Muscat, Oman

After the week with the family in the US, I flew back to Dubai and landed Sunday night. Had 8 hrs in my apartment, waking up at what was 12midnight to my body, got to my office, printed out all the training tools, back to the airport at 3pm and flew out to Muscat, Oman for my next new country opening. Horridly jet lag. Like I have never been this jet lag in all my travels. Ugh.

My hotel here is a business hotel, and is decent for what it is. Because muscat is such a resort/tourist town, and this is already high season, the rates at most the hotels were over 400usd a night, so we are at the Park Inn. The best part is the rooftop bar which is where I am sitting right now typing this up. 360 degree views of the city. Mountains on the one side, Indian ocean on the other. The city is very much traditional. The architecture is very arabic with the pointed Arabian arches, low rise buildings, smaller pointed windows, the skyline is dominated by mosque minerretes. The men are all in dish dashas all sorts of colors, my new favorite is the dark green one. And being that it is Oman, they wear these little hats, so cute! The hat almost always matches the color of the dish dash too with heavy embroderie of gold thread. The women wear the normal black burka and the head scarf.

To start out- it is hot here. Being on the southern tip of the Saudi peninsula, it is as close to the equator as you can get in the gulf and boy could we tell. We walked to lunch and I got an instant tan on my bald head. It looks good :-).
The office we are training at it in an apartment complex. Yes, I am being serious. The training room used to be the master bedroom, with bathroom which the staff have to come into the training room to use throughout the day. Ackward, lol, to say the least. Finding the apartment was a game all in itself because it is above a shoppinng center.

The training today went well. The staff is 100percent Omani women, with the managers being phillipinos. When you see the picture you are going to be like "whoa". It was interesting because with the culture being so traditional and me obviously not doing my homework last week on the city and culture, I wasn't sure of how a man teaching this class was going to go. But my fears were unwarranted and they loved the training and were engaging and happy.

Then we went to leave and the manager said one of the girls would take us to the mall. We were glad because taxis a 20 to 30 usd like in bahrain because all the taxi drivers are locals. We walked outside and again, being a traditional country I was wondering how this was going to work, and she pulls out her keys and tells me "yella" which means come on, and I got in the car with her. Lol, I know it sounds so stupid but I was like "are we going to get arrested? A women driving, with a man in her car no less!". But no issues, it is a progressive country in most respects as I learned and we got in the car and she put on her Enrique englasias cd and we jammed it out driving to the mall. Talk about an experience. I never thought I would be in a jeep Cherokee with a woman in a full albiya, headscarf and Chanel sunglasses singing to enrique riding in downtown Muscat. What a ride I'm on. :-).