What wonderful fare!

Before I go into our latest escapades, I just wanted to share with you just one of the wonderful culinary experiences we have had since arriving.  For our dinner this evening, we popped in to the local coffee shop which is underneath our appartment and purchased an array of Indian starters.  Sufficient food for the two of us cost us approximately 80p.  Hopefully, when Joe gets back he can work out how to upload a picture of exactly what I am talking about and you can share in our delight.

Anyway, back to serious blogging.  I have just turned off the air con so that I could hear the distant call to prayer from the mosque down the road. 

Once more, I find myself catching up with what has happened over the past few days.  We are coming to the end of a week of INSET days at work and are looking forward to meeting the children on Saturday.  Apparently we should expect roughly half classes because many will be staying at home during Ramadan.  I have had a great time bouncing ideas off my grade 6 colleagues and am really looking forward to working with them on some more detailed planning.

So that's work.  We have been rather adventurous and have hosted our first dinner party - rather a success if I do say so myself.  I have to admit that the starters and desert were from our favourite shop Lu Lu, but the main course I cooked all by myself. We went out to an Iftar buffet last night with some other friends from work and were astounded once more by the quality of food served for the very reasonable price.

We are now holders of Omani driving licences too.  While the other new staff had the delight of residency cards, Joe, Amy and I went along to get our driving licences.  Only an hour and a half after we arrived, we were the proud owners of new licences.  We are feeling quite at home now and  getting used to the way things work.  When we thought about it, waiting around for a few hours for these things is nothing compared to the waiting for them to arrive in the post

Now that we have all of our documentation, we are off to look at cars this evening.  It still feels strange to head out at 7pm to do such things, but everywhere closes for the afternoon during Ramadan and then opens any time after 6pm.

One last excitement is that we now have the internet at home!  It was a rather painless experience in the end and once more no waiting for postal deliveries before we could get our hands on the equipment. 

Thanks to everyine for their comments - I have only just worked out how to read them I'm afraid.  Hopefully all of your questions have been answered but if not, drop us an e-mail.