Welcome to Qatar – Cool Malls and Hidden Chips

The monumental move from the U.S. to the Middle East was an undertaking to say the least.

After accepting educational positions in Qatar, a group of students, another fellow Spanish teacher, and I explored Andean Peru. Nadine and I shared our love of people and travel with Sophie and Dominic in Ecuador as they put their dual language Spanish skills into practice. A strong seller’s market nudged us to sell our house of 12 years. Once we left the last box in storage, we focused the next couple of remaining days packing 18 bags for 16 hours of flight.

Prior to 14.5 Hour Flight Around the Globe

Using Your Sister as a Footrest

Where is Qatar Exactly?

Travelers voted Qatar Airways as the top airline in the world. Qatar Foundation provided us with one of their one-way tickets from Omaha to Doha via Dallas and Qatar Airways made the 14.5 hour flight with four kids and two exhausted adults feel more like a nine hour flight. We still disembarked sleepy from jet lag, but onne could only imagine our state had we flown Ryan Air.

Hamad International Airport is home to Qatar Airways and also the airport that passengers selected as the best airport in the world. I will render further opinions after a couple more departures and arrivals.

Qatar provides climatic extremes. Indoors, you freeze under artificial arctic chill. Outdoors, a blanket of heat hinders your walk. Inside you need a fleece. Outside your glasses fog up. There has to be a happy median, I believe it’s called November.

Professional Water Fountain Show

Doha doesn’t spare any expense when it comes to malls. No half assing these centers of commerce selling gold and silver. I guess when the heat index hits 120 Fahrenheit, people just don’t really want to sit in their frigid homes, instead a visit to their local mall like the Mall of Qatar should do the trick. We’ve yet to walk the length of a mall.

You couldn’t possibly walk the mall yourself? Taxi please!

Any expat could move to Doha without speaking a word of Arabic. Every sign is written first in Arabic and secondly in English. Contrary to Chinese English signs that render hilarious mistranslated signs, signs in Qatar have been grammatically and lexically correct. This clean, desert peninsular city is very hospitable to foreigners.

Obviously, any move around the world wouldn’t present a few challenges. The heat could be one, but fortunately we’re not actively rebuilding Doha’s infrastructural outside. Air con everywhere trumps that heat. The biggest challenge have been buying SIM cards for phones. The official procedure requires any perspective SIM card owner to first, formally present your passport, then your Qatari visa, and finally a stamp indicating your exact arrival date onto the peninsula. One slight problem. Due to the fact that the Qatar Foundation gathered our passports, fulfilling these requirements is a bit impossible. Color passport copies and visas haven’t proven to be sufficient proof of our legal presence for Ooredoo stores the first week. Yet, at the end of week at that same gargantuan Mall of Qatar, the lady sitting behind the counter didn’t even ask to see a copy of our documentation and happily sold Nadine a SIM card.

Thus, Welcome to Qatar. Life is good with a week of work already under our belts, yet the settling in process is indeed a process that has just begun. Until next time.