Sunday, January 30, 2011

Cars and Soccer

On Friday we went to the Qatar Motor Show (the first time for a car show in the middle east.) We were able to see everything in about an hour, that tells you how small it was. GM had the largest display, Ford's was disappointing and Chrysler fell in between. There were many luxury car brands and a couple we had never heard of. All in all it was fun and we felt a conection to Detroit for a hour. It was well received in Qatar with traffic jams outside the convention center the entire time of the show. Then we went for an authentic Arabic meal where you sit on cushions on the floor and share large plates of food, that was fun too.

On Saturday, we went to the Asian Cup Final soccer game between Australia (don't know when Australia became part of Asia) and Japan. Before we got there we decided to cheer for Australlia and found our seats (about $30.00 US for a final game!) surrounded by Australia fans. For those of you who don't about soccer the game has two 45 minute periods, if there is no scoring (which there wasn't) then there are up to two 15 minute periods. Japan scored in the second 15 minute period, thankfully. Then came the presentation of all the trophies, so we decided to leave. When we got out to the gate they said no one could leave until 15 minutes after the fireworks. So we thought ok let's go back in, plus I needed a bathroom even though I was a little afraid of what I might find. They wouldn't let us back into the stadium, finally I got to go back in. When I came back I went out a different gate and they weren't stopping people from going back in. So we went in and watched the back side of the presentations. Then the fire works, which were on the outside of the stadium and we could only see a little bit over the sides of the stadium and they didn't turn off the lights inside, afterwards came the confetti. Qatar has a lot to learn about these types of things.

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