I've fallen, and I can't get up...

So my husband and I went on a different kind of date today.  We left at 8 in the morning, and went out on the jet skis.  We were going to try to idle through the mangroves, but the tide was too low.  Instead we rode around and just took in the amazing beauty of the water side of Abu Dhabi.  I wish I had taken more photos, but I didn't want to keep coming to a screeching halt, pull my camera out of the waterproof bag, and shoot away... all while sitting in the channel. 

Our first sighting?  These sand gazelles.  They were pretty close, but I didn't want to scare them off by clomping onto the beach, so I took these from the water.  They are all over the place here. 

So now I'll get to the "I've fallen and I can't get up..." part.  I've known for awhile that there's an island in Abu Dhabi where you can find ostriches.  Who knew?  They're fenced in, but the only way I know of to get there is by jet ski or kayak, so I've never taken photos until today.  We pull our jet skis up onto the beach, I get off and start walking in water about 18 inches deep.  My foot sinks into the sand, and I'm stuck almost to my knee.  I fell down, ever so gracefully, onto my backside, and I swear I couldn't get my foot out of the sand.  I seriously had to call my husband over and have him help me.  I think he kind of shook his head in awe, but I may have just imagined that.  Anyway, by the time I got myself out, I realized that had a parked on the other side of my husband, there wasn't that kind of sand, and I could have just walked out of the water like a normal person.  Instead, I was all graceful and amazing.  You're welcome, honey.

Anyway, I only got one shot of an ostrich.  Mainly because he was outside of the fence.  And he was walking toward us.  And my husband said he'd heard those things are mean.  All of the others that were behind the fence ran away when we got there.  Not this guy.  Instead of being able to walk up to the fence and take photos of the 25 or so that I saw, I had to take one of this crazy thing, and then get back to the jet ski.  Fun times.

This is just a panoramic shot of Yas Island, taken from the dock where we keep the jet skis.  My sweet date was being awesome, and he wouldn't let me help with any of the cleaning or anything, so I just played around with the camera.

Didn't even get a date night selfie of us, but here he is in cleaning mode.

I had a really good time, despite the fact that we had to change our initial plan because of the tide.  Totally not a typical date night, but so, so fun.

Today's Photo... Two Girls in a Kayak...

So here are my 10 year-old and 8 year-old in the kayak. Working together.  Priceless.

Because apparently I think every post has to be a long one...

This one won't be.

Because I have been inspired by Liz, who is much better at blogging regularly than I am, I have decided to post some photos from around the UAE. She does one daily, I believe. I probably won't. If I hold myself to daily, I'll miss a day, feel like a failure, and quit blogging again.   =) 

The other day, I went to the Emirates Palace Hotel for coffee with some friends. Not just any coffee, but cappuccino with 24k gold flakes in it. Wow. So glamorous.

 The coffee was good, but the conversation with friends was better!

A strange post about things I like about our apartment...

So I've had several people berate me (but in a nice way) about not blogging about my life in Abu Dhabi.  Apparently, inquiring minds want to know what everyday things are like here.  I figured no one would really care.  I know there are a few friends who are chomping at the bit to see photos of our apartment, although I kind of get that.  I like to take a peek into people's homes, too.  Photos of our home will have to wait, though, until it doesn't look like Hurricane Four Girls hit.

So... what to talk about today...

hmmmm...

as I'm drumming my fingers on the desk I can't think of anything interesting.  At least interesting to me.  I guess that's because I live here everyday and I know what it's like.

How about some of my favorite things about living in our apartment...  and just because no post is as good without photos, I have actually included some ridiculous photos in this post.

1.  The garbage chute.  Seriously.  I love that thing.  I don't have to rush out to the curb at 5 in the morning in my robe and slippers when it's freezing outside because I forgot to roll out my garbage bin the night before.  It's like "Disposal on Demand."  I can even send my kids with a bag to the garbage room and tell them to drop it down the chute on the right.  (The left is for recycling.  The rumor here is, though, that they don't really recycle anything because they don't have the facilities for it.  I don't know whether that's true or not... I'm just perpetuating rumors.  We still drop our recycling down the left chute.)  So no more stinky garbage bin sitting in my garage.  Also, no more garage.  Well, no more personal garage.  We now have an underground parking garage.  Which brings me to #2...

Why, yes, there is a broken handle on the one on the right.  Maintenance has been notified.

2.  The underground parking garage.  Even though it's over 100 degrees here with a "feels like" temp in the 115's (still... in September), it's awesome having an underground parking garage.  You don't singe the skin off your fingers trying to buckle your seatbelt or grip the steering wheel.  We have spots really close to the entry doors to the elevators, which is awesome.  Also, we park our bikes behind our cars.  And miracle of all miracles... after a year, they are still there.  I know there's some theft here, but people don't just walk around taking things that don't belong to them here.  Granted, we probably annoy the people who park around us with a boatload of bikes parked by our spots, but they are super nice and don't complain.  At least not to our faces.

3.  We have six (why, yes, yes I did just say "six") toilets in our 4-bedroom apartment.  That's also something I hate, though.  Cleaning 6 toilets.  Really?  The good news is that if we ever all have a stomach virus at the same time, there will hopefully not be any crises involving toilets.  Now that I've said that, I'm sure one of my little sweethearts will bring home some sort of gastrointestinal festival for us all to partake in.  The bad news is that 6 toilets don't clean themselves.

 Here are photos of two of our toilets.  Your day is now complete.

4.  La Brioche's Cafe Mocha.  La Brioche is a bakery chain around these parts.  I'm sure it's around other parts, too, but I've never encountered one in the US.  Anyhoo... I lamented not being able to get a peppermint mocha at Starbucks here for awhile.  Until La Brioche opened down by our beach.  And then I tried one of their Cafe Mochas.  And the clouds parted.  And the angels might have been singing.  Or that could have been me.  Either way, they are divine, and I no longer even really go to Starbucks anymore.  And for all you Pumpkin Spice Latte lovers who may be reading... don't even think about ordering one of those.  They don't have them in the UAE, and they'd probably laugh at you if you ordered one.

5.  We live on a beach.  There is a beach that is about a 5-minute walk from our front door.  That includes the wait for the elevator. 

6.  The clothes dryer that we purchased.  Best purchase ever.  In my life.  EVER.  In my pre-dryer days, I lived a life that paralleled Cinderella's.  And not her glory-moments at the ball.  I may be exaggerating a teeny bit, but let me explain.  Washers here hold about 1/3 of the capacity that my front-loader behemoth did in Tennessee.  I could do a load of clothes every day and be caught up on laundry.  NOT HERE.  I have to do three loads of clothes EVERY DAY just to keep up.  And the really glorious part of that is that before we got the dryer, I hung our laundry out to dry on the two drying racks we had on our balcony.  With clothespins and everything, ya'll!  It was super glamorous, I know.  And just to paint an even prettier picture... you sweat a lot when it's 115 outside and you're hanging clothes up.  The good news?  Clothes will air dry here in the summer in an hour.  Awesome.  But as it gets closer to December, it takes progressively longer for them to dry, so that three loads a day was becoming impossible.  So we bought a dryer.  It's a condenser dryer.  Which I had never even heard of.  It's not vented to the outside at all, but instead we have to empty a water tank after every load.  It also makes our teeny laundry room hot.  But it DRIES MY CLOTHES!!!  And I love it like a fat kid loves cake.  (That was totally not PC, but we aren't PC in the UAE.)  (That rhymed, just so ya know!)  Also, as a total bonus our clothes are no longer crunchy (and anyone who has ever hung their clothes to dry knows exactly what I'm talking about.)

Our laundry room is not much bigger than what you see here.

7.  There are more things that I love about my apartment, but I'm tired of typing.

I don't think there have ever been more exciting photos put on a blog in the history of blogs.  Do you?

Visibilty - not good...

We get some crazy fog here in Abu Dhabi.

Of course it's like this when I have to drive the girls to school.  It makes the driving super fun.  It doesn't burn off like I'm used to.  Today, it lingered until about 10:30 am. 

Licensed to drive...

So it's December already, and I haven't posted anything for over a month.

I'll blame it on being a UAE-licensed driver.  Now that I can drive myself around instead of calling a cab or waiting on my (awesome) husband to get home from work to take me somewhere, I just don't make as much time for blogging.

Not that I'm jet-setting around town or anything.  But I could if I wanted to.

I think the real problem is that when I'm at home, I can think of so many other things I *NEED* to do instead of blogging.  So this morning, I dropped the kids off at school at 7:40.  I knew I had to go to Marina Mall, which is ALL THE WAY on the other side of Abu Dhabi from where we live.  (I hope you felt sympathy for me there, although I sort of hope you didn't, because it's really only about a 30 minute drive from our apartment, and there are also about 15 malls in Abu Dhabi.  HUGE malls.  So I could have probably chosen some others to go to.)  But, I digress... so after I dropped off the kids and stopped to get gas, I drove out to the mall.  The only problem is, the mall doesn't open until 10, like most malls, and I didn't want to drive 20 minutes home, in the opposite direction, to turn around an hour later and drive again.  So that's the reason I'm blogging today.  Because I'm sitting in a Caribou Coffee (and they have something BETTER than a Starbucks Peppermint Mocha!) drinking a Mint Condition Mocha.  And because I don't have twelve other things I could be doing at home... I'm blogging!  Hooray!

Although the title of my blog post is "Licensed to drive," and I've written very little about driving here.

So here goes:

Driving here is crazy compared to most cities in the U.S.  With that being said, I haven't driven in New York City, or Chicago, or a vast number of other major metropolitan areas.  I have driven in Atlanta, Miami, St. Louis, and Nashville.  =)  And probably some other big ones that I don't remember.  I have to say, though, that I LOVE driving here.  Even though I got lost in Dubai (twice) and I've gotten lost many times in Abu Dhabi, I still love it.  

If you've ever done any research about driving here, you'd know that most people think it's just crazy and out of control.  And in a way, it is crazy (and sometimes out of control) but for the most part, people are just aggressive.  And sometimes their aggressiveness makes them do things you and I might consider crazy (or stupid).  Caleb told me when I first got here to just imagine in every situation what would be the most ridiculous thing for someone to do, and they'll most likely do it.  And he was right. 

I'm not a scientist, or even a rocket surgeon, but I think I've figured out why driving here is better (in my opinion) than in the U.S.  Because although people are aggressive... they are attentive.  Because people don't text and drive here.  I have almost been involved in accidents (twice in one day, even) with people in the states who can't be bothered to pay attention to driving because they need to text "LOL" to someone.

I won't go into how I rolled down my window and yelled at one person to "Put the phone down and DRIVE!" while my husband and kids were in the car with me. (That's probably WHY I decided to yell at the guy.)

Back to driving in the UAE.  People honk.  A lot.  It's not really considered rude... it's more of a communication tool.  People honk before they cut you off... kind of as a way to warn you that they're coming into your lane even though there's not really room for them.  However... you start to realize that people will always let you in here.  They don't play that little game with each other where they inch forward and don't budge to allow someone in front of them. They let you in.  And so you let them in.

I could probably write a bunch of other things that are different about driving here, but I'll save those for another day when I'm out and make time for blogging.  Instead I'll just close with two sentences that came out of my mouth the other day while I was driving.  (Both said very calmly, I might add...)

• "Gee, I really hope that bus doesn't hit us."
• "I hope that lady doesn't decide to cross right now because she'll probably get run over."

Nice.

To all my friends with cell phones:  Don't text and drive.  Or I might beat you the next time I see you.

Big foot...

Just a warning... If you are a woman, and your feet are larger than a size 8, most stores in Abu Dhabi will not have shoes that fit you.  They will also look at you either in awe, or with pity, wondering how you managed to get those big clown feet into their store without knocking over all the displays.

I know.  I've been there.

My name is Lynn, and I have ginormous feet.  US women's size 10 to be exact.  UK size 42, which actually does sound kind of ginormous.  And it's not like I knew that 42 was the UK conversion for US 10.  The first store I went into had to look that up, because apparently no one has EVER come into the store looking for shoes that big before.

I was truly amazed when looking for shoes for Hannah.  She's 13.  She's 5'8".  She wears an 8.  Sometimes an 8.5.  Apparently she has ginormous feet, too.  It got to the point where we wouldn't even look at the shoes in the store we entered, we'd just ask if they had the size we needed.

Size 8.  Really?

There are close to a bazillion malls here.  For a place with so many malls, maybe they need to have just one store somewhere that sells shoes to people who haven't had their feet bound?

No photos of my feet in this post, because I'm guessing you would run away screaming in horror from the sheer size.

The first time I ever got lost in Dubai...

There I was... all alone.. driving to Dubai to watch one of Hannah's volleyball games.  I had already prepared myself for the drive by printing out the directions from Google maps, and by using the GPS on my old android phone.  I should probably let you know that I had been a licensed UAE driver for, like, 5 days.  What could possibly go wrong?

First, Google maps directions over here are ridiculously vague.  Not really any street names to speak of.  Honestly, the first four directions on my way out of my apartment building were:

1. Head north.
2. Turn left.
3. Turn left.
4. Slight right.

I'm not even kidding.  At least I had the GPS telling me when to turn left.  Most of the time.  It also gave me extremely helpful directions whenever I needed to enter a roundabout:  slight right, then turn left.  Wow... thanks for that.  I'm not even going to go into how people have a tendency to drive like lunatics here... that's another post for another day.

Anyway, I make it all the way to Dubai, and, no lie... I am three minutes from my destination.  I'm so proud of myself that I've made it this far.  I would have been able to see the school I was going to had I known what to look for.  I'm pretty sure you can guess what happened next.  I missed a turn.  My trusty GPS failed to tell me "slight left."  And I couldn't actually pick up the printout from Google and read it right then.

The next thing I know... I'm completely lost in a city I've never been to before.  A huge one, at that.  One where lots of people speak English, but most of it is broken.

I ended up calling my husband.  This is sort of how that conversation went:

•  Me:  (crying) I missed a turn and I don't have any idea where I am and my GPS lost it's signal and I don't even know what to do.
• Him:  Woman.  You can't see when you're crying.  Find a safe place to pull over and call me right back.
•  Me:  (still crying) I've been driving around lost for over 20 minutes, and I haven't found a safe place to pull over yet.  I'll call you back.

The rest of the conversation we had when I called him back is pretty much meaningless.  I stopped crying and eventually found a place to pull over.  I even found the school I needed to get to.

It probably seems a little strange to be so worried about getting lost.  When you're in a country where streets aren't marked well, and people drive like complete crazy people, and there's not always places to turn around, and there's entirely too much construction going on at one time, and you've been warned that one wrong turn can take you 50km out of your way... possibly into the desert... you kind of get a little freaked out.  Anyway, that was a really long run-on sentence.

One thing you do here is take small victories whenever you can find them.  I found where I needed to be, despite driving 30km in a giant circle, arriving at my destination 20 minutes late with smudged mascara.  Score!

Oh, and just so I can post a photo... because blog posts are always more fun with a photo, and I didn't think to take one while I was there because apparently I was too busy crying... here is the school I was driving to:

 

Photo from Gems World Academy

Nice, huh?

Not quite PRIME, but pretty darn good...

One of the things I knew I'd really miss when we left the US was our Amazon Prime membership.  It allowed me to purchase many things I probably didn't need but thought I did without ever having to leave my house.  And then I'd receive it in two days.  Because, you know, I probably couldn't have survived if I didn't receive it that fast.  And then my loving husband pretty much sold all of it on craigslist.  And then he wrote a book about it.  And now I have to hear all about what an incredible author he is.

The point is... I love Amazon Prime.  Alas, two-day shipping no longer applies to me.  Turns out it was only five-day shipping to the UAE.  That's pretty impressive, in my opinion. 

 

It cost a bunch, but we got what we needed.  Or maybe we didn't really need it.  But we got what we wanted and couldn't find (yet) over here.

Leaving on jet plane (part 2)...

I figured I should get this part written before I forgot about the really fun parts of it.  This is part 2 of our trip all the way from the US to Abu Dhabi.  When we left off, we were sitting in O'Hare Aiport, and we had just finished our $100 dinner while sitting on the floor near our gate... waiting anxiously to board our flight.

The airline first announced that Business Class was now boarding.  At that point in time, I kid you not, I have never seen anything remotely like what I saw.  Virtually all of the people that were waiting in the gate area... a couple hundred, I'm sure, crowded into line in the walkway.  And when I say crowded, it's because I can't even come close to thinking of a word to describe it.  And I use the term "line" very loosely. It was seriously like cattle being herded.  At that point in time, I had serious questions about how we were ever going to be able to board the plane in a timely fashion, let alone find any overhead storage space. 

One thing I've learned over here is that there are some cultures that can not even comprehend the concept of personal space.  AT ALL.  They will seriously be all up on your back while you're waiting in line.  I often wonder if, for the lack of a better way to describe it, someone ripped a really stinky SBD (silent but deadly) fart, if a little more space could be created.  Alas, I can't accomplish that task on demand, so I may never know. Anyway, there are tons of people waiting in a huge, jumbled mass that doesn't even come close to resembling a line, and the gate attendants are literally SHOUTING for people to form a line and allow the people whose row numbers have been called to board.  Not a chance.  I'm not sure if it was just a language barrier, or if people just really didn't care.  I seriously thought there might be a revolt.  They called for families with children 5 and under to board.  Praise God.  Seriously.  And then I sort of internally freaked out trying to figure out how we were going to get through all those people.  Against all of my better judgement, I decided that since we were already sitting on the ground reasonably close to the front of the herd... we would just enter at the front of the line.  Turns out, it worked, and we were able to leave the herd behind. 

We found our seats... we had the four in the center section, and the aisle seat right next to them.  I was worried when I saw our seat assignments online that since there was a wall (bulkhead?) behind us, we wouldn't be able to recline our seats at all.  I was pleasantly surprised to find we could.  The girls were also thrilled to find little pouches in their seat pockets. 

The little pouch contained a sleep mask, some earplugs, a pair of socks, and a toothbrush with a single-use thingamajig of toothpaste. I can not even describe how awesome they thought these were.  Until the flight attendants dropped off a little activity bag for each of the girls.  It included things like cards, a puzzle, colored pencils, a game, a coloring book, and stickers.  Way more awesome.  Even more exciting, though, was that THESE little beauties were on the back of EVERY seat.

Photo found here

 

 

Seriously?  Best. Thing.  EVER.  They were entertained for the vast majority of the 14-hour flight.  There were movie choices for adults or children... there were even games that they could play with the little phone/handset thing.  With the exception of a few times I had to grab coloring books and crayons out of someone's backpack, these kept my children completely entertained.

 

No one ate dinner.  I don't even know what it was, except that it was "vegetarian" because they ran out of chicken, and no one wanted fish or lamb.  The flight attendants felt sorry for us, I think, and were sweet enough to find other snacks and stuff to feed the girls. 

 

Everything went well for about the next 8 hours.  For some reason, my children had the insane ability to stay awake for the entire day up until this point.  As they started to fall asleep one after the other, things got really pleasant.  For a little while.  Then, bless their little hearts, they were just so uncomfortable to be sitting and trying to sleep that Hannah and I tried to come up with creative ways to keep them happy.  I would hold one on my lap (yeah, there was so much room for that!)  Hannah would trade her seat with one of them.  At one point in time, the two littlest were laying (or is it lying?  I can never remember that rule) next to each other in on the seats in between us. 

 

About an hour before we arrived, I called Caleb from the airplane.  That was fun... I was trying to be as quick as I could because it cost $6 a minute.  He had told me before we left to go ahead and get the internet on the plane so we could keep in touch while we were in the air.  Only... no internet on the plane.  I HAD to speak with him because he was hoping to have our preliminary residence visas waiting for us at the airport, and I would have to have them stamped at immigration, along with our passports.  I needed to know where to pick them up.  So I tried to be really quiet while talking to my husband from something like 35,000 feet in the air. 

 

Anyway, we made it.  Finally.  We got off the plane, got through customs and immigration, got our luggage, and found Caleb.  We walked outside, and I gasped.  It was so hot and humid, it literally took my breath away. 

 

After about 10 minutes in the humidity, I decided that I would not be able to have bangs in Abu Dhabi.  So I'm growing them out.