World Handball Championship

As part of Qatar's desire to become a "global hub for mega sporting events", Doha is hosting the 2015 24th Men's Handball World Championship. For the next two weeks teams from all over the world will play the "game of fast" in order to qualify for the 2016 Olympics in Rio. 

Qatar built three new state-of-the-art Handball stadiums to host the competition. It is the first time a world championship for Handball has all been held in one city. The stadiums have all been constructed in the last 4 years and they are beautiful! The Ali bin Hamad Al Attiyan Arena holds 7700 spectators and can also be used for volleyball, gymnastics, badminton and ice hockey! The Duhail Sports Hall is located just minutes from our home and can seat 5500 people. It is the site dedicated to handball only and is used by the local Qatar Handball Team and its administration. It also has 60 rooms for players accommodations, a swimming pool, and two training courts. The Lusail Multipurpose Hall is the venue that we attended last night. It seats over 15,000 spectators. The stadium can also be used for volleyball and basketball. It has been called the most "spectator-friendly" venue in the world and is currently being explored as a facility to host entertainment events.

Last night we attended our first matches. A $5 ticket gains you entry to the stadium for a series of 4 matches. Our ticket included matches between Bosnia and Iran, Macedonia and Tunisia, Germany and Poland, Argentina and Denmark. Thankfully the $5 admission price also includes a beautiful 125 page glossy Event Programme with all the rules of handball, the team rosters, the events of the tournament and the sights of Doha.
It is very exciting game to watch, with similarities to basketball, and soccer. It has Free-throws, Corner-throws, Throw-ins, Red / Yellow cards, and dribbling.  There are 6 players plus a goalie on each team and the play is very fast because the ball can only be held for 3 seconds at a time.

Indonesia Recap Week 2

Here are some special memories from the week that we spent with the McGavrans in the town of Salatiga on Java Island.

Christmas Day with friends was a treat for us. We really appreciated all the house decorations! And we had a delicious ham dinner (a very rare treat for us)!

all dressed in red for Christmas dinner

We took a day trip to visit the Borobudur World Heritage Site. This 9th Century Buddhist Temple is the largest in the world. It was built in the 800s and then became engulfed by the jungle when the Javanese people switched to Islam religion. Archeologists uncovered the temple in the 1800s and, after a large restoration project in the 1970s, it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The temple has over 500 carved Buddha statues.

The view from the McGavrans balcony. Behind us is the mountain that the boys hiked.

At the end of the boys' mountain hike, still a 30 minute drive home, they were all hungry. At the foothills there was a small convenience store that sold snack food. When they asked about something more substantial to eat, the man ran next door and had his wife make them all a plate of rice with egg. The store didn't actually serve this normally but in the face of 5 starving teens the woman was happy to help!

Max and Simon had fun being driven around by Hunter and Brittany. Thousands of these small motorcycles fill the streets of Salatiga. It is less expensive to run a bike than a car and the roads are very narrow so bikes are more easily accommodated.

Indonesia Recap Week 1

Our trip to Indonesia was so amazing that we want to share a bit more. The previous blogs were snippets done remotely on Lisa's tablet and Simon's phone, so they are limited in scope and depth. Here is a recap of our favourite memories from the first week of our trip -- the Island of Lombuk and Sengigi Beach.

The SCUBA course was really a great experience for Tim, Max, and Simon. Before going to Indonesia all three completed the theory of diving through the online PADI course. Onsite at the resort they spent the first two sessions in the pool with their French-speaking instructor Faride, from Corsica.

Then they did four open water dives off the Gili Islands. This time of year the waters are not as clear because it is rainy season. The boys were very focused on demonstrating their skills required to pass the course, but they still saw large turtles, octopus, lion fish, puffer fish, large angel fish, clown fish (inside anemones, of course), bat fish, grouper fish, and a 2 metre seasnake (poisonous, of coure).

Lisa really enjoyed hanging out on the boat while the boys were under the water.

We had many massages while in Indonesia. The massage therapists had very strong hands which some of us appreciated more than others. The most memorable were Max and Tim's open air massage on Sengigi Beach, Simon and Lisa's foot massage at the airport in Bali, and the 2 hour/ $8 massage in Salatiga.

We saw a couple of unfamiliar signs posted. This one was a reminder that 10 years ago, on December 26, 2004, a large tsunami wave hit the coast of Indonesia (to the north of where we were staying) and killed 250,000 people. There were several memorial services held during our time there.

Ornaments in the trees were a subtle reminder that it was Christmas season.