Our year-long contract is finally coming to an end, and we are going home at the end of the month. Hence, this will be our last update to this website.

It's been an interesting experience living in Qatar for a year. There have been many highs, and many lows. Through this website we've attempted to give you some of the highlights. For this, our final instalment, we'll be using pictures to express who and what we'll be missing most about living here. Here are some stories from the last month:

Sea-doo ride: along with Joe and Sonia, Elena and I went for an hour long sea-doo ride near the Corniche. It was our first experience, and it was a lot of fun. We chose to ride the sea-doo with the smaller motor, since we were beginners. Even then, at full throttle I'd estimate that we were going at over 100 km/h. Before we set out, the owners had let us know not to approach the area to the right--because it was personal property of His Highness the Emir (the ruler of Qatar). Naturally, we all avoided this area in the interest of making our lives easier. Unfortunately, the family that went out after us decided to ignore the warning and went exploring there anyway. They got stopped by the Emir's personal guard. Interestingly, it was the rental company that got into trouble! The not-very-happy-looking guard that gave the employees a stern talking-to warned them that if it happened again the rental company would be closed down. Yikes!

The Pearl: we finally went for a visit of this artificial island. It was very posh, too posh for our taste. About half a year ago, it had been suggested to Elena and I that we could invest in a condo here. Apparently there was a deal going where you didn't need to pay any down payment on a mortgage until the buildings were finished. The Pearl properties were considered an ideal opportunity for house flipping. At the time, we had been very sceptical of making such an investment--a scepticism that has since paid off now with this global economic crisis driving down housing prices. We would have lost a bundle if we had gone for it.

Al Wakra Beach: this is a really nice beach located a 5 minute drive from where we live. The water is clean and nice, although some might complain that the water is too shallow. It's rarely more than waist-deep unless you walk very far out. The shallowness also has interesting effects on parked cars when the tide comes back in! Your car can go from bone dry to 10 cm deep in water in only a few minutes.

Islamic Art Museum: Qatar has done an incredible job with this place. The architecture and grounds are awesome. It's truly one of the wonders of the modern world. The collection inside is interesting and shows Islamic and Middle-Eastern cultural items that I've never seen before. The museum's collection is small at the moment, but this should come as no surprise given how brand-new the museum is. I think it's a wonderful thing that Qatar has done with this museum--it will hopefully serve as a cross-cultural bridge to the Middle East.

Dune Bashing Rally: We also have a real treat for you: live footage we took of a spontaneous Dune Bashing Rally, brought to you by the youth of Qatar. We ran into this get-together on our way back from the Inland Sea, as the sun was setting. I think it's important to emphasize just how dangerous the stunts you'll see really are. The cars are climbing a literal mountain of sand, 10 stories (30 m) high! The onramp the cars use to initially climb the mountain is angled at about 30 degrees, but as they move toward the right (from the camera's perspective) the angle switches to around 60 degrees. That's very steep! Their crazy manoeuvres are outrageously dangerous. I've tried doing this kind of stuff on 1 to 3 m dunes with an ATV, and it's scary, somewhat dangerous and requires nerves of steel. So imagine a dune 10 times larger than that... If the drivers were to make a serious error, their vehicles would tumble down the mountain--probably killing everyone inside. Plus, there's the risk of collision between speeding vehicles.




That's it, dear reader.  We hope that you enjoyed our Living in Qatar blog.

--Jonathan and Elena