I can feel it!

It is not too often that someone can say “In four days I will be over 7,200 miles away from my current location, in a foreign culture where I barely speak the language” but when it can be said, it’s definitely a wake-up call. Especially for me, who has spent most of the past two months sleeping in, playing video games and watching TV. To be honest, I’m eating KFC and watching Indiana Jones as I type this (the third one, with Sean Connery as Indiana’s dad – it’s the best)

In four days I will be spending the next four months abroad in Muscat, the largest city and capital of the Sultanate of Oman. You know how the Arabian Peninsula kinda looks like a boot? Oman is the toe, just south of Saudi Arabia and right across the pond from Iran. While a lot of you may not have ever heard of it, Oman hasn’t been resting. When the Sultanate of Oman was created in 1970 it was a subsisting backwater with a civil war being waged in the south.

However, since the Sultan, his Majesty Qaboos Bin Said, wrested power from his father in 1970, the country has been on a rapid sprint towards modernization and internal development. Today, this work is starting to pay off. Oman’s currency, the rial, is the third most-valued currency in the world, and just this past year, the United Nations’ Human Development Report ranked Oman the world’s ‘top mover’ in its Human Development Index.

Be sure to check back here as I explore Oman’s nearly unprecedented history, plus you can laugh at my blunders as I bumble across the Middle East. But for now,  I’m gonna eat this fried chicken and watch Indiana Jones (Indiana Jones just threw the guy out the blimp and said ‘no ticket’)