Oman/Qatar Study Tour Day 4

Celeste Mendez
12/07/2019

On Saturday we everyone woke up, finished packing, ate breakfast and brought our stuff to the hotel lobby so that we would be ready to check out of the hotel before nine in the morning to start our last day in Oman. When we all got downstairs we turned in our keys, loaded the bus with our bags and got on to head to the mosque. When we got to the mosque all the girls put on hijabs and went inside. The first part of the mosque that we visited was the women’s prayer room, which can fit 650 women at a time to pray in their own praying squares has multiple very large chandeliers handing for the women to pray under. Then we passed through the outside praying area for men and women and saw the tallest tower in Oman which is where the Emam does the prayer through a microphone for everyone to hear. After that, we walked around the men’s prayer room which can fit over 7,000 men at a time and has the world’s second-largest chandelier in the world and is over 8 tons.after hearing our tour guide, Abdul, read the shortest verse and translate it from the holy Quran we went to the room where the people who go to clean themselves before praying and then talked to a few women about the mosque and Islam for a little, while eating dates and drinking tea and coffee from Oman. Once we left the mosque we got back on the bus and presented Abdul, our tour guide, with a few little gifts that we got him at the market the day before so that we could show how grateful we were to him for showing us Oman. 
After the mosque and after we gave Abdul his gift we went to get lunch at McDonalds. For lunch, most people either have a burger or chicken nuggets. I got a happy meal with chicken nuggets and a toy that I want to carry for the rest of the trip, everyone thought it was funny that I got a happy meal because those are usually for children. After we ate we got back on the bus gave our other tour guide, Sean, a note telling him that we were very thankful for his help and for showing us Oman. we got on the bus and went to the airport where we said goodbye to Sean and Abdul and got on the plane to come to Qatar. As we were going through security and the bag check everyone got very nervous including me, we didn’t know how it was going to be or if we would connect with our hosts. When we got on the plane there was a 45-minute delay but then we took off and were in the air for less than two hours. On the plane, some people slept and other watch movies, I was one of the people who watched a movie. 
When we landed, we rushed off the plane went to get our luggage and ran to meet our hosts because we were late. Once we all got to our hosts we were not nervous because we immediately connected. When we left the airport we all went to our host’s house settled in and did our own things, most of us went out, me and my host, Sereen, went to a food festival and saw abbey and her host Rachel, Maia and her host Aseel, Paige and her host Teagan, and James and his host Abdul. Me and Sereen ate burgers and fries and everyone else ate other foods they found and then we went and walked to the docks where we hung out until Sereen and I got picked up by her father. After that we went back to her house and i got ready for bed while she studied for school. When I was getting ready for bed realized that I wasn’t nervous anymore to be around Sereen and in a new country doing things I had never done before. Before going to bed I talked to the other sophomores on the trip and we were all so happy with our hosts and the entire day and were very excited for the next day because we don't usually go to school on Sundays in America.  

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