Sharqiya

Al Hamd li Allah! (Praise God!)

Ok, so just a quick post:

I'm using fast internet for the first time in Oman now, and it feels great. Unfortunately, my battery is getting low so I won't have too much time to write now, though. Just to make the point, though--it is true that I haven't been on the internet too much, and when I have, it's been pretty slow (up until now).

A couple highlights from the last week or so:

We took a trip to Sharqiya region, including the port of Sur and the Wahiba sands. The sands were absolutely great. Honestly, I remember thinking that it was the most raw "fun" I've had in a long, long time. We left from here in Muscat in land cruisers and stayed in a little "camp" in the desert. Not long after getting there we went on what tourist brochures here advertize as "dune bashing" in the land cruisers. Basically, we just deflated the tires in the land cruisers and then went all over the dunes doing things that looked extremely dangerous. It was so much better than at least half of the roller coasters I've ever been on, and it was real. Eloquent words fail me. I also went "sand boarding"...which is exactly what it sounds like, and was decent fun as well. Unfortunately my camera got sand in it early into the trip, so I took no pictures after that. I'm gonna try fixing it soon, and I think I can still move the pictures I have to my computer (although I haven't yet)

We also visited a green sea turtle nesting ground at night (green sea turtles are big and slow and green and endangered so they're a big deal), and swam in the Indian Ocean and played soccer on the beach during the day. On the way back to Muscat, we stopped at Wadi Shab and swam in it. The wadi was amazing. It's this huge canyon with some parts where you can't walk along the bottom but have to swim. There were spots where you could jump off cliffs into the water, and some parts where you could go through caves with only a little breathing space to get to covered caverns with waterfalls and such in them. It looked like something that could be designed at a water park but it was entirely natural.

I didn't feel too cheap for doing all these "touristy" things since understanding tourism in the country is part of understanding its development and diversification strategies. (right? right??) That, and I've been living in a pretty normal home so I don't feel like I was visiting touristy things at the expense of the "real" Oman at all.

Other than that account of one of the excursions, I'll just say that now I'm going to classes every day, doing homework, eating amazing Arabic food, and thinking about what I'll do for my Independent Study Project. I'm pretty sure I want to do something about Islam, but the world's second largest religion is a very broad topic, and I need to research and explore a very specific question so that I can actually do my own reseach and answer my question.

With peace,