Saturday is now part of my work week

I am so confused on my days here. So I went into the office this morning...nothing too exciting going on. But after lunch Salim took me to Muttrah. This is old Muscat, this was the first place of entry into the country way back when. But first we took Sultan, another Lufkin employee who was coming back off his field rotation to his fathers house.

So we arrive at Sultan's father's place. And Salim and Sultan are chatting in Arabic in the car a couple minutes. Well Sultan invited us in for some coffee. Salim said it was up to me if we would come in, I immediately jumped at the opportunity. So Salim, Sultan, and I make are way to the front door all the while Salim is trying to prepare me as best he can for this visit. In the Omani culture if you want to see your friend you don't call him you just show up at his door and then he'll greet you and serve you coffee or if he's cooked food he'll feed you or he'll asked if you just ate where you came from and if not he'll prepare something for you. The trick as I understand it is you always have to be ready for guests, especially if they show up around meal time.

So after taking our shoes off before we enter the house we meet Sultan's brother, who's name I can't remember, we'll call him Hank. Hank's little 3 year old son was running around doing what normal 3 year olds do. Sultan's father enters the room, which is a giant oriental rug with a huge sectional and a entertainment center off in the corner with a little tv on it, we greet him and visit a bit before sitting back down on the sectional. At this point its evident that respect for elders is a very big deal in their culture, it's obvious just by the way the Sultan's father is greeted. So we chat it up for a bit, all the while I'm trying not to overwhelm them with too many questions and really looking for nonverbal cues from Salim about what the heck I should be doing.

The coffee finally arrives brought out by Sultan. He brings out two trays and sets them on floor in the middle of the oriental rug. All five of us descend upon the trays on the floor. Sultan begins slicing up oranges and apples and offers them to us along with what is a different version of what I would describe as dry cereal. It was very tasty. I grabbed a quarter of an orange and begin attempting to peel it like I saw my new friends doing. Only they quickly took notice of my tough time keeping the juice contained within the orange. Sultan was the first to recognized my difficulty and peeled one for me while I was still working on my orange, which i finally peeled.

After a few apple slices Sultan brought about the other tray. This tray had a plate of dates, coffee, coffee cups (more like tiny bowls), and some other sticky gelatin goo stuff. So I grab a date, it was my first, initially it wasn't too tasty , more of a texture thing, but the after taste was pleasant. Then we move on to the goo, which from what I was told has a lot of sugar in it, which is why they serve it with coffee. It was so sweet I could feel my stomach tremble at having to digest that much sugar in such a high concentration. But I did with no problems and it was definitely something I could get used to. Then came the coffee. In Omani culture they fill the class up less than half full out of respect. If its over half way full it's a sign of disrespect and Sultan's father would become angry. So after a couple tiny shots I had made up my mind I was done. Luckily the conversation of how to non verbally let your host know your done happened while I was still drinking coffee. You simply shake your cup in your hand to indicate your satisfaction. Otherwise if you hand your cup back to your host he will continue to refill your cup. We departed shortly after that and continued our trek to Muttrah. This post is way too long so I'll make Muttrah a whole different post.