Up to God and Back: Mai and Nancy's visit

We had a wonderful time having Ken's sister Mai and her friend Nancy visit us in Doha for 2 weeks!! Ken was able to take a few days off work in order to spend more time with them and they even went to Dubai for a couple of nights. Here are some pictures ...

Mai with the boys before karate class in front of the tree in our compound

At Museum of Islamic Art with Doha skyline behind

Museum of Islamic Art and traditional pearl fishing boats in background

After wandering through the beautiful Museum of Islamic Art, we popped over to another temporary art exhibit right next door. It was a Damien Hirst exhibit. We're not art enthusiasts, so we didn't know who Damien Hirst was, but his exhibit has received a lot of buzz around Doha so I wanted to see what it was all about. We were warned not to take small children as some of his art is rather gruesome. Mai took one look at the first photograph and turned around and left. She waited for us in the lobby. The photo was a picture of Damien Hirst in high school with a cadaver's head on a table.

He uses a lot of real animals in his art ... preserved in giant tanks of formaldehyde. There was a cow, cut in half with each half in a separate tank and you could walk through the cow and see all of the internals, including the baby that was tucked inside. I didn't include the pictures of that one. The worst one for me was the flies. It was a giant tank with a live decapitated cow, blood running all down and across the floor and flies everywhere! I couldn't even take a picture it was so disturbing!

But not all of it was gruesome, the butterflies were quite beautiful and the pills were funny!