Hello, boys and girls. I hope all is well with all of you who read this. Except for Duke fans. I hope you all have nasty colds.
I’ve been keeping busy since last we spoke. Well, you didn’t speak. You just silently read my blog without commenting. For shame. Anyway, on to the show. Err… blog. Like, I said – busy busy busy. Because of my little infection, I missed two weeks of Drama lessons and my kids were sorely lacking in their Theatrical development. Once I got to feeling better, I treated them to two special weekend workshops – Mask Making and Makeup. We even let other kids who weren’t in my classes come to the workshops for free, which tripled my class sizes for the lessons. Anything that is offered free people just flock to, don’t they? The workshops went really well. Nothing against the good ole’ UAE, but they are lacking in Mask and Makeup supplies. I had to make do with what I could find, but adding the “you can buy this stuff at your local store” ideas to the lessons made the kids excited about trying things on their own. And, of course, all the older kids just had to have some gross cut, gash, bruise, black eye, etc etc etc. Though I am in NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM any type of good makeup artist, I do a pretty good job with gross projects. Spring break (for the drama kids) is next week, then we’ll start the final semester of the year. We’re gearing up to go a play in mid June!
Alanna and I have been wanting to go camping since we arrived in the Middle East. We both have quite a bit of camping history in our lives, though we just didn’t find the time to camp in the States in the last couple years. Everyone here kept talking about how cool “desert camping” was, so we finally decided to give it a try. I asked around on some Expat forums where a good spot was, and got tons of ideas. We finally chose a spot about an hour away towards Abu Dhabi, that just happened to have quite a few Geocaches around it. Camping supplies are cheap here too. We got a 3 person tent and two sleeping bags for the equivalent of $40. Firewood though, as you might imagine, is in short supply in the desert. We did find one Souk that sold it in bundles though. So we haggled with the nice man and got 4.
We planned to camp just one night, to give it a good college try, so after Alanna got home from school on Thursday, we packed up the car with supplies and headed West. The spot that was suggested to us was easy enough to find. We got their a couple hours before sunset to give ourselves time to set up and then get a fire going. We drove down a sand road with dunes all around us until the road came to a dead end. We parked the car there out of the way and got out to look for a good spot to pitch our tent. I grabbed two arm full loads of supplies, Alanna grabbed Logan, and we headed off into the dunes. We didn’t want to go too far because, A) we’re lazy and B) we didn’t want to leave the car all alone and too far away from us. So after travelling over a couple of dunes, we found a nice small hollow (Logan) and decided to make it our home for the night. I quickly set up the tent and two chairs. The plan was to have Alanna watch Logan and I would handle all the manual labor. Well, after 4 or 5 trips to and from the car later, I was tired. Walking over sand dunes with bundles of firewood is not easy. Eventually though, I had loaded all the stuff in the tent and we were sitting in… ok… I was sitting in the chairs. Alanna has a thing about bugs though. The flies were bothering her, so she took Logan into the tent (which was MUCH hotter than sitting outside because of the nice breeze) and played with him for awhile. I relaxed and waited for the sun to start slipping down behind the dunes. Once it did, I quickly worked up a lovely fire. One part former Boy Scout, one part dry, easy to light firewood, and soon enough we had a blazing fire just as the sun set. Alanna and Logan joined me beside the fire once it got going. It was quite cozy. The temperature dropped to a nice 70F after the sun went down, so the fire felt great. Not too hot, not too cold. Around 8pm, I made dinner. I chose to go with the classic Hobo Meal for dinner. I’ve known the recipe since I was a wee lad. You basically take your choice of meat, add some veggies and what not, all chopped up and then place them on some heavy aluminum foil. Then you place another bit of foil on top of everything, wrap it up, and throw it on the hot coals of the fire for 20 minutes. Once its done, tug it out of the fire, let it cool off for a few minutes, then cut it open like a baked potato and fork it out for a great meal. I’d even marinated the meat all day to give it some extra taste. My recipe was hamburger meat, chopped carrots, potatoes, onions and corn. It was DELICIOUS.
We all sat around the fire for a few more hours before finally heading into the tent. The night went downhill from there. It wasn’t horrible though, just not the wonderful sleeping experience I was wishing for. I blame the 10 month old baby. I should probably blame his parents for dragging him out to sleep in a tent in the middle of the desert. But since Logan can’t defend himself, he’s easier to blame. The combination of Logan not sleeping at all and the ground not letting either Alanna or I get comfy made for a loooong night. We were very happy to see the sunrise. We peaked our heads out of the tent around 6:30am and there was… fog. It is weird to see a blanket of fog in the desert. We had ourselves a cereal bar and OJ breakfast, then I packed up everything and we made our way back to the car, which was thankfully still there and in one piece.
The rest of the morning we spent Geocaching around the outskirts of Abu Dhabi. We found 4 out of the 5 caches we searched for. The one we didn’t find, beside a giant (think 50 feet tall) birdcage complete with an eagle inside, was probably muggled – someone had removed the object that the cache was attached to. We did make our way up a man made mountain though. Don’t ask, I have no idea why they made a mountain here. But there was a geocache near the top so we grabbed it. We found a few more caches that day – one at a busy camel racetrack, one at the abandoned endurance village, and another out in the middle of nowhere. We finished up the morning and were back in Al Ain about 11am.
Note to self – Camping with a baby is a no go. Drop the little rugrat off with his grandparents next time.
Some new pics… enjoy!
