Forgive me Blog, for I have not posted lately.
This week, under Muslim law, started with my birthday and ended today with the last day of Ramadan. My 34th birthday was nothing to shake a stick at. I think as you get older, at least in my case, birthdays are just a reminder
that you’re one year older. Nothing really to celebrate in the revelation. My amazing wife orchestrated a party for me Friday the 10th though. I had a great time with a lot of new friends. Sunday, my actual b-day, I don’t think we really did anything, which was fine with me.
The rest of the week was mostly routine, aside from a few bumps in road, both figuratively and literally. Alanna started her first week of school. The kids won’t show up until next Wednesday, but she was there with the other teachers. Basically she’s been sitting in a small pink room doing nothing all week. Oh well, she gets paid well for it! Her absence left me in the hotel (still in the hotel, yeah, more on that later) being a stay at home Dad for Logan. Logan has been pretty good though, so no complaints there. He is your typical baby – happy, sad, crying, pooping, peeing, screaming, you know, the normal stuff. It was his father who as been abnormal. I have allergies, and I’ve had them since my college days. Until now, they’ve been mostly seasonal or triggered by dust, etc. Since I’ve been here in the UAE though, they’ve gotten worse. I wake up almost every morning with watery, itchy eyes, then proceed to sneeze violently for an hour. Many of the reactions also bring on shortness of breath, my chest tightening up, wheezing and coughing. Don’t freak out though. I feel ok. Its not like I need to be rushed to the hospital. We’ve tried different medications over here, the last round of OTC pills seem to help if I take them every 12 hours. If I forget, then they wear off and here comes the sneezing frenzy. This only happens in my hotel room though. We’ve narrowed it down to maybe the detergent they use of the bed sheets and towels, or maybe something in the A/C unit blowing down on me. I can’t think of anything else that would trigger it. So right now its just really an annoying part of my day that I hate dealing with. Hopefully once we get out of the hotel, the problem will be solved.
Speaking of that… yeah, still in the hotel. Its nice, but its still a hotel. We’re crowded into a small room with no real way to cook. We have a washer/dryer at our apartment for laundry, thankfully, so we are no longer washing her clothes in the sink and bath. Its not fun living out of a suitcase with only one room. We keep hearing rumors our family apartments (the ones we wanted to be placed at in the first place) are close to being ready. So hopefully we’ll be out of here in a few weeks. Ramadan has really screwed us over I think. No one works during this month, so things like… I dunno… finishing apartments so 100s of people can move in don’t get finished.
I shouldn’t complain though. Overall, I’m still loving my time here and think Al Ain was the exact place I needed to be.
Moving on…
We went to the mall with Alma Joy on Friday night. We saw that there is a 3rd floor where they are building an
indoor ski slope. Yeah, you heard that right. We also saw a sign for a Papa Johns being built in the mall. We were rather excited but that tidbit of good news. Alma gets hit on by every guy in Al Ain. We went into a clothing store and one of the workers there followed her around and flirted with her. As a last ditch effort to win her affection, he shouted “God Bless America” as we left the store. I guess thats how you pick up the mamacitas Al Ain. Don’t think Alma took the bait though.
Oh yeah, I rented a car. No more taxis for us. I’m driving this tiny little 4 cylinder thing that does from 0 to 60 in about a week. But its better than paying for taxis and trying to explain to them in my very poor Arabic where I want them to take us. Driving here is a little different from the States. They have NO CONCEPT OF SAFE DRIVING WHATSOEVER. People speed like crazy, change quickly across three lanes with no signal, you name it and they do it. I know they do all this stuff in the States, but trust me when I tell you its a whole new ballgame here. And worst of all are the round abouts. Who invented these things? They are everywhere in the UAE, at every intersection. Its basically a big circle with three lanes and 4 ways to go. I’ve gotten the “pattern” down on how to traverse these death traps, but its still something you must do with extreme caution. Defensive driving is a must here. All in all though, I’d rather drive in this then be stuck in a 2 hour traffic jam outside of Chicago!
We went to Jabel Hafeet last night, which is the tallest mountain in the country and is located right outside of Al Ain. The drive up and down were fun. You know the curvy roads you go up and down when you drive through the NC
mountain area on I40? Well these are even crazier. You take a 15 minute drive up the mountain and the craziest, but still busy, twisted road I have ever seen. You basically go about 50 feet and make a u-turn and go up, then do the same thing every
50 feet. Thankfully though the road looks brand new and is well lit. The view from the top was great. You could see the whole city of Al Ain lit up 1000s of meters below. We’ll have to go back in the daytime to see the view as well. There is also a hotel at the top and magically healing hotsprings at the
bottom. Last night we just perched at the top and ate some Hardees. Yeah… a Hardees picnic.
On our way back to Al Ain we got a little lost. Alanna is notoriously bad at anything involving directional skills. I have trouble seeing some roadsigns at night, so combine those two and well we weren’t on the the road that we needed to be. Thankfully, its a desert at night, so you can look and see off in the distance the bright lights of Al Ain, so we were never truly lost. Anyway, as we went down the wrong road, I spotted camels off to my left. They weren’t moving so I had to ask Alanna if they were real. She confirmed they were. So I booked it to the next round about (cause there is absolutely no way to go back the other way unless you use one), turned back and stopped the car near where I saw the camels. This was the desert. The road was well lit, but there were no cars out here. We were alone with the camels. Well except for the two cars who came by twice, racing each other at speeds of over 100mph. No exaggeration. I made Alanna come down from the car quickly in case the loonies didn’t see us. Ok, back to the camels. When you think of the desert, you think of camels. At least I do. And so far in my time here, all I’ve seen are two camels sitting down in the back of a pickup truck. But last night I saw a a bunch. They looked like were on a farm. They were a fenced in area of sand about the size of a football field. I’m guessing there were about 25 of them. I walked up to the fence and in a matter of 30 seconds, I had 10 camels lined up along the fence staring at me. They just walked right up and stood in a long line, leaning their long necks over the fence. I did my best to pet them gently, but most of them were pretty skittish. They let me pet their noses a little, but then would pull away. Alanna was sure I was going to get spit on or something. Alanna joined me along with Logan after some coaxing. She even petted one of them too. There were some black camels too. Don’t remember ever seeing one of those before. We took a bunch of pictures. It was such a neat experience – out in the middle of the desert, not some petting zoo. We finally got back in the car and after getting a little more lost and arguing about it, we got back to the hotel safe and sound.
I’m just happy we got to see something besides a mall.
Ok, here are some more pics – mountain and camels –
