Christmas season

Happy New Year to you all!

Following our trip to the UK things got very busy. Our long weekend to Dubai led us right into the Christmas period during which Angela and John (Simon's parents) joined us in Muscat to leave us on 1st January. Hence no time to update the blog until now.

Things are now back to normal. We are relaxing in the garden taking in the perfect beach temperatures, the blue sky and the beautiful sun.

I guess many of you will be curious to know how we spent our Christmas period in Muscat. Of course being a Muslim country Christmas is not a mainstream holiday here yet, if you ignore the sun shining and the beautiful weather, Xmas day was more or less a "standard" affair for us with food, family and even Xmas service at a Christian Church not far from our home.

On the 24th we went out for a nice meal at the Shangri-la where we even had a table-side show of Christmas Carols, ate turkey and lots of other lovely food!

For Xmas day we had lunch at home where to my dismay I realised that duck is indeed a small animal with very little meat! lol! Maybe it wasn't the best choice but it was nice nonetheless :)

We visited a Christian church not far from home for Xmas mass. It was a very interesting affair. The mass was in English.. or intended to be, although at times it sounded as if it had switched to some obscure foreign language. It didn't in reality, it was just the priest's strong accent and a slight lisp. I guess it made me concentrate more... maybe.
It was interesting to see how extended the Christian community is here, especially considering that the church we went to is not the only one in Muscat.
The majority of the people there seemed to be from South East Asia, a mix of Sri-Lankan, Indians and Philippinos. I think you could count westerners on the tips of your fingers. Probably because most tend to fly back to their own countries for this period of the year or maybe because the ones who stay aren't as bothered about going to mass or go to some other church...

Not sure, I thought I'd see more.

Although at times we were working in between Xmas and New Year we took some time to visit places and do some trips outside Muscat. We spent 26th December by a wadi, visited Nizwa on another day and also took the opportunity to visit the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque.

It was nice to spend Christmas with family!

Here is a link to the photos taken during this period.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/liquidworld/sets/72157611995480911/

As usual the private ones will only be accessible to those who have signed up to flickr.com and who I have added to my list of contacts.
Send me an email after you have signed up to ask me to add you. For obvious reasons I will only add family and friends. If you have stumbled onto this blog by chance but you are not part of this trusted circle, you may still enjoy the public photos.

Happy New Year!