Muscat part 1, Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque (Oct 2011)

Oh my heavens it's time to get back into blogging. This is the farthest behind I have ever been, but still I feel compelled to stay in chronological order, so here goes. We flew out of Beijing and arrived in Dubai, UAE. I was nervous. It felt so unsettling to be "in the Middle East" (said with a sinister tone of voice). If I had picked our travel site- it would have been to Europe. The Middle East brought to mind terrorists and abusive men mistreating women. I questioned how safe we would be and how we'd be treated. Growing up my mom rented way too many movies of women and children being oppressed and cruelty in those countries, not to mention how in the last decade or two, Hollywood has moved on from Russians and Germans being the bad guys in the movies to Middle Eastern terrorists. Their portrayals have added to this negative perception. But in saying that this trip was such an eye-opener to that wonderful world and culture. The Muslim people were so kind and generous to us. Their hospitality far exceeded that of anything I expected or that you can typically find in Western cultures.

 

At the airport one of our babies started crying and we were ushered through to a different line where a man kind of ushered me to the side and talked to Varian. I wasn't sure quite where to go and didn't want to go to far away. At the time I didn't know if he was trying to get rid of the women/children, or if he was being kind and allowing me to go through to help the boys and not be stuck in line. (Looking back on the whole thing I definitely believe the latter.)

We got through all the securities and began the semi-dodgy part of our plans. We took a taxi to a street corner where Chad remembered from past travels he could catch another taxi to drive us over the border to Oman. But it worked. I don't know what time it was but it was late at night and totally dark and it would take hours to get there. But luckily we found two drivers who would take us and off we went driving overnight through several guard posts and the border crossing till we got to our hotel/apartment. It was lovely.

We made a little bed and put Jaren in the kitchen, which with jet lag and all that open space didn't work that well. Hard to convince babies it's the middle of the night when their body clocks are telling them otherwise. I wanted to include a picture of the bathroom to show how on the wall is the toilet paper roll for the Westerners, and the hose for the Middle-Easterners. Goo! :} Often the bathrooms would just have a pitcher of water next to the toilet for your "wiping" needs and so we'd be careful to always bring tissues with us into the bathrooms. Let's just say that once I discovered I had no tissues with me. Well, when in Rome...

This was the view from the balcony outside our window. It was gorgeous! That building in the horizon is the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque, which we went to the next morning.

Here are some shots of the mosque in person. Women had to have their head's covered, hence the baby wrap on my head. :) It was a beautiful place. Shockingly clean and shiny, considering what a dusty desert place the area was.

     

Hopefully some of these images capture the beauty of the building and gardens. If only the following photos could give a true sense of the splendor of the chandelier in the main musalla (males-only prayer hall). It was absolutely stunning. I have a thing for chandeliers and this was perhaps the most breathtaking one I had ever seen- it was just so huge!

 

Now the feminist in me  can't help but be a bit disgruntled at then comparing that huge magnificent hall to that of the female prayer hall:

 

It would be hard to pray there with an open heart knowing you were excluded from the masterpiece room due to gender. But maybe it helps the women to be humble and Allah hears their prayers better; still sad though. 

 

Our boys  enjoyed a nice little nap. We brought this double stroller all over 6 countries- this was just the beginning. We couldn't always bring it with us, but it sure was nice to give them a nap and give our arms and shoulders a break from carrying them and all our bags.

We had a lovely time visiting the mosque. Here's another daytime shot of it from our hotel balcony.  We only had this one full day in Muscat before we were on to Salalah to rendezvous with the rest of the Aston family. The rest of the day's photos and stories I'll save for the next post.

"Tastes Just Like Chicken..."

Our last request for our day of Beijing was to hit the markets and our "taxi" driver found this great local one for us.

 

On a previous layover Chad had seen scorpions to eat in the market and had regretted not getting them and that was on his bucket list. I do have a growing list of nasty things I've eaten (see below) and so we jumped on board the plan.



It did seem a bit wild to be eating scorpions. I listened to Felicity ask one of the vendors, "Is it spicy?" YES! YES! he said. "Is it dangerous?" YES! YES!

He pulled out a bowl of wriggling scorpions and picked them up to skewer them in front of us, their little legs wriggling and their tails wrapping around his fingers trying to sting him, (see the 1st video below) then into the deep fryer they went, dashed with salt and passed over to us. Normally I can't even eat meat with bones in it because it makes me feel sad/grossed out, so this was a bit of a challenge, but in they went. They crunchiness and taste reminded me of popcorn- popcorn with legs.

*

At least we ate the little ones.

*

These would have also been a challenge- tarantulas or skinned baby birds. I tried for ages to find out what the red ball things were made out of, they looked tasty to me, something out of Willy Wonka, but I never found out.



A pit-stop was inevitable, the awkward thing is trying to go in squatter toilets with a baby strapped to your chest. Luckily when I went in all these ladies coo-ed around Reid and I and directed me to the one "western" toilet that magically was in this bathroom. Phew! I was grateful! I used plenty of squatter toilets during that trip, but was grateful to not have to do so then. 

Poor Jaren was sick of being strapped in that day and his little chin got all red from rubbing against Varian. We hiked those babies all over the middle east though so they soon got used to it, and whenever we could we'd let them down to run around and be free.

I came across the above photo when I was choosing pics for this post and thought the sign "hot race" pointing right at Varian's face was funny. He is a hottie! :)

*

I don't know what we were thinking but we had these little pita meat/lettuce wraps. We had researched and planned to be so careful with not eating vegetables washed in local water and here day 1 we are eating lettuce, probably one of the worst things for getting some food poisoning. (Not to mention scorpions but the deep fryer probably killed off any germs.) The rest of the trip we we much more careful. We stayed healthy until Egypt (du du dummm- more on that later.)

*

It was a really great day! We had such a fun time, and it was all an adventure! I've included two video clips below of them skewering the scorpions and us eating them. These are unedited clips or otherwise I may have censored out my suggestion that we feed the 3rd scorpion to our child...:} but otherwise enjoy! 

Preparing the scorpion sticks:

Bon Appetit!

*Photos from Felicity*

Gross things I've eaten and their context:

• Rattlesnake- 10 years old @ Aunt Robin and Uncle Jim's house in Arizona
• Grasshoppers- 17 ish, Brother McKay's seminary class, lesson on John the baptist eating locusts- and 21 yrs old, Jake brought some home from his mission in Oaxaca, Mexico
• Octopus- teenager years, mom brought it home one day as a "treat"
• Paraguayan food- Yuck my whole mission was filled with pretty nasty food, but here are some of the low lights:
• Cow stomach- my first meal with locals. I thought it was raw chicken. I could tell they were saying "Vaca" - cow but other than that I thought, what the heck am I eating?!
• Cow tongue
• Pig's feet- There it was hoof and hairy ankle all standing up in a pile of beans. Luckily I ate this one really slow as my companion was treated to a second foot for being too fast. Eventually the dad saw me struggling and I used the "no se comer" (I don't know how to eat this) excuse and he helped me out. 
• Cow anus- though technically I do think I actually tried to hide this one in my bag when the sister left the room
• Rabbit's Heart and Chicken kidneys- though this was by choice at a buffet to add to my gross list
• Crab- 25 ish, @ a crab shack in Maryland on our visit to Katie Cragun. Ok I realize most people wouldn't add this to their gross list but I think it even beat the pig's feet. Granted I thought it was cool to be hammering away "like you see in the movies" but otherwise the process totally grossed me out. Here they were there little black beedy eyes staring at you accusingly while you ripped off their legs and smashed apart their bodies. To have to crack their "ribs" in half and then push out their lungs with your fingers before eating the meat....GOO! It was horrible. Plus I hate having my fingers dirty I admit, and each crack of mutilation sent me reaching for a napkins until the pile of soiled napkins far outweighed everyone else's pile of exoskeletons. I eventually gave up and ate the chips and hush puppies - a far safer option.
• Scorpion- 31 yrs old, Beijing Markets