Vol 69 Michele Day 1

Alrighty then. My sister, Michele, came to see me here in Oman. Yay!!!!!! My first non-CouchSurfer visitor! Airfare to Muscat is stupid expensive so I had told her all she had to do was get here; I would gladly pay for everything else. Incidentally, I extend this offer to all my loved ones. She scheduled her trip to coincide with Firas' trip to Chicago for a dental conference so that I was off too. She arrived in the morning on my last day before vacation reasoning she would have the day to rest before we hit the ground running. Mahfoodh picked her up at the airport for me. I have to say it just about killed me to think that her first impressions of Muscat were formed without me.

As I mentioned in the last blog post, my camera was no more, so everyday I downloaded all the photos from Michele's camera onto my laptop. It is her photos you will be seeing in the coming posts. She took a butt-load of pictures. I will attempt to choose the best ones as I've always done with my photos but I also want to show quite a lot of her photos as I figure if these were the things she found interesting, you will too.

Our photo journey starts with this little duck. This is Puddles. Puddles belongs to my sister's 9 year old daughter, Chloe. Chloe reasoned that since she was not able to come along on vacation with Mommie, Puddles ought to come instead. So here is Puddles in London, at Heathrow Airport.


Here's Dubai from the air. She had a quick layover there before continuing on to Muscat.

Here's Muscat from the air. It shows very well how the city is wedged between the mountains and the sea.

As soon as I was finished work Michele and I headed out to the Muscat Festival. It's an annual, month long event focusing on cultural heritage and shopping and there were only 3 days left.

The event takes place at a number of venues. I took her to the venue which focuses on the traditional culture of Oman and other countries. We headed to the other countries section first, pausing along the way to watch some dancers from Mahfoodh's village.

I spotted this guy shortly after we arrived. He's pouring Moroccan tea. Yummy! I hadn't had real Moroccan tea since returning from Morocco.

I was excited to discover that he was also selling coconut cookies just like Hassan's sister Rabha had made in the cave. Bliss. My friend Emie from work came along with us as she had not been to the festival yet. I think we thought this was a "Who can be the least pretty" contest. We sipped our tea and pigged out on pastries while watching a Moroccan band.

While my back was briefly turned my ultra-friendly Canadian sister started chatting with this guy. She took a video of him in which he extended an offer of friendship and help. He states over and over "I like Canadians too, too much". I think she met her match in Oman for friendliness.

Later we returned for more tea and little doughnuts thingies. Yummy!

We toured through the stalls for various countries. This one was in the Iran section.

Michele insisted on taking a photo of this giant hubbly-bubbly (aka water pipe, aka bong) for Chloe. Seems Chloe has a fascination for hubbly-bubblies. Seems Michele doesn't mind feeding this fascination even though it will surely lead to her started smoking at an early age which will surely lead to her getting hooked on drugs, getting pregnant at 13, dropping out of school and working the streets for tobacco money. But who am I to judge?

Also in this section was an Iranian artist whose work I quite liked. I bought this painting from her.

When we were leaving the section featuring various countries we were approached by these guys. They asked if any of us were tourists. Michele confessed. They asked if she would mind taking a short survey about the Festival. Would she? A chance to talk to real live Omani guys? You bet! Much laughing ensued.

Michele made Emie stand and pose so she could get a photo of some Omani women. It's not cool to take photos of Muslim woman so she took one of Emie instead..... See how that works? We talked about a couple of other sneaky photo-taking tricks I have picked up along the way. My best two tricks are holding the camera casually at my shoulder, snapping away or having the camera completely ready to go at all times so that when you see something good you just quickly bring it up and snap, even if they see you doing it. The theory behind this one is that sometimes it's better to ask forgiveness than permission.

We stopped to eat. I was delighted to introduce her to Koushari, an Egyptian dish consisting of rice, macaroni and broken spaghetti topped with lentils, chick peas, tomato sauce and crispy caramelized onions. Vegetarian and oh so good.

While we were eating Michele snuck over and took this picture of some Omani men hanging out, waiting for their food. She employed the "easier to ask forgiveness than permission" technique. This photo shows how Omani's will just cop-a-squat anywhere, anytime.

She wasn't completely thrilled with the results so she went back over again and this times asked if she could take a photo. This one makes up for it's loss of candidness with the smiles on their faces.

After eating we headed over to the traditional Omani side of the festival.

These guys are engaged in some sort of black magic/evil spirit chasing/removing ceremony. We were the only women watching.

These guys are making Halwa, Oman's most traditional sweet. I call it glop.

Sugar and ghee are cooked in a copper pot until a good, gloppy consistency is reached. Then rose water, saffron, cardamon and sometimes nuts are added. It's poured into a bowl to congeal. It's surprisingly good.

Puddles really wanted a camel ride. People thought we might be crazy.

We ended the evening with an eggie/crepie thing from this lady. She has a flour dough in her hand which she smears across the griddle.

Then she cracks an egg on top and smears that around. When it is mostly set she folds it and it's ready to eat. And it's surprisingly good too.

We headed back to my apartment. Such a fun evening and it was so nice having Michele in Oman, though I must admit I was somewhat dismayed that night when I discovered that my dear, sweet, beautiful, ladylike sister snores like a chainsaw. Sorry Michele, I'm a journalist, I have to tell the truth.

And now for a little video: