“I can’t even imagine what your life is like” or “I can’t picture you guys there,” are comments we often receive from emails and such from our family and friends. Hope this helps!
Really our day to day lives haven’t changed that much from the typical North American lifestyle, we are just in a different location. Richard gets up and goes to work Sunday through Thursday and I am still a stay at home with three boys. Now, driving into PDO company site, through the manned gate, past the armored truck with the M-16 sticking out of the roof, that’s for a different post!
This is our house from the street, number 8 Kauther Street
Welcome!
I get up at 6:30 to start making lunches and getting the boys packed up and ready for school. Ethan and Matthew are my early risers and they are usually waiting for me downstairs, snuggled under a blanket, looking at a book or more often playing on the IPad or little laptop. This morning they were playing trains in Ethan’s room. We leave the house at 7:42 and drive just down the street where the boys are attending a beautiful, brand new (they moved in end of October) state of the art school; the PDO International School. They each get gym, swimming lessons, music, and IT lessons once a week. They have lots of extra help and both James and Matthew get individualized one on one help with a learning assistant to help get them caught up. They are all working hard and everyone who meets them says they are sweet and likeable little boys. They have fantastic teachers and great administration so we are very happy with their education. James is in Primary 6 (what we call grade 5), Matthew is in Primary Four or what we call grade three and Ethan is in Primary One which is like kindergarten.
I drop them off for school which starts at 8am and then I usually head back home to finish breakfast and have a second cup of coffee. When I first typed up this post, the last two weeks had been busy with uniforms sales at the school as I volunteered to be on the committee to help sell them. That often meant going early to the school and then staying at school for two hour shifts of helping other families get outfitted in the uniforms. Some of my boys were not thrilled with the idea of wearing a uniform, but the uniforms look so sharp and it will help with the image of the school as well. All the other schools in Muscat have a uniform dress code as well.
I have also volunteered to be the treasurer of the PTA and so we meet on Sundays at 12:30. We just planned and put together a National Day Celebration (think Canada day) at the school to celebrate the Sultan’s 45th year of reign. There was decorating to do, food to arrange and the children got together for an assembly. Seeing over 500 children, dressed in white, red and green, waving Omani flags and singing in Arabic made even me proud! It was a great day!
I started taking group tennis lessons with two other gals, both named Jennifer, both from the States! We have become good friends and help each other with childcare, laundry and we hang out on the weekends for pizza night or at the PDO Club. I am not very coordinated, so the tennis does not come easily to me, but I am learning. We have a great coach, a guy from the Czech Republic, the tennis is fun, makes you sweat for an hour as we are outside and I get to hang out with my girls.
On November 1st, we moved from our lovely temporary apartment into a beautiful three bedroom townhouse right up the street from the school and right off the main drag on PDO Camp. Our boxes are unpacked and we have settled in. I called someone to have custom curtains made, we get water delivered every week and we are enjoying our location here, which is a five minute car ride to the pool, restaurant, beach, video store and library.
Take a tour of our house!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5Kiie21V2E[/youtube]
When I am not playing tennis or helping out at the school, I am doing laundry at home, other housework, getting groceries and having coffee with other women who are blessed to be able to stay home as well. The days go by quickly as I pick up the boys from school at 2pm and the weekends arrive quickly and go by just as fast.
Sometimes it hardly feels like the desert! The company’s maintenance team have done a great job at planting trees, flowers and irrigating everything to make it look lush and green. Hopefully the pictures and video show you all some of that.
P.S. So I have procrastinated so much in posting this that it is a bit out of date. Sorry for that! Will update soon.
