I was thrilled that I had safely gotten to Muscat, but I still had several problems, such as my missing luggage, which contained useful things like my laptop power cord, my universal adapter to charge my tablet and other devices, and my clothing. I had packed pajamas and 1.5 outfits in my carry-on, plus toiletries, so it wasn’t an emergency. However, it was very frustrating. The airport doesn’t ship luggage until the next day’s flight at the same time as your original flight, so my luggage wasn’t scheduled to arrive until Sunday (though I did get it then, so crisis resolved).

My first day in Muscat, which was a Saturday, I met with the student coordinator for my language program and did a short orientation over lunch. By the way, Muscat is really big into juices; I had a lemon-mint blended juice that was excellent. I was the only new student from out of the country, so it was a short orientation.

Afterwards, we picked up two of my housemates, ladies who were learning Arabic for their jobs at the DOD. We drove to several touristy sites:

Bait Al Zubair (http://www.baitalzubairmuseum.com/), a former house, turned museum, that has exhibits about Omani culture. You can see traditional clothing and old weapons, for example.

The Sultan’s palace, for Oman’s Sultan Qaboos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qaboos_bin_Said_al_Said), who seems to be pretty beloved by the citizens of Oman. He had recently returned to Oman after a long absence to treat an undisclosed illness, and there was much rejoicing! The decorations and pictures of the Sultan were still displayed all over when I arrived.

We walked around the palace and saw some nice ocean and mountain scenes, then moved on to Muttrah Souk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muttrah), which was pretty dead, since most of the shops don’t open until after 4. We were too early. However, we found a few of the really touristy shops, where I bought a shirt and a scarf, since my luggage was still AWOL at the time.

We traveled back to the villa and I tried to get some sleep before classes started the next day. Oman uses a Sunday-Thursday week, so Friday and Saturday are the weekend.