Thomas journals

Now at the end of September, the nighttime temperatures start to drop below 90 degrees, though daytime is still consistently above 100degrees. Our morning shower (water from the rooftop tanks) is no longer HOT. Soon we might need to power-up the water heater.

The tourism council noted that the Faisal Bin Qassim Museum would be offering tours throughout this holiday, so we decided to try it.  From checking out fbqmuseum.org, I sensed that it was a very personal project, with a little-modified website evidently hand-built by his nephew.  The BookATour page link was dead, as was the GettingHere page link.  So we traveled on, relying on google-maps:  two frustrating hours later, through road construction and remote desert roads (with hidden speed bumps), we found a sign that pointed to “Museum” ! And we found a highway interchange not marked on google-maps; and we found a highway access road not known to google-maps… lesson: I should have followed my eyes rather than the computer. The Faisal Bin Qassim Museum is strangely anonymous, with few signs identifying the entry road, though the edifice is quite imposing and unusual in the neighborhood.  An old-fashioned unmarked gatehouse controls the driveway, and the entry r...

We have now attended the Anglican Center’s worship services twice.  We are impressed by the determination of so many people to attend worship, braving arcane traffic patterns and crowds and security scanners and very long walks in unshaded sunny heat.  What is officially marked as “Religions Complex” but unofficially called Religion City is the square mile reserved for all non-Muslim religions to build their houses of worship. The Anglican Center serves the Protestant community, with over 30 different groups worshiping in various parts of the building throughout the weekend.  One neighboring building houses the Indian Inter-Denominational Christian Church (the several branches of the ancient Keralan orthodox church), while the largest building is the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Rosary.  Probably the two largest expatriate groups in Qatar are from India and the Philippines.  Within the same complex are also Coptic and Greek and Syrian Orthodox churc...

After three years as teaching missionaries in Seoul, Korea, God called us back to the Middle East, to teach in Qatar. Our years in Saudi Arabia have made our transition here easier - we already know the culture, the religion, the environment, but more importantly, how to be Christian in an exclusively Muslim country. We look forward to supporting the Christian community here and modeling Christ’s love to our students. We are settling, in our apartment in Al Wakra, Qatar (yes, emphasis on the first syllable: QATar with a sort of soft initial K sound).  The apartment is spacious and solid, with good air-conditioning and reliable electricity and fairly reliable water.  The school owns the building, so we know all our neighbors automatically, and we leave our door unlocked.  We are about 5 miles down the coast from the airport, so we can easily pick you up if you come to visit!   Most of the teachers are US or Canadian, with a few Europeans and Middle Easterners in ...

An idiosyncracy of living in a hot climate where water supplies are often scarce is that your household water is often provided from a tank on the roof.  Most of our VISTA apartments are supplied from water tanks on the roof, where they get the full sun of the day: solar heat!  Because our summer nights are still hot, the water tank never really cools much.   Typically, each room has its own electric water heater, powered by a(n unmarked) switch on the wall. The water heater is either in a closet, or the ceiling, or the wall -- so it does not get any solar heat!   Thus, counter-intuitively, in summer, we: 1- leave the hotwater power switch off; 2- turn on the “cold” water tap for hotter water, and 3- get cooler water from the “hot” water tap. Thus in full summer, it is better to take showers in the morning can be rather scalding, when the tank has had a chance to cool somewhat. At some point when there is less solar heat, we switch back to normal o...

  Please Look After Mom, written by popular Korean novelist Kyung-sook Shin, was published in English after selling over a million copies in Korea. Shin is a visiting scholar at Columbia University, and lives in Seoul.  Jeff taught this book in his Grade 10 World Literature Class to explore local culture. It does that and more. It represents the guilt of countless women in Korea of the new generation, struggling with the implications of society modernizing, as Korea careens into a super-modern nation. Korea changing from a war-torn country of farmers to the land of Samsung and Hyundai in one generation is bound to produce the themes explored in this book.  But not just a book for and about Korean families, Please Look After Mom focuses on the universal theme of what it means to be a mother -- in this case defined through self-sacrifice. Mom's duty it seemed to the central character was to put her children, now grown and on their own, as well as her husband before herself....

I just returned from a quick shopping trip in the neighborhood, and I'm moved to write how nice it is: our apartment building is mounted on the side of a hill, so we walk about fifty yards down a steep alley to the district center, with five "BBQ" (i.e. grill-your-own meat) restaurants in a cluster, along with a tiny hotdog shop, a fashion clothing shop, an optician, and a specialty pigs-knuckle restaurant (good for your joints!).  Upstairs is a pub (kind of grimy), and then around the corner for the taxi-stand cigarette vendor, an outdoor coffee vending machine right where we wait for our morning bus to school (only 30 cents for a tiny cup of instant coffee!), a decrepit pharmacy, then a jeweler shop.  In the same block is the local public-bathhouse and a discount housewares store.  Across the street are the chain stores: 7-11 and Paris Baguette.   A bit further up the street, after a couple more little restaurants and clothing stores, is Song's Florist along ...