What Time Is It?

It's 11pm here while I'm writing this and my body is so messed up I have no idea what time it really is!

Yesterday was a "shopping" day. Everyone else went on a tour of some local schools and a university, but Jackie took me and Cory shopping in the morning so I could buy an abaya. (you'll get to see it later!) It's funny because we went to a mall. It as just like we were in the States... right down to the Starbucks!

The difference being that the guy sitting on the right is in the "normal" section and we had to go in the "family" section. Everything is very segregated here.

In the afternoon there was a bazaar here on the "camp" where the ex-pats live for the benefit of all of us here for the reunion. I think I got all my souvenir shopping done in one swoop. At least spent quite a bit of money!

After a short nap it was off for the very elaborate Welcome Dinner put on by the reunion committee. It was at a private club on the Persian Gulf called Sunset Beach. You have not seen a fancier place! We even had a red carpet to walk in on!

I thought it was slightly amusing that it was on the water, but all the attractions seemed to be man-made. There was a huge water park right by where we were eating dinner. Fronting the water park was this lovely pond.

There were many tables set up on the sand around the pond for the 500+ people eating dinner. And so much food I don't think it would have all been eaten if 3 times the people had come! I was glad I wasn't one of the servers!

This was about 1/3 of the set up. There were 3 full sets of the food on our side alone and at least 3 on the other side (to the left of the picture).

This was the fruit table (mountain) down at the end. There was every kind of fruit you could imagine and tons of it!

Unfortunately we didn't get to start eating until 8pm and got home at about 10pm. And then we got up at 4am to go touring out in the desert this morning!!!

I'm having some issues uploading more than about 4 pictures at a time so I'll leave today's adventures til tomorrow. Besides, I'm kinda tired!