Get ready to experience campus life in Qatar! From student gyms to cafes and libraries, Education City (EC) has it all. Join me for a quick tour of Education City and see everything it has to offer.
STUDENT CENTER
At Education City’s Student Centre, there’s something for everyone. Students often visit to hit the gym or play a friendly game of basketball. The student center has separate gyms for both men and women and has a huge sports court next to it, where you can play basketball, volleyball or badminton. It also hosts inter-university basketball tournaments — Georgetown’s women’s team is one of the top two women’s teams in EC and has won the tournament multiple times.
The student center also has a game room with a pool and a small arcade. What I personally like the most is the bowling alley, where you can play a game for just 5 QAR per player ($1.30). On Saturdays right next to the student center, Torba hosts its weekly farmer’s market where you can get food, artwork, clothes and accessories from local shops.
It also has some great burger places like Exit 55 and Chickito, a convenience store and some great cafes. There are often some temporary food trucks serving a variety of food right outside the building in the open seating area. During the spring, it is a great place to have dinner with your friends. For more food recs around EC, check out my last blog on good eats around campus.
OXYGEN PARK
Right next to the Student Centre is the Oxygen Park. You can walk to the park in less than four minutes from Georgetown. The large park hosts spaces for cycling and playing sports. It also has a large running track across the park. It connects with the male dorms on one side and the Student Centre and Georgetown on the other, making it easyfor students to walk to the park to unwind or have a fun game of football.
The park often hosts sporting events including but not limited to volleyball, football matches and practice, etc. It also has Ladies Night twice a week when the whole park is reserved for just women from 6-10 pm. During Ladies Night, women can join zumba or yoga classes or just have a fun picnic with their friends. As a student ambassador during my sophomore year, I worked at Ladies Night ensuring only ladies were inside the park and enjoyed some zumba and salsa classes as well
QATAR NATIONAL LIBRARY
First opening in 2018, the Qatar National Library (QNL) is one of the biggest attractions in all of Education City that people from EC and around the region love to visit. Known for its unique architecture, the building combines traditional Islamic elements with contemporary modern architecture and is one of my favorite buildings in EC. Looking from the sides, the building almost looks like a glass rhombus lying diagonally and looks beautiful at night.
The building features a library on the ground floor and houses an impressive collection of books, manuscripts and artifacts in the basement. It is a small museum in itself holding manuscripts of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) among many others. The library has sections for students, young kids and families. As a Georgetown student, you can issue a book with a QNL card and can access their extensive archives. Students love to go to the library for a good study session or for the matcha they serve at the popular cafe inside.
MATHAF: ARAB MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
Mathaf Museum, accessible by tram, is one of Qatar’s numerous museums and offers free admission to Qatar ID holders. Featuring a broad array of artworks, including paintings, sculptures, installations and multimedia pieces, the museum showcases a diverse range of artworks representing different aspects of modern art and Arab modernism.
While students may not visit the museum every week, they do enjoy a visit every once in a while. And if you like going to museums but do not want to travel outside of EC, Mathaf is the best spot. It is often a site during field trips for art history classes at Georgetown and Virginia Commonwealth University.
For someone who is visiting Qatar for the first time and wants to see some great contemporary arab art, Mathaf is the place to go.
EDUCATION CITY STADIUM
The Education City Stadium, situated just behind the female dorms, hosts a variety of games including the FIFA World Cup and more recently the AFC Asian Cup in 2024 that I attended. It is accessible by tram and is a 10-minute walk away from the female dorms.
The football culture is very popular in Qatar and has gained more popularity after the FIFA World Cup in 2022. The AFC games this year were quite popular among students in Georgetown, so much so that the university had a raffle draw for tickets for some of the games at Education City Stadium. While the tram station across from my dorm is usually silent, on game days it’s filled with cheers, songs and hundreds of people.
The walk to the stadium is extremely fun. There are DJs playing music and performances right outside the stadium. However, I learned the hard way that you need to get to the stadium a few hours early to see all these attractions on your way. Even so, the walk to the stadium was quite eventful filled with photobooths, football challenges, graffiti art and security guards on horses. Fans are cheering with their flags behind them, painted on their face, many wearing jerseys and caps of their teams.
Maliha Khan is a senior at the School of Foreign Service (SFS) at Georgetown’s Qatar campus. She is majoring in culture and politics with a minor in English.