News on Qatar in the Hoya, Georgetown's student newspaper

Some students from the main campus came to Qatar for the Model UN Conference (I was at Dunestock camping and partying, so I missed it. Awwwwwwww)

Anyway, here are four articles that tell you what it's like here from another perspective:

http://www.thehoya.com/news/031706/news2.cfm

http://www.thehoya.com/news/031706/news3.cfm

http://www.thehoya.com/news/032106/news5.cfm

http://www.thehoya.com/news/032406/news1.cfm

My favorite is news5 which is Part 3: Culture a Delicate Balancing Act in Doha

Also, check out the articles on Qatar at: http://www.hoyablogs.blogspot.com/

Some of my favorite quotes from these articles are:

"Keeping the school running — a school full of checked walls and Georgetown-blue rugs, one built essentially from scratch — has frustrated some staff, and burned others out. While six of seven faculty will be returning next year, at least three of the four student affairs staffers are leaving forever with mixed emotions." Some peole have quit, not me if the cash keeps rolling in.

"And although it’s not in Georgetown’s part of the building — it belongs to the Academic Bridge Program, which teaches English to Qatari high school graduates — that little poster only steps away from the library at SFS-Qatar may be symbolic of the deep challenges Georgetown faces in bringing Israeli and American Jews to a Middle Eastern campus."
They mention the library in this one.

"But there are 600,000 foreigners here — nearly two-thirds of whom are male and miss home terribly."
It's like a sausage factory here. All dudes on the edge of depression and overwork from 12 hour days, six to seven days a week.

'“In some ways it’s a lot like high school and lots of times it’s boring. I have managed OK but there are some people who just can’t handle it here,” says Chris Bobbitt (SFS ’05), who is studying for a year at Qatar University and works at SFS-Qatar.'
Yeah, people here drink like they are in high school.

And my all-time favorite quote from the articles:

"On a recent night in Palomas, the Intercontinental Hotel’s kinky Tex-Mex bar, young Qataris, hairy old expatriate men and trolling prostitutes in tight skirts throw back vodka shot after vodka shot."
The Shehrazad Bar at the Ramada Hotel, the bar we frequent, is way more seedier than the one at the Intercontinental Hotel. The Intercon one is tame compared to the bar we go to, which is within walking distance to my villa.