It’s catch up time

 We have been here a week.  Four matches, one anniversary party, some touristy stuff, a curry dinner, and lots of chaos.  First, the party.  The party was on Saturday night.  Kathy organized a party to celebrate our 50th anniversary at her compound recreation building and pool. There were lots of people (30) who we have gotten to know over the years and many of her coaches and friends.  An international crowd from the Philippines, India, Greece, Zambia, Canada, the USA, Yemen, and Senegal.  Lots of interaction and everyone had a good time.  Two of the children jumped in the pool among the floating candle decorations.

The theme for the evening was an Arab Night, and the pool area set up in typical Arab decor, food catered from Turkey Central, one of our go to local restaurants.  Lots of positive comments about the impact Kathy has had on the lives of people in Doha.  Champagne toasts, and our thanks to the guests for taking care of Kathy but we were told that we didn’t need to worry about her because she had many arms around her. Great evening overall but Greg and Jenn missed the event as they were still in Covid quarantine.

So on to the soccer matches, we saw Croatia and Japan, in a 120 minute slugfest and then the dreaded penalty kick shootout to decide a winner.  Tough way to determine winners but Croatia prevailed and moved on.  The Japanese manager came to mid field and bowed to the crowd after the match.  He, his team and all the Japanese tourists we met at the matches were a class act.   The next night we saw Morocco and Spain play to a SRO pro Morocco crowd.  Absolutely insane atmosphere of singing, cheering, and assorted noise makers mostly rooting for Morocco who pulled out the victory in another PK shoutout.  The crowd control was crazy as we saw the police in action for the first time when a large number of Moroccan fans seemed to try to gain entrance with fake tickets.  The story we were told is that a large number of Moroccan fans bought screen shots of legitimate tickets and tried to use them to get in the stadium.  There is a unique QR code on the tickets which flagged illegal tickets.  So a lot of people get scammed and that resulted in a lot of very angry people.  Security is no joke here as the fake ticket holders found out.

We had a home cooked Philippean shrimp curry dinner that JoJo cooked that was great.  All the time we have had three dogs involved in everything.  Got to spend some time in the Museum of Islamic Arts on the Cornish in Doha.  It is an amazing building and the collections are world class.  They have some of the earliest written Koran’s.  It is a must see stop.  



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