As most of you know Brock has gone to live with his natural father in Brisbane which is absolutely the right decision for Brock. Wayne, Quinn and I miss him every day but are looking forward to seeing him when we return to Australia in July for part of the summer.
OK, now life in Doha. We have moved into the school compound and love our apartment, with Quinn getting to hang out with his friends and be able to use the school bus service (less waiting around for us to finish work for him). We also have the use of the Clubhouse, which I love, because on the days I am not working I use the pool, gym and restaurant.
Work is going well for Wayne and he is really enjoying working on his masters program. He was very fortunate in that, as part of this, he was invited to be a key note speaker at a conference in Romania (I had to stay home and teach his classes). Wayne had a wonderful time and the conference was a huge success; pictures in the local paper, meeting the town mayor etc. Of course as per all of our travels the return trip did not go so well with Wayne having an allergic reaction to something and collecting a stomach virus on his way home he spent a horrid trip home on the plane falling so ill that they needed to divert the plane to make sure he was ok.
Bumps Lumps and scrapes
Stella has grown into a delightful cat although her latest habit of eating plastic, metal and anything that moves has had us all on our toes and questioning at times if we did in fact need a little cat!
Quinn – blood clot in eardrum…. Trip to specialist all is great now
Ruby- while driving into compound the security guard drops the boom gate on Ruby's bonnet scratching her from the front to the top of the windscreen, and a misplaced pole matched the front to the back a fortnight later.
Meg – virus while Wayne was in Romania, virus when Wayne got home from Romania
Wayne- Allergic reaction to the sulpha in Romania and the Romanian horror virus
The poor man came home and got straight into bed without showering as he was so ill. As I am a loving wife I cuddled up to him not realising he was ill until the next morning so I went to work for him and when I got home I found him really unwell and covered in a purple rash… a trip to hospital a drip and lots of meds later he got home and he was feeling better, I on the other hand was not and caught this horrid virus so it would be fair to say the weekend was not a pleasant one. Quinn was lucky in that he didn't get the virus but several of his friends succumbed to it making Wayne a very popular man on the compound lol.
Fun Stuff
Life in Doha can be very quiet so we have had a series of dinner parties with other teachers that we have gotten to know. We have loved doing this as we both like to cook and love to hear from our friends about the places they have been and taught in, poor Quinn has found it weird to come home and find his teachers sitting in his lounge room but he is a great sport and enjoying life. Quinn has turned into quite a social butterfly and his weekend starts on a Wednesday night with movies and take away but we love to see him with his friends and they are a great group of kids. Quinn was also supposed to go to Thailand on a school trip but due to the issues over there with Red shirts etc the school had to make the difficult decision of cancelling the trip. The kids were crushed but so mature in how they all coped with it.
We also had the pleasure of taking a large group of the kids to see Shrek 4 at City Centre which we all enjoyed especially telling everyone about Quinn when he was little hehehehe.
Wayne and I have not had as much time together as we would like as I have been working a lot, but at primary or the learning centre, so we are counting the days till the summer break. We have taken some time out to go to the movies and loved 'Date Night', hated 'The Back up Plan' and enjoyed our own date night with dinner at a very swanky Thai restaurant.
Monkey Love
Life in Doha is great, most of the time; we have a cleaner twice a week, a massage therapist, drive a current model car etc but we had not given much back into the community. Sure, we teach the kids here but we felt that there had to be something more we could do and then we found it. Now it's not exactly community service but its fun and it's making a difference to someone.. We are…….
Socialising the monkeys at the zoo! We go once a week and play with the three monkeys at the zoo; Timmy, Tina and Rita. These monkeys are very bored and a little confined as their cages are way too small by anybodies standards. We take the furry friends fresh food and treats to help pass the time. They love to drink water from plastic bottles and swing on swings that we tie up for them every week.
I can hear you saying why? Well here as in several Arabic countries animals are not respected they are 
seen as dirty so they don't always get the care they need. Some of the security guards even tease them and throw dirt at them so they have learnt to not trust people. The zoo is trying to breed two of the monkeys, but need them to trust people so that they can monitor the progress of the infant; and that my friend is where we come in. We have loved it so far although, if you tick them off, they are not above throwing dirt in your face or pulling at your clothes. Wayne has made a very delicate friendship with Timmy and this is great as they need him to be very calm with men as the vet is a man too. We take them toys and anything we can think of so any ideas you have please let us know.
So that's about it today in the big City of Doha.. we are happy smiling and very content with life, we are leaving here on the 1st of July to fly to Sweden and then onto a cruise we will then be in Sweden for a few extra days we are flying back to Doha to check on Stella see the monkeys and fly into Melbourne on the 12th July we are spending some time Melbourne Sydney Tuncurry and Brisbane
We would love to catch up with you all so if you want to see us please let us know
Love live and be happy
Meg Wayne Stella and the boy
