E in Nizwa

An advantage of private schools is big, overnight field trips.  At our school, they are referred to as residential trips.  Is this a British phrase?  I don't know.  But I know it isn't just a British thing to go on trips because my sister went to a private school for a few years growing up, and she always went on ever larger end-of-year trips.  To keep me from being sad about this, I went to my Grandma and Pa's house for a week by myself.  Hmmm... I see a Throwback Thursday post I could do with that.  I did go on school trips, but band & orchestra trips and soccer tournaments seem different, to me.

My adventurer

Anyways, year 4 children (third graders) are the first to go on a trip, then the trips get a bit longer each year.  Year 5 children go to Nizwa.  Nizwa, as you may remember from my previous post about our family trip there, is a city in the interior of Oman.  It is 1.5-2 hours by car from Muscat.  The school hired buses to drive the kids to Nizwa, then they had to change to smaller buses to get up the mountains to their camp.  By camp, I mean hotel.  But these are kids, and it's fun to refer to it as a camp.  The school had rented out the entire facility.  It's not overly large, but renting the entire facility allows for better security measures for the kids.  They shared rooms 4 or 5 kids to a room, and the teachers came around to make sure they were settling down for bed.


On the trip, the 5th years went to Hoota Caves, Jabreen Fort, Misfat Village, and Bait al Safa.  The caves were a highlight for E, but he couldn't take any pictures there.  The villages also made an impression upon him.  He came back telling me about the falajs.  The cool thing about Misfat and Bait al Safa is that they are remote, old villages where the children can step back in time.  I've seen quite a few pictures of the fort, because forts are always fun for kids.  They also had a time of "orienteering."  I believe they did that at the camp from my understanding.

I'm assuming this is at Jabreen Fort.

A far-off view of some mountains

The teachers did a great job of making it fun but also a time of learning.  There were activities to do and questions to answer at their various stops.  The children were given journals to write down what they saw or did, answer questions, and draw pictures.  There was also a photo competition.  The interesting part about that was that the kids were not to have smart phones (to eliminate distractions). Unfortunately, our phones are also great cameras.  They were also not to bring anything that would need to be charged at night.  So I snooped out 2 old cameras that we had, packed some batteries, and hoped for the best.  One recharges via USB, so I really just hoped that the battery would last through the weekend.  It did better than the one that used 2AA at a time.  I forgot to warn E to not use the zoom feature.  Oh well, only a few pictures were terrible because of that.  I mostly enjoyed his detail shots.

Probably from a door at the fort.  There were similar features on the doors of Nizwa Fort.

I'm not sure what this is, but it's colorful.  Possibly a ceiling as there was a painted ceiling at Nizwa Fort, too.

A metal Omani door

A favorite photo of mine:  traditional Omani dresses.  Sadly, ladies do not where these regularly.

Another favorite photo:  a woven camel among pottery.

E had a great time.  All the kids seemed to have a great time.  The teachers were probably exhausted. Mostly, I can't wait for next year when both children will have trips of their own.