Omani Wadis

Dear friends and family,

I’m so sorry that I haven’t written in such a long time (one month to be exact)! I know that most of you will not be reading this because.. well you have probably lost interest in this blog by now. However, if you happen to stop by this is what is happening in my life currently!

The last time I wrote I had just arrived back in Dubai from Bahrain from a visa run. We (Jenna, Heather, and I) are now currently in Oman staying with some friends for a week.

It is amazing how quickly time goes. Already we have been here almost half of our time and I have not gotten done with near as much homework as I would have liked to. However, instead of doing that we have been hiking up to some nearby wadis, sleeping, eating, and relaxing.. this is after all, our Spring Break!

The picture attached is the base of one of the wadis we visited. We hiked up into it for about an hour which included walking most of the time on their mad-made irrigation systems that you can see that go from up the mountain down to the villages and date farms. It is very impressive to see and know that this is what they live on and yet we walk on these systems to go up to a place where we can go swimming. It was SO BEAUTIFUL there… big rocky mountains, with date palms and these irrigation channels… then you have these little inlets of water that just spring up in the bottom of the wadis. It’s so amazing!
The Arab life in Oman is much more traditional, and a life that I like much more! They go back to their roots more and local Omanis are not as coddled by their government as Emiratis are in the UAE.. so you have more interaction with them as an expatriate. If I lived here I would speak Arabic much more and I would feel like I was actually living in an Arab nation instead of an Arab-ruled nation.

Life in Dubai has sped up. I am hanging out with more university-aged people and work as picked up a bit also. School is becoming more and more demanding as the semester ends, but while we are on this side of the world it seems less and less important in comparison to the experiences, relationships, and personal growth that is happening here. This is a lethal combination for grades and proves to be a struggle on learning, however, we will complete it sometime!

I know that this is short… but maybe it can suffice as a snapshot into my life.
Blessings to all of you!
Katrina Louise