Getting around

Newton International schools (my employer) has three separate campuses: West Bay, D-Ring, and Newton British.  For the most part the teachers live in two apartment buildings, Sana and Al Manzoura.  Every day there are three buses, one for each school,  that first come to Sana (where I live, the newer apartments), then pick up the teachers from the other apt, then go to school.  They are interesting little buses, there are about six rows.  with a single seat on the right side of the bus and a pair of seats on the left side of the bus.  The arm rest on the pair of seats is actually another seat that folds down in the middle (I'll have to take some photos).  These buses also take us home everyday.  The students leave school at 1:00, and the bus leave at 2:15.  On days without meetings it is the perfect time, but when you are in a meeting from 1:10 to 2:00 it doesn't seem very convenient.

These buses also sometimes provide transportation for weekly shopping.  My apartment is very close to several shops so it is not necessary for us to get transport for shopping but the Al Manzoura apts. have no grocers around.  So last Saturday the bus drove us to Villagio, a large shopping mall that seems to be a knock off of the Bellagio hotel in Vegas.  There is a cloud painted ceiling, and a waterway running through it.  There are lots of good shops there including H& M, and many english shops like Top Shop and Marks and Spencers. It's exciting to know these shops are here, but also a little disappointing that I cant wear a lot of the clothes they sell (skirts too short, tank tops).  Anyways I digress,  we did our shopping and on the bus back one of the teachers from my school, Marguerite was talking about taking a taxi in early the next morning, I said I would love to go.  It would be nice to share the taxi fare and nice to get a head start on the day.  So Sunday morning I get up at 4:45 and am down on the steps at 5:30 waiting for Marguerite.  I get a call from her a few minutes later asking where I was, she was there with the taxi, where was I?...Turns out I had completely spaced that she lived in the other apartment building! Really if my brain was not glued into my head.

So I am up and ready so I get my own taxi to school.  There are no addresses here, so you just have to go by location.  I had taken a taxi with some other teachers once before and was sure I could find it easily.  I was told a reference point was Birla School, and Indian school nearby, so this is the information I gave the taxi driver whom I later found out has not been in Doha very long.  It turns out Birla is on the opposite side of the main road D-Ring, and here you can't simply just cross the road.  The main streets and about 4 lanes going each way with a concrete divider between them, and there are large roundabouts to make turns.  It ended that a 13 QR taxi drive came to 24QR, he only made me pay 20, due to my obvious frustration.  In the midst of it all the curry sauce in my lunch had seeped through my canvas lunch bag and onto my new (floor length) skirt.  All of this before six am!  It was quite a day.

But I am proud to say that now I know how to get to my school.  I went early on Thursday also, on my own and got there straight away.  We've been spending a lot of time walking around and that is helping to familiarize me with the area.