The Schellenbergs.com

Wanted to send a message home to Grams… Love you, Happy birthday!

From Ryan, Jen, Daniel, Thomas, and Rosie

ok… so I have been neglectful. Apologies. I was on holidays last week and we did a ton of awesome stuff here in Doha.

One of the coolest things was the release of baby hawksbill sea turtles.

We went up to one of the beaches north of Doha where the government is organizing turtle protection activities for the state of Qatar.  Apparently the project is very successful and they are finding the transmitters that have been attached to the turtles in places from Cairo to Indonesia. Quite the swim if you ask me.

anyways, the pics.

Daniel is showing off his little dude.

And Thomas doing the same

Bit of a closeup

Thomas loved watching them go into the water, he was a big helper

Just after this was taken, Daniel jumped cause if you look closely you can see a turtle crawling over daniels foot… Scared the big man…

Hey Everyone… It’s been a while.

Jen and I planned a super cool birthday for our little man. Thomas has always loved Dinosaurs, animals and trucks. Anything bigger than Mom and Dad is cool. For his 5th birthday this year, we rented a stretched hummer and picked up all his friends and took them for a little tour of Doha.  I will get the video uploaded and post it separately. Take a look:

K. I really like this one:

It rained yesterday and today!  Thomas was out enjoying it (who knows when it will happen again).

Of course you need the camel pack when you are out for a 10 minute ride in the rain.  It’s important to keep hydrated when you live in the desert!!!

love

-jen

He didn’t take the mouth piece out of his mouth the whole time

Had to tie the straps up so he wouldn’t get then caught in the chain

Goof

Lovin’ the splashes.  Look at the speed….<grin>

Hey… yah, it’s been a while. today marked the first day of ramadan… First of all, ramadan is a month in the islamic calendar. it’s like saying today is the first day of september, which it is, but that is besides the point… so, when people are celebrating ramadan, really they are celebrating september… Another thing I found out is that their year only has about 355 days(or something like that) there is never a leap year, and the only way you can tell if the month is gonna switch is by reading the moon… All the Muslim countries in the world look to saudi arabia to tell them when the month is changing. Saudi was chosen cause that is where Mohammad lived and died. K. nuff history

Ramadan… the work hours are cut back to only 5 hours a day… none of this working 8 or 10 hours a day stuff… 5 is good… then you are encouraged to go home and have a nap. So, today I did. I went grocery shopping after that, Had to get some burgers for dinner. Hopped in line, adn the one lady in front of me had 1200 Canadian in groceries, and she didn’t buy any meat. She had 8 carts of food… she brought a pick up truck to bring it all home in. it was incredible. I had my burgers and felt like I was not holding quite the same calibre party as she was…
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Anyways, I’ll see if I can get jen to write about the traffic, She and Kara went out tonight, I am home with the boys. I am interested to hear if the no eatign thnig all day makes people as agressive as I have heard they can be…

Dunno if you’ve heard, but there were internet cables cut on Wednesday evening in the Mediterranean… this made for a very interesting Thursday for myself and the crew I work with. I just found out that a third cable has been snipped in the persian gulf but it is less of an issue as it had some redundancy build into the design… all this is an important into to today’s post of the weekend…

Today is friday here in the warm hazy city of Doha, Qatar. we started out the day going to church, then headed down to the wheels and heels festival put on by reach out to Asia and shell petroleum. this celebration is held during the las leg of the tour of qatar, here in qatar. the tour is put on by the same people that do a little bike ride in France called the tour of qatar, but it isn’t “quite” as well known.

anyways, we went down to it. It was amazing. They had huge inflatable park equipment that the kids could play on, vendors selling stuff, bbq’s going on, tons of security guards running around and so many kids. There must have been 400 volunteers there too… just an amazing city wide picnic on a Friday afternoon. Only think that made the day kinda rough was this sand storm that blew out of nowhere… Sandstorms for the uninitiated are like fog, only the fog hurts your eyes and tastes like garbage… not a terribly nice feeling. One interesting thing though, is after being outside for 5 minutes, it kinda gets better… then after 20 minutes, your nose starts to run like crazy… amazing how the body kicks into high gear…

Thomas and I sat down and watched the bike race for a bit. there was a motorcade in front that announced it’s arrival. Then there were 3 riders who had broken away from the poleton for a bit. We took some pictures of those guys… then you hear the wind and the gears… the whizzing of the riders as they approach. a blaze of colours approach as the riders bank to attack the round about that Thomas and I are stationed at… I take one last look at him and dive behind the shutter… about 4 seconds and the whole thing is over. it is absolutely amazingly fast. so fast, so close together. quite a sight.

I have lots of pictures to upload, and I will… but I am going to wait till the internet is at least limping and not bleeding out in this area…

Hey Everyone…

The schellenbergs are hanging out at the great wolf lodge in niagara falls. Holly came downwith us and right now Hol land Jen are out getting their nails done. I wanted to have themgoout and getsome serious girl time in, cause I think that in the next few months Jen’s girl time away form the kids will be seriously lacking<grin>

I’ll take some shots of the boys on the water slides,  the park in general and maybe the cub-club room… Both Daniel and Thomas are loving the arts and crafts down there… Me, I just like hwo everyone is relaxed and having a good time…