Fresh, New, Exciting

When we visited Sri Lanka this past Christmas the youngest muppet thought it was so cool that there were monkeys walking around everywhere. He asked me why we didn’t have any monkeys in Doha and I told him probably because we didn’t have a lot of trees for them to play in and that monkeys didn’t like sand! He was a bit disappointed, but I told him that having monkeys everywhere was what made this place special and that if the rest of the world had monkeys it would be a very boring place.

Visiting Canada for the past 3 summers since we moved to the Middle East has been so wonderful because for the boys it is like seeing everything for the first time. They remember the zoo, the playgrounds and the lake, but every day we walk outside they discover something new and exciting! The other day after all the rain that we had we went out side to the car. The youngest muppet discovered it first… “A snake!” he cried as he pointed to the puddle of water near the cars tire. There swimming in the water was a tiny earth worm, the other two muppets barrelled down the drive way to see what all the fuss was about. The could have stood there for hours watching the wriggling worm and all took turns touching it and bringing random family members to see the longest worm in the world!

They spent the evening yesterday exploring my Aunts community lake, while us adults were getting eater alive by the swarm of hungry mosquitoes the three muppets sat on a picnic table watching a lady bug wander through the blades of grass. We collected old sticks hiked up to the top of the water fall and threw them down, they probably could have spent all night doing that! I am still amazed at the beauty of this country even though I have spent most of my life here but I sometimes forget the little things like the fuzzy caterpillars, the baby ducks swimming in the pond and the half a dozen rocks that we end up coming home with on a daily bases. All of the things that make this country special and different from any other!

What would Pirates do?

We landed in beautiful green Canada almost a week ago, we were greeted with scattered rain showers which we happily played in. We had spent the last two weeks stuck in doors in Doha while the wind whipped the sand in to storms and the temperatures rose above 40 degrees Celsius. It has been raining off and on all week and as we drove to a friends house across town various parts of the province started to declare states of emergency. By the end of the day 28 communities in Calgary had been evacuated because of potential flooding and surrounding towns were under water.

The three muppets were greeted this morning to their Auntie and a girlfriend coming to stay with us since they had to be evacuated from their downtown apartments. We declared a stay at home day today since almost all the roads are closed going in to the city. The muppets are entertaining themselves playing pirates and Peter Pan, it will be a day of movies, lego and praying for sunshine. I hope that all our family and friends in Calgary and surrounding areas stay safe.

Jinx you owe me a… What?

I had a friend who traveled around Europe for a year and when she returned she had picked up a really weird accent. It was a mixture of English, Canadian and maybe Scottish plus all the slang that she had picked up from the different countries she traveled to. I always thought it was so weird that it would never happen to me.

The muppets first school was a British nursery after a few weeks they came home asking for biscuits, wanting to wear jumpers to school to keep warm and putting things in the rubbish bin. I thought it was really cute until the day I asked the middle muppet to put his shoes in the bin (I was talking about the shoe basket at the front door) he heard trash bin. When the youngest muppet was asked by his Nana to grab her a Kleenex last summer he looked at her dumbfounded until I whispered to him “A tissue, Nana needs a tissue”.  Slowly other words crept in to our vocabulary, the yard was now a garden, our cell phones were now mobiles and soccer became football, with out even thinking about it I have adopted a whole new way of speaking.

The muppets do it as well with some words they will say with an Arabic accent, or French and some times much to my dismay American. We will sit with a group of friends and someone will be telling a story and throw in a word from their countries slang, sometimes it is something you recognize and other times I have to stop and ask what the heck they are talking about. Today we sat in the truck heading to a birthday party the older two muppets were in the back playing one another up and trying to jinx each other. When they both said the word at the same time the middle muppet screamed out “Jinx you owe me a cup of soda!”

Time to head back to Canada where he can owe him a pop!!