Dhow trip

 Above is what the scene actually looked like.  The skyline of Doha is beautiful at night.  My camera takes crap photos in the dark and when in motion, so it was a double whammy.

Anyway, we decided to take a Dhow Dinner Cruise.  As usual, it was an adventure.  I thought I knew where we were going, since I had called 3 times for directions on Thursday.  One of the times, I didn't understand what the man was saying, and he responded with "ok bye bye" with a think Indian accent.  Agh...life in Doha.  So we left in plenty of time, and arrived 10 minutes late.  We were driving up and down the waterfront, and eventually found the Doha Port.  It was then a 1.5 km drive down the port with several lefts and rights.  Finally the owner told us to sit with our flashers on and he would come and get us.  We weren't the only one who couldn't find the boat.  There were supposed to be 50 people on the boat, and there were about 20-25. 

 This is Noni, Don, and Madison.  We went with them.  Cool family.  Noni works at Georgetown in PR here at the Education City campus.  Don is a financial adviser turned math teacher, and Madison is their 10th grade niece whom they are raising.  Don does SAT prep, so we work closely together, since my students scores leave quite a bit to be desired.

 Bad quality photo, but Madison and Sergey on the upper level.  They spent much of trip up there,  leaving the old parents downstairs.

 Why is he leaning over a trash can?  Well, it IS Sergey.

 That's Amy on the right.  She's an art teacher.  She was in Paraguay prior to coming to QA this year.  Very cool girl.

 The skyline courtesy of my crappy camera.

So here is the weird part.  It was a 3 hr cruise (I should have known, Gulligan's Island fans).  We sailed for 30 minutes, and then dropped anchor.  But we weren't going to eat dinner for 90 minutes.  There was totally inappropriate music playing...is was like a booze cruise without booze.  We were all falling asleep by the time the food was ready.  It was 10 pm! 

 At one point, the song being played was so incredibly inappropriate, an unedited version that radios don't play, nor should they.  I tried to explain to the men running the boat ride that the song was really crude and bad to play.  I asked if they understood the lyrics, to which I got a No.  So I asked for the song to be changed, and....they started it over!!  We all just laughed, what are you gonna do?  I audio-taped it actually and video-taped the shore, but I decided the song was too foul to put on here.

 Sergey talking Amy's ear off.   I think he has a little crush. :-)

Other boats out on the water.  They all had music cranking.  Very surreal....we needed a couple of beers and it would have been fine.  Since that isn't an option here, a 2 hour cruise makes much more sense.  It was only $30/person though.  Worth it, but we didn't get home until almost 1 am.