Our Weekly Weekend Update

First thing... I hope everyone had a great weekend and a wonderful Mother's Day!
I was able to call my mother from Qatar to wish her a Happy Mother's day. I also called my step mom to wish her a great day and was able to talk to my dad very shortly. We called Jon's mother but weren't able to get a hold of her. With this darn time difference (8 hours) it is so hard to reach people sometimes! Jon had to work yesterday so our Mother's Day consisted of me going to the gym, having lunch with Jon and spending the rest of the day trying to figure out how to use Photoshop Elements. It's so much more complicated than I thought it would be!

Our weekend actually started on Thursday evening. In Qatar businesses work Sunday through Thursday. So Thursday night Jon arrived back at the hotel and we decided to grab dinner at the Villaggio (one of the malls in Qatar) at a restaurant called The Butcher's Block. It's a great steak place and it really hit the spot, (a.k.a., I ate the entire meal and had to unbutton my pants afterward.)

Inside the mall the ceilings are painted to look like the sky and the stores are built to look like homes in Italy. There is also a canal in the center of the mall with gondola rides! I've posted about this in one of my first posts, but it's so beautiful I thought I'd post about it again.

Friday we headed out early to try to beat the heat; right now in Qatar temps reach to 100 degrees, and the humidity is so awful. We wanted to get an early start so we wouldn't be absolutely miserable in the sun. We checked out a new development in Doha, called the Pearl. It is a man made island built off of the coast of Qatar. From the internet, I found an aerial view of what the Pearl will look like with it is finished.

Here are a couple of pictures.

Here some pictures I took when we visited Friday morning.

The Pearl is a HUGE shopping center, (I saw Versace, Jimmy Choo, all the high end brands that you can think of,) and they are buildling luxury condos, apartments, townhouses and villas just behind the shopping area, making it Riviera style living. There will be an international yachting hub and three 5 star hotels including a Four Seasons on the island. This place is going to be AMAZING! I cannot wait to visit again when the Pearl is completely finished because it is going to be incredible! I mean come on, I CANNOT afford to shop in most of the stores, but I can look, wish and dream!

After seeing the Pearl we went to the City Center Mall where we grabbed lunch and went to the movies to see Wolverine. It was an excellent movie! Jon and I both agreed that it was a buyer!
After the movie we made our way toward the hotel but stopped to check out the book store down the street. I left my Living Dead in Dallas book at home on the coffee table when I had every intention of bringing it so I could read on this trip. So I was hoping they had this book, even though Jon really thought they wouldn't. I was pleasanlty surprised, they did have it, so I snagged it! Too bad I have two of the same book now, but I had brought the rest of the Sookie Stackhouse books with me and couldn't just skip the second book and keep reading without knowing what happened in the second! Yay for the Sookie Stackhouse novels!

(SARAH.... if you're reading, you should grab the first two books from my apartment and start reading! You'll LOVE them.)

Saturday we got up early in hopes of seeing the Museum of Islamic Art. Sadly it was closed for a special showing. Bummmmmer! Oh well, maybe next time. The museum building is beautiful! Jon told me that the architect of the Louvre came out of retirement to design this building for Qatar. Here are some pics of the museum that I took the last time we were here.

Due to the fact that it was only getting hotter outside, we thought the best thing to do would be to go see another movie! So we went and saw Star Trek. I am not a Trekkie, but if it means meeting Chris Pine, a.k.a. Captain Kirk,

I will become the biggest Trekkie of them all.

Seriously this guy is adorable! He is another movie we really loved called Bottle Shock, and he is equally adorable in that movie. But really, the movie was great, even though I have never seen a single episode of Star Trek, I really enjoyed it. I thought it was cool that they had the real Spock in the movie. Go see it!!

Now I am off to the gym to get my hiney in shape!

Have a great Monday ya'll!