Pics from Doha

It's the weekend again. Yesterday, Friday, which is the first day of the weekend here, I attended a concert of the Doha Symphony/Doha Singers. The music was wonderful, and I think I would like to join the Doha Singers next fall when I return. They had an interesting program of everthing from Palestrina to Steven Foster. It was very enjoyable. This morning, Chas and I caught a cab over to the Sheraton Doha where we had a great breakfast and then wandered around the hotel taking pictures. Even made it up to the penthouse restaurant and took pics up there. It is a little hard to see from the photos, but the place is build like a hollow pyramid, and the restaurants are in the centre, looking up about fifteen floors to the top. All very posh, a bit too expensive to come very often, but a great place to visit. Then we walked to the City Centre taking photos along the way. It was getting terribly hot by this time (mid forties, C)so we were glad to get to the mall. We wandered around there for a couple of hours, picked up the tailor made shirts we had ordered a couple of weeks ago, and finally caught a cab back to the apartment. All-in-all it has been a great day.

walk by the ocean

It's been awhile since my last posting. School is going very well. The campus is so nice, and my class is small. I have my own office now, although it is isolated from the other chemistry teachers. Still nice to have my own space. Living in the city is not really my cup of tea. It seems there is very little opportunity to get away from the concrete sidwalks, and the noise and smells of traffic. This morning, though, I took a long walk along the 'Corniche' which is a beautiful seafront walk. It's about 5 km long, and by the time I finished I was not feeling so well, with the sun and heat. A big glass of juice and some food helped to fix that up. I caught a cab to get back to the apartment. The views of the new towers being built in the city centre area are quite remarkeable. I've included a picture of the beautiful garden area just outside of my classroom, and a couple pics from my walk this morning. It is incredible the amount of construction there is in Doha, and these three new towers are just a sample. I counted over sixteen construction cranes in the small city centre area.

settling in

Well it's just over two weeks since I've been in Doha. I am settling into my apartment and have had one week of classes. I have only one class of chemistry which amounts to four 2-hour lectures per week and two 2-hour labs. Not a bad workload!!! And to top it off, the labs are prepared, run, and marked by a lab tech. I'm just there for support. The campus is very nice as I indicated, but the city dirty. That's because there is so much dust in the air almost all the time. First it is a desert city, and secondly there is so much construction going on in the city, and there is a lot of dust from that source. It really is amazing to see the amount of construction. It seems that about 50% of the city is being built. There are about 16 very tall buildings or skyscrapers being build in the downtown section alone. And the buildings aren't just plain tall boxes, but have unique designs and features. Amazing. I haven't had a chance to get good pictures of them yet but will post some when I get them. I have made friends with a number of guys in the apartment building and we often go walking to the stores, or for coffee, or just sightseeing. That is the nice thing about my apartment. It is in the centre of the city, whereas some of the instructors are staying in walled compounds out near the edges and can't just walk to a store or shop. All in all, I'm having a great experience so far. The pics are of my apartment building, and my living room.