I think this makes the third post in a row that includes ice cream.Phoebe had ice cream on the plane. We had ice cream at IKEA yesterday (which Phoebe threw up).And now I'm going to write about ice cream again. Moving is wonderful. But also stressful. And it turns out that a little bit of ice cream really can help soothe raw emotions (particularly with preschoolers involved, but I am pretty sure that drowning sorrows in ice cream is a rather common trope). *****Today was our first somewhat official day of school.True, we just got here and are still getting over jet lag.True, we're in temporary housing so will have to move again in a couple of months. True, I feel like just being here is a pretty big learning experience. But it's been a long and rather hectic summer and we really needed to build some structure into our days. So I woke the kids up bright and early. We did science together, and then we did math, and then our school day dissolved into "actually let's get the living room livable" for a little while so we unpacked and organized quite a few things. And then we had lunch and went to the mall to play "The Alphabet Game" (we allow letters to fall anywhere in the word—how about you?)...but in Arabic. We went to a little playground where Phoebe could run around while the rest of us searched for words and wrote them down in our notebooks. That definitely counts as school, right?*****We had frozen pizzas for dinner (that we figured out how to work the oven to heat up—go our team!), along with a salad (that hasn't killed us yet...unlike the lettuce in the states thanks to that cyclospora outbreak...and which we figure is pretty safe because we bought it at Carrefour). And then we were talking about what else we were going to do. Like, what was going to be our Qatar Adventure of the day (as if walking around the mall looking for just the right Arabic words didn't count as an adventure). “Because it’s the first day of school," Andrew said, sounding far more patriarchal than he meant to. "Perhaps—as a treat—we can go downstairs.”Here he paused for what seemed like an extraordinary amount of time. I started giggling. "What?" he asked. "What did I say?""Perhaps—as a treat—we can...go downstairs?" I repeated. "It sounds like you keep us chained in the attic. Oh, you had such a good school day! You can go downstairs...but just this once!""TO GET SOME ICE CREAM!" he finished, laughing at himself because he agreed that he paused for far too long and that what he said did, in fact, say like something from, like, I dunno...Jane Eyre or Silence of the Lambs. (I'm not actually familiar with Silence of the Lambs, but I am aware of the tropes. I have read Jane Eyre and although it's been awhile I know there's a wife locked up in the attic).*****We went downstairs to get some ice cream. To be fair to Andrew, the kids have enjoyed joking about our "basement" which abuts the City Center mall (with a tunnel connecting them on the second floor, giving us 100% air-conditioned access to an entirely other world). It's really pretty cool. "We have Carrefour in our basement!""We have a food court in our basement!""We have multiple food courts in our basement!""We have a playground in our basement!"Phoebe really has her heart set on visiting Fun City, which is also in our basement (it's like an amusement park of sorts, but...I'm not sure how likely we are to say yes to that at this moment in history). Anyway, I thought we were going to get just regular ice cream from the store, but then Andrew spotted a gelato place and suggested we splurge. It was, after all, our one day out of the attic.Kidding, kidding. (The gelato was delicious.)