Currently Reading Girls of Riyadh By Rajaa Alsanea see related

Quiet times are almost over!

It's been a very quiet summer at work - too quiet with 99% of the school on summer vacation.  By next week everyone will be back and the new semester will get underway.  That's good news, as I found the quiet becoming very depressing.  If you've ever taken the Myers-Briggs, you know that people are rated as either being Introverts (I) or Extroverts (E).  It has nothing to do with how shy you are or what you might think about these terms; it actually has to do with how you are energized.  Are you energized by being around people, or do you have to have time alone to get energized?  I'm definitely an 'E', and this summer in the quiet just completely confirmed that.  So thankfully I can get re-energized soon!

I wanted to post one last picture from Jennifer's trip here that the woman I replaced just emailed to me a few days ago.  This was taken in the villa that we were originally supposed to move into.  I thought it was a pretty good picture of all of us, so here it is:

Dubai

We moved into our apartment this week.  We are going to like it a lot once we get settled.  Our first night here we decided to take a swim and relax - it has a great pool and gym.  We weren't out there ten minutes when Bill slipped on the wet tile and went down.  He never saw it coming and crashed down on his back, clipping the back of his head on the edge of a tile step!  I'm convinced he was knocked out for a few seconds because he didn't answer me and was very still.  He was bleeding like crazy.  Someone called a ambulance and they took him to the hospital.  He ended up with 5 stitches.  They did a CT scan to make sure there was no internal damage - and found nothing (kaboom, ching!).  LOL  That was Bill's joke - I'm not sure the doctor could relate to Bill's humor.   Also, when the doctor asked if he worked and if he would be able to take it easy for the next couple of days, Bill told him that he works for me as my manservant (he made up that name for his 'role' when we moved to Poland 4 years ago), so he thought he could get some time off.  I'm not sure this Middle Eastern doctor got that one either!  Anyway, I was glad he was able to joke by that point.  There's about 45 minutes - from when he got out of the pool until he was in the ambulance - that he doesn't remember at all.  He was talking to us some during that time, but he was very quiet and disoriented.  It was scary, but I'm thankful he's okay.

Below are some pictures from our time in Dubai - mostly from when Jen was here visiting. 

At my school, we had graduation in June.  It was a women only affair, and we were given abayas to wear.  The Emirati women wear something similar to this every day, plus a head scarf.  It was very comfortable.  I sort of wish I could just throw one of these on everyday and not have to worry about what to wear!  It was a women only affair because the Sheika (kind of like the queen - first wife of the Sheik) came and presented the graduates with their diplomas.  Being all women, the plan was for the girls to be able to not wear their abayas and head scarves.  However, because there was some man from the palace there in the sound booth, many girls didn't uncover for the ceremony.

There are so many malls in Dubai.  Jen said she never thought it was possible to get tired of going to malls!  They are pretty amazing places.  The one below is one built to look like the traditional architecture in Dubai.  The inside looks like an old souk.

The Mall of the Emirates is famous for it's indoor ski slope. I posted pics of that back in February.  Below is a picture of what a man-made indoor ski slope looks like on the outside.

Below is the mall I described in my previous post, where each section is a different country.  They are, in order:  Persia, India, China, and maybe Tunisia.

Family in Persia below.

Tallest building in the world.  Jen says she will never go to the top of it!

This building below is near the Mall of the Emirates.  It is freaky because it is built in the shape of a triangle, so you can't see the side of the building from this angle. It looks like a fake building on a movie set or something. 

Scenes around town, touring, beach, etc.

We went on a desert 'safari' where they take you dune bashing and the other things I described in my previous blog.  Below are the pics from that trip.

The camel farm

Above is a dung beetle pushing a piece of camel dung!  It pushes it backwards so that it's head is facing the ground away from the dung.  Smart beetle!

Claudia, my shy and reserved child joining in (with other people, not alone thankfully!) with the belly dancer. 

Looks like Bill had a little too much of the flavored tobacco!

Jennifer sitting on a camel. That's the closest she would come to riding it!

Currently Reading Atonement By Ian Mcewan see related

Update from Dubai

Moving to Dubai has been an amazing experience so far.  First of all, after being in Armenia where there are very few western products and where there were so many things we couldn’t get, the choices here are almost overwhelming.  Going into a grocery store feels like you are stepping into a store in America – everything is available you would expect to find back home; except here, the Brits, the Aussies, the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Kiwis – everyone can find just about anything they would expect to find back home.  I guess just about anything in the world is available here.  It’s pretty amazing.

Jennifer was here for a little over a month visiting.  She helped us explore the city, and since we had a visitor, we did some of the touristy stuff that we might not have done right away, like going on a city tour and taking in a desert safari.  The desert safari was interesting.  First they take you “dune bashing,” where in 4-wheel drive vehicles they drive you over the sand dunes.  It was fun, although I think our driver took it pretty easy most of the time because a couple of our passengers weren’t really up for too much jerking around (I won’t mention any names).  Then they took us to a camel farm where we saw camels and a falcon – oh yeah, and a dung beetle that was really pushing a piece of camel dung around.  After that, we stopped on the dunes to watch the sun set and then headed to the Bedouin camp they had set up in the dessert.  There we got to ride a camel, smoke some flavored tobacco in a shisha (that’s a water pipe), eat a buffet dinner and then watch a belly dancer.  Many people got up and danced with her part of time, including my shy and reserved child, Claudia.  What are we going to do to bring her out of her shell?!  We also got henna tattoos.  These are temporary tattoos that these very talented women can paint on at amazing speed.  I don’t know everything about this custom, but I know in the Middle East and parts of India (maybe other places as well) women get these for weddings in elaborate designs on their hands.  They also do this for special occasions, such as holidays. 

Speaking of weddings, Jennifer, Claudia and I got to go to a wedding.  One of the strangest things was that none of us knew the bride or the groom, but we were invited along by one of my new colleagues.  The bride goes to our school.  It seems that it’s no big deal to go along if you are invited by another wedding guest – the more the merrier.  These weddings are definitely different than western weddings.  First, the women and men have completely separate parties.  The actual vows or contract is carried out a few days before with some religious leader involved (most of the time) and I think filing some legal paperwork.  The party we went to was in a large banquet hall.  We all sat around at round tables of about 12 people each.  We arrived around 8:30 p.m. or so, and it was on a weeknight.  There was a lot of food and tea and Arabic coffee – no alcohol, of course.  Then at around 10:30 p.m. the bride came in.  She was wearing a very fancy, white, western-style wedding dress. They dimmed the lights and had a spotlight on her as she walked slowly around the room so that everyone could see her.  Then she walked up some steps to walk slowly down a runway, like at a fashion show, and then onto a stage that was elaborately decorated with red curtains framing a sofa.  She sat on the sofa, and then everyone went up in groups to greet her and have their picture taken with her.  Because it was all women at the party, many of the women had taken off their abayas (the black robes they usually wear) and headscarves.  You have probably rarely seen such over-the-top dresses and jewelry assembled in one place!  Some of them were quite beautiful, although I don’t think there would be anywhere to wear them back home, except maybe the evening gown competition in some beauty pageant.  Some of these were probably too much even for that.

About an hour or so after the bride came in, certain music is played so that the women know that the groom and other men are about to come in.  Many of the women covered themselves, but I was actually surprised at the number of women who didn’t.  The groom came in with a group of men – I think one was his guardian (the bride and groom, as I understand it, were both orphans) – and then several guys his age.  They went up to the bride, where he lifted her veil and kissed her on the check.  Then the bride and groom sat together on the sofa and people went up to greet them again.  We left around midnight while this was still going on.  From what I’ve been told this was a comparatively simple wedding party.  Sometimes there will be dancing and/or entertainment.

If there is one thing there is no shortage of here, it is malls.  Jennifer said she was surprised that she was actually getting tired of malls.  There is the Mall of the Emirates, which is the one that has a ski slope inside.  There is one that is built to look like an old traditional souk (market).  There is one that has sections representing different countries conquered by someone or traveled to by someone – some historical figure whom I don’t know anything about.  Anyway, it is really beautiful.  If you’ve ever seen the Venetian casino in Las Vegas where the ceilings look like the sky and you feel like you are really in Venice – that’s what this mall is like.  There is a Persian section where everything is done in tile – mostly blue.  There is Indian section that has a life-size elephant (not real).  There is a Chinese section that has a life-size Chinese boat.  You get the idea.  Even one of the ‘smaller’ malls near where we are staying right now has a small amusement park inside, complete with a roller coaster! 

We are currently living in a hotel apartment very close to my campus – close enough to walk to work before we got a car.  We were supposed to move into a villa (house) where the person I am replacing lived.  It had three bedrooms and a maid’s room, a pool across the street shared by about 12 villas, and a really pretty small yard with a palm tree and several large flowering trees.  It was also about a 15 minute walk to the beach.  We should have moved in at the end of last week, but when the guy from our school called to request some maintenance to be done, he got a notice from the company that owns it that they don’t want to rent to the school any more.  This is becoming a problem in Dubai.  Housing prices have gone through the roof, so the company can sign a new lease and probably get twice as much for the villa as before.  We were all really depressed at this news.  However, things have worked out okay.  We got to see an apartment a couple of days ago that is really terrific.  It has three bedrooms and a maid’s room, it is on the third floor, and it has a balcony that runs the entire length of the apartment.  It has a really nice pool as well as an exercise room and sauna.  It’s much newer than the villa, so it’s nicer and more modern in many ways.  The villa was good in that we could have ridden bikes around there – it really felt like suburbia.  The apartment is more in the city, with lots of shops and restaurants conveniently located around.  We’ll be able to walk to a lot of places once the weather cools off.  Also, they are building a metro system in Dubai, and there is a stop about a block away from the apartment.  These are a lot of the conveniences close by that we enjoyed about living in Yerevan, Armenia.  It’s also only about a 15 minute drive to the beach, so it’s not that much further away.  The thing we will miss the most about the villa is having a yard, but at least there are some good trade offs. 

People from all over the world live here.   Just in my department, the following countries are represented:  India, Philippines, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Palestine, Lebanon, UK, Egypt and U.S. (me).   I’ve read different figures, but approximately 75% of the population of UAE are expats from other countries.  In Dubai, I’ve read that 90% of the population are expats!   We are discovering, however, that not all expats are created equal, sadly.   As part of the process to get your residency visa, you have to go to this hospital where they draw blood (AIDS test), take a chest xray (TB), and take a urine sample (who knows).  Dubai gains almost 900 residents per month, so this is a very busy hospital with lots of waiting at the different stations.  I went with Bill there last week – he is finally getting his residency visa (that’s another story I’ll have to tell sometime) – and we were amazed that if you are white, you don’t have to wait in any lines.  Bill would try to wait in line, but some employee would come up and take him to the front of the line and say “no line, no line.”  Even the other people waiting in line didn’t want Bill to wait in line, like they knew he wasn’t supposed to be there.  Those waiting were almost all from India, Pakistan and the Philippines.  I was amazed.  In a part of the world where white people aren’t the majority population and aren’t the indigenous people, we get preferential treatment.  What should have taken 2  - 3 hours took less than one hour.  In spite of the convenience, it didn’t feel right at all.  It made me feel sad and uneasy.   Uneasy that we were treated one way at the expense of other people, and that there really wasn’t anything we could do about it.  Sad that so many of my friends wouldn’t have been treated the way we were treated because they were either from the “wrong” country or had the “wrong” skin color.  It made me think about a lot of issues – and about how this happens in a lot of places in a lot of different ways, but I’ve never experienced it so blatantly.   This is a topic to delve into deeper at another time.

On a lighter note and to summarize, we are as settled in as we can be until we move into our apartment.  We stay out of the heat as much as possible, since it is getting pretty unbearable – especially in the middle of the day.  Work has gotten quieter since 99% of the school is gone on summer vacation.  I have some time now to sift through the mountains of information I got in May and June and try to make sense of it all.  Claudia has been accepted into an American school, so she will be back in regular school in September – thankfully!  Bill will start looking for employment soon.  A company he used to work for, Ecolab, is here, plus there is a really large Ace Hardware store close to Claudia’s school that could be promising.  We’ll see . . . and we’ll keep you posted. 

Settling in

Being new is always difficult.  It’s always better if you just prepare yourself for that fact, but it is still hard even then, not knowing the lingo of the new place you are working, not knowing names and faces, not knowing job functions of everyone – or even yourself!  Then there is learning your way around a new town or city, getting used to new accents.  Everyone speaks English here in Dubai – at least everyone I’ve encountered – but the accents are a little hard to understand sometimes.  Then there are the logistical parts of settling in, such as setting up a bank account, getting your household goods delivered, getting kids registered in schools, getting work email accounts and learning all the new passwords that go along with those sorts of new systems.

My new college is very high tech and it’s going to be very cool – once I learn how all the technology applies to me and how to use it.  I got a cell phone that includes a PDA.   I’ve been saying I need to switch to a PDA, but I’m not sure I even know how to answer a simple phone call on this phone, and since I’m already at my “INFORMATION OVERLOAD” limit, I’m not in the mood to learn how it works. 

It’s always nice to get your own things and get settled into a new house – so it can start really feeling like home.  Our settling in will be delayed until the end of June; however, in this case it’s worth the wait.  We are currently in a hotel apartment, which is a two-bedroom, 1 ½ bath apartment with a kitchen and living room.  Since it’s a hotel, it includes maid service, which is a great perk, and it’s very new and nice (Is there anything in Dubai that isn’t nice and new?).  It’s also a handy 5 minute walk from my office, which is good since we don’t have a car yet.  At the end of June we will move into a 3 bedroom villa which is located in a great neighborhood – you can even ride bikes around there, which we missed a lot living in Armenia (riding a bike there would have meant great risk to life and limb!).  Across the street, it has a large, shared pool with 10 or 12 other villas and it is a 15 minute walk to the beach!  If you look at a map of Dubai, it’s just below the “World Island” – it’s marked in red below.  It has a beautiful small yard – which our dog Winston will enjoy – with real grass (we didn’t see a lot of that in Armenia), some lovely flowering trees and a palm tree.  I’ll post some pics when I get the chance.  It will be a great place to entertain or just to enjoy an evening barbeque – at least for 6 – 8 months of the year when it’s not too hot. 

One of the biggest shocks is being in a foreign country, but walking into stores and feeling like we are in America!  All of the American brands of everything are available, along with the UK, Indian, European, Australian, Lebanese, _FILL IN THE BLANK__ brands from all over the world.  After being in a country with very small markets with not many western products, the choices are a bit overwhelming.  It’s awesome.  And we can read ALL of the labels!  Everything is in English.  No more mystery food. 

We have reconnected with some of our former colleagues already.  We have gotten together with two friends from Warsaw who live here now.   Our next door neighbors from Warsaw lives here, but I haven’t seen them yet.  One friend works directly across the street from me.  She is the one I stayed with when I was here in February.  What are the odds of that?

Overall, we think we are really going to love it here.   It is a fascinating place and we look forward to exploring and learning our way around.  But I must say, my heart still remains in Armenia. . .

This is a pretty wild looking map, isn't it.  Those strange looking islands that look like the world and palm trees are manmade - and quite huge.  Supposedly you can see them from the moon.  Everything in Dubai is the biggest, fastest, tallest, longest . . . you get the idea. The area marked in red it approximately where our villa is. 

Above is the building where I work.  My office is on the right side, the fourth window from the glass doors on the bottom.

Currently Reading Cuba Diaries: An American Housewife in Havana By Isadora Tattlin see related

Ancient ruins

Children singing in front of the museum.


Inside the museum.