that this basically means you eat from home the entire time unless you want to join the rest of the town at the restaurants when they finally open after sundown. Um, with three kids, I think not.
• the pools?? They aren't heated. They are CHILLED. That's how freakin hot it is.

There are various other things that have added to the craziness. I feel like my list of things to do is always five times as long as Hubby's and, to some extent, that's often the reality not just my feeling. The main problem is that I've lost my ability to be realistic about a)what deserves to be on the list and b)in what order those things should be listed. Yesterday, it was 2:00 p.m. and I realized that I hadn't eaten anything all day, and the only thing I'd had to drink was a morning cup of coffee. Even worse, I felt compelled NOT to stop and eat anything because there was too much stuff to be done while the baby was napping.

I know I'm a control freak, and I'm trying to get better at asking Hubby to help me with things, but I still sometimes resort to quasi-sabotaging his efforts b/c I can't keep from following up on him and directing the task myself--micromanaging is probably what it is--which defeats the purpose of delegating some of the tasks to him in the first place.

The one main saving grace of the day is that I was able to contact the finance person in Doha, and she indicated that we might be able to get our relocation allowances next week!! You have no idea how big this is! I mean, technically, we are officially unemployed until July 1. Neither of us have had any summer funding, and we've had to take out short-term loans just to make sure we'd have enough money to pay bills in July, since we weren't given any clear information about when we'd get our relocation funds. Making this particular issue more complicated is that I had been given the wrong info from our support office here. All this time, I've been told that we couldn't get our funds until our visa came in. I found out just YESTERDAY that the visa has nothing to do with our funds! The only thing that needs to happen is for our signed contracts to hit the desk of the finance person in Doha! Once I found this out, the finance person was able to quickly track down our contracts and get the ball rolling.

Yesterday, I seriously needed to be talked down from the metaphorical edge. The stress and anxiety are creeping into the daytime hours now, not just preventing me from getting to sleep at night, but making me feel like I'm simply going nuts trying to keep track of and prioritize all the things that need to be done (the list that now includes me completely changing my syllabus and assignments for the writing class). My doctor is increasing the dosage on my medication and he's given me the go-ahead to take it as needed during the day also.

Oh, and did I mention I have a defense date scheduled? Yes, Wednesday, April 7th. Making it official has simply reinforced my anxiety about making sure I get the time I need to finish my revisions in the fall....this has simply reinforced my anxiety about getting as much course prep done as I possibly can now, so that I can put the classes on "auto pilot" once I get there. You get the cyclical nature of all this?? Thought process fail. Control fail. Planning fail.

Not SAH Material

That's not a typo. I'm definitely Mother material, but I'm most certainly not Stay-at-Home Material, mother or otherwise. I like to say I'm Stay-at-Home-More-Often (SAHMO) mother material. Regardless friends, I am ready to once again participate in some sort of life outside this house. I love my new baby, and I love the time we've had together, just she and I. I know that she likes my voice, face, and touch better than anyone else's in the world. I know her better than anyone else, and I can comfort her when nobody else can. These are all wonderful things. Unfortunately, they do not satisfy my need to feel like I am making any sort of professional progess, either toward course prep for the fall or revising the dissertation (which I've been advised to shelve until I get settled in overseas).

After an argument with Hubby on Friday, in which I explicitly detailed *my* list of to-dos and compared it with *his* list, I think he finally gets what I've been telling him for weeks now: I'm fucking overwhelmed! While his comment that, "I've never seen you so overwhelmed??" made me want to rip his head off, I pointed out the obvious---I never HAVE been so overwhelmed. This is my first go around with three kids, a dissertation, and an international relocation. Some nights, I've stayed awake until 3:00 a.m. thinking about all the various plans and backup plans we need to have for random issues (travelling in the airports, vehicle arrangements in Qatar, teaching schedules, etc.). While I was in for my full medical exam on Friday, I talked to my doctor (the family physician) about the anxiety and insomnia, and for the first time in my life, I'm on anti-anxiety medication. I'm embarrassed about it, and I don't like needing medication to help me cope with my life, but things have reached a point where I had to do something. It's a mild sedative, which I'll only take in the evenings and only as needed in the lowest dose. In addition, Hubby and I have now worked out a division of at-home care with Amelia, which begins tomorrow. I'll work at the office on M/W, he'll work T/Th, and we'll split Friday in half. This comes after he met with his committee and they told him there are more revisions they'd like to see, and he won't be able to defend this week as he'd originally planned. They don't want anything extensive, just nit-picky things. He's confident he can finish the revisions before we leave in July, and then he'll defend in September via video conference.

Between the medication and getting some time in at the office, I think things will improve. My goal is to use my office days to work on course prep for the fall and use my at-home days to box things up for storage and garage sale. I'm hoping that if I can have those two categories of boxes completely taken care of, this will make it easier to relax and know that the moving company can handle all the other stuff we're taking with us. Part of my stress has come from simply looking around my house and seeing all our stuff everywhere. I don't feel *ready* to move with all my things still in their place, so then I start feeling anxious and unprepared. I can much more easily tolerate looking at boxes in the garage or stacked neatly in a corner than I can handle the stress of feeling like nothing has been done.

For now, I've gotta make use of the little time I have while the baby is asleep.....check that, she's awake now...didn't even make it 20 minutes.