Life after Ramadan... so I'm finally posting!

Eid Mubarak!  Ramadan is over and the celebration of Eid al-Fitr started Sunday.  Technically the last day of Eid was Saturday, but most everyone was on vacation the entire week.  Rachel and I missed out on getting out of Doha for the vacation by about 2 day since I got my permanent residence a little over a week ago.  If I had gotten it 2 or 3 days before we may have been able to travel somewhere.

Luckily our staycation was very relaxing.  Plenty of sleeping in and hanging out with new friends.  We spent 2 days at the pool with friends and also went to another embassy party.  Other than that it has been a very relaxing week.  This last Thursday was our new friend Erin's 25th birthday, so we went out to a bar and had a grand old time.  Rachel and I got some fun pictures and they are posted here.  Enjoy the view from the 11th floor of the La Cigale hotel, particularly the one Rachel took!

Anyway, on to life here in Doha.

One of the coolest things here that I've wanted to talk about  is all the different foods and spices available here. The spices here are just amazing, not only the quality but how cheap they are.  I have almost reassembled my whole spice cabinet from Chapel Hill for less than $20.  Just two nights ago I was able to buy 150g ( about 6oz) of excellent curry powder for about 25 cents.  Cinnamon, cumin, pepper, chili powder, garlic powder, and all kinds of dried herbs are equally as cheap.  That being said, there are lots of other things that are extremely expensive or extremely difficult to find.  You can find most American brands here, but if they are produced in the USA, they will be incredibly expensive ($10 for a small box of Fruit Loops!).  Some times you can find US brands that are produced more locally, but they hardly ever taste the same.  Fresh chicken breasts that are tender and taste good are also difficult to find.  Frozen chicken is typically a better choice.  Cooking for me here has definitely been an adventure, but it's also been lots of fun to trying a come up with good things to try and substitute in recipes.

On a very positive note... I GOT OFFERED A JOB!!!  It's not finalized, but I got a job offer from Cornell!  I'd be working partly in the general lab and partly in the Genomics core, which would be a perfect job for me.  I'm very excited and will be very happy to have some more human interactions day to day!  Sitting around at home, cooking and cleaning by yourself is fun for a few days, maybe a week, but after that it just gets boring.  They hope to have me start October 4th, but we'll see what happens. I'm supposed to go in tomorrow to meet with the HR Hiring manager and get everything sorted out.  I'll keep everyone posted on what happens.

I hope everyone is having a nice start to their weekend!