HALLOWEEN
Today is Halloween. On-camp there is trick & treating, & a party for the adults. We however will be retiring, exhausted from our first week. Funnily enough, Cole is suddenly scared of all our cat visitors. Having gone from stalking all the cats himself last week he has started screaming & crying in fear when we open the back door & they're waiting for us. He doesn't want us going outside at all, hates us touching them & won't quit until the door is closed with us safely inside. The hungry strays are quite persistent but I think it may be his introduction to Halloween through school & kids. As most of all he is very scared of the poor little black cat that stalks us most of all.
DOCTOR TIME
I've had no voice all week & Kaija & now Siena have had a bit of a cold & it was suggested quite a few times by her kindy that we take her to the doctor. The NZ$2 medicine we got from the chemist was excellent at relieving symptoms & putting her to sleep at night but hasn't cleared up the cold. There is a PDO clinic over on the camp that provides free healthcare but the hours are so inconvenient for us, with 3 to run around after & it has been suggested that it is better to use an international doctors clinic. Seth the master researcher has managed to find us one at our local shops. Even better, so we'll try the paediatrician there.
Today is Halloween. On-camp there is trick & treating, & a party for the adults. We however will be retiring, exhausted from our first week. Funnily enough, Cole is suddenly scared of all our cat visitors. Having gone from stalking all the cats himself last week he has started screaming & crying in fear when we open the back door & they're waiting for us. He doesn't want us going outside at all, hates us touching them & won't quit until the door is closed with us safely inside. The hungry strays are quite persistent but I think it may be his introduction to Halloween through school & kids. As most of all he is very scared of the poor little black cat that stalks us most of all.
DOCTOR TIME
I've had no voice all week & Kaija & now Siena have had a bit of a cold & it was suggested quite a few times by her kindy that we take her to the doctor. The NZ$2 medicine we got from the chemist was excellent at relieving symptoms & putting her to sleep at night but hasn't cleared up the cold. There is a PDO clinic over on the camp that provides free healthcare but the hours are so inconvenient for us, with 3 to run around after & it has been suggested that it is better to use an international doctors clinic. Seth the master researcher has managed to find us one at our local shops. Even better, so we'll try the paediatrician there.
BUSY KIDSWhat a week. It has been exhausting. I've never been so razzled. The heat, the car trips. Can be as many as 6 - 8 a day depending what is on. One way to get accoustommed to the traffic. Last week was so quiet, this week so busy. Poor wriggly Siena has been dragged all over the place, with no regard for sleeps, routine etc in the incredible heat. She's doing pretty well though.
Cole & Kaija are in PDO school. Cole in Nursery (a sort of advanced kindergarten) & Kaija in Pre-Nursery (kindergarten). They both love it. Cole did think he'd had enough after 2 days but having it explained to him that this is an everyday thing, he was happy to accept his fate. It's fun, keeps them busy, but more formalised than back home. The main thing for Cole is that there is only 10 in his class, so he's not struggling with shyness so much. Next term more will come over from the nursery to make 19, but hopefully he'll have found his feet by then. Kaija loves her kindy too, which is also a small group. She was her shy, mute self too, but she has been joining in all activities very content. Next Wed there will be a coffee morning with the Kindy mums so I can meet them all.
This morning I went with my "meet & greet rep" (person whose job it is to walk newies through all the infrastructure, groups & going-ons) from the Spouses association to a monthly coffee meeting for all the new spouses on camp. A delightful Scottish woman who has 2 young children in the British School, one of whom was born here. We went for morning tea at the Director's home hosted by his wife. It was the quintessential lavish ex-pat lifestyle. A beautiful older home on the camp, right on the cliff overlooking beaches & sea. A large, cool home with pool and magnificent view. It comes with domestic staff including butler & cook. Very nice. I hadn't driven around that area of camp & didn't even know it existed.
Having such a pro-active husband all the many support groups etc don't seem so necessary Seth has tapped into most things we need anyway. They were surprised we already had internet access, although very slow, we do have it. I don't think we'd have wanted to wait over a month to get access to that, especially just using someone elses. Being in an office job & reasonably computer savvy means Seth has can access things quickly. Many of the roles here will be technical experts out in the field, & won't perhaps be focused on family setup.
PARTIES ALREADY
It seems I'll be busy meeting people through the kids. We went to a birthday party yesterday for 2 kids from Cole's class. They had a lovely home just off camp with a great outdoor area for kids. It was just like at home. People are just more clever here with putting up sun shades, but even then you can only go outside when it's cooled in the late afternoon. Siena was very grown up, jumping on the tramp with the 15+ other kids & played pass the parcel just like a big kid & even won. They had all the great kiddie party food, home made nemo cake & colourful cup cakes.
That was Siena's 2nd party for the day. We had a Halloween party for the under 3s in the morning at the little Toddler Hut Club. I think we'll be back. The party effort was fabulous, & the venue was a wee disneyland. All the great toys, inside & outside & even its own manicured lawn. After everything in life being about driving, dropping off, & picking up Cole & Kaija at their exciting places, several times a day, finally there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for Siena. We will start visits there for her this next week.
HELPER SOON
I despretely need to get one of the domestic helpers though because it's diabolical getting all 3 monsters feed, watered, washed, brushed, teeth cleaned, lunches made, bags packed in the car, through the morning traffic & dropped off before school starts. We get up at 6.00am or just before & should leave by 7.30am for 8.00am start. We've been late every day except today when Seth took only Cole but had to hang around & wait for school to open so he was late for work. The kids are really on a go-slow picket line in the morning with tantrums & tears to boot & when I turn my busy back it is incredulous what creative sabotage they've done within seconds. Seth doesn't think any domestic worker is going to what to live with our family because it'll be too full on. I hope he is wrong.
LUNCHING
Seth has been hounding me all week about how the mothers collect the kids from youngsters school & meet their husbands for a relaxing, leisurely lunch at the club overlooking the beach. We decided to try it today. Seth initially wanted to do it the 3 days a week Cole finishes early at 11.30am the same time as Kaija. Envisioning a happy family affair. After today's experiment we'll be lucky if we try it once a week. The food is very good & very well priced, I'm assuming subsidised by the company. But the children took the leisurely & relaxed out of the lunch. We came out of it, with indigestion, hot, tired & dripping in sweat from trying to manage the monsters. Looks like Seth will have to make buddies at work to enjoy that one.
ODD ONE OUTIt feels very much like I've landed in the middle of a secret club I know nothing about but have managed to somehow get into. Seth was a direct hire by the Oman side of the company, which is less common, & it seems the majority of westies & families here are in the actual Shell group, there are a few direct hires though. The Shell group families seem to have entered the Shell world early on in their careers & have travelled the globe placement by placement eventually having families along the way. Every country Shell has operations, although quite different, appears to operate by way of a Shell community model. Knowing nothing about this, I'm a little lost at the moment. But it's all very set-up & standardised I guess, & comforting for those families who spend their careers & lives travelling the globe in this manner. It does feel very insular, & a bit like living in a bubble within a country. Quite self-sufficient & not hugely interated into the local Oman community.
The other thing is being kiwi. I have met only 2 other kiwi ladies, & 1 aussie. Everyone else is Dutch, English or Scottish. One NZer was relieving as Cole's teacher, the other was one of the organisers for people new to Oman. They are both from New Plymouth, where the small Shell presence in Nz is based. Most westie employees here seem to either come direct from the oil & gas industry or backgrounds where they've travelled the globe on placements for other companies, working on various projects. Seth being plucked out of Auckland from the recruitment industry is a bit out of the square.
Our time in living in Japan also seems to influence our expectations. As Japan itself was quite insular & foreigners had to really make networks of a sort with local Japanese, which was really enriching, we naturally expected the same here. I think both of us are keen to get to know the local situation, people, culture, practices etc & hopefully befriend some locals. It doesn't appear to be the norm however. Although Seth at work is surrounded by mainly Omanis & occasional interaction with one westie. I, on the other hand am surrounded by westies or easties (ex-pat eastern hires) and absolutely no Omanis thus far. Sometimes it's a little surreal.
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