Blog Introduction

Posted on August 28, 2015

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The Sultanate of Oman is situated in the southeastern quarter of the Arabian Peninsula, bordered by Saudi Arabia to the west, Yemen to the southwest, and the United Arab Emirates to the northwest. It is a country of diverse landscapes, including mountains, oases, lagoons, and farmland. About 1700 km of coastline stretches from Musandam in the north  to the tropical greenery of the Dhofar region in the south. The temperature varies from 20 to 50 degrees Celsius,depending on the season. The majority of the population are Ibadi Muslims, however other religions are tolerated as well. The capital city, Muscat, is home to 10% of Oman’s total population of 3,500,000, of whom approximately 76% are Omanis and 24% are expatriates.

In Muscat my family and I lived in Madinat Sultan Qaboos  in an apartment in a complex, with two pools on the roof and a gym. My sister and I went to an American international school, called The American International School of Muscat (TAISM). School started at 8.30 am and ended at 3.30 pm. However, most days we went to afterschool activities, like soccer, basketball and volleyball. A friend of mine and I played tennis outside of school as well. Anyway, we usually got picked up at school at 5pm. Then the 10 to 15 minutes’ drive home, before homework. Because of the long distances and highways we had to drive almost everywhere. There was only this small area with a grocery store, starbucks and a couple of restaurants that we could walk to. In the weekends, my friends and I often went to the beach, hang out by a pool, went to the mall, a party and so on. Speaking about weekends, our weekend was Thursday and Friday, because Friday is the holy day for Muslims. However, just last year they changed the weekend to Friday and Saturday in other to make business with the outside world easier. Once in a while, friends and family from Norway visited, and it was nice to share a tiny bit of our world and experience with them. And to get some Norwegian chocolate. In February, that would be 2011, I went on Discover Oman with my school. It was a week-long trip where we traveled to different parts of Oman to gain a greater understanding of the culture. We went to Wahiba Sands (the desert), rode camels and slept in Bedouin tents. We went to the turtle beach, Tiwi where we saw sea turtles and their babies. And we went to a beautiful wadi (a valley). On days like May 17th all the Norwegians gathered in a hotel and ate Norwegian food. In December the Scandinavians gathered for a Christmas party with Scandinavian food and Christmas songs in Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Finnish. On Christmas Eve we walked on the beach and celebrated with a plastic tree. We celebrated New Years Eve with some of our friends from France, Sweden and Norway. So, our lives went by pretty much the same way as it does in Norway: school, friends, sports etc. Moreover, everything was at the same time indescribably different, and that´s exactly why I´ve made this blog. In the upcoming weeks I´m going to share past experiences from my time in Oman, share som information about the culture in the country, as well as sharing some of my thoughts and feelings about all of this.

Comments from previous blog:

Anonymous on September 3, 2015 at 11:19 am said:Edit

Looks interesting.
Having travelled the world all my life I have a problem settling anywhere now. Do you feel that your time abroad has given you itchy feet? could you imagine yourself living permanently abroad? or did you carry enough of your Norwegian family habits with you to keep the link while away?
As you went to an International school why didn’t you go into the IB system here in Norway?

Reply ↓

• Vildeon September 3, 2015 at 5:24 pm said:Edit

  First, to answer your last question, I have to say that I really considered going into the IB system, however I ended up not to, because of the subjects. I wanted to study subjects such as politics and human rights, psychology and law, and none of those were possible in the IB. Honestly, I have to say though, that I miss having all my subjects in English.
  Second, I do feel my time abroad has given me itchy feet. However, Norway is still what I view as home, because I have lived here most of my life. Moreover, I´m a completely different person than I was before I moved. People who knew me before and after probably noticed quite a bit of a change, however, I believe the crucial change is in my personal thinking. For a lot of expats I think that the following sentence applies: “once an expat, always an expat”. At least for me it does. Before I moved, I was one person living in a tiny world in Norway. Now, I`m like two distinct people, having close relationships to people all over the world. I think that no matter where I live on this Earth, I´m going to permanently miss the people I love, I´m going to miss the nature, the culture, the language and, well, I´m going to miss almost everything about the country I´m not currently in. Moreover, I wouldn´t exchange this longing for anything, because the experience and insight one gets when living abroad is truly amazing. I can´t wait to move abroad somewhere after high school, and to answer your second question; yes, I could absolutely imagine myself living abroad permanently, because for me Adam Gopnik´s saying fits perfectly, ”The loneliness of the expatriate is of an odd and complicated kind, for it is inseparable from the feeling of being free, of having escaped.”