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a nomad in the land of nizwa

~ an American English teacher in Oman

a nomad in the land of nizwa

Tag Archives: Daydream Saturdays

daydream saturday: prague

22 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by nomad, interrupted in Daydream Saturday, Prague

≈ 19 Comments

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Daydream Saturdays

Saturday, December 22:  Today, I’m dreaming of winter and Bohemia, fairy-tale castles and an old town full of architecture ranging from Art Nouveau to Baroque to Renaissance to Cubist to Gothic to Neoclassical.  I’m dreaming of the epitome of culture: museums, theaters, galleries and cinemas.  I’m dreaming of walking through colorful streets wrapped up in a warm coat and fur-lined boots, ducking into cafes for hot coffee or Czech beer.  I dream of eating heart-warming foods like Czech goulash and pork with dumplings (!!!) and sauerkraut.  Mmmm….

For some reason, Prague has captured my imagination.  As I haven’t experienced a winter wonderland since I was in South Korea in winter of 2010, I am yearning for the cold.  Here is the city I am dreaming of this Saturday evening in the unchangeable climate of Oman.

I would love to hear about your daydreams this Saturday.  Where would you like to go now?  What if money were no object and you could just be whisked away to any place on earth?

If you’d like to join my Daydream Saturday, I invite you, challenge you even, to put a link to your own daydream in my comment section below.

I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering. ~ Steven Wright

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daydream saturday: zanzibar

15 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by nomad, interrupted in Daydream Saturday, Zanzibar

≈ 21 Comments

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Daydream Saturdays, Travel

Saturday, December 15:  Today, I’m dreaming of Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa.  Many of my colleagues at the university visited the island archipelago over the Eid, while I went to Ethiopia.  Zanzibar is particularly fascinating for expats living in Oman, because in 1698, Zanzibar fell under the control of the Sultanate of Oman.  Sometime in the early 1800s, Said bin Sultan moved his capital from Muscat, Oman to Stone Town in Zanzibar City.  Stone Town, the historical center of Zanzibar City, is a World Heritage site, and is said to be the only functioning ancient town in East Africa.

Zanzibar is one of the destinations I am considering if we get a holiday between the fall and spring semesters.

I invite anyone to join me by placing a link in the comment section below to your own Daydream Saturday.

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daydream saturday: morocco

08 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by nomad, interrupted in Atlas Mountains, Casablanca, Daydream Saturday, Marrakech, Morocco

≈ 42 Comments

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Daydream Saturdays

Saturday, December 8:  Today is Daydream Saturday, and I’m dreaming of Morocco.

From the Atlas Mountains to the Rif to Saharan dunes and oases, from Casablanca to Marrakech to Fez, Morocco has enticed me for a long time.  This summer, I am hoping to explore Morocco, along with Spain and Portugal, for a kind of Moorish expedition.

If anyone would like to join me in a Daydream Saturday, or a daydream any-day-of-the-week, please join me in the fun by putting a link to your daydreams in the comments below.  I hope you’ll come along. 🙂

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daydream saturdays & connect the dots: tibet

24 Saturday Nov 2012

Posted by nomad, interrupted in Daydream Saturdays, Tibet

≈ 19 Comments

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Daydream Saturdays, Tibet

Saturday, November 24:  Inspired by Heather of artist. hippie. cali chic. …a hopeless case of wanderlust and by WordPress: Daily Prompt: Connect the Dots, I have decided I’m going to start doing “Daydream Saturdays.”  Fellow blogger Heather created what she calls “daydream days” on Mondays because “I have found that I tend to let my mind wander to far off lands quite a bit more on Mondays than pretty much any other day of the week…not that this isn’t something I do every day of the week, but it is a bit heavier on Mondays.”

Since here in Oman, our weekends are Thursdays and Fridays, and our Saturdays are equivalent to Mondays in the West, I’m going to call mine Daydream Saturdays.  Because Saturdays have that rainy day Monday feel and I need something to cheer me up, something to get me past the Saturday doldrums, something to dream about.

To get me started on my first post in this series, I am using the daily prompt from WordPress, which is this: Open your nearest book to page 82. Take the third full sentence on the page, and work it into a post somehow.

I have a whole shelf of books within reach, but the first one that catches my eye is Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East by Pico Iyer, which I haven’t yet read.  I pick this book up frankly because it has a bright green band across the center, a lime green that I adore.  It also mentions Kathmandu, and it just so happens that, a couple of days ago, my colleague Francois asked me where I was going for Oman’s National Holiday, which will be this Tuesday-Friday (November 27-30).  I said I didn’t yet know, and he said, “What about Nepal?” Surprising.  I would have never thought of Nepal.

The last enticement for me to pick up this book is that I read another book by Pico Iyer in December 2010, The Lady and the Monk, that inspired me to go to Kyoto in February, 2011.  I fell in love with Kyoto, of course because of my experience there, but partly because of Iyer’s book, which added a whole extra dimension to the amazing city.

So, on page 82, here’s the third full sentence on the page.

I almost imagined myself back in Tibet.

I would love to go to Tibet.  But sadly, I can’t afford to go anywhere on this 4-day National Holiday.  Believe me, I have thought of everything, every possible scenario. For one, four days is not enough time, when flights take 10+ hours each way. And, as I just spent about $1,000 to go to Ethiopia in early November, and another $500 to go to Abu Dhabi in mid-November, I am clean out of money.  Sure, I could use a credit card, which is just what I did when I went to Japan that long-ago February.  But, finally, at my late age, I’m trying to be responsible with my money.  It really is time that I grow up.  Bummer.

I can barely write anything about Tibet, because I don’t know much.  But I do know this.  It’s a plateau region in Asia, east of the Himalayas, and is the highest region on earth at 4,900 meters. Tibet is ruled by China.  Just today someone in Tibet set himself on fire to protest Beijing’s rule. Tibetan Buddhism is extremely vital to its people.  During China’s Cultural Revolution, nearly all of the country’s monasteries were destroyed.  Now some have been rebuilt and more religious freedoms have been granted, but practice of the religion is still limited.

When I came back to Oman from Virginia in August, I brought with me The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche, which supposedly provides “a lucid and inspiring introduction to the practice of meditation, to the nature of mind, to karma and rebirth, to compassionate love and care for the dying, and to the trials and rewards of the spiritual path.”  Though I haven’t yet read the book, it is obviously calling out to me.  Serendipity.  Maybe magically it will happen that I will head to Tibet sometime soon.

Sometimes I wonder why I am pulled in certain directions.  For instance, for years, since September 11, 2001, I have been pulled to understand the Middle East.  I have read too many books to count about the Muslim world.  I went to George Mason University and earned a Master’s degree in International Commerce & Policy.  Every project I did was related to Middle East issues.  I was drawn to work and live in Egypt or Turkey, Jordan or Oman. I needed to understand a world that seemed to have gone haywire on a beautiful September day in the country I love.

A good friend of mine told me recently that he thinks I am searching for something.  I believe he’s right, though I don’t know exactly what it is I’m searching for.  I am drawn to ideas of pilgrimage.  In Japan and Korea and Vietnam, I was drawn to Buddhist temples. I am still drawn to Buddhist practice.  I am also drawn to churches in Lalibela and the idea of walking the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain.  I dream of spending three months in Japan at a Buddhist monastery or spending months at an ashram in Rishikesh, India.  I am drawn to all these things, yet I don’t do them.  Why?  Am I afraid of what I will find?  About myself?

Here is what Pico Iyer says in the sentences before the above quote, about an experience he is having is Nepal: “…I began to lose myself in wistful reverie.  The strange smells, the hypnotic repetitions, the flutter of candles transported me.  I felt myself carried away to distant lamaseries, whisked off to snowy mountain passes.  I almost imagined myself back in Tibet.”

There is something that appeals to me about the contemplative life.  I used to have a dream of myself walking down a street.  When I looked down at my feet, I saw my feet taking steps, one by one, from under a black robe, the robe of a monk.  Not a nun, a monk. Strange.

In the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Rinpoche says: “Our true nature could be compared to the sky, and the confusion of the ordinary mind to clouds.  Some days the sky is completely obscured by clouds.  When we are down on the ground, looking up, it is very difficult to believe there is anything else up there but clouds.  Yet we only have to fly in a plane to discover up above a limitless expanse of clear blue sky.”

Here is my Saturday daydream: Tibet.

I hope one day I can go there.

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~ wander.essence ~

where travel meets art

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PIRAN CAFÉ

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Wrestless Word Wrestler

Cardinal Guzman

Encyclopedia Miscellaneous - 'quality' blogging since August 2011

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A German Expat's Life in Fredericksburg/Texas

Fumbling Through Italy

Empty Nesters on a Green Global Trek

snowtoseas

Cornwall in Colours

inspired by the colours of the land, sea and sky of Cornwall

Slovenian Girl Abroad

A blog about travel adventures written by an Slovenian girl living in Switzerland

Let Me Bite That

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Running Stories by Jerry Lewis

Personal blog about running adventures

Finding NYC

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Fairfax County Emergency Information

Official Fairfax County Government Emergency Preparedness, Response and Recovery Website

~ wander.essence ~

where travel meets art

Living in Paradise...

SterVens' Tales

~~~In Case You Didn't Know, I Talk 2 Myself~~~

PIRAN CAFÉ

Word Wabbit

Wrestless Word Wrestler

Cardinal Guzman

Encyclopedia Miscellaneous - 'quality' blogging since August 2011

Pit's Fritztown News

A German Expat's Life in Fredericksburg/Texas

Fumbling Through Italy

Empty Nesters on a Green Global Trek

snowtoseas

Cornwall in Colours

inspired by the colours of the land, sea and sky of Cornwall

Slovenian Girl Abroad

A blog about travel adventures written by an Slovenian girl living in Switzerland

Let Me Bite That

Can I have a bite?

Running Stories by Jerry Lewis

Personal blog about running adventures

Finding NYC

exploring New York City one adventure at a time

The World according to Dina

Notes on Seeing, Reading & Writing, Living & Loving in The North

Cornwall Photographic

snippetsandsnaps

Potato Point and beyond

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