First Weekend in Muscat

I am really behind on blog posts and I am sorry.  There is not enough time to do everything that I need to do in a day. But here is a very late recap of the first real weekend that I spent in Oman.

In Oman, weekends are Friday and Saturday.  The weekend of June 27th and 28th was our first real weekend in Oman.  On Thursday night, Mer and I decided to stay up until suhoor on Friday morning.  Suhoor is the meal that Muslims eat during Ramadan before the sun comes up and they fast until the sun goes down.  We stayed up until around 2:30 on Friday morning talking with our host sister before we ate suhoor and went to sleep.  Exhausted after a long week, Mer and I slept for at least twelve hours.  We decided to try fasting and not eat after we got up until the iftar.  Fasting wasn't bad, especially because we were only up for about four hours before iftar. 
At iftar, the family of my host father all came over and we all had a really good time.  They speak English very well and asked us a lot of questions about our lives and how we liked Oman.  The communal sense of family here is really amazing.  Family is the most important thing in Oman. 

On Saturday we got up around noon and hung out with our host family for a few hours.  We were then went to the Muttrah Souq with our program.  The souq is a traditional outdoor market where a lot of people go to purchase more traditional items, such as dresses, frankincense, silver and gold, and headscarfs.  Bargaining is a necessity at the souq, because prices are often higher than what the object is worth and foreigners get ripped off even more because they're foreign.  The souq was somewhat overwhelming at first but then we got used to it.  It was scary to bargain in Arabic but I managed and ended up getting two scarves.  We ate dinner near the souq and then walked along the edge of the sea.  The night finished with mango milkshakes and a long bus ride home.

Muttra Souq by night



Muttrah Souq Panoramic

Enjoying mango milkshakes; one of my favorite things about Oman is all the fresh fruit

Overall, it was a very good weekend because of the amount of Omani culture that we got to experience and  the group bonding time. 
I'm so lucky and grateful for this experience.