Thursday is the new Friday…

So it is a Thursday night and I am sitting at home blogging. Wow – I am a winner. For those of you who don’t know, Thursday in Qatar is the same as Friday in the US. (some Muslim countries, like Saudi Arabia, have their weekend on Thursday and Friday, while others, like Qatar, have their weekend on Friday and Saturday). Sadly I have found that my Thursdays are surprisingly similar to my Fridays in Philadelphia. There are not a lot of things you can do on your own, and it is hard to get a group together for things, so many Thursdays end up with me watching a movie.

This weekend I am also blessed to be “On Call” otherwise known as duty. This means that even if there are things going on, or a group getting together, I can only go if it is close to campus. Most of the time this is not the case, or whatever is going on is happening at the exact time as something for work. I signed on for this – I know this is a part of the job – I only give up about one weekend a month… that is not that bad.

On a really great note, I started mentoring a third grader at Qatar Academy. Abdulla is my mentee, and he is great. He is this quiet kid who is so proud of his role in his family. He is the oldest male in his generation (this is a BIG role). He talks with such excitement about his little brother and how he “guides” him. Mixed with this pride is also a good portion of shyness. He usually looks down right before he says something he really wants me to comment about. He says something (while looking down) then he pauses and looks up and waits until I say something. He is awesome! He is also a wealth of knowledge. He is Qatari and Bahraini. He has passports for both countries. The first time I met him he looked at me with a serious look and said, “I will use the Bahraini passport now, but my dad told me to use the Qatari passport when I am older.” In addition to sharing his knowledge about citizenship he is taking skiing lessons in France (for real… he flies to France for lessons… I have not figured out how often) and he is an avid fan of wolves, and is planning of reading me something about them. He was going to read about them today, but we got to caught-up in our game of Monopoly. The game was going well, but he kept lecturing me. “Annie, this is a game of buying, you have got to buy, buy, buy.” I promised to keep that in mind the next time we played. He asked that if we played again could we use credit cards instead of money because it would be so much easier. Oh he was not raised in the Schuster household. I did not get my first credit card until I was 22, and I am still afraid to charge anything unless I know I have the money in the bank to pay it off. I will make sure to keep you all updated on the fun things I learn from Abdulla.