Garangao is the 14th day of Ramadan, and is Children's Day (more int he next post). Because no one knows the exact dates of Ramadan until the moon is sighted and considered the first day, planning for events can be difficult. The new mall by our house, Ezdan Mall, simply determined the most likely date, but then the moon was sighted a day later, so their Garangao festivities were a day earlier than all others in town. We decided to attend. Unfortunately, it was probably the most poorly executed event I have ever attended. To their credit, the mall is newly opened, and not all of the stores are even open, and they did prepare for what could have been a nice activity, but it didn't come off like that.
After arriving and checking-in, we were to leave our kids on rugs set out in front of the stage, but parents were supposed to sit in a separate area. You can see from the picture, that didn't happen. The seating area for parents isn't eve in the picture, that's how far away. See the Chaos?
Some kids sat quietly
Others were busy standing up adn looking around, which involved feet moving
See the orange shirted kid just to the right of the abaya wearing character? That's my kid.
Leoni
These were taken about halfway through our stay, and the kids were sick of waiting
In the end, we skipped waiting in the huge lines for photos, spent so much time waiting that we were going to leave before getting the "goodie bags." Leoni really wanted to stay, so we did. The whole thing was supposed to be 8-9:30pm, but we left at 10:30pm after getting the goodie bags (two condies and a coupon to their play area that wasn't open yet and expired before it opened) but not having gone to collect candy or watch a puppet show. The few "performances" on the stage were all in Arabic and kids couldn't see because everyone was standing. It was unfortunate, but it was an experience true to Doha.
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