Day 197

Yesterday I partook of a tour of the City of Doha, Qatar, and got lunch out of it, so it wasn't all bad. This is one booming town. I've heard they expect the oil to run out in about 20 years and they're doing all they can to build their modern infrastructure as quickly as possible, and pray for tourists. We were at a mall in the new downtown section, and there were at least 20 skyscrapers under construction. A look across the skline made me think of Doozers, just waiting for the inevitable Fraggles to come along and eat up all of their work. We took 24 people in a 24 person bus, how convinient for us, which luckily was air conditioned. We passed by a very large, by square footage if not by height, palace. Then past a shopping mall based on the Vegas attraction Bellagio. Next to that a really tall tower, still under construction, and a stadium which housed the 2006 Asian Games, seating 50,000 fans. Through the new suburbs, into the old part of town, at least the dirty part of town, and back into the new part of town. A small bling market where I had a hundred new best friends the moment I stepped off of the bus. Gaudy Alley, it shall be named. Then on to the coast for a few pics, then to lunch. Not bad food. A visit to a modern mall, then to an ancient mall, still working, then to a Harley shop and then back here. In all of that traveling, nowhere did I see one bookstore. These people are not illiterate, by any means, but not one bookstore. Perhaps this is Amazon dot com's biggest customer? I signed up for a boat tour today but did not sleep so well last night and decided to sleep in and do some more resting and relaxing. Good choice. Right now I'm waiting for my roll call at 9 pm, in about 5 hours, to see what time I fly back to Iraq. 5 months from today I have my Transfer of Authority Ceremony and then I'm outta here. I don't know if I've ever mentioned it before, but don't ever volunteer to come to the Middle East. It kinda sucks.