CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

Funny to be driving my 4-wheeler down the three-lane freeway in Muscat's perfect December weather listening to Frank Sinatra sing "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas". But, then, that was what the original song was all about, except that the writer was dreaming from Southern California.

Been a very food-heavy couple of days, appropriately enough for the season. Christmas Eve last night found me at the Grand Hyatt with four colleagues from work enjoying the Hyatt's annual Christmas Eve buffet: prime rib, ham, turkey, plus about 15 other main dishes if you preferred. Then today, Christmas Day, I was invited to Christmas dinner at Dr. Don and Eloise Bosch's along with about 16 other people (including Bosch family in town for the holidays). Butterball Turkey, stuffing, cranberry relish - all the standards. The weather had gotten quite dramatic: dark clouds, white caps on the bay off their back yard, drizzle and noticeable gusts. To wake up from our starch-induced brain-dead state, a few of us headed outside after dessert to let the rain and wind do their work. Then about 5:30, I excused myself and drove back to the university for ANOTHER Christmas meal at another teacher's house on campus. Haven't had so many glasses of wine (divided between the two dinners) in many months!

My Christmas present this year - not to belittle the kind gifts mailed to me from the States - was getting a text message on my cell phone around noon informing me that I had been selected for one of the three open positions on the Writers Group, a curriculum development team. They had had a kind of materials-writing contest for interested teachers, and my application was just one of many, so it felt extremely good to make the cut. Apparently, this half-time work begins already in February, so I will only be teaching part-time when classes resume February 2. (My last class is tomorrow, then finals.)

This is really BIG news professionally, since my main career goal post-PhD has been to get into materials writing and curriculum development in a uhiversity EFL program with an aim of possibly getting into the ESL publishing industry later on (too big of a blank on my resumé at this point to really be considered seriously by them yet) - or at least to qualify to interview for full-time curriculum posts in a year or so at a university. My career time is short on this end of the PhD, so my time to get established in this new area is pretty limited - hence my real "Christmas joy" today! I've had 20-plus years of ESL teaching now, so I'm VERY ready to move in a new direction. Deo gratias!

So, Merry Christmas, God Jul, Vrolijke Kerstfeest, Bom Natal, and 'Eid Milad Sa'id!

Be on the look-out for a year-end emailing from me in the neear future ...

SEPARATE BUT EQUAL?

Oman doesn't really have an enforced racial divide, but as in much of the conservative Gulf, it has a clear-cut gender divide. Saudi Arabia takes it to an extreme; other Gulf countries - such as Oman - are relaxing it ever so slightly.

Even the architecture at Sultan Qaboos University reflects this sexual apartheid. Of course, there are women-only dorms. Many US universities do that, too. But SQU has separate elevators marked "Men's Lift" and "Women's Lift". And there are separate walkways on campus with signs up: "Women Students' Corridor", "Men Students Corridor". Each classroom has two doors on opposite sides. Men enter and leave through one, women through the other. In many cases, it's (any way you look at it) the back door for the ladies. Separate, but equal? There's a bit too much "enter-by-the-back-door, keep-quiet-and-know-your-place" about the whole arrangement. But at least they are on the same campus (unlike in Saudi Arabia) and sit in the same classrooms at the same time.

In class, women (mainly all in black) sit on one side of the room, men (mainly all in white) sit on the other. Sometimes, if there aren't equal numbers of women, the gals sit in the back. The woman naturally gravitate this way without any instructions. Being too close to the men might lead to "talk" by other students and ruin a girl's reputation. Protecting their honor is the main duty. When passing each other in the corridor, women look down out of modesty. The sexes don't greet each other. That would be "forward".

Among the faculty, things are more relaxed, and male and female colleagues will greet each other and carry on polite conversations, then go and sit at segregated lunch tables. It's mainly a comfort-level thing, I believe. The women and men would feel very awkward seated at the same table for more than a few minutes.

It's not surprising that this segregation occurs everywhere. After growing up in Saudi Arabia, it feels second nature to me. But what is surprising - and fun to watch - are the times when the oh-so-carefully-observed barriers come down and male and female students do actually interact.

A few weeks ago, I was walking back to my office and passed an outdoor engineering students exhibit. Each exhibit was in a separate booth. A big food and refreshments table was on the opposite side ("manned" by women students only, of course), but many of the engineering students exhibiting were women and were giving their spiel to both male and female students. Some of the male students were obviously motivated by something more than just professional curiosity in chatting up the female exhibitors! And that setting also allowed female engineering students to talk to male exhibitionists, I mean, exhibitors! (gotta watch those suffixes!)

In my new Level 6 class this semester, there are 16 women to 6 men. They tried the first couple of days to sit each in their half of the class, making it pretty squished for the women's side. "This is ridiculous," I decided. So, with the instructor demanding it, the women students somewhat reluctantly (with maybe some relief), spread out over the last two rows to fit wall to wall, enclosing the men's "quarter" (front right) behind and across. This led to some spoken interaction between the men in the second row back and the women in the row right behind them. (Interesting, I thought. This wasn't required; it just happened of its own accord.)

And sometimes, emotions run too strong and dialogue erupts despite the both sexes' best efforts at physical and verbal apartheid. In my Level 4 class last "block", for instance, the two sides kept pretty well separate and didn't interact for many weeks. One day, I had a unit on advertising and showed several ads I had clipped from magazines. One was of a fashionable blond woman with Prada sunglasses (a Prada ad). The men in class were making their mildly ribald comments, while the women rolled their eyes in mock disapproval. Then one of the male students said something like, "Beautiful, teacher." "Oh, so you like the glasses, do you?" I teased back. "No, not the glasses ..." and said something else that got a sudden rise out of the women's side so that, suddenly, the women were ALL talking to the men - rather heatedly. I quickly called for them to calm down, but it was fun to see them actually interact for a change when the normal icy barrier was melted.

It will be interesting to see what happens in 5-10 years with the new generation. (Of course, SQU students come from every part of Oman, from the more liberal cities to tiny, conservative villages. The trickle-down effect should be pretty unequal.)

DON BOSCH'S 90TH

Sunday, December 9 was Dr. Donald Bosch's 90th birthday. (Arabian Mission doctor in Oman from 1955-1980 and a local celebrity!) The event coincided with the regular Sunday evening service at the Ruwi PCO Church (near downtown), so I made my first trip out (about 30 kilometers from campus!) for the Protestant service. In honor of his birthday, the mainly Indian congregation had arranged a big cake and refreshments. After the service, I stood out on the patio chatting with their son David Bosch, a long-term Aramcon who manages Saudi Aramco's Washington lobby office now, while Don and Elois Bosch sat in their VIP seats for people to greet. (Also, at 90, Don can't stand for too long!) David's wife, Leslie, is another Aramco Brat, from the Zinola clan, but she was several years older and left Dhahran with her parents before I really knew her.

In chatting with David, I learned for the first time that Dad had been instrumental in getting him his first job with Aramco in 1973. Apparently, David had applied to Aramco via the New York office but had been turned down. Not giving up, Eloise his mother suggested he talk to Marianne and Art and see if Aramco couldn't interview him directly in Saudi Arabia. So, yet another Aramcon owes his job to Dad's intervention. (He did this also in the Hague for a Dutch MIT student.)

November 20, I had visited the Ruwi church compound (sort of Christianity Central in the capital here - the Catholics, Protestants, Mar Toma Orthodox from South Indian etc. all sharing the same large compound hidden back off the main arteries of Muttrah) the day before the anniversary of Mom's arrival in Muscat back on November 21, 1954. The PCO, the ecnumenical descendent of the Arabian Mission of the Reformed Church, has its main office in the Ruwi compound. The office is run by a very capable Sri Lankan woman, Dulari Fernando, with Esther, a new secretary from Madras, and Khalid Al-Zadjali, an Omani man in his 40s who is in charge of "public relations" for the church, smoothing things over with the Muslim government of Sultan Qaboos. By the time I found the compound after many wrong turns, I only had 40 minutes or so to chat and take a tour, but it was a start!

Christmas Day I have been invited by Eloise to come to their annual Christmas dinner. First is the Christmas service 10:00 am in Ruwi, then we head - not far - to the Bosch's place for a midafternoon feast!

GETTING IN THE SEASON

A busy weekend. Last night (Thursday), I was invited to a "soirée musicale" of English Music by Trish and Terry Edwards, a long-term British couple at the Language Centre. The husband is a Classical music buff and plays himself in all kinds of amateur groups here in Muscat. The wife is non-musical but "for the sake of her marriage" is an ardent supporter of the arts, so she says!

My ony price of admission was to bring something for the potluck (the evenings goes: drinks- music - dinner - music - dessert). Kind of a musical club sandwich. For some reason - the recent cooler weather? - I thought of beef stew and ended up making Boeuf Bourguignon, which requires an entire bottle of red wine to cook the beef chunks in. Since I still don't have a "liquor license" for Oman, I bought a bottle off a neighbor who does.

Trish and Terry have a beautiful two-story house not far from the sea. Not sure if the university rents it, or they arranged for it directly, but it's very nice and has a beautiful tiled patio outside, where Trish had put candles on tables for people to sit at. Inside, the 20-odd guests sat around the living room and listened to the musicians (two oboists, including Terry, and some string players - oh, and one pianist). I had heard of Handel and Benjamin Britten, but Gerald Finzi (20th century) was new to me. I looked him up on Wikipedia and discovered the totally trivial detail that he had died of complications from chicken pox!

Yesterday was also busy with rehearsals at the PCO (Protestant Church) in Ghala for the Carol Service this morning (Friday). I had had my arm twisted to play on a number of pieces (and not just out of a hymnbook, alas), so I worked feverishly for 3-4 hours practicing in order not to look like a total dummy in front of what turned out to be a very full house.

In the service, we had two choirs - the Muscat Singers and an Indian choir (Indian expats). The short sermon was given by the Rev. Duncan Hanson, the traveling Reformed Church rep for Mission. He extended his stay by a day to join us at the service. He was staying with Don and Eloise Bosch but hadn't heard of Mom (Oman 1950s). Not too surprising; she was here less than a year. He told me the Arabian Mission archives were kept in New Jersey at New Brunswick Theological Seminary for the RCA. "They keep every little detail, so watch out!" he cautioned. :-)

Last week I also got out for my first in-theater movie: "American Gangsters" with Russel Crowe and Denzel Washington. I wasn't expecting too much (I'm not a mafia or crime movie fan), but it was very well done. The theater is in a very up-market part of town. Most of the audience was Omanis, who seemed to think talking continually during a film and looking at the bright LCD panel of their cell phones was fine movie etiquette. The America they were exposed to was gritty and sordid inner city New York of the '70s - heroin junkies, dishonest cops, prostitutes and mafia thugs. I wonder what sense they made of it. Muscat seems like a quiet small town by comparison.

UNSPOILED (?) OMAN

Last week, we were gifted with yet another cluster of days off. Omani National Day gave us two extra days to tack onto the front end of our normal Thursday-Friday weekend, so, around here when the weekend gets good, the good go camping.

I had been invited several times to an "unspoiled" beach near the fishing village of Seifa quite a ways east of Muscat off the main road. This weekend, Meriel and Carlo Carboni (the on-campus couple who first gave me lifts to the Protestant Church before I had a car) and a group of their Russian friends (long story!) had planned to spend two days on the front end of the weekend to leave the last to days for other household duties.

Tuesday morning, we all met at the Carbonis'. I was to take Liubov, an EFL teacher from Russia, her granddaughter Yana and daughter-in-law Svieta in my car. It was a bit tight with three four people plus camping gear, but we made it! Meriel was in an SUV with another Russian prof at SQU, Sergei and his kids; Anvar, a Tatar Muslim hydrologist from Russia (I'm not making any of this up!) and his wife Roza and kids were in the third. We all left in convoy. Carlo and the high school kids from the school that didn't give Tuesday off would join us later that evening.

First, we headed to downtown Muscat, turned off on some congested little streets (absolutely no signs) that took us very suddenly to the end of town (the high cliffs helped end the town there), and the little road started to wind upwards. It was blacktop for about an hour, winding through multi-colored barren rock mountains, then down into palm oases and villages till we hit the coast. Then it was dirt road for another 30 minutes or so. (I'm getting tired of being the vehicle in the middle eating everyone else's dust!) Eventually, we reached Seifa beach, a "beautiful, unspoiled off-road beach" that's due to be developed into a luxury hotel or two in the coming years. "See it now while it's still unspoilt!" everyone kept telling me.

Another Russian, a very butch linguistics prof, had already set up her tent on the top of a dune (picture one 15' high), so although the rest agreed that camping near the shady grove of pricker trees might be optimal, we joined her on top of the dune, lugging trip after trip of tent, cooler, etc. up the sandy cliffs. The view on top was pretty spectacular: a long stretch of sandy beach ending in a rocky promentory on the east side with beautiful blue-green water. Behind us in the distance were the ever-present Omani mountains, dry, rocky and forbidding. The site was marred, however, by plastic trash bags blowing in the breeze and litter everywhere. Being "off-road" in Oman means that only 45% of the expat community can reach the site, the SUV and 4-wheel vehicle being common. By noon the first day, the entire top of the long dune was full of tents and campers to the end of the beach.

Realizing that camping is (rightly) a major passtime among expats here, I have broken down and purchased the requisite camping gear now: sleeping bag, tent, cooler, and most recently, a big fat foam mattress to put under the sleeping bag (some campsites are lumpy and rocky). My last sleeping bag was "borrowed" back in the late '80s and never returned. (A true camper, I'm not!)

The best time of the whole trip was the first evening, watching the sunset behind the mountains, letting skin-cancer-challenged me come out from the grove of trees where I had retreated to read and wander back to the campsite. Anvar, a true pyromaniac, had a huge bonfire going, stripping every bit of driftwood and dry pirckly tree branch in the area to feed it. The Russians had mainly all homemade fare: boiled potatoes, boiled eggs, various salads, etc. Living up to my Yankee heritage, I had brought processed, plastic-covered cheese, turkey and store-bought items. (Including real Omani dates, I hasten to add!) With all the kids, parents, and a couple singles (me and an Argentinian visiting physics prof named Silvana) fighting over the tiny table space, dinner lasted over an hour. Anvar had a decrepit, blackened teapot on top of the coals, which eventually whistled, signaling we could have our after-dinner tea and coffee.

Carlo got out his guitar and started playing folk songs, mainly 60's and 70's tunes (his generation), and he and I got a Simon and Garfunkel groove going. The Russian adults and Silvana sat on the sand nearby enjoying our occasional moments of musicality. The moon rose over the edge of the sea (not making this up), starting a ghostly green and growing to irritating brightness by the middle of the night, hanging overhead like a searchlight. But during the guitar serenading, it cast a beautiful white wake over the sea all the way to the beach in front of us. With a gentle breeze, it was almost cliché.

The next morning, nature was not as loving. A steady little breeze at breakfast turned into almost gale force (30 mph?) steady wind by lunch, forcing us to use rocks to hold down the food, and blowing tents almost over. Breaking camp after lunch and lugging every bit of camping equipment and trash bag back down the dune to the cars was not fun.

We arrived back in civilization, coated in sea salt, sand in every cranny, weary and wind-blown, but it was worth it!