Some more acts of kindness

This morning, one of J's students (with the help of her driver) delivered our lunch! There was chicken Majbos, shrimp Hares, sweet Aseda and a lovely salad and cucumber dressing. This was a Qatari student who said this was typical Qatari food. We had enough to eat and 1/2 to freeze for when we return. Tomorrow we are off on our adventure to Isreal! We received an email from another teacher that J. works with in his workshop inviting us for dinner when we come back for finals after our trip. We also have some food from Mary Pat, who left last evening for the states. (Dan, if you are reading this --- Mary Pat is on her way!) A friend is following us today to return our car. We rented this car for 3 months and it's been dependable, not pretty by any means, but it gets us where we want to go. It's purple and rather small, compared to the white Land Cruisers, Lexus, Land Rovers, and other big SUVs that everyone else drives. Last evening we ate dinner at Landmark Mall. We don't often go to the malls here, but the Qataris do! With Villagio shut down for at least 2 weeks, Landmark (which is close to us) was packed. As you probably read, Villagio suffered a devastating fire a week ago. Several children in the nursery located there on the second floor or the mall died. Several people have been arrested. Safety precautions were not taken. Sprinklers and fire alarms did not work. The country is pretty upset over this --- with the possibility of the Olympics or other world wide games here, such a documented tragedy doesn't bode well. Getting back to nice things. One of the Lebanese staff at the university has cooked us 2 meals. She brings them to J. at school and he brings them home. This young woman says J. reminds her of her father! The food was delicious. I've been meeting with several people this past week now that classes are done for the semester. I still have lots of questions about how this country works, how the laws are passed, how foreigners do business here, and all the many, many questions people like me have ! The people I have met with have been helpful ----- and nice. That doesn't always happen when you ask questions. Or, perhaps, people aren't always nice when I ask questions (come to think of it, I am usually asking questions in a deposition, so why should people be nice!). Anyway, I've spent a lovely week getting some of my curiosity quenched ---- but certainly not all of it. That would take years! Students of both of us have been emailing the last couple days. Thank yous for being their teachers. Really nice emails. Hope we taught them something. They mostly taught us.