Our house is slowly becoming a home

ZAM ZAM, LU LU, AL-FAIR and Carrefour?

They're the names of some of the supermarkets around the place.  They like to tag many of them with Hypermarket as well.  Grandiose sounding? You betcha, but they all have one thing in common they are bustling with activity.

Zam Zam is nearby to where we live and we use it as a landmark that the expressway exit is coming up any second.
AlFair caters to the expatriate market and hallelujah sells Tim Tams  and Mint Slices.
The Omani's at work decided that these were all a bit sweet, but original tim tam beats double coat any day! Message there for Arnotts I think.
And Carrefour, despite being french is the major chain.
But everyone loves LuLu!

So what has happened in the past couple of weeks? Well lots of work and I have a few hours of document review to get through this weekend. We both hit the homesick button, but have passed through that. Apart from Katrina's cold/flu we are acclimatising well. The temperature is now on the up, climbing well into the thirties each day and staying warm overnight. 

Furnishing the house continues apace, now that we have the essentials the rest can come in dribs and drabs from second hand bulletin boards and web sites.  There's no rush. 

A couple of weeks ago we saddled up the Mazda2 and shot off to a couple of Wadi's, with Dan and Nooshin - Australian expat with Iranian wife. What a contrast, driving driving driving for a couple of hours with a single sign post pointing us to our primary destination, Wadi Shab. Unfortunately when we took the exit we got to the end of the road and a sign that said road closed, use the Wadi Tiwi exit. So a bit of faffing later we drove into Wadi Tiwi. Interesting, it's a full on community living in a patch of wet green in the middle of rocky nothingness. The wadi walls are dotted with buildings, some of them quite old, nay even ancient.

After a quick investigate we went off to find Wadi Shab. Glad we did. Rugged cliffs on either side of a defile. Azure sea to the right and emerald waters in the wadi. Gorgeous. But what's this the water in the wadi was luke warm! Hmmm while I think a summer visit is indicated not sure how cooling a swim will be. And that haze in the distance, well that's how it looks. But it goes back and up into the hills with its best sites only accessible by swimming - photo's when we've been!

As we bounced around between the wadi's we stopped for a moment inTiwi town to try and work out which way to go.  We were rather amused by the Lexus parked, with essential hood and roof ornaments - Goats.

As we zipped through the country side we noted that the local wildlife is Goats and Donkeys. A bit strange and exotic to our eyes after years of Kangaroos and sheep!!!

In town there's cats everywhere, but to call them feral would be somewhat like labelling Kangaroos as ferals. All colours, but the shape is predominantly the Persian/Siamese cat style. In the pet shops they sell cats, but mostly fluff balls, guess long hair cats must be considered exotic or something.  And after all that Katrina prevailed today and we now have a six week old Omani cat - left to its own devices it would have had a short brutal street life. Now its somewhere in the house, probably hiding under the indoor fridge.
And so our house becomes even more like a home!!!