Day One

The sun came beaming thru my window at 4:50am. I fought it off & went back to sleep. Kristi came in my room at 11:00am wondering if I was ever going to get up. She had been up since 5:00am...unpacked all her things, arranged her room, made her bed & was ready for the day. Qatar may be good for her. David left us his cell phone for the day, since our home phone is not yet hooked up. We called a taxi service to get us out sightseeing, but none available. We then called a private driver, Mike, to see if he could pick us up. He tells us to call him back in 30 minutes. First disaster, Kristi accidentally locked David's cell phone & didn't know the right password to turn it back on. She made a couple of guesses & then we were totally blocked out due to too many "pin attempts". We walked to the compound office to use their phone to call David. After much frantic searching, he came up with a # for us to call & we eventually got it working again. Confirmed with Mike that we were to be picked up at 2:00pm. Perfect. Kristi asked me her usual question, "Mom...can't I wear spaghetti straps?" "No, we must respect the culture", I say. She looked so cute in her t-shirt & jean skirt. MINI jean skirt!!, I notice on our way to City Centre Mall! We walk into the 5 story mall & all eyes look to her. Straight to a clothing store to purchase jeans. After a few stores of not finding any, a lovely local retailer frantically searched to relieve Kristi of her shame. 188 Riyals later ($51.64!!) we were on our way, jeans on, skirt in the bag. That won't happen again! Anyway, it was a fun day of shopping after we got over that stress. We had dessert and coffee at a little French Cafe in the mall. It was wonderful. Today we have a cab picking us up at 2:00 to go to Landmark Mall. Yeah, we're doing the mall circuit first. David will meet us there when he gets off work to pick us up like he did yesterday. Later.