Qatar's non-mainstream daily life

After Corona has become a routine, the second child goes to the garden once a week. The days I can’t go to kindergarten are with me all day long. It has been more than a year since I started waking up at dawn to have time alone. I can’t think of Qatar like that if I’m writing while breathing the air at this time when no one is up.

On November 5, 2016, I arrived at Incheon Airport with my 42-month-old son and 8-month-old daughter. Despite the fact that I had sent a full 20ft container, the weight of my luggage and carry-on luggage exceeded the standard, so I repackaged my luggage several times at the airport. In fact, most of what I put in my suitcase was Korean food. It’s good to have it, but it doesn’t matter much without it. Even though it exceeded 5 kilos, I took out 2 bottles of soy sauce and 3 frozen rice cakes, put them down, and weighed them again. In fact, it wasn’t the luggage that I couldn’t put down, it seemed that it was the heart that was attached to Korea.

My father-in-law said, “If you go to Qatar by yourself, you will earn a lot of money. Why are you going out with the whole family and having a hard time?” “You go to your home and live, and let your dad spend it alone.” “Would you like to make a lot of money at this opportunity and buy my house?” He wanted to send only my husband to Qatar, and my children and me to stay in Korea. If you live with your mother’s house, you can get a full back and live full life. Why would you go to Qatar with a newborn baby to suffer?

Actually, it wasn’t wrong. However, since my newlyweds, I had to change my mother’s house and sometimes even get worse, and at some point, I had to decide whether I would have a’heart trouble’ at my home or’body trouble’ at my house in Qatar. Although both mentally and physically are weak, if you want to choose one of them, it would be better to have a hard time with your body, so I decided to follow my husband.

I fought a baggage war at the airport and boarded the cabin. There were 4 people and 3 seats, so the second child, a newborn, was held in my arms and in the arms of her husband alternately. I woke up again when I lie down on a bessienet to sleep. Originally, it was a baby who wakes up once or twice after sleeping at night, but he awoke more often if he noticed that Betsynet wasn’t his futon. I held it for 10 hours, lay it down and kept it open, and I arrived in Doha. On the plane, the road that I encountered was wet and cloudy.

I boarded the driver’s vehicle and arrived at the airport. From the outside, the house was a two-story villa with a garden that seemed to be in the middle, but when I entered the house, the movers were rolling around with dust. There was more dust in the kitchen that had entered the ventilator, and there was also a door to the backyard. When I opened it, a pot filled with food scraps that my husband secretly hid greeted me in black. From then on, I began to unpack the loose luggage and the boxes that had not yet been opened, and put them in place.

Doha was my first time, but I wasn’t my husband. While bidding for the project, I traveled to Doha once or twice a month, and after a few weeks of the project, I went to Doha before me to lay the foundation for living. In the second month of my stay in Doha, I found a house and a car for my family to live with, and in the third month of my stay, a mover who was waiting for the owner to see the owner again moved into the house. To such a husband, I and my children in Doha must have been treated. Families who couldn’t properly adjust to the time difference were constantly transporting them to large marts, famous tourist spots, and restaurants, and tried tirelessly to understand the unfamiliar country, Doha, Qatar.

My husband, who had done his part, went back to his daily routine and began to go to work, and from that time on, my real life began. Because of jet lag, it became a habit to start oversleeping and woke up every day at 10 am. It is 12 o’clock by simply cooking and feeding the first breakfast, and heating the frozen baby food that has been filled with an overflowing carrier to feed the second and remove. Then I start cleaning from then on. It’s a two-story house with 4 rooms and 2 bathrooms.

The first turns on the TV for a while, the second wraps around with a baby carrier and starts vacuuming. I was a self-certified lazy, but I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know this place with the first two feet and the second four feet. So when I cleaned it, I couldn’t see the end. It was a house that had been emptied so far, so even if I wiped it, dust came out.

After clearing up the house, it became lunch time. I wasn’t hungry because I ate late in the morning, and I simply ate it with bread or cereal with the first. After giving the formula to the second, it is time for the children to take a nap. When I lay down on my body, I fell asleep faster than my children, and I usually took a nap for about 2 hours, but sometimes I slept for more than 3 hours. When I woke up after taking a nap, the sun was setting. Having been at home all day, I have a sore body, and since then I take my children to the playground.

There are few children in the playground at sunset. One or two remaining children also return home one by one. After an hour of playing with the children in an empty playground, it is 7 o’clock. I started cooking from then and eat dinner after 8 o’clock.

By the time I get rid of what I ate, my husband returns home. After my husband has washed the children, it’s well past 10 o’clock. Children who have taken a lot of naps in opposition to their husbands who are immediately aborted by a hard routine do not sleep even after 11 o’clock. After turning around for a long time, I fall asleep at 12 o’clock. Then I wake up at 10 am the next day. Wake up late and sleep late lasted for several months.

While maintaining the life of an owl, there were occasional forced wake-ups. I was worried about the ants coming out through the broken tiles, so I called the maintenance staff, but for my children and me, I pressed the bell at 9 a.m. and came home. I greeted the staff with unobtrusive eyes, but at first I was a little embarrassed, but later I got used to it. A Nestlé employee, a bottled water delivery company, also woke me up every Tuesday at 8am by ringing the bell. I want a bottle of empty bottled water and a coupon for bottled water.

I had a glimpse of the fact that the family’s lifestyle was out of the ordinary in Doha, but couldn’t afford to change it. At the same time every day, I was playing with my kids in an empty playground, and one day, a familiar man and a child came into my eyes. I thought I was Korean or Chinese and I was happy to talk to you. I informed him that I was alive, and I told him that this place where no one was there was so lonely, so I gave him my wife’s phone number. A meeting was finally held after exchanging contact with a Korean neighbor who did not even know his face.

The average wake-up time was 10 o’clock, but the appointment time was 9 o’clock. It seemed that I wasn’t polite at first when I was planning to postpone the meeting time. So, I set the alarm at 7:30, which is unlikely to happen. I barely got up and washed my body with no fatigue. I forcefully hugged the children who didn’t wake up even after waking up and came down and put on clothes. Their daily lives were very different from my daily routines, which I had prepared early in the morning and listened to them at the place where they barely met the appointment time.

The man who introduced him to sending his child to an international school of British origin said that he set the alarm at 5:30 am and got up. After waking up, he briefly washed and said that he started packing two lunch boxes for the child to eat at school. (1 snack lunch box, 1 lunch box) And at 6:30 am, he said that he would drive the child to school and take him to school. No, they wondered why they woke up so early. When they asked about the time to go to school, the answer was ‘7 am’.

“7 am? What kind of school does it open so early?”

But when I thought about it, it wasn’t just schools that opened early. Most public institutions are also open early in the morning. The starting time of the Korean Embassy in Qatar was 7:30 am, and the starting time of treatment at the hospital was 8:00 am. And the husband’s rush hour was also 7:30.

In Doha, where I start my day faster and finish it faster, I started my day later and ended later than anyone else. As I maintained a lifestyle that was separate from the mainstream, no one could communicate with me. Korea is not a problem for those who are briefly out of the mainstream. Because I have family and friends who watch over me and support me. However, in other countries, you have to create someone you can communicate and relate to. It’s because everyone is busy living and no one cares about me first.

I was so sorry for my life in Doha that I complained to my mother through Kakao Talk, but that was the only time. The consolation of someone who had not been through my situation was felt as consolation. In addition, there was no reason to add a spoonful of worries to parents who would live with their daughters’ worries as a basis because they were overseas. So, even though I was tired and tired, I was drowned in the inside.