A car and a visit to QAWS...

 My new (ish) car.  Not sure what's up with  the coloring/haze.  I think I had it set on the wrong photo setting.  Anyway, below is what a Qatar license plate looks like.  Some are English numbers with small Arabic numbers and some are the opposite. 

Drives quite well, and I like to stick with Honda's.

 We went to QAWS (Qatar Animal Welcome Society) on Friday.  It is run and operated by a British woman who has lived here for 20 years to take car of the abandoned  dogs and cats of Qatar.  5 years ago their facility burned down, and it will be a long time until they have enough money to rebuild.  In the meanwhile, here are a few pictures.  It's a working farm as well, so there are huge fields of vegetables that have dirt paths around them, and that it where we walk the dogs.  Because they stay in their kennels most of each day, and only come out twice daily, they are very jumpy and anxious to get attention.

 Ducks, chickens, 2 donkeys, and a bull are also on the premises. 

 This is what the kennels look like.  They are clean and cleaned each time a dog goes out for a walk, and they have big bowls of water, but the sounds was deafening when the whole row was barking at once.  There are very small windows and a few fans, but it's not air conditioned and is very hot.  It was hard to witness frankly.

I considered not going back because it's difficult to see...but that's not who I am.  And I'm putting it on here because it's the the truth and the more people hide their heads in the sand, the less truth about the world is known and the more animals and children and women and living things in general are not treated properly.  In the same way that I couldn't "know" about foster children or starving children in the world and do nothing, I can't "know" about QAWS and do nothing either.  If Sergey and I can give some love and attention (and likely some treats)to a few dogs once or twice a week, that is a little bit more than those dogs would have received without us.

The outdoor barn cat was quite comfortable. :-)

There were a lot of people this day because it was a semi-annual QAWS awareness day where people bring food and buy baked goods, etc. to raise money.  There were Qataris and other Muslims as well, but I took care not to photograph them as it is impolite.