Getting Organised

Rod in the hotel pool.



Well, the second week here in Muscat was very similar to the first. The weather has been the same everyday and there's never any clouds around. Carrie is settling in at work ok especially now that she has access to all the computer programs so she can start doing some work.
Rod has been hanging out at the pool and around the hotel as well as getting out and about with the other spouse's playing some cards and seeing some shops. Anything has got to be better than sitting at the hotel all day.
Carrie is a legal resident of Oman and has the residency card and work permit to prove it. It was a bit of a drama getting the card as the government departments are about to start Eid (holidays after Ramadan....kind of like a Muslim Christmas), so everyone was trying to get the residency card before that. The lines for everything were very long. Fortunately for Carrie everywhere has a separate line for women which were very short. However, unfortunately Carrie still had to wait for her male collegues who are also getting residency, to go through the long lines.
To obtain a work permit, blood had to be taken that gets tested for HIV. The clinic was in the backstreets of old Muscat which was packed full of smelly men who of course stared at the only white female in the building. Not the most comfortable situation. Thank god for Australia's strict health regulations. As an Australian Carrie only had to give blood and no other "samples" like the women from dodgier countries. Yesterday Carrie then went and got fingerprinted (where once again there was a 2 hour wait) and then off to immigration to actually obtain the residency card. It took 3 hours to get the card.....but at least she has it. Now the same process can begin for Rod.
We found a house finally! Instead of an apartment we are getting a house in a suburb about 20 minutes away from Carrie's work. The house looks like all the other Omani houses....painted white, high fence all around and not much of a garden....actually, no garden. It is a bigger place than we were expecting. It has 3 massive bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, powder room, lounge, dining, sitting room and a roof top area that we will use for a BBQ and chairs. We should be able to move in by the 7th of November once the owner has repainted and put in new air conditioning.
We look forward to having our place and settling in.