Exploring Doha with Nana and Papa

We are very fortunate to have Doug's parents here for Christmas this year. Here are some photos from our sight seeing yesterday - Christmas Eve in Doha!

Checking out the views of West Bay from the Corniche

Next stop the St. Regis Hotel to see their giant Christmas tree and life size real gingerbread house.

Then we visited Katara, a cultural village of restaurants and art and music venues.

Our last stop was at the open air fruit and vegetable market to pick up our Christmas dinner veggies and breakfast fruits.

Walking to The Mall

Yesterday with the evening temperatures so nice and cool we decided to take a walk across the street (across the six lane expressway!) to pick up our ceramics we painted at The Mall. Funny I capitalize The Mall since the name of the mall is actually 'The Mall' haha.

The last time we took this walk I realized was when we first moved here and I had no car. I ventured out during Ramadan in 40+ degrees in July. I had to sneak water as we walked to ensure, well...that I didn't die! 

Things have changed for sure, we all wore sweatshirts and I wore socks and shoes for the first time since we moved here. It was windy last night and about 15 degrees, which now feels quite chilly!

We're lucky that we can actually walk somewhere outside our compound. Sidewalks are very rare and being too close to any traffic is pretty scary here. There is one stretch on a slip road (so not directly next to main traffic) that has that 'rubble' look that I use to describe so much of Doha.

The girls had a blast though running along the sidewalk on our walk! Guess we'll have to get out more often for a walk. Missing our regular walks Roslyn ;)

Vanilla Extract Experiment 3 Weeks In

The vanilla seems to be coming along nicely. Smells really good! This is an after 3 weeks photo.

Not something you see everyday on the Buy & Sell Facebook pages back home!

Truthfully this is the first time I've seen guns posted on Facebook here. Usually it's just an abundance of fancy handbags, watches, jewelry and gold iPods! Oh ya and weird products like skin whitener

s ;)

Pretty creepy. Expecting to see lots of guns tomorrow for the National Day Parade. We've already been warned that we'll most likely see kids with guns. This is when you know you're living on the other side of the planet!

Vanilla Extract Experiment

Guess I never really thought about it, but call me stupid if you want...I had no idea real vanilla extract was made with alcohol. Would explain why I haven't been able to find it in stores here! And good thing I figured it out before I asked my mother-in-law to bring some into the country at Christmas. 

So we've decided to experiment with making our own. Following a fellow Canadian living in Qatar and also some research on the Internet, we've add four vanilla beans to a small bottle of vodka. Should be about 2 months till we have our finished product.

Will keep you posted on its progress and final result. Figure it's a win win situation though, worst case we're left with vanilla infused vodka for drinking if not baking!

Just in case you were worried that Root Beer may actually contain real Beer!