Saturday, Part II

Tonight, my flight commander Heather invited me to join her and our Shirt downtown for dinner, so I got to leave work a couple of hours early on "official business." They went to work getting me signed off base while I changed out of my uniform in a hurry. We drove downtown and went first to a place called King Kebab, where the waiters bring you endless platters of hummus, olives, baba ghanoush, tabbouleh, garlic and olive oil infused naan, grilled meats, and salads. And we all ate for less than $30 total. Ridiculous. So we roooooooolled out of there and then went to the Vellagio Mall. Now this is no ordinary mall. I really don't like malls, but this place was GORGEOUS and very impressive. It is set up much like the Venetian in Vegas, with the sky-scaped ceiling and the crystal blue water canals running all through the mall with gondoliers and the whole thing. And every store you could think of plus many that I WISH we had back in the states. Gorgeous, honestly. But there are TONS of fabulous little cafes there, and people just go from cafe to cafe to cafe drinking coffee and eating desserts - kind of like the Qatari version of bar-hopping I guess. So we went to one cafe and had delicious coffee and then we walked around for a bit (we went into a big Walmart-like store called Carrafour and I FINALLY found some soy milk!!!) and then we went to another cafe and had another cappuccino and delicious eclairs. So decadent. We just spent the whole evening talking and enjoying ourselves and it felt so wonderful to just be normal for a night - no uniforms, no laptops, no food on styrofoam plates - just normal. I enjoyed it very much. Now I am back on base and WIRED from all of the coffee but am so glad for having been blessed with the opportunities that I have here to experience.

The sandstorm is over too, finally.

So, yay!