Last day in Doha

Should I say Good Bye, Farewell, Maà Salaama...what now? I have decided I don't really like to say good bye, unless its on the phone. This morning Daudi woke up and said very cheerily 'hello mommy, here I am, do you want to give me some breakfast?' I thought, instead of Goodbye, I need to say Thank you.

Thank you to all the friends we`ve made in the last 6 years because we`ve lived in Doha. Friends we`ve made here in Qatar, in Dubai, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Pakistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Italy. And friends we`ve made, from India, Philipenes, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Israel, Jordan, Greece, Finland, New Zealand, Australia, Korea, Burma, South Africa, Cuba, USA. Thank you to some for fellowship, some for friendship, some for both, and just even for cultural differences that have shown us there are new and different ways of doing things. Thank you for giving us a brighter picture of humanity in general :0)

Thank you for all the different languages that have touched our ears and have shown us how easy it is to misunderstand someone and how frustrating it is to only know one.

Thank you to our neighbours, 2 doors down, who have been the best we`ve ever had. Who have lent us everything and anything, and Leslie, who was my hospital buddy when the kids were born.

Thank you to those who were here, and who came to see us, to support and love us when we lost our first baby and helped us continue a life here afterwards.

Thank you Doha, for the craziness that defines this city, the crazy drivers, the traffic jams and the `inshallah` factor (which basically means `maybe`, directly translated as `God willing`) that has taught us patience is something we could use a whole lot more of!

Thanks to some lucky stars that I made it through 6 years of accident-free driving in this country! Jarvis wasn`t quite so lucky, with one to marr his perfect record :0)

Thank you SO MUCH for all those who have been guests in our home over the past 6 years. It has been entirely our privilege. We hope you will come and visit us again in Rocanville.

Thank you for the tolerant people who love children in this fair land. Who always compliment me on my darling children, even when they are being anything but darling! I`m thinking the average person might not be so accomodating in good old Canada :0) (This week has been quite an embarassing eye opener for me to realize our children are not really restaurant trained in volume or messiness!)

Carmen asked me yesterday, `what does it feel like to know you are leaving and probably will never come back here again` And at the time, all I could think was that it hardly feels like that, its not sinking in that we are really leaving for good. Now that I`ve had a little more time to think about it, I realize that I feel thankfulness. Not just thankful to be going home, I feel that too, but mostly I feel thankful for the experience we`ve had to live here, in a country so totally different from our own, and not without its annoyances, but yet comfortable and peaceful. Yes, Qatar has been very very good to us and for us.