H....O.....T...... HOT!!!

Wow is about all I can say for the heat the last two days. It has been unbelievable. Even people who have lived her for a long time are saying this is as bad as it's been in awhile. It has been about 100F, but 75-85% humidity. While that sounds similar to NC, there's something about the way the desert heat feels that is so much different. When you walk from inside to outside, it not only feels like walking into a wall of heat, but it literally takes your breath away. Several times today walking outside I almost choked. The biggest problem is that 2 days ago the humidity showed up. A week ago, I could take the 110F heat no problem, it's hot, but if you're in the shade it's not unbearable. Today, you could barely stand outside for 30 seconds with out pouring down sweat. The humidity is so high that I can't walk out side without my glasses fogging up completely. Any glass that isn't double paned is completely covered in condensation. I'll have to get the picture from Julie Chase, but she took a picture after dinner tonight of me and Jon from about 7 feet away, and even at that small a distance you can see the haze illuminated by the flash.

In other news... WE HAVE OUR DRIVERS LICENSES! It took us about 4 hours, but we got it done. Muhammad, the Qatari government "liaison" walked us though the process, which was supposed to just be getting the Traffic Sheik's signature and then our licenses. Well, we got the signature, but the man who was going to print our licenses said we needed to take the driving test (an 8 hour ordeal that's as complicated and stressful as you can imagine). Luckily Muhammad threatened to go back to the Sheik and complain and got the man to have us only take a "small" driving test. The test was administered at the arab driving school, which is just as nuts as you would think it would be. I was sad I didn't have a camera with me, because it was quite the madhouse. When we got there, the traffic policeman signing off on the tests had us take a signs test, which was interesting as we hadn't studied any of the signs. I acted like I knew every sign and the man didn't question it. Rachel got a little flustered, but luckily the man was in a good mood and had her study for 5 minutes before taking the test. After that was the driving part, which consisted of me and the other husband with us (a very nice Jordanian couple) driving for about 45 seconds each. Rachel and the Jordanian wife drove second and all went well. After a little more red tape, we got our temporary Qatari drivers licenses! All in all it could have been much worse, but we were ready to just walk away and try again on another day if need be.

The next thing on the list is the medical exams (exact copies of what we already did in the states) and our fingerprinting so that we can get our Residence Permit (RP). We'll also have to turn in our temporary licenses to get our permanent license once we get our RP, but that is much simpler and Muhammad will simply take our temp license to the ministry and exchange them.

That about does it for our exciting day today. The license was a major check mark in our settling in process, and probably one of the more stressful things we had to worry about.

All in all, a good day...