Desert Christmas

Spending Christmas in Doha was never going to be easy.

For me personally, this is the first Christmas in all of my 26 years that iv ever spent away from my family. I think I've only ever spent Christmas Day away from home once or twice but only as a kid, and even then it was spent with my parents and relatives.

Now the 25th has been and gone, and I thought I'd share a few snaps from the weeks leading up to Christmas, and the day itself. I didn't take many pictures on Christmas Day because to be perfectly honest, I just wanted to get very drunk on cocktails and hope the day would pass as quickly as possible!

In a bid to inject a bit of festive cheer into everybody because, to be frank, nobody seems particularly happy here at the moment and nobody really wanted to be here over the festive period, Sara Jemma and I threw a little house party at our place for the team.

 

I got my Nigella on and baked a few festive treats on Christmas Eve for my flatmates and neighbours.

We popped down to the St Regis beach in the morning to get a quick snap by the sea in our Christmas jumpers.

We ate brunch at Spice Market in the W hotel. The food was incredible (an endless stream of fresh sushi, Asian salads, freshly fried prawn tempura, dim sum - there was even roast turkey and almost all of the trimmings for those wanting to embrace the Christmas dinner tradition). Lovely waiters and waitresses kept our glasses topped up all day long (red wine, white wine, bubbles, mojitos and everyone quickly got very, very merry!). We did a secret Santa round the table (I of course was predictably bought a jar of Nutella, and a very lovely jumper!)

After dinner we went for a few drinks at Mayurs. The boys decided to play Fifa so I slipped downstairs to meet a new friend I'd made at brunch for drinks, and then we all headed back to our apartments later on to carry the party on in the bar with a few games of pool.

I disappeared back up to my apartment by ten, face timed my family and predictably got very upset and emotional, and then went to bed hugging a tube of Pringles. Rock and roll desert Christmas!

Maybe it's the time of year and the fact that it emphasises more than ever how much I miss my family and friends, but I do wonder, having been in Doha for 5 months now, how I am going to get by til the end of the football season, let alone until the lease runs out on my apartment in October. I always said I'd stay for three months and then re evaluate how I'm finding it. Then I said I'd stay til Christmas and re evaluate in the New Year, and here I am. The past 5 months have definitely had their fun times, but right now the good times don't nearly outweigh how hard it is here to be truely happy.

With that said, if I'm going to be here into the New Year, I need to enter 2014 with a better attitude than this. Doha is never going to be home, and living here certainly isn't a permanent move, so I need to start accepting it for what it is and making the best of being here. I'm here for a reason, to make my life back in the UK better and easier in the long run, so I need to focus on my goal to save like crazy and try and have a bit of fun on the way.

 

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