When I sit waiting at red traffic lights I take a look around me, at the Qatari men in their Land Cruisers, with mobiles fixed to their ears; at the Indian drivers in their somewhat smaller cars with little children inside, sitting on laps or moving freely around the inside of the car, with not a seatbelt in sight; at the bright turquoise Karwa taxis that stand out from all the other cars and are invariably driving in the opposite direction to where their fare paying passenger actually wishes to be, and at the huge big lorries which are busy moving construction materials to one of the many building sites around Doha's quickly expanding skyline. Except for the Qatari drivers, all the rest of us have something in common, the fact that we all have another place, another land, that we call 'home' - that it is the prospect of work, at somewhat differing levels, that have united us here in Doha.
Before we know it the end of August will quickly arrive and we will pack our cases and head back to the land of sand, laden down with all those extra purchases that can't be made in Doha. The sun will beat down on us as we step off the plane and, in the space of a week, allowing for that initial period of adjustment, we will be 'home' again! We are so lucky to have 2 such vastly different places to call home and it will never cease to amaze me the way in which we can slot so seamlessly back into hugely different environments so quickly and easily. It would have been simple to have said 'no' to the opportunity to move here, but for once we stepped up to the mark and accepted the challenge. We are in fact the lucky ones now as we always have another place to escape to, so when the boredom of day-to-day living starts to set in at one home, we can look at the calendar and start the countdown to when we can escape to the other!