My Weekend: The Non-vague Account

After school Tuesday, two of my friends and I targeted the youngest of the van drivers (we get shuttled between the hotel and class every day) to ask him to drop us off at Lulu's, which is right by our old hotel and between our new hotel and the university (I like the guy...he always makes the same stupid joke about driving us into the mountains that, in his mind, apparently never gets old, but I find it endearing). So after buying my oh-so-hip plastic fruit and doilies for our common room in the new hotel (we're in suites now, and mine has a special kind of vibe. also lots of sparkle) we took a taxi to souq al-haffa, which is one of the main market areas of the city, since my friends wanted to buy abayas.

We had a cute old man taxi driver who was very polite, but cars full of guys kept pulling up next to us and trying to shout in...our driver kindly explained that they were only trying to hit on us because they saw that we were western, and so then they knew that their behavior wouldn't bother us.

clearly.

We went to a frankincense shop that was, in fact, run by my BFF (the one woman in salalah that I could understand when I visited last year) who remembered me!!! (well, same store, same owner...wasn't like it should have been a surprise to find her there) Then, on the way to an abaya shop we were distracted by a store that had a sign declaring that men were forbidden to enter. Turns out it was a wedding shop (one of several) and to make the female clients feel comfortable while running around in all kinds of scandalous getups, there are no boys allowed. We had fun looking at the pretty and shiny things before realizing that we were already running late and still hadn't made it to the abayas...

later that night I went with some friends to an outdoor sheesha cafe with Moroccan waiter and waitresses (ours was from Casa...YAY! ) Best part was that they were projecting tv onto the huge screen infront of us for entertainment, and the movie playing that night on MBC 2 was Speed. Which I haven't seen since I was in fifth grade and it was amazingly cool bc it was my first R rated movie.

It seems to have changed a little since then.

Wednesday was a Muslim holiday=no school! and since thursday/friday is the weekend here, my plan was to sit on my butt and chill (for once) the whole day, and then be a productive human being the next two days.

Then one of the PFs called me around noon to inform me that he was taking some people to the mountains and I should come. As in, now.

So I did and it was great. Well, kind of foggy. But great. Granted, I once again found myself in a van which had a destination that I was not entirely clear on while wondering if I needed my passport. But it was an adventure, and it ended with some slightly off-key renditions of boy band songs, so I had nothing to complain about.

That night, the boys had a wedding dinner to attend (that all 30 of them, naturally, were invited to) and afterwards all 65 of us were invited to a big mansion in the middle of salalah inhabited by a handful of large british military men.

interesting.

Thursday was supposed to be the Dhofar day just for boys (since we had a just-for-girls dress up/make up session, they wanted one too) but somewhere along the line someone decided that an all-boys party would just be boring (well. duh) so they invited us too. I played a lot of uno in the morning (yup. uno) while others worked jabbing lots and lots of raw meat and vegetables with sticks. there was a ridiculous amount of cooked meat, and pretty much all of it was delicious. Then the male PFs demonstrated both male and female omani dances. I saw some of my american friends up on stage, parading around with khanjars (the traditional omani daggers) and it was nothing shot of terrifying.

I was very much convinced that someone was going to die (I am often convinced that firey firey death is around the corner in this country though...carival rides at the fair, for example. crazy taxi drivers.) or at the very least get an eye poked out. but nobody did. That was comforting.

Finally, after watching the boys run around like crazy people for a while, I finally gave in to the PF call for girls to join and went on stage too. I felt a little weird about it-I knew that none of the female Omani PFs would be caught dead dancing in front of men. But so many rules are different for them...I mean, none of them would be caught dead with their photos on facebook either (as it was explained to me, for fear of a theoretical husband candidate of the future's family deciding that they are 'bad girls' and using said photos as evidence). And also. I wanted to dance.

As a result, my calves are STILL a little sore...

By the time we got back to the hotel that night, I was pretty much done. I did not even leave my room on friday until 6 that evening (which, embarassingly enough, was not long after I FINALLY got up for the day...I made one feeble attempt to order room service around lunch and ended up falling asleep on the menu instead). I got my roommates all rallied up to swim (which never happens) and dragged us all through the lobby in our oh-so-sexy housedresses-turned-coverups (which might have accidentally humiliated one of my roomies a little but...all in the name of the pool) and we were all so proud of ourselves for actually DOING something

and then they wouldn't let us in the pool because some stupid family had to have a stupid wedding in the building next door.

I mean. The curtains were closed!!!

But in any case, I made it through today, which has been relatively calm and normal in comparison to everything else. I finally made it to Browniz, which is the cool kids expat hangout in Salalah in the same strip o'stores as the pizza hut (classy, I know). Some of my friends have been superloyal customers from the beginning of our summer (because of the free wireless, among other things) and have gotten to know the owner pretty well...he was actually the dj for our hafla wedesday night.

They just finished their 'family room'/upstairs area, which we were shuttled to immediately when we arrived (they would never, of course, make up come here, but they kept suggesting it as we looked for a seat...and frankly, since downstairs was really really smoky and really really full of men, I did not mind at all)

And even though I am surrounded by bright yellow walls, and I know that there's an actual salad coming my way, and my couch is nice and cushy and the a/c is working overtime, I can't help but to mourn...as of two days ago, omantel has apparently renewed their efforts to block skype. and, for that matter, to block any of the voice chat/phone/etc applications on their network.

But of course.