13 months of Sunshine!

I am made it finally to Ethiopia!

Lets start with yesterday....
So, my 8 hour stay in Dubai before coming to Ethiopia was quick. I guess it was because I had loads of friends online who kept me busy. Thank you guys.

The flight from Dubai to Ethiopia took 4 hours and it wasn’t that bad either. If your visiting Ethiopia and on a budget, then use Ethiopian Airlines, otherwise, I advice you use Emirates.

I arrived to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, and it started raining like crazy. My brothers picked me up and went home to see that the electricity was out. According to my brothers, this was normal!

We had dinner (using torches) and chatted for a bit before we went to sleep. I couldn’t sleep the whole night because of the heavy rain that was pouring down insanely. However, I managed to get few hours of sleep before my eldest brother woke me up at 7am!

Today started by dropping my niece and nephew to school and then we went off to work. All I can say is that it was a long day!

Here I am now at home and its 6:30pm and the kids are playing around the house like crazy!

Before I finish this post, let me share with you some of the crazy but interesting facts about Ethiopia.

According to the Ethiopian calendar, today is the 21st of April 2003! I don’t know how they count it but it is!
Ethiopia has 13 months in its calendar, not 12! They count each month as 30 days and the last remaining 6 days make up the 13 month. Hence, Ethiopia is called the land of 13 months of sunshine!
Over here, the way they tell time is also funny. I think there are other countries around the world who use this system. If it is 2pm, they will say its 8 and if it is 3, they will say its 9. Its basically the opposite on the watch. I hope you get the point. I don’t know why they do it but I will try to find out.
Ethiopia has some of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in this world! All the women take so much care of them selves that even the ugliest woman will look beautiful. They know how to keep their men happy I guess!

That’s all for today.

See you guys tomorrow. I won’t be uploading pics either because of the dial-up internet connection I am using but I will try to find a solution to that.

Now, its play time for my niece and nephew!

Africa here I come!

Woo, its been a while since I posted a blog post here. I really miss this place.

Alright, so without any boring intros, here are the updates. I was supposed to travel to Ethiopia right after my finals, which were few weeks back. However, parents wanted me to come back to Oman to help out with sister's wedding. I flew to Oman and chilled there for a week. However, here I am now in Dubai Airport going to Ethiopia today :)

The reason I am going to Ethiopia is for some family business which I will not be talking about here on this blog. I will also visit family and get a chance to see my country after not being there for more than 6 years! its been a while.

I will be there for a week and than get back to attend the wedding on the 12th of Jan before I leave back to Doha on the 14th.

I am really excited as I wanted to blog about Ethiopia for a while. I believe its one of the most beautiful African countries but people don't know much about it.

I hope I will be able to show the world the beautiful side of Ethiopia and help them realize that the world is not only about Europe and America !

No one in my family in Ethiopia knows that I am coming today except for my brother who is picking me up from the airport. I hope they don't read this post before I get there :)

I wont make this any longer as I have 8 hours to spend in this airport and I have loads to do.

Stay tuned for more posts about the beautiful country, Ethiopia. I am not sure if I will be able to post everyday as I don't know how easily internet is accessible there.

Until then, enjoy these videos .

This one is about the Blue Nile Falls in Ethiopia.

This one is about the capital City of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, where I will be staying.

Until we meet again...

Sorry for the late post, I had to make a quick decision to finish my break a day earlier. The day itself was not interesting at all since I was at home the whole day and went to meet Nasser in the evening. Met some friends from high school which is always good.

I was supposed to come back to Doha tonight but I came last night because it dawned on me that I have a lot of homework and I cant do it in Oman. Its to much distraction.

So with this post, I will be ending my travel blog about Oman. I hope you guys enjoyed the pictures and comments about the beautiful places in Oman. I hope I was able to portray a good image of this amazing country. I will try to make a google album soon and put all the pictures I took in Oman.

Until I travel again, take care and see you guys soon. Please leave your comments or suggestions below so I can know what you think of Oman.

P.S. I am already making plans for my next travel plans. This time, Its a country I am sure you all have not been to; I am going to Ethiopia!!

Stay tuned for more updates!

A day in China of the Middle East!

It was amazing! I loved China. I cant wait to tell you guys about it.

Alright, jokes apart, here is what happened.

So we had planned to go to Dubai today and do some shopping. We woke up at around 5am and were out of the house by 6:30am. The drive from Muscat to Dubai takes around 4 hours and the road is amazing. If you plan to visit Oman for a week, than you should think about doing this road trip.

On the way, There was a lot of fog in some area and I couldn't stop myself from taking a picture to show you guys.

Here are some pictures of the scenery on the way.

Our destination in Dubai was a place called Dragon Mart. It is a huge complex on the outskirts of Dubai and it basically sells everything. However, the catch is that everything in that huge complex is from China! The entire complex is Chinese and even the shopkeepers are Chinese. I literally felt like I was in China.

We reached Dragon Mart at around 11am and started our 4 hours shopping madness.

The thing I liked about this complex is that it had everything and its really cheap! Some of you might argue saying that the quality is bad, however, I was shocked to see some really good quality products for a relatively cheaper price.

Here are some of the things I took pictures of that I found really amusing.

This is a women's purse and a matching Iphone cover. It costs 600 AED (163 USD). Apparently, its expensive because its completely hand made and the blings are costly. But seriously, talk about creativity!

Here is a very nasty looking t-shirt that I was wondering who would even think of buying.

Dragon Mart is really a place I would advice anyone to check out if you are in Dubai. It has a very interesting collection of phones (Chinese Iphone 4,lol), electronics, furniture, textile, and everything you can imagine the Chinese to make (which is basically everything!).

We left Dragon Mart after walking across it for hours and started our drive back to Muscat. We were back at around 8pm.

This is one of the reasons I love Oman. You can go to a different country and come back on the same day!

Before I forget, I did not mention that even thought the products and shopkeepers were from China, the visitors of the complex were from all over the world. There were a lot of visitors from Oman which made perfect sense since its so close. The place was so diverse with visitors that I even saw a fellow Aggie from the Qatar campus over there. Talk about small world!

Numbers and stats

Since today was not a very fruitful day and I basically did nothing expect facebooking, blogging, and visiting family in the evening, I thought to share with you some other interesting stuff.

Since I started blogging my trip in Oman, I have been getting several comments from you guys, (my readers), suggesting me ideas and things to say and not to say. Thank you all very much.

I have also been testing out different blogging techniques and various ways through which I could increase my reader's circle. After all, I am typing all this so it could be read. Let me share with you some of the numbers I got since I started this blog in July.

I have got 1,344 pageviews since I started my blog in July. This is really good given that I just wrote 17 posts. I blogged two countries until now, India and Oman. I got 815 views for my India trip and 451 views for my Oman trip until now. Here is a snapshot of the graph that google analytics gave me.

Other interesting figures that google analytics gave me was the countries I got visits from. Here is a snapshot of those stats. Let me just point out that these are not all the countries since I changed the template in between and this caused some numbers and countries to disappear. I know South Africa, United Kingdom, and Australia should be on the list.

I don't know how these graphs will be useful to me but here they are. Views by browser and operating systems.

I want to thank everyone who has been following me since I started my blog. Thank you for reading and continuously providing me with feedback to help me become a better blogger. Please leave your suggestions in the comments section below.

A traveler's guide to Muscat

This post is a day late because yesterday was a very busy and long day. To the people who asked me to have fun, I did have fun. It was a very eye opening and eventful day. I also got some comments from my readers saying that I am not describing Oman in my posts. Its hard to do this when its your own country but I will try today to talk more about it. I have loads of pictures as well.

As I told you, I got 4 friends from Doha visiting Oman. They arrived to Muscat and I planned to take them around on the whole day. The girls, (C & B) stayed at my place and the boys ( M & D) stayed at a couchsurfing family.

Me and the girls woke up early morning and went to the fish market in Mattrah. I missed that place alot because I remember when I was young, dad would always take us there to buy fresh fish.

The fish market functions in the early mornings because the fishermen go to the sea right after the fajr (dawn) prayers and by 7:30am, they will be back to shore with their catch. Everyone from around Muscat comes to this fish market to buy fresh fish. There are two sections in the fish market: a section to sell the fish and the other section to clean and cut the fish after its bought. I really like this system as it is very efficient and quick.

After the fish market, We went back to get the boys from the house at which they stayed.

Our next stop was the Grand Sultan Qaboos Mosque in Al-Azaiba area. This mosque was at one time the largest in the Gulf (after the Masjid al Haram in Makkah) and is still one of the largest Mosques in the Middle East region.

You can click the link to read more about it however I will tell you that the carpet is so huge that it was woven on site and it is one complete piece. It cost more than 5 million Omani riyals

(around 13 million USD). Here are some pictures of this majestic Masjid which is one of my favorites around the world.

After the Grand Sultan Qaboos Mosque, we did a short road trip tour around Muscat in the car. We drove by the sand dunes in Al-Khuwair area, the malls in Al-Qurum Area and than went to the Old Muscat City.

The Old Muscat City has many historical sites that you have to visit if you come to Oman. We started the tour by going to the Qasr Al Alam Palace, Or the residence of the Sultan (president) of Oman.

Our next stop was to an Omani research facility that focused on the Omani Fishery. It had a huge Aquarium that had fish native to Oman. I had never been to this place and I advice everyone to go there. It makes you proud to be Omani.

After we took several pictures of the fish and the sea turtles, We went back home for lunch. Mom insisted that we have lunch with them at home. We rested for a while before we continued on our schedule for the rest of the day.

We headed out to the bandar Al Jissa Resort. This resort has 3 hotels that range from 5 to 7 stars. Its a very lavish and amazing place to be at. We went in and took a walk around one of the hotels. The beach is amazing and they even have a lazy river!.

My friends didnt want to leave until they finished the game of chess they had started on the big chess board!

Our next stop was the corniche. We chilled around there for a few minutes before we went into the Mattrah Souq. This souq is very touristy and has silver and gold gifts like jewelery and swords.

My friends wanted to get some souvenirs and gifts for their families and friends. They went on that quest while I chilled and helped them bargain for some of the things they wanted.

By the time we were done, it was sunset. We watched the sunset over the corniche which is a view that you must not miss. Sorry, no pictures of that.

After sitting by the corniche water fountains for about an hour and talking about random topics,we moved on and went to see the Sultan's Palace again at night, since the view is a lot much better.

We ended the night with an amazing BBQ with the family that the guys had stayed with. It was an interesting chat.

This is all about my trip around Muscat. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Filling up the space

This post will be short and simple as I have a long day tomorrow. The whole morning was very useless as I did nothing usefull except facebook and blogging. I made a new blog http://www.aboods.tumblr.com/ . Check it out if you got time.

I was waiting for my friends from Doha who were coming later in the day. At 4pm, I went with mom and my sisters to visit my family since mom did not see them since she got back from Dubai. At around 7pm, my friends reached Muscat and I picked them up. We went to have dinner at my dad's restuarant and than I dropped the guys off at the house where they were going to couchsurf at. The girls came back with me to my place. We walked by the beach before that and I showed them around my neighborhood.

I have a long day tomorrow because we are waking up really early to go see the fish market, then see the Sultan Qaboos Grand mosque, and then show them around Muscat. I was planning to take them around Muscat tonight but they came in late and they were really tired.

So hopefully tomorrow, there will be pictures and stories to share. Sorry that today's post wasnt as eventful as it was supposed to be but thanks for reading. As the title says, I am just filling up the space with this blog post, there is nothing much to say in it ;)