{"id":40,"date":"2015-05-23T23:26:47","date_gmt":"2015-05-23T20:26:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oman.victorreynolds.net\/?p=40"},"modified":"2015-05-23T23:36:13","modified_gmt":"2015-05-23T20:36:13","slug":"first-day-in-oman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oman.victorreynolds.net\/?p=40","title":{"rendered":"First Day in Oman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was my first full day in Oman. I’ll start with a few random interesting things in case you don’t want to read all of this. Oman is pretty, but also incredibly hot! Not that I didn’t expect that. Pictures of Sultan Qaboos are everywhere! On billboards, in every office space, in our dorm, everywhere. The buildings, even modern ones, though, look very different. They’re mostly light colors and built to be more heat-efficient in this weather. There’s a ton of empty space here as well. And by empty I mean nothing other than rocks and some bushes. Some people in my group have said that it’s a lot like Arizona. Even Muscat, which has 1 million people, only had mostly smaller buildings than one would expect and was very spread out. Most people here speak some English, and almost every sign is in English and Arabic. Speaking Arabic has helped, though, and people here are always impressed to see Americans speaking it.<\/p>\n

I’ll start with last night since I haven’t written since then. We arrived at Muscat around 10:00 PM. Even at 10:00 at night, it was about 90 degrees outside, and it was humid! And I saw my first mosque in Oman in the airport parking lot. After we met our guide, Tilal, and a few others from the Sultan Qaboos College for Teaching Arabic, we went to a hotel in Muscat. I thought we were going to drive straight to Manah, but staying the night in Muscat turned out to better. Tilal wound up taking us out to a restaurant called “Old Turkey Restaurant”, and I had some Tabouli, Hummus, and Baba Ghanoush.<\/p>\n