Unanticipated Adventures

So this week is crunch time. Tomorrow all the papers for the semester are due and on top of that, the – cough 50% of our grade cough – Arabic final is the same day. Now I am a man who likes to plan things like this out, so when something unanticipated happens I get kind of messed up.

But that’s just what happened last night.

One of the papers we need to write is a follow-up analysis of a short interview that we conduct. My interview was planned to be last night with one of my host dad’s friends.

Right after we got home my host dad was like “We will go,” so I got my laptop and recorder together and went with him. First we spent about an hour getting medicine for his son – I was a little annoyed about that. After that, we got a call from his brother saying that his car had broken down in the middle of the souq. So we had to go to the souq and push the damn thing halfway through the crowded souq to a nearby car repair shop. Turns out all the car needed was a jump. So now two hours in, we stop at one of my host dad’s other friend’s house for dinner. By the time we finally finished it was about 9:30.

So I called Dominic, the guy I was supposed to interview – no answer. I tried again – still no answer. So, defeated, I ceded that we should to dinner at a small little kabab shack off the side of the road. By the time I finally got back it was about 10:30. I was dead.

I got no work done on a day during which I had planned to do a lot. I will still get everything done and it will still be excellent, but damn, it’s gonna be a late one tonight.

I heard somewhere that American’s are obsessed with time. That’s definitely true but I don’t understand how other cultures aren’t. Time rules us. Are lives are nothing more than a period of time. I guess it’s just the Omani style to be so flexible but sometimes I wish I could get more of a heads up. I don’t want to have to sacrifice my grades for deeper cultural immersion.