the weekend

I was pretty angry when I was writing my last post. But it's really not so bad here. Really! You just have to find the people with which you connect.

AIESEC has some connections to the U.S. Embassy here, so we meet with the Cultural Attache every once in a while. I recently started hanging out with an intern of his, a cool girl that goes to UPenn, but was here for the summer. She studied at AUC this past year and only has a week left in Doha. This girl has been in Doha for a month and a half, lives in a huge villa all by herself and doesn't have a car. It seems that she has been really lonely... I know I would be. First, it's great to talk to another American in person (after not having done so for almost two months), and second, understanding her situation in Doha makes me appreciate all the wonderful AIESECers even more. And when I told her that wherever I go in the world, there will be AIESECers there to meet, she was amazed. :)

Friday (the first day of our weekend) was fantastic. Three members and I got up early and drove about 45 minutes to the inland sea to learn how to scuba dive. The morning started with the "experienced" scuba diver in the group commanding us to eat breakfast, because, apparently, "you can't dive on an empty stomach." We arrived to the beach/desert around 10 and spent the next few hours lounging in the 115F heat, enjoying the super warm water and looking at the little snails scurry along the sand floor of the Persian Gulf. Pretty awesome, if you ask me. We had brought food and we were planning on having a barbecue, but decided our tans were perfect and it was getting too hot around 1 pm. So we went home, showered, took naps and met out for dinner a little later. A movie followed, Shadowboxer (it was the only one playing at the little theater where we wanted to go), and to be honest, it sucked. An hour-and-a- half movie is pretty difficult to understand when a half hour is cut out because of censoring. There was one point where we went through four or five different scenes, only getting a sentence out of each one. But that's life here, for better or for worse. Overall, it was a great day and night... and I think we're going to barbecue today at some point on the corniche.

In other news, the "n" key on my keyboard isn't working, so I'm pasting the letter every time I want to use it. I will get that fixed tomorrow. It's so annoying.

Lonneke arrives on Thursday! I've been alone for the past week in the apartment, which isn't so bad, but it'll be great to have her here, finally.

Also, IC in TURKEY is in ten days! So much to do in so little time... We leave on the 15th.

I hope everything is well in your corners of the world. :)