The Watts Adventure in the UAE

Love it and Leave it

2012-01-02T10:21:00.000-08:00

Having one day left in Dubai, and on the second day of a partial inexplicable power outage, with extension cords jerry-rigged around the place so that our maid's room and TV room have power, I need to pause 'n ponder what it is I will miss and what I can't wait to leave behind. With three and a half years in the Middle-east under our belts, and after completing a 3-year contract with the government colleges, I leave the place with mixed feelings; those of great excitement (and trepidation) for what is next, as well as a certain sadness (and relief) over what we leave behind.

I will certainly miss the wonderful diversity of the children's schools - the European moms in skinny jeans, Arab moms in headscarves and veils, British school principals, Zimbabwean teachers, and the American moms who stand out for their volunteerism and a tendency to talk way too loud. Never have I with such quickness found people to be friends with among both neighbors and colleagues.

I will definitely miss the fabulous winter weather, all the gorgeous places for al fresco dining, and the night time January BBQs. But I will be happy not to suffer ever again through the oppressive 125-degree months, and the fear that your own skin is cooking when you find yourself unprepared in the summer sun.

I will surely miss the hotel pools where the burkini and string bikini sit side by side and where the smiley East-Asian staff will clean your sunglasses and bring you tiny bits of melon on a stick. But what I will not miss, and yet I feel so sorry about, are the labor camps where thousands and thousands of toiling construction workers live in such poor cramped conditions while they build for Dubai its next 7-star hotel and the world's tallest most luxurious residences.

I will categorically (yet slightly shamefully) miss having a full-time housekeeper and the freedom to read the paper while someone is cooking our dinner, having someone to sweep up broken glass, wash nasty lunch boxes, iron Billy's shirts (and undershirts) and to wash dishes so I can help the kids with their homework. All with a smile. Chamry, Nazrin and Dilani. We will miss you.

I will sweetly miss teaching the Emirati college gals, those crazy, decked out, emotional, teacher-dependent students, who taught me how to wear my make up, and how to trust in Allah when nothing else makes sense. But I will not miss the rigid and chaotic and oppressive management of my place of employment. I don't work there any more so I can be ever so slightly more candid in this space now. Can you hear my great sigh of relief?

I will most absolutely and positively miss the proximity to the exotic places you can fly to from Dubai. We've managed Jordan, India, Turkey, Oman, Italy and Croatia during our time here, and I only regret having not yet made it to Egypt and Sri Lanka and Cyprus.

What I am so truly happy to kiss goodbye are the reckless driving, irrational road rage, institutional classism, limited freedom of speech, the fact that it's illegal to curse and use your middle finger in public (some close calls for sure), the illogical and sporadically enforced modesty laws, the fabulous inefficacy of the phone company, the internet provider, the power company, the immigration office and the truly unbelievable landlords.

Now heading off to a good spell in Chicago, we are sure to get back to our American roots, while we fondly remember our Emirates Adventure. Yalla!

Hellen Keller. On Sheikh Zayed Road.

2011-12-13T09:25:00.000-08:00

Fetching my 9-year-old Liam from the school library, we bumped into his school mate, whom I'll call 'Little A'. This is the same sweet pal whose massive SUV Liam had ridden in, free-style you might say, with no seat belt on the infamous Sheikh Zayed Road, several weeks ago. Little A, a gentle and super-smart boy, who according to Liam's teacher nudges Liam to care about his 'potential' in class, was very excited to see me and to ask when Liam could come around to play after school again. I said well, maybe tomorrow. Check with your Mom and I'll be happy to drive Liam over, as I had promised myself that Liam would not again ride in that car, with the family's driver, who doesn't bother to make the kids belt up.

But then Little A says: But it's ok now. We found a seat belt. Under the seats. Liam can wear it.

OK, I'm thinking. Maybe my freaked-out-safety-mom lecture to Liam about being assertive in the cars of friends has trickled down. Maybe he said something to Little A about not being allowed to ride home with him any more. Let's explore this. So I say: Well that's great. I am glad you found the seat belts. You will wear one too. right?

At this point, Mr. O'dell, the Canadian librarian takes an interest. Mr. O'Dell says: Yes, everyone needs a seat belt.

But Little A says: No no no. We are Muslim we have Allah. And we didn't find all of the seat belts anyway.

Mr. O'dell and I shoot each other a look that says two things: Number One: Oh boy, can you believe what we are hearing? And Number Two: Here is an opportunity to make some impact, take some action, say something meaningful. Or not.

And I say: Well Little A, that is not quite enough. And besides we are not Muslims anyway. (I am now sounding as illogical as Little A).

Little A says: No, no, no, don't worry. Liam can wear a seat belt yes. But then he holds out his hand. And kind of like Helen Keller, he draws onto it with the other hand, almost as if signing the letters of his name. We say this thing, says Little A, and we do this thing on our hand, which he shows me again. You know, it protects us.

Like a prayer? I say? Can you say this prayer for Liam. (All the more illogical I become as I reason with this child..) And what about you. Can you please ALSO wear your seat belt in the car? You know, all the time?

Little A says (chuckling at this point, I am sure at the thought of his saying prayers for little Christian Liam): OK. Yes. I can do it for Liam too. And we can wear our belts.

I mean it Little A.

Yes, OK, yes. Can Liam come to my house then?

And then I say, you know Little A, Mr. O'Dell and I, we are North Americans, safety is so important to us, and scientists know it's true that seat belts protect your life. Keep you alive. Right?

And Little A says, more seriously this time: Really? OK I see. Can Liam come to my house then? We will wear our belts.

Yes, I say, he can come. But I have plenty of time. I don't mind driving you guys myself.

Romance, Intimacy and S-E-X on the Radio

2011-12-05T23:10:00.001-08:00

The irony of maintaining your adventure blog is having the least amount of time for it when the most newsworthy and bloggable items are happening. As well, when you find yourself unemployed, and imagine the bliss of having time for 'things that matter', you end up with much less free time than when you were giving 50 odd hours a week to your work. What I mean to say is I how remiss I feel at not quite keeping up with this blog as I would have hoped.

But enough remorse, especially since I have two hours on my hands and lots to share. But not to worry, I won't carry on here for pages. Instead I vow anew to post more frequent sound bites (perhaps every Tuesday) about what I and my Brady-Watts clan are up to here in the United Arab Emirates, and for today, I'll be tooting my own horn.

Twice recently I landed on a radio show called 'Talking of Books', sponsored by Magrudy's bookshops here in Dubai. My dear friend Thom got me roped in to the program to talk about the classic 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn', and I must say my debut was thrilling. A bookish endeavor indeed, this going on the radio about a book. But for someone who's always enjoyed a good yarn, and being rather militant about book clubs over the years, this was a welcome and thoroughly enjoyed opportunity. During my first spell on the show, I got to talk about American culture, lovable characters, a daring author (Betty Smith) and I became so comfortable in my skin that the host invited me back again, for a chance to be the 'lead reviewer'. So on I went, this time for an hour spot about a deep and quirky book called 1Q84, in which we are taken on a strange journey through modern Tokyo, through the eyes of a disturbed 17 year old girl. The challenge in both cases was to lay out the themes, some of them rather adult-ish (erotic memories of your mom and a strange man, etc.), while not offending our mixed Western-Arab audience with reference to S-E-X and J-E-W-S. Though I sweat through all layers of clothes both times on the show, I found the confidence to almost pull it off, using words like 'intimate' and 'bedroom' in place of 'sexy' and 'sex' (though a kind friend told me never again to refer to myself as a 'novice' on the radio waves), and as a result I've been asked to be a moderator at the Emirates Lit Fest next year. Wish me luck!

Happy to Drive

2011-10-10T09:29:00.000-07:00

The homework and pimple control, teachers notes and play dates, emotional middle school fits and all the miscellany of our children's daily schtick are under my jurisdiction now, since I am on a professional break. Yes, the benefits of unemployment reach beyond the beach workouts on week days, for which, by the way, I received a lynching after gloating about it on Facebook. Indeed, I am getting reacquainted with the world of my kids, while fine-tuning my choppy front crawl.

In the recent three years, with both parents (mostly) working, we said 'no' to outings that required too much parent help. We avoided after-school activities and play dates unless they were in the neighborhood. And we didn't commit to any bake sales, because saying 'yes' either meant overtaxing our nanny or relying on other parents to drive our kids around town. Though we did manage without too much trouble and much to our children's delight, to send Krispy Kreme donuts on potluck days.

But without a proper job any more, I can say yes to play dates and I have ingredients stacked up on the counter for the Fall Concert Bake Sale this week. If I could just figure out how to get my lousy Egyptian oven to cooperate.

But the trick now is determining when to 'just say no', being diplomatic with my kids' teachers and yes, trying my best to tolerate the other moms. All are more easily said than done. At least for me they are.

A few days ago, 9-year-old Liam arranged a play date with a lovely Pakistani kid whom I've met several times at school. I made final transit arrangements with his mom over the phone. The afternoon would go like this: her driver would fetch the kids after school (only 4 in total), bring them to their residence, a place called 'Executive Towers', and I could pick Liam up a few hours later.

Considering the high fees we pay at this school, and the fact that this family has a driver, which is not uncommon here, I wrongly assumed that the kids would be safely belted into the car for the 10 minute ride home. The route to their towers, though short, includes the infamous Sheikh Zayed Road, a beautiful 16 lane automatic tollway through Dubai, where reckless drivers cause mayhem and daily wrecks.

All went well, Liam had an incident-free ride, followed by a few great hours at the Executive Towers, and I picked him up before dinner. However, though they do have a driver, two maids, and by Liam's description a 'really nice car', this car does not actually have functioning seat belts. Liam just said, 'Nope. There weren't any.' After many discussions with my local college students about this issue, and knowing that big families actually have the seat belts removed (citing that they are a hindrance to fitting an over-sized family into the car) I know Liam was telling the truth. But I figured wrongly, that my kids and their friends and people enrolled at our school had the same knowledge, the same sensitivity to safety, the same car-riding practice that we do. And not for the first time on this Middle-East adventure of ours, I was wrong. Potentially dead wrong.

So for now, as the next play date is on my turf, in my car and at my house, I can teach a safety thing or two to another kid. The hard part is later, when I've got to tell the other mom that no, I am very sorry, for everyone's personal safety, Liam cannot ride in her car. And since I do not have a job, I can honestly say, I will be happy to drive.

Rolls Royce in the Carpool Lane

2011-09-14T09:52:00.000-07:00

Two weeks into my new life in Dubai without a job, here are some things to be observed:

American moms talk the loudest
You can't have enough bling on your flipflops for this lifestyle
Massive marquee handbags are de rigeur among the moms here, especially Louis Vuitton
Flipping the bird still gets top billing in the local newspapers
It is ok to drive your illegally black-tinted windowed-Bentley through the carpool lane, and stop it on the wrong side
Race cars on Sheikh Zayed Road are even worse in broad daylight than they are on weekend evenings. Who are these guys and why the reckless antics on work-days?
Fake grass is way more expensive than wall-to-wall carpet (OMG did I really just have fake turf installed in my yard... for shame)
Most kids here have their hair combed (or moussed or braided) by 'their maid'. We still awkwardly insist on calling our helper a nanny or a housekeeper. I mean, isn't the word 'maid' a bit antiquated, at least by American standards?
The neighbor's helpers still don't like to see me washing my own car (though perhaps I should do it without a jug of red wine nearby)
And yes, I do miss the collegiality of work

However, after a hard-fought but rewarding three-year contract, I have returned to the UAE, to a new post. I gave up my faculty job at the Higher Colleges of Technology and we're switching over to my husband's work visa, which makes me his dependent in the eyes of immigration (as soon as his visa actually gets through, that is). So I am now driving the kids to school, checking out the PTA and having leisurely morning coffee. Just call me Jumeirah Jane..

Transcontinental Ham

2011-08-25T05:18:00.000-07:00

Chicago roasted coffee, Illinois venison steaks, ground elk meat from Colorado and a few dozen pixies from Chicago's Fanny Mae candy. Along with butterscotch chips, real salami (the kind with pork), giant marshmallows, bacon, ham, and two cases of Girl Scout Cookies. The frozen meats, if packed properly in newspaper with giant ziplock bags swaddled in blue jeans, will survive the 24 hour door-to-door trip from Tinley Park to our freezer in Dubai, with only some mild thaw. Though I'm still trying to figure out the best way to transport a couple of dozen bagels to our freezer in Dubai. After three years of back and forth from the Middle-East, our routine is well-rehearsed, and the six giant bags and six carry-ons sit strewn across the 'packing room' in various states of dishevel as I blog away a little stress while I think over the best spot in the right bag for the 10 pound ham. Oh the ham.. So tasty in our Muslim country villa.

But the emotional toll it takes on everyone is never any different. Grandma says she always starts feeling bad at least 2 days before we leave, even when 7-year-old Rosie is raising cane. And as we wind down our time here after a 2-month summer in America, 9-year-old Liam starts asking how much time he's got left. What he really means is how many more bike rides on Grandma's suburban streets, how many more goodnight hugs from Gramps, and how many more breakfasts with his cousins and the dogs.

At the same time the kids are all looking forward to getting back home to our neighborhood in Dubai, to their international schools, to the beach that'll still be too hot to walk on when we get there on Sunday, to our Jordanian, Indian and New Zealand neighbors, to the most fabulous malls in the world, to the water parks, the schwarma stands and yes, to a doting housekeeper. But we are also going back to the reckless roads, the occasional cultural misunderstandings, the homesickness during Thanksgiving and to a place nearly a world away from our family's very solid American core. We are indeed so lucky yet so sad about leaving again that I really wonder is there something wrong with us?

And so it's at about this time when I get that low-grade headache, partly from the melancholy of leaving my parents in their giant house behind us, but also from the excitement of being re-united with Billy who's spent most of the summer without us working in the desert.

The most excellent part of this year's return is that I am not going back to my college faculty post. I am taking a break to soak in the Arabian culture from a new perspective, as our in-house homework over-seer, taxi-driver and piano page-turner. Wish me luck! And do come and visit.

Getting Political About It

2011-06-14T23:01:00.000-07:00

I do not really like to get political in public, or on the Internet, or even in the company of some of my closest and dearest relatives and friends. Besides, there is so much else to talk about! But today I will get political.

There is no doubt that the liberties afforded in the USA are a point of pride and consolation when we get out into our world and find out how it works in other countries. And the fact that so many people read and replied on this blog and via Facebook to my latest post shows that American-style freedom is something we all hold dear.

But I have undertaken a personal mission to get around this world, and ever since my first trip to Sahuarita, Mexico at around age 14, I have been roaming the globe whenever possible, and encountering what really are the normal experiences we 'foreigners' are bound to have. Anyone who has ever been a foreigner, migrant, immigrant, guest worker, exchange student, refugee, backpacker or world traveller of any sort will know what it means to find yourself in a place where they don't talk like you do, dress like you do, drive like you do, clean their bathrooms like you do, cook the food like you do and generally behave with one another like you do back home.

For me, there were the awful French supermarket ladies who switched into local Alsacian dialect every time they saw my Purdue University sweatshirt come through the doors. I soon learned that to get by in France, it was best not to go about town in sport shoes or with American College sweatshirts (all the rage in 1980's America). In Japan I was scolded by my local tycoon boss for doing the culturally unthinkable - stopping unannounced a the home of a newfound (and hard-won) friend. 'It is NOT DONE here, Kurisuteeena-San'. And the scariest of the foreigner encounters I remember is running through the slums of Rio with my husband Billy, from the thugs who were literally coming out of the woodwork to follow us through 'the hood'. From that point onwards we did as instructed by our hotel clerk, and hired taxis.

But as I look at this 'reading my lips' incident, the first reaction I have, as many of you did, is to feel insulted at a very basic level along with a quiet unwillingness to forgive. But as I stand back, here on the very next day, I slowly pull away from the unnatural (for me) intolerance and recall the comment made by my mother here yesterday. She wrote, "people experience discrimination and abuse from those who have power in the UAE, USA, and every other country in the world. It is ugly wherever it happens". And she is right. There are extremist and intolerant types in every country. It is human nature for those with power to abuse it to their best and worst advantage, yet it is unfair to write off the entire culture for the deeds of their worst citizens. It is not unfair however, to write off an entire regime or government as a corrupt violator of human rights. And while I may continue to take up residence here, I will consider the continued invitation for Westerners like me to live and work here as indication of a small and reluctant consent to change for the better.

Liar Liar

2011-06-14T07:57:00.000-07:00

I honked the horn today at a local (Emirati) lady in her golden Lexus after she cut me off in the parking structure of our favourite mall. And you would think, that in a country where folks get sent to jail for flipping the bird, using the F word in public and kissing in restaurants, I would have let the situation drop. I do, after all, call this place 'home' for now and have willingly taken up residency.

But it's well over a hundred degrees outside, and yes, it gets humid here in the Dubai desert, and I had already spent a good chunk of the day in line at the phone company, where everyone seemed to go off on their coffee break just as I arrived at their desk. And when I honk, she throws her car into park to block my way, and the foul frustration starts spilling out of my mouth from within my sealed and air-conditioned car, while the woman who cut me off eyes me spitefully through her rear view mirror.

At some point, my 10-year-old son from the back seat says something like, 'I think she can read your lips Mom'. And when the most senior looking Indian security guy, of the three staff who gather to try and divert traffic from our little scene, seems to be taking instructions from the lady driver and gets onto his walky talky for back up and possibly the police, I take notice and call my husband Billy. First of all, I need him to pick up our daughter at school since I can see this situation heading into a lengthy incident. But also I need him to know that I am in a potentially legally difficult situation.

In fact, as recently as last month, a big news story featured another naughty expat who was jailed for showing his middle finger. While I'm in discussion with Billy, the security comes over to me and says, as gently as he can, 'she wants apology madum'. At this point, the boys in the back seat are starting to get nervous and I am enraged and in shock that a simple 'you-cut-me-off-so-I-honk-at-you' scenario had escalated to this level. So I hang up with my husband, get out of my car, walk over to speak to the lady with three sweaty Indian security guys as witnesses and a whole line of cars backing up and watching the scene unfold. I try to say 'would you mind moving your car' and she says 'I will not move my car we need the police'.
'What for?'
'I saw you shouting at me and I saw your bad words why you say such bad words with children in the car?'
'You cut me off, I was following the rules of the road'
'But in a parking garage' she says ' you must give way, this is not a road'
'I was not shouting I was talking with my children in the back seat'
And then she says 'you are such a LIAR'
And I say 'pardon?'
And she says 'you must know this is the UAE, we accept you being here but you must be in the UAE with our rules, this is NOT America, this is not Europe, this is the UAE'.

And in so many ironic ways she was right, and therefore, I was thinking, oh dear, I have a flight out in 10 days and any altercation with the police could trap me in this country and possibly land me in jail.

'I apologize'.
'Not like that you apologize, like you mean it'.

At this point I realize I have to do what I tell my 10-year-old, and say it like I mean it. And so, I suck it up, I say 'I'm very sorry Ma'm'. 'I'm quite sorry'. 'Please forgive me'. Etc. And so on. And so forth. She finally rolls up her window, and I, oddly grateful that I had put on good makeup, and a pair of designer sunglasses (there was an audience at this point), walk back to the car, get in with the boys, put it into drive, and let the big tears roll.

Open Toe, Oh No..

2011-05-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

Posh hotel bars, fashionably overpriced restaurants, and the biggest and best of the world's malls and buildings are what make Dubai Dubai. And though we've been here almost three years now, we still once in a while get thrown by the pretentions that come with the riduculous Gulf-Arabic bravado.

It happened again last night when we were out and about with some new friends and came across the dress code enforcement at The Address Hotel, one of the posher hotels near the Dubai Mall and overlooking the famous dancing fountain.

As you go around town, especially in the malls, which are by the way, the social pulse of Dubai, the mix of locals in traditional Arab dress, white gowns for the men (dishtashas) and black ones for the women (abayas), intermingled with the westerners in smart and strappy and sometimes appallingly skimpy mall-wear is a peculiarity worthy of comment. What's impressive is the stubbornness of the local traditions, especially with regards to dress, amidst the influx of foreign American-Eagle clad residents like us. The fact that the local women can still go around so completely covered-up, and have coffee within arm's reach of me and my skinny fully-revealed arms and (not so skinny) calves and feet, is mysterious, impressive, and downright confusing. Yes, modernization has brought Landcruisers and Starbucks, American teachers and European (censored) movies, but the local norms for modesty have resisted. But I digress.

After a long and lovely meal at Abdelwahab, a fountain-side Arabic restaurant, where we dined on small birds, lamb kebobs and Lebanese wine, and another hateful drink called Arak, we took the short walk over to The Address Hotel, which yes, is pompously named, where we would have an after-dinner drink. The slow walk between the venues had us all damp from exertion, as the high temp earlier in the day was 116 degrees farenheit (47 Celcius). Even at 11pm, it was still balmy. And as we sidled through the sleek lobby to the lounge, and aimed to walk past the beefy black-dressed earpiece-wearing security, my husband Billy was gently grabbed by the elbow, pulled aside, and told that 'next time', he needs to leave his sandals at home. As he caught up to us inside and explained why he fell behind, and after a minute or two of balking at such ridiculousness, we decided that the lounge was too loud and headed to the quieter bar at the top of the hotel. But no, the open-toe shoe police (yet more beefy handsome men in black) barred our entry to the elevator, citing again, the sandals. Our Palestinian friend Walid tried an argument that went something like this: 'my tourist friend here (Billy) is from California'. But to no avail. The security folks at least entertained us with a dialogue on the nuances of their dress code. Open-toe shoes you see, are only permitted on women, and yes, on men in local Arabic dress, the white dishtasha. And even on the arms of two beautiful women, and in the company of an Arabic man, Billy would be turned away. After a few more friendly words with security, and some further dress-code education, we ceased and desisted, headed to the loud bar where we slinked past the security with Billy in his expensive but frowned-upon sandals, and had open-toe drinks with the mortals in the noise.

Call me Habibti

2011-04-09T04:14:00.000-07:00

The UAE locals do not exactly invite friendship from expats like me. And though we live in the same neighborhoods, shop in the same stores and eat in the same restaurants, only a very few of us Westerners have ever crossed the threshold of an Emirati house. Those of us lucky enough to teach the nation's college women, do get invited to big events such as the lavish bling-ish weddings and engagement parties so cherished among them - but these are Ladies Only events hosted at the country's famous hotel ballrooms or ladies cultural centers, and even once you've been to a few, you continue to feel like an outsider.

And so we carry on here, socializing amongst the other foreigners, Arabs and Westerners alike, being seemingly ignored by the locals. The most typical interaction many people have with Emiratis happens when we go to pay our electric bills or renew our Residence Visas, as those government posts are the jobs held by the locals who work. And when we do go about these necessary errands, the best way to describe the attitude towards us is aloof, perhaps cold, and sometimes utterly word-less. It is part of the culture we say, and in my opinion, it's to be expected in a place where we, the tank-top wearing foul-mouthed foreigners have moved in, set up our pork-eating households, and demanded CNN and Disney from their Satellite providers. Wouldn't you give us the cold shoulder?

But this week I turned a corner and was softened once again to the locals as I passed through the gate of the neighborhood park in my car. With my bike in the back seat, I unrolled the window and offered an Arabic hello 'Salamaleikum' to the veiled lady clerk. As if the veil had been lifted, I noted a change right away in her return 'Alaikum Salam'. She had recognized my car (one of the oldest to pass through their gate I am sure) or perhaps my Oakley-clad blonde head, and decided to offer me the discount advice, explaining the advantages of park membership and offering to help me with the forms. And all of this was finished with a veiled smile and the Arabic word for 'my dear'. She called me Habibti.

(For more on local weddings, check my April 11 post from last year)

Can I Help You Madum?

2011-02-20T03:35:00.001-08:00

If you live in the UAE, you get used to the sand, the dust and the poor air-quality, and you're not surprised at the occasional sandstorm. You might even have to walk through the sand to get to your car from your front door, or to your office from the parking lot. Our first house here in the UAE was on a sand road, on which the municipality would run a plough from time to time, in an effort to fill in the ruts and stamp down the drifts, especially after windy spells. This, we thought, was so civilized.

What all of this sand means on a daily basis however, is quickly broken down shoes (the sand eats into the space between the souls and the leather), dirty feet (I see now the symbolic importance of the bible's 'washing of the feet' story), filthy windows on your house (despite regular attempts to clean them), and regular smoggy days. It also means a newly washed car is dirty almost immediately, and a seldom washed car looks like it's just sailed off the dunes from a desert safari.

My own car, a 13 year old Volvo V70, otherwise known as the 'green machine', the 'dream machine', and the 'two-and-a-half Blackberry' (it cost roughly the same as 2 1/2 Blackberries at the fateful time of purchase) is especially susceptible to the dirt, as its forest green color nicely contrasts with the dust that gathers in its crevices. It should be noted that my husband drives a lovely new people-moving SUV, because his schedule allows for the shifting of children from home to school and to various other activities, or so he has argued.

So I am left to care for my ageing car, which means washing it from time to time, when the visibility through the sandy windows becomes a safety concern. And if you need to wash your car, it is easily accomplished, as every mall has a band of car-washers, some with ecofriendly mobile power-washers. Or, many families, ours included, employ a housekeeper whose job might include the washing of cars. As a last resort, if you don't trust the mall-guys and if your housekeeper's job is altogether too full with kid care and cooking, you might have a guy in your neighborhood from India or Pakistan who comes along every second day and washes your car for a monthly fee.

But I have not been satisfied with any of these options, either because they didn't do the stellar job I would expect, or because I simply like to wash my car myself. Why not? When the winter weather brings mild temps and sunny (but dusty) days, it is perfect for hanging out with the garden hose and a bucket taking care of your trusted automobile. Or so you would think.

Yesterday I was out in the sand shoulder in front of our villa working on my green, mean, two and a half blackberry dream machine, and I could not get any peace. It is apparently, such a spectacle, a baseball-hatted white woman actually doing a chore for herself in this culture, that passersby could not help but to offer me solutions. A neighbor I know kindly offered the services of her 'car boy', who 'has his evenings free', and at least three neighborhood workers, either from a nearby construction site, or local gardeners or houskeepers stopped by and gently asked 'Can I Help You Madum?'

The only tempting thing about these offers is that by saying yes, I'm offering work to people who've got very little of it. And if my saying 'no thanks' causes whispers in the neighborhood, I sometimes wonder if I should just give in, go local, and get my own car boy. But alas, I am a nearly middle-aged American woman who enjoys the satisfaction of a job well done. Why shouldn't I wash my own car?

Jordanian Jaunt

2011-02-01T22:00:00.000-08:00

In our house here in the dusty suburb of Mirdif, we have a love-hate relationship with the Emirate of Dubai and the entire UAE. For instance, local road etiquette nearly sends my husband Billy packing, straight to the visa cancellation office and onto the next plane for America. It's a kind of harrassment, this driving, like a high-speed up-close lights-flashing tailgate, a 150KPH bumper-to-bumper lane change, and a two-unbuckled-babies in the front seat mentality, which gets so bad sometimes that we sit beside each other in the car and say why, just why are we putting oursleves and our children through this madness, this danger, this reckless disregard. At the same time, if we tire of the normal road home, it's completely acceptable to hop the curb, put the car into four wheel drive and cruise over the dunes when it suits us. Like I said: Love it. Hate it.

But then we take a trip to a lovely nearby country like Oman or a little further afield to Jordan, to the real and slowly modernizing middle-east and we remember the benefits of planting ourselves in what is the Las Vegas of the Arabian Gulf.

Last week we took the three hour flight to Jordan and spent seven days touring the Arab country, rich in biblical and archaeological heritage and friendly to Christians. Yes, our driver even has a Christmas tree. Only right after we left did the politics and protesters start to heat up, and in Jordan's case, a more or less peaceful government changeover is taking place.

The most striking thing for us about Jordan is that the experiences we had seemed uniquely Jordanian. After almost three years in Dubai, I can say with some certainty that a 'real' street corner where people are speaking Arabic is hard to come by. 80 % of the residents here are either Western teachers or other professionals, or minimally paid labourers from India and Sri Lanka, all of whom communicate in English (or Urdu or Pashto..).

In Jordan, when I attempted my very weak Arabic hello: 'Salaam Alaikum', an actual Arabic greeting and even a smile would be sent back my way, a small encouragement to break out my Arabic phrase book (or Blackberry). I was actually inspired to have my six-year-old coach me through the Arabic numbers, just in case.

But the real bonus in Jordan is the sites. The ancient Roman City of Jerash, built out of stone, and the even more ancient 300BC city of Petra, carved into stone, are treasures largely unknown to us before, and in Petra's case, so monumental and amazingly preserved that we were astounded at our failure to come here sooner. What were we waiting for?

In seven days we were able to see most of the highlights, including the Roman City of Jerash near the capital, with its meticulously carved column-tops and recently dug-out Roman shopping nooks. We moved along to the Dead Sea, where we pretended to lie on a sofa and watch TV in the thick but strangely clear water, and then dug up the therapeutic mud to bathe ourselves in the mineral-rich earth. We then carried on to the biblical Lot's Cave, which contains a bread oven and a small tomb, and then spent two nights and one amazing day in Petra.

Petra is at once awe-striking and humbling, both in it's architectural ingenuity and archaeological setting. Traipsing through the 10-foot-wide yet hundreds-of-meters-tall canyon pathway in order to get to the most impressive structures we were stricken by the most visible displays of tectonic shifts - you can see just where the massive formations were broken apart by quakes. Even the kids were more or less quieted by the uniquely massive Treasury building carved completely from gorgeous orange rock, deep into the side of the formation, where you can still peer in to see tombs and imagine the civil goings-on that took place there. If you have stamina, and amazingly even six-year-old Rosie stayed with us, you also can treck via donkey and on foot to the Monastery, set higher up a narrow rocky path, where the remaining structure is even more massive, and if you can hoist yourself into the entryway, they are still allowing you to enter the 1400-year-old building, carved completely into a rock face.

Our children withstood the challenges of this rigourous vacation I am sure because of the breakfasts and our fantastic driver and guide, Ibrahim. As a party of five we were able to book a private 4-star package tour. Surprisingly, what they call 4 stars in Jordan was even posher than expected, with gorgeous breakfast buffets, laid out with egg cooking stations, made-to-order pancakes, local cheeses, granolas, olives, hummous, dried, fresh and preserved fruits and of course, hot dogs and hot chocolate. Only on the very last day was there any moaning and groaning as we toured the Amman Citadel, mostly because climbing on stuff was forbidden.

The day after proudly finishing the 9 hour day at Petra, we were ready to relax and carried on to our final destination of Aqaba. Aqaba is on the Red Sea, just a few Kilometers across from Israel and Egypt. It was just warm enough to swim in the water, which was full of the most beautiful and various colored rocks. The tourist class here seemed to be the whitest and most Western looking people we had come across the whole week. Where were all these tourists in Petra? We didn't see them there. The seaside village of Aqaba was lovely and quiet and experiencing a building boom, with giant ads from AbuDhabi development companies lining the newly finished roads. My guess is it won't be the same when we go back again in a few years time. Lucky us.

Fat Dead Birds and Egyptian Guitar

2011-01-18T20:55:00.000-08:00

Giant poisoned pigeons are dropping from the sky here. The dead birds are literally falling from the rooftops in the Mirdif suburb of Dubai and there is not even a phenomenal meteorogical event to blame. At one point we counted 22 oversized pigeons hanging out on the ledge over our front door, and our deadbeat landlord actually responded quickly to this pest complaint. He then passed the buck to the Dubai municipality, who hastily dispatched a team, who without our consent, laid poison where the birds were roosting, and indeed, all around the property. Almost as quickly as they packed up their ladders and were on their way, some of the pesky birds started skulking off to die, while others fell over dead, right off the rooftop onto our carport, into the pots of bougainvillaes and into the swimming pool. Unfortunately, though the city pest control will come along and kill the pests, clean up is not part of the deal, and so disposal of the birds falls to my dutiful germophobe husband Billy, and his trowel. That's right, tidy Japanese-born with American-swear-words Billy, grocery store plastic bags and trowel in hand, doing his best not to inhale while scooping up dead fat pigeons, along with unfortunate beautiful non-pest birds, taking himself right to an anti-bacterial bath post-haste.

And yes, it's so easy to say they'd never do it this way in America, but there are many other of our daily experiences that they don't have in America either. Right after a bird-disposal episode last weekend, with my patio door open, I heard music, acoustic guitar and Arabic voice, in such a professional quality that I thought for sure it must be a neighbor's radio. But six-year-old Rosie, unafraid of seeming nosey, checked it out and came back confirm. Yusef's dad from Egypt was sitting on his terrace in full performance mode. And even with my limited Arabic, an expression came to mind which translates literally as 'joy, praise, or thankfulness for an event or person that was just mentioned'. Masha'Allah.

British Gulf Santa

2010-12-28T00:13:00.000-08:00

The Christmas holiday season in the United Arab Emirates is a unique experience that I've now managed three times, though not without some disorientation and a few small emotional setbacks. And since I'm known in some circles to be an 'epic crybaby', the emotional challenges are to be expected.

For my first Arabic Chrismas in 2008, The Sharjah Co-op Supermarket was the site of my distress when the stock assistant could not decode my request for graham crackers. So be damned my holiday cheesecake, bring on the store-bought Lebanese pastry, but only after a bleary wander around with sunglass-covered eyes to regain my composure. Surely the piles of unwrapped gifts and the long days spent working and siteseeing with holiday visitors could be pointed to as triggers for my breakdown.

During my second holiday attempt, Christmas 2009, the fact of my working on Christmas Day put me in such a foul mood that I was in a constant state of budding migraine, while I still managed the holiday 'to do' list and prepared my students for final exams. Why, I thought to myself, did I ever decide to come to the Muslim world to work? Fortunately the kids' holiday pageant, with all its partridges and pear trees got me connected back to my roots, and a rousing round of 'O Christmas Tree' set me right. More or less.

And this year, though I thought I knew what to expect, I still was caught unawares when, as rumour has it, the library staff were asked to remove their Christmas decorations. And OK, I get it, this is a college for locals only, and to have a local passport means you are a Muslim, and well, in a Muslim institution we need to behave culturally appropriately. All fine. Yes. But when you drive down the Palm Jumeira, the palm-shaped island where every last tourist has to plant his foot, and you see giant inflatable Santas dangling from the balconies, and when Abu Dhabi is bragging over their world's-most-expensive Christmas tree, our college restrictions seem simply arcane.

Work environment aside, I still managed to have a lovely Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and I powered on with appropriate cheer. At a festive Christmas Eve party, I witnessed the funniest of characters. I can't explain how unnerving yet totally amusing it was for my American children, when the surprise Santa opened his mouth - and 'talked British'. This was followed by an at-home Christmas day, on which we cooked local goat with my Mom and brother from America, assembled toys and played host to our Muslim neighbor kids, all the while giving thanks for the goodies under the tree, delivered by the funny-talking British Gulf Santa.

Roughing Up the Muffins

2010-12-14T03:11:00.000-08:00

I thought we were in good shape when I woke up this morning, for it's the week before Christmas, there are 9 or 10 gifts wrapped and under the tree, and I am fairly certain that Santa knows what to bring on the 24th. After a look at 8-year-old Liam's breakfast-table head however, on which I rushedly performed a haircut last night, I realized I am just barely faking it. Not wanting him to look like a Dickensian waif in the school pageant this evening, I somehow made him look like a worse and modern version, the neglected private-school child of socialite parents. I wish.

When 6-year-old Rosie, who is perpetually confused about what day it is, comes into my get-ready-for-work zone insisting that she have the Santa hat, I say, the Santa hat has not been purchased yet. That event (starring my other 2 neglected-socialite-kids) is after school, this evening, in fact it's over 12 hours from now, and so Rosie honey, we will get the Santa hat while you are at school, no problem. But no, she says, the show is TO-DAY, tonight is TO-DAY and the Santa hat is for TO-DAY not TO-NIGHT. I say well, look, here is a pair of sunglasses, you were meant to have a santa hat and sunglasses, right? You have half the get-up. This is good, No? But no indeed. Those are boy-colored sunglasses. Dark green. Oh please, Please Rosie, are you serious?

So as I rush through my morning make-up and add 'proper haircut' and 'girl-colored sunglasses' to my mental to-do list, Dickensian (or do you prefer Socialite) Waif number three son Brady, informs me that the lovely home-made muffins and oat-choco cookies I so lovingly baked up long after they all went to sleep, are not healthy enough for the grade five holiday picnic. What?! I mean seriously? So how about a little fruit salad mom? With some roasted sprinkled flax seeds and a drizzle of lemon for freshness. At that point I remember a fairly decent mommy-memoir, though please forgive my not remembering the author's name, where the opening scene is a frantic working mom, unpacking the store bought holiday pie and purposely roughing it up, putting it on her own dish, sprinkling some extra powdered sugar on top, and serving up as her home-made potluck contribution. And so perhaps I'll follow her example, and rough up my perfect and already truly home-made muffins, and tell Brady to explain that these are totally organic, old-fashioned roughed up working-mother muffins. With a sprinkle of flax.

That's Harrassment. H-A-R-R-A-S-S...

2010-12-03T05:41:00.001-08:00

Imagine the only blonde in a room full of 17-year-old Arabic boys in a city auditorium in the Middle-East. Imagine the hormones and the stifled cat calls, in a room where the vast majority of pupils, 250 or so, do not have female high school teachers, have not personally met an American or any native-English speaker, and are not permitted by the culture or their families to co-mingle with girls. Then imagine that it's your job, that you have been specially elected, or selected, rather drafted, to sell the government college to these boys, with a microphone and a very big stage and snazzy projected video, not because you have a knack with youngsters, or because you are an exceptional educator, but because you are blonde, you wear the right make up and are perceived to have what it takes to 'attract'. Imagine all this and there you have it, a day in the life on the faculty of a government college in the United Arab Emirates.

A couple of months ago, my male supervisor, a tall and well-tanned Arizona Phd, stopped by my cubicle to tell me with a chuckle, that I'd made 'the list'. So right away I'm thinking, what ridiculous overtime course, or lesson committee, or chaperoning duty is being slung my way. But he went on to explain that it was far more fun and much less labor-intensive that what I had imagined. Or so he thought.

His visit to my cube was followed by this emailed missive from our Dean of English, a short, brusk, 50-something-deep-voiced make-you-cry Scottish woman who truly runs the show. It reads:

"You have been identified as the people most likely to attract new students to join the college system. The key to the ‘why me?’ answer is the word “attract” 

We need the male teachers to visit the girls presentations and the female teachers to visit the boys ( getting the picture now ? ) We have a ready prepared script for you to read. All we ask is that you come along looking happy, confident, and just super thrilled to be there.

If the whole idea of this just scares you to death....talk to me. But really, for you, it will be nothing more than a ten minute guest appearance on stage."

I seriously took the whole thing as a compliment at first. That is, until I heard that a lovely college librarian, also on 'the list', was refusing to participate, on principle. Gee, I thought, am I completely without principles? A mere sucker for a smile and casual smarmy quip? Or was this a well-intentioned college marketing scheme gone just a little sideways?

Long Summer's Gone

2010-09-07T22:27:00.000-07:00

Been getting mini-bum saunas since returning to Dubai two weeks ago, at the ladies room at work. Water from the rooftop tank is so hot from the desert sun that as you sit your dainty derriere onto the commode, it's like trying to get into a bath that's still too hot. To be away from Dubai for two months, and then to come back during the holy month of Ramadan, when it's 115 degrees and humid, where you can't drink water in public during fasting hours until the holy month is over, can be a little shocking, if not draining.

We've lived here 2 years now and to certain things we've become accustomed, some of them shamefully so. Inexpensive help at home, for one. Having a smiley live-in nanny / cook / housekeeper (especially one that irons) is something I will never recover from once back on the normal part of the planet. Thank you Chamri! British English vernacular for another, as I sit here on a holiday recovering from 'the dreaded lurgy' I caught in Turkey, while my kids 'natter on' about the new neighbors. And then there are the gorgeous hotel bars on the Gulf, with their impeccably coiffed east-Asian staff, and cocktails stirred to perfection.

But despite soaking it up as expats in the Gulf, there is a nagging guilt sometimes that I might be helping to sustain a largely immigrant culture where the workers are often subtly oppressed and in many cases outright neglected and abused. A story in the paper this week revealed 75 stranded Pakistani and Indian laborers whose company closed up shop and left them on the un-airconditioned premises during desert summer, with no passports, money or food. The local mosque and Indian embassy came forward with aid, but only after these guys suffered several miserable days without safe drinking water or a cool place to rest.

And then there is the delicate issue of other nannies we know in the community, some of them working for families who delay and withhold their pay, keep their passports, work them night and day, and provide merely a cot in the pantry as accommodation. Is living in a country where these things are commonplace a tacit approval of the prevailing cultural norms? The shameful thing about it is that when these issues are right in front of my face, I have the mind to say to myself "What on Earth am I doing here?" But then my own reality takes over, and my gaze shifts over to my kids, their expensive school shoes, our next holiday plans, the working conditions at the women's college where I work, and all of the abuse, neglect and human rights issues recede into near non-existence.

An American Minority

2010-06-23T22:26:00.000-07:00

Dubai holds up a fantastic reputation for its shopping, the outrageous theme-park-style malls, and for having more international brands represented than any other city in the world. But just try and find a simple America-themed t-shirt, and you start to wonder what all the fuss is about.

Over the last couple of weeks, we've been poorly parenting our children by schlepping them all over town to pubs and malls to view the World Cup games, at sometimes less than family-friendly hours of the day. But in our quest to get into the spirit, we've been disappointed in the shops, which offer almost every major and minor footballing country's colors and emblems on jerseys, hats, pins, flags, and even Crocs shoes, except for the United States. We've also been disappointed in our own wardrobes, which are surprisingly thin in patriotic wear, and so we've had to settle for blue OBAMA ball caps to make our American affiliation known, in a world of Brits, Continental Europeans, and large contingent of South Africans.

Our impression that Americans are underrepresented in this part of the world was confirmed last night, when the English and Americans were playing separate matches in the same time slot. We showed up at the Irish Village which promised to be airing both matches, and found that the England game was playing in the stadium tent on two back-to-back jumbo screens, while the American match was showing on a small screen that was basically holding the two jumbo England screens together. What can be said for the sparse group of Americans assembled in front of their modest screen, is that the vibe was far more civilized than the England section, with much less smoke and fewer falling-down fans. In the end, the Americans and Brits all ambled out, satisfied with wins and looking forward to the next round. Luckily, since we're departing tonight for summer break, we'll be in America by then, where we can watch the game, properly attired, in red and white and blue.

Gifts and Goodies of Another Sort

2010-06-15T00:24:00.001-07:00

Laundry soap in 20-kilo bags, gallon-cans of milk powder, 10-Kilo bags of rice, 10-packs of Dove soap, chocolates, cookies, shampoo, conditioner, traditional Sri Lankan saris and six-dollar pairs of jeans, a brand new fridge, still-in-the-box IKEA computer desk, lofted bedframe, second hand queen mattress, and various baby supplies. Our nanny Chamri has been with us for almost two years now, and these are the items which, over that period, she has slowly beens stockpiling under her bed and in our various closets, in preparation for a major cargo shipment to support her family back home, in Colombo. By her estimate, she is sending enough milk powder to last her husband's extended family for an entire year. The fridge will be the family's first functional one in over four years, and the lofted bedframe is for a home-health worker she hopes to employ to take care of her aging grandma.

I only came to understand the extent of her project two nights ago, while we were having dinner, when a festival of Sri Lankan friends of Chamri's materialized in our front garden, with tape, giant rolls of plastic and other random salvaged packing materials, to help her get ready for the cargo guys who were due to pick up her shipment the next morning. Since it was still over a hundred degrees out there, it was a hot project, undertaken with the jovial industriousness that Santa in America might possess on Christmas Eve. While we worked through dinner, and offered help that was politely refused, "No, no Madum, we are not needing any help", Chamri went back and forth past the dining room carrying the vast stores of sundry goods out to her friends, who arranged and rearranged it, tied it, taped it and bundled it, into a huge mass of lumpy gray freight, with gifts and goodies of a very special sort.

Gifts and Goodies

2010-06-03T02:17:00.000-07:00

The natives are getting restless. Students are emailing me, waiting for their grades to appear, and showing up at my desk with chocolates and picture frames, perfumes and fancy make up, hoping that their generosity (soft bribery) might soften up their serious English teacher. Some might call it grade grubbing. But seriously, I am a rule-following North American teacher who knows how to separate business from nonsense, and although I am a sucker for lovely gift baskets, and some ribbon tied around a bunch of flowers, or a neatly wrapped department-store gift, I do manage (I am pretty sure) to blindly apply the stringent criteria to their projects, papers and presentations. One of my most difficult groups of students, who had such a hard time getting their act together, came around to my desk with a little speech prepared: 'We know we made you very tired Miss, but we are happy for you helping us'. And that about sums it up.

Widening Horizons

2010-04-15T23:48:00.000-07:00

Though I am often disgruntled about what is disallowed at the college, I was stunned this week by what was actually allowed. Ten male students from from our brother college were allowed to come to the auditorium on the women's campus and perform a charity concert. When it was first announced, I assumed it would be something traditional or somber. But as the event neared, the tickets sold out, and my students all informed me rather coyly that they would not be coming to my noon class on Thursday. I was then asked 'kindly', by management, to please attend the event as a chaperone, where a raucous event ensued. The music was booming, the boys were jamming out covers of Arabic pop tunes and even some original music. The girls were dancing in their seats, filming with their blackberries, screaming their applause, and despite being told constantly to 'SSSIT' by the various deans and department heads wandering the aisles, they had an awesome hour and a half of normal college debauchery.

Though it might sound completely normal to you, it is not normal in a place where the culture prohibits dancing, live music (except the singing of the Koran) and mixing of the sexes. Knowing all of this, the institution where I work continues to be a strange college-aged environment. The students at the college are day students, and their exit from the college each day is restricted by their 'out' passes. So if a student with a 2pm out-pass approaches the security gate at say, 1:45, she will be directly turned back into college grounds by an Indian security guard. Families who send their girls to our college, (women in most countries but still 'girls' in this one) are comforted by our closed-campus environment. Guardians of our students have full access to their student records, and they even get to sign off on permissions for field trips. Crazy you might think, since most 20 year old women in the US or Europe, Australia and China, and Japan too, enjoy full-blown adult status. In these countries, 20 year old women can get drivers licenses, enroll in college, visit their friends, and more or less come and go as they please, on their own.

But this is a newly opened culture, a culture where many women over 60 did not attend anything more than the mosque school. Advancements are on the horizon, but we, and they, must be patient, lest all of the rich culture that goes along with the restrictive tradition be washed away with modernization. But such patience does not come easy to this modern American faculty member, and so often still I am struck silent by a student who is not ashamed to say that her husband won't let her get a driving license, or her brother disallows her to attend musical events at the college. I should be grateful for the honesty I suppose, but I can't help but be shocked by the unabashed 'OK-ed-ness' with the day-to-day restrictions placed on them by the patriarchal family figures. Not stirring the pot does not come easily for me, but pot-stirrers in this culture do not last long in their jobs, and cultural craziness aside, I more or less like my job. So my tongue remains tied (most of the time), and I am grateful for the growing number of students from the more open families, who can comfortably attend live music at the college, and talk about their wishes openly to visit my country, or even get a job and a license to drive.

Full Cover or Full Disclosure?

2010-04-11T02:35:00.000-07:00

You eventually start to feel as if you you more or less 'get the culture', but it takes time.

This was explained to me many months ago, after a frazzling day of sand clouds, traffic jams, and demanding privileged students. As time goes by, some things do indeed become clearer. Muslim modesty, for example, by way of covering your hair, is a great comfort to many of our students, who say that fretting over bed-head would surely make them late for college. And so when the female-only occasions arise, such as wedding parties, the doing of the hair and the choosing of the gown becomes a monumental event deserving of a whole week's planning and preparation. I was lucky enough to experience a local wedding, first hand, when my colleague was invited to one 'with guests'.

Here is what I knew to expect:

The reception is a female-only event.
Food will be extravagent and come in huge amounts.
The guest list will be in the hundreds, if not thousands.
Alcohol is not permitted.
Gowns (fancy and in some cases very revealing) will be worn underneath the traditional black abayas.

But here is what I learned in person, at the actual event:

Weddings are where you'll find the greatest collection and quantity of the world's gold.
There will be loud, booming Arabic music.
All wait-staff will be female.
There will be no cameras.
Dancing, all females of course, is encouraged.
Dancing will be mostly of the belly-wiggling and hair-swinging variety.
Dancing is done between the tables and on a cat-walk type of stage, and in a manner that would seem to most westerners as if you have a genuine romantic interest in the people around you, and mind you, all of the people around you are women.
There might be an MC, in our case, a gorgeous Egyptian woman, to encourage above-mentioned dancing and hooting and hollaring.
Large whole lamb bones are ceremoniously served up on top of heaps of gorgeous aromatic rice.
The finest most delicious selection of hot beverages will be continously offered, including Arabic coffee, sweetened Turkish mint tea, Indian milk tea and green tea.
Arabic appetizers are the best food feature of the evening, such as hummous, olives, dates, warm Arabic breads, eggplant and pomegranate salads with warm figs.
The bride and groom only appear late into the evening.
When the groom does arrive, the women wearing gorgeous evening gowns and letting down their hair, will hurriedly cover back up, out of cultural tradition and respect for the new bride and groom.
Some women will remain as covered as they do on the street.
Others will flaunt their typically voluptuous figures.
Perfume servers will come round with Disney-like giant perfume bottles to help you freshen up.
Strong Arabic incense will welcome you to the venue and continue to burn throughout the night.
And foreigners will be warmly welcomed and kissed by the mothers of the bride and groom.

How honoured we were to be invited, and part of the 500-plus guest list! If any of you ever get the chance to attend an Arabic wedding, here is my advice: practice your belly dancing, starve yourself the day before, and see if you can borrow some gold.

Snakes are not Snacks, or are they?

2010-03-23T09:07:00.001-07:00

Snakes are not snacks, right? And fuzzy / fizzy drinks?? Which is it?

Now that I've properly medicated my migraine, I'd like to put all the ridiculousness of my work day in order.

For starters, one of my 'to do' items was to get through the marking of 21 research papers on nutrition. Don't know how I expected to do this, with four hours of special event duty (involving a cute wallpapered MINI COOPER car, see below), one session professional training, and a test to finish preparing for teachers. But alas, the student writings are what provide the color and chuckle to my week, and I am grateful these reports on eating habits were there at my desk. As you might imagine, 'snack' and 'coke' are top ten words in the world of nutrition, fuzzy (fizzy) drinks and oh yes fatty asses, ooops, I mean fatty acids. When the first student said something like, 'my family has a bad habit of eating snakes in front of the TV', I was like, giggle giggle, funny little Microsoft typo, her family eats snakes, teehee. But as I went on to find fizzy spelled fuzzy, and acid spelled asses, and yep, coke spelled like this:: cock, I really started wondering where the paper dictionaries are, and the lined composition books, and spelling practice lists. Seriously, I am not making these up: 'family snaking is a big problem', 'our snake habit is harming our health', and 'sweet snakes are my weakness' were all among the neatly organized fairly well cited little research papers.

Between quick bouts of grading these gems, I had 'escort duty' at the business department mini-mall project, where local retailers, such as Mini Cooper, BMW, Body Shop and Sunglass Hut, set up stalls, to be run by students, for an exercise in retail management. Just as my monthly migraine was gearing up for a massive crescendo, I somehow got drafted to escort female students on Mini Cooper test drives, as it would be improper for the males running the MINI stall to be alone in the car with our female students. Yes, you are all thinking, come on Christina, how many of us get paid to sit in the passenger seat of a zippy car on a sunny day and let students drive us around with the sunroof open? Well, let me just share a few facts: Most of our students are not licensed drivers. Of those who are licensed, many simply have the license as a matter of their education, and do not actually get to practice real driving. In addition, as this was a marketing thing for MINI, I was told: let them enjoy the drive, read: let them blare Indian pop music with their friends in the back seat as you drive around nearly missing the light posts, curbs and security guards lining the route. And last facts: my migraine meds were simply not working and I am employed by an institution where calling in sick, or going home with a headache, is not an easily-done thing.

So it's no wonder that when I finally get home to my husband whose car had just been hit and run in front of the kids' school, after we just dented up the vehicle ourselves by backing into a local fisherman's well over the weekend, that I burst into hysterics. That's when I went into the house, found myself a snake, a fuzzy drink, and a bowlful of fatty asses.

Rainy Days

2010-03-07T21:32:00.000-08:00

I've been here in the Middle-East for two glorious winters, so I can now pronounce that I am an expert on UAE climate, don't you think? Despite the horrid 120 degree summers, which do begin before teaching ends and we all go away for the worst of it, the UAE winters are gorgeous, cool, dry, sunny stretches of pleasant eat-outdoors weather. My husband Billy has been taking every opportunity to fire up the grill, not only for the perfectly grilled mini-chicken pieces (harder to find hormone-grown plump birds here), but for the actual warmth provided by the grill on the chilly desert-winter nights. We actually refuse to dine in restaurants without al fresco seating right now, and routinely have our moring coffee outside. Life is good.

But last week, for the second time this winter, the rain came. It was as it is in novels, people smelling the rain, watching the sky for the rain, and predicting the rain for a few long unusually cloudy days, until the storm finally came and dumped several inches onto us and the sand, literally at once. They say it comes down harder and in greater quantities than in the past, and even more often. Though it hardly seems possible, since for two years now, there has been a sum total of two rainy spells each winter. When the downpour started, I have to say I was confused because we live in the Dubai Airport flight pattern, and the rain came down with such force that at first I thought it was a low-flying plane. But when it didn't stop after a minute and a half, I got out of bed, looked out onto the pool where I could hardly see its outline. It was a downpour, a fierce, heavy, steady opening of the sky. It went on like this for around an hour, after which I gently settled back into sleep, with the satisfaction of the unusual smell of rain in the air. How absolutely lovely I thought. The smell of rain.

The next morning's reality though, was anything but lovely. Roads were clogged and closed and blocked and cars were upto the runnung boards in water, plodding through to work and school, where everyone was late and nothing got done. The roads here are built to some strange desert standards, which means they simply do not drain, until the sun comes out to dry it up, or the big orange sucker trucks come to drain the low-lying roads and cart the water out to the gulf. So after an evening of rain-smell bliss, we suffered through two days of awful traffic, cancelled classes, required meetings and near-miss collisions with clueless people in the pond-strewn roads. There you have it. True Emirati Living.

Elephants and Chai

2010-02-01T00:09:00.000-08:00

If you've lived in the Gulf for a while, it's no big deal when your friends go off on a vacation to India. It's a normal thing, a 3-hour flight, like an extended weekend with the gals in Napa Valley. But to a lot of us, especially those from clean and remote North America, going to India is still exotic, a little scary, and well, a major undertaking. Or so I thought.

We decided to spend my two-week college break in India, largely because of the airfare (under $300 per ticket) and because our old pals from Colorado are now living in Bangalore and they extended an invitation to their home. We bought our tickets, borrowed a guide book, visited the pharmacist and off we were, two packs of malaria pills and one family-sized immodium pack later.

Our decision to stay in Southern India was made mostly with the kids in mind. India is big (who knew?) and road travel and day trips are slow. (...think 4 lanes of cars on two-lane roads, sharing with cows, cycles, monkeys, rickshaws and ladies carrying firewood on their heads..) We visited our friends in Bangalore for three days which included an all-day outing to Mysore. The palace there, where Indian royals still live, is well worth the potholed-three-hour treck from Bangalore, and the Hindu imagery painted and sculpted throughout the place is amazing. But poor 5-year-old Rosie, just when she was getting the hang of being a Christian in a Muslim country, we take her to a place where the gods have 12 arms and the heads of elephants. Surely, we tell ourselves, this confusion is really just a world-citizen in the making.

Our Banglore friends helped us arrange family-friendly lodging, first in Tea Country near Munnar, and then in the Backwaters, where the most popular activity is touring the canals via houseboat. Tea country is gorgeous and rugged, mile upon mile of nearly vertically planted groves of Tea, where every morning we looked out onto the green hills dotted with colorful and quiet tea workers picking the leaves by hand.

The best thing about hanging out in this part of India for me was the Masala Chai, a spicy Indian black tea served uniquely wherever you go. It's amazing with the caffeine that I got any sleep at all. The kids favorite part was surely the animals - the nature, the mango and papaya trees, cashew trees, vanilla beans, fields of lemon grass, cardamom, and coffee plantations, which all offered a natural background for outings, which was new and vibrant and funny, including a one-armed monkey eating coconuts and a guy chopping fruit with a giant cartoon-sized knife. We went on every India tourist's 'must-do' elephant ride where we fed the enormous laid-back animal whole pineapples onto the end of his curled trunk while sitting on his back. The boys absolutely loved the feeding part, and they were game to wait again in line, not for the ride, but to get the elephant to pluck food from their hands with his trunk. We also cruised the backwaters on a houseboat for a day, where we saw villagers doing their wash, rice workers out in their fields and Kingfishers diving for dinner. Billy enjoyed the bird viewing, which included cormorants, egrets, cranes, kingfishers and lots of other diving birds with funny names and beaks and bright green feet. But I'm sure he also agrees with me that the local fruit, chili omelets, and Indian sambar for breakfast made each day excellent before it even got started.

Burj Dubai, Oops, I Meant Burj Khalifa

2010-01-04T22:21:00.000-08:00

The opening of the world's tallest tower, The Burj Dubai, happened last night. Because the entire tower premises was reserved for VIPs, getting close was not an option, but we were lucky enough to watch it from the rooftop of a freind's villa. The view was lovely, and the 75 degree temperature was perfect for an evening outdoors.

If you follow this link, you can get an idea of what we saw.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yuk8bU-B5y4

The Burj Dubai (now renamed the Burj Khalifa by the Sheikh) is impressive against the modern but not very tall skyline of Dubai. It's over 800 meters tall, contains more than 50 elevators, houses Armani's flagship hotel, as well as deluxe residential flats and the world's tallest open-air observation deck, where a mere 50 dollar fee gets you access on the 'fast' elevator. And yes, it is shamefully impressive when you realize that so much of country's development has resulted in a massive world-famous debt crisis.

But alas, I have a job, and friends with cozy rooftops as well as an excellent family to kick around town with, so the debt crisis is as unreal to me as it might be to those of you who've never set foot in the middle east. The only really noticeable debt-related issue for us right now is that brunch reservations are easy to come by and the beaches are delightfully under-crowded. And oh yes, Billy's job has painlessly come to an end.

So we carry on with visits to our favorite stomping ground, the one-year-old Dubai Mall, which sits at the base of the Burj, where we've been dining regularly, not only to check in on the progress of the giant tower, but to take in the tallest choreographed fountain show in the world.

Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYeFFyFJxqk

National Day

2009-11-22T00:34:00.000-08:00

This week, the women at our college are celebrating National Day, and the country's 38th birthday, draping Emirati Flags over the doors, and wearing Sheikh Zayed-inspired buttons, sashes and even black, red and green nail polish. The atmosphere is so festive (green eye-shadow anyone? or gumballs with royal faces on them?) that it's been hard to accomplish anything serious in our classes.

Yesterday, to top off the festivities, we sojourned out the college gates on a 28-bus police-escorted convoy. The stated goal was to inspire national pride in the emirate's 'cultural and Islamic gems'. The highlight of this trip though, was an audience with His Highness (HH) Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, Crown Prince and Deputy Ruler of Sharjah, and his entourage. This royal personage and his escorts are not much older than our students. He is handsome, well groomed, and fashionable (see Ray Ban shades in picture). And though most of the students do not consent to being photographed themselves, not one of them was without a camera to capture the arrival of the Prince.

You can see that hundreds of students joined this trip, but what you don't see are the students left behind. A small number of our students, who are 18-23 years old, are still tightly controlled by their guardians (brothers, husbands and fathers) and were not allowed on the excursion due to the 'improper' amount of time being spent 'in public'. There are days when elements of this culture do send me scratching my head (or worse). But then something always reminds me that 30 years ago, when this country had just been founded, the situation was even more archaic. Colleges didn't accept women, girls were married off at 14, and females did not drive. So in the grand scheme of things, the fact that most of our students were allowed a fun day out, with their pals, their Blackberries and triple-hued makeup, I'd say progress is being made, one National Day at a time.

Desert Commute

2009-11-12T01:47:00.000-08:00

Since we moved from Sharjah into Dubai I've been enjoying my desert commute to work. We live on the edge of Dubai and the college is on the edge of Sharjah. So to avoid traffic, I head out onto a desert road and over the dunes into the neighboring emirate's outskirts. Though it doesn't compare to the colors of my San Francisco commute over the Golden Gate Bridge, or the gorgeous drop into Boulder on Highway 36, there is an elegance to the desert scenes, the camels, the sand, the mosques and the palms. Here are a few pics from a recent evening ride home.

Mosque TV or MTV?

2009-10-30T23:01:00.000-07:00

After a year of workouts at the college, it was time to shell out the bucks for a fancy Dubai gym membership. It's not that I didn't give working out at the office a try. Our college gym, shared by the men's and women's campuses, does have a 50 meter pool (closed for repair since February) as well as a half dozen 1990's treadmills. But with my gym-junkie history, a facility with limited hours and dated equipment was just not doing it for me. My mental and physical fitness needs were not being met.

So I joined Fitness First, a gulf-wide chain of health clubs, with dozens of classes each week, the newest equipment, chilled outdoor pools, coffee bar, spinning studio and the perkiest fitness trainers from Egypt, India and the Phillipines. And as with many of our UAE adventures, the gym experience has been full of things that don't quite make sense.

In the ladies locker room are multilingual signs suggesting that we preserve our modesty, by changing behind curtains and covering our bodies with towels. But then there are the massive banks of TV monitors in exercise areas, where every fifth wide-screen is tuned into MTV World, where you're sure to see Madonna in crude gyration mode, or Shakira in flesh colored leotard, writhing as if having an exotic (erotic) dream.

Now I'm all for modesty and respecting the local norms, and I will admit that when the kids are not around, Billy and I tune into the old MTV to see how far behind we've fallen in our pop-culture hole. But I'd like to ask the gym managers if they don't think it's a little much to directly request our compliance with modesty code while showing the most immodest of offerings from satellite TV?

And if that's not enough, there's mid-day Friday - holy time for Muslims, when the route to the gym is clogged with mosque-goers rushing to make the holy hour and parking illegally all over the roads, roundabouts and medians. The gym is indeed a little quieter at this time. But what I just discovered is that if you do hop onto a treadmill, your TV options include not only the indecent videos of MTV, but also the Mosque TV channel, with bowing and praying traditionally-dressed Muslims in the mosque, directly next to the barely dressed dancers of MTV.

How funny and irreverent and religious and multicultural can the UAE manage to be?

I need only tear my eyes away from the the mosque TV and the MTV and direct them to the treadmill on my one side with a Muslim woman running with her hightech dry-fit headscarf, to the stinky German engineer on my other side with his hairy chest spilling out of a tank top. Maybe it's best to just stare out into space..

"You are Naughty Madam"

2009-10-22T03:06:00.001-07:00

Someone saw me moaning on Facebook last week about my fatigue, and our sick kids and Billy travelling for work, and they said to me, 'Don't you have a helper?'

The embarrassing thing is that yes, I do have a helper, a fantastic young smiley Sri Lankan helper who lives with us, packs lunch boxes, looks after our kids, does laundry, buys groceries, cooks our dinners and pulls the weeds from our tiny garden without being asked. She even said to me one recent Saturday morning, her day off, 'You are naughty madam', when she awoke to find I had washed the morning dishes. How dare me!

I honestly don't know what I'll do when I get back to America one day, where a nanny costs double-digits per hour, cleaning ladies are a true luxury and gardeners are deemed an indulgence. Seriously, the stress I feel at my college, which is basically an arm of the Islamic government, and the rage I often feel on the reckless and dangerous roads is real, warranted, and a veritable cause for lost sleep and many a new fine line on my face.

But the reality is, I do have good help and when it's time for bed-time stories with the kids, I can totally sink into the pillows with kids and books, and give myself completely to that coziest of parental tasks, knowing that the kitchen is being tidied and laundry getting put away. How totally lucky am I.

No One to Walk With

2009-10-17T00:21:00.001-07:00

Health and wellness are hot topics here in the UAE, where obesity is out of control and the country's reputation is growing as the Gulf's Diabetes capital . For the Muslim population the situation is complicated, with the separation of the sexes and the women's need to cover, creating barriers to the pursuit of active lifestyles. And then there's the Lebanese pastry counter at the supermarket, with all form of pistachio and honeyed sweet to mess with any attachment you might have to whole-grain living.

At home we think we're doing ok with our kids, who eat cheese and fruit after school and take brown bread in their lunch boxes. But we get sabotaged by school-sanctioned birthday celebrations which include not only cakes in the school, but candy bags sent home to mess with our delicate hard-won snack regime. And then our neighbor's housekeeper seems to love giving Rosie chocolates. But what can you do? Fortunately 9-year-old Brady knows how to read labels for sugars and fats, and even 5-year-old Rosie knows that 100% juice is the good kind. Woohoo for Boulder-inspired parental badgering!!!

But public health initiatives are behind the times in the UAE, and local moms are often young and inexperieced in the ways of healthy living. This week in class we discussed the topic of transport, and walking was listed as one of the many methods of getting around. We discussed the pros and cons of cars, donkeys, subways, bicycles, and yes, walking as ways to get from place to place. But when the idea of walking was presented as an option, loads of excuses were given as to why it is simply not done here, including bad weather 6 months out of 12, non-existent sidewalks and reckless drivers.

But the crux of the problem is actually rather sad and culturally difficult to get around. One of my students says she loves to walk and every so often she convinces a brother to take her to the mall to walk a few laps, with him. But when I asked her why she doesn't simply take a walk in the neighborhood before school in the morning, or after dinner while it is still light outside, she said 'No Miss. It is not allowed for girls to be alone. I am not allowed to walk outside our house by myself, and no one will go with me'. So in a culture where even a most basic part of living healthy is not allowed, what are these women to do?

Going Local

2009-09-23T00:37:00.000-07:00

I just realized that I did, in fact, average a weekly post during my first year in the UAE. Thanks to those of you who read, replied, and sent your positive vibes our way.

What you notice though, after a summer's absence, is how well you've settled, and adjusted to the new surroundings. First of all, you get braver. You get braver on the roads, and at the same time, less outraged at the recklessness, and more likely to go the wrong way (on purpose) up the exit ramps, and circumnavigate blocked intersections during power outages by hopping medians and staring down semi-truck drivers in your way.

You also get detached from your safe and beloved brands. Hertz rent-a-car, for example, was the only name I recognized (or trusted) when I needed a long-term rental last August. This year, however, with visitors coming and the need for another car, I asked around the office and secured a reservation at 'Orient Trading'. I didn't even sigh when I received in an email the basically hand-drawn scanned map to the location of Orient Trading, on a rock-strewn sand road in the ugliest and most industrial part of Sharjah. Who can complain when it comes at half the cost and the same coverage? To top it off, the lovely Indian Keralites in the rental office insisted I stay for tea, provided by their sweet-faced 16-year-old Chai Guy. And seriously, this was the best chai..

Finally, if you check out my 2-week-old Hyundai you'll see the seats are still sporting the plastic factory seat-covers, to preserve my sand and dust-free seats as long as possible. I couldn't help but grin when the Pakistani dealer guy asked if I'd like them removed and I said, 'Nope, I think I'm going local'.

A Visit to our Things

2009-07-13T11:55:00.001-07:00

I planned to take a break from non-family obligations this summer, to reconnect with my kids, my husband, the daily news, and life in the Western Hemisphere. But after a relaxing European vacation, and a week with Uncle Bern and old friends in Colorado, I'm feeling the urge to get back blogging. Go figure.

What sent me back into the blogosphere was a trip to the dusty self-store, where the bulk of our worldly belongings (two 20 x 20 storage units to be precise), now resides. We left our things there almost a year ago, re-planted ourselves in the middle east, and used my modest faculty furnture allowance to re-acquire family essentials, including beds, dining table, tv, sofa, rugs, lamps, toys and cheap local art. Funny thing is, we thought we were living light, acquiring only what we needed, and patted ourselves on the back for changing our lifestyle for the better. But when the end of the academic year came, the first of my three-year contract, we realized we were just kidding ourselves. As the movers packed us up to move to a better Dubai location, and they had to send for a second and then a third truck, I posted the disappointing news to facebook, where my brother quickly replied:

"Wow, now you have too much stuff in 2 countries."

So we rolled up to the self-store in a borrowed car, for a quick visit with our stuff, with the intention of extracting the following: kids books, camping gear, and photos. But now we know you cannot expect to simply show up, unlock, locate stuff, and head out again. At the sight of our things, boxed and labeled and stacked to the cieling, I was stricken speechless and sad, impressed and overwhelmed. It seems almost absurd, that we would choose this lifestyle, where you lovingly acquire books, bedspreads and art, and then pack them up for safe-keeping, only to decamp, relocate and start all over again. I can't really describe the turning-stomach feeling I had as I half-heartedly handled our boxes of stuff while our kids frolicked among their sleds, stuffed animals and outgrown carseats.

But eventually I got busy, shook off the dust, rifled through to find the target items, locked back up, and carried a trunk full of treasured objects back to our temporary digs here in Colorado. The kids are thrilled to have their old books, I've got plans to camp in the famous Oman Oasise and Billy can hold those childhood pictures near to his heart as we traipse into our second year abroad.

Paid Holiday

2009-06-19T06:52:00.000-07:00

Not quite sure what to do with myself now. I've just finished my first intense year (on a 3-year contract) at the Higher Colleges of Technology in the UAE.

How shall I sum it up?

Well, I'm worn out for starters. A full-time job in higher education in this country is more than a 40-hour work week. And there is a lot of pressure to please (and quickly educate) the students.

I do understand Islam more now. How could I not, living in conservative Sharjah, with the mosque speakers right in our back yard? In short, it appears to me that even for those who drink Corona at Dubai's hotel bars, Islam is still a way of life, with Fridays reserved for family and prayer, Allah to thank for all that is good (and bad), and traditional clothing a symbol of the deeply rooted Islamic tradition of the region.

As for the women of Islam, at least the 18-22-year-olds I've had access to, some willingly wear the shayla over their hair and happily have drivers and avoid doing things that are manly, because they find them distasteful, and because they interpret the Q'ran as such. Other women though are watched by their fathers and brothers and are only allowed outings to the mall with their mothers, and sometimes can't even pick out their own handbags (or husbands). And yet others are shedding the traditional robes and shaylas, in favour of flashy head-scarves and clingy (but all-covering) western clothes for outings to Lebanese restaurants, Victoria's Secret and coffee bars in European hotels. Some of our students pray between classes while others send text messages to forbidden boys. For many of our students, the daily commute to college is the most freedom they'll get in life, yet for others, it's a path to modern jobs side-by-side with men and people from Christian nations. For me it has been a daily challenge to understand the conflicts without balking or being disrepectful with my questions.

The country is advancing at break-neck speed in terms of tourism, high-speed transit, modern roads, awe-inspiring architecture and so on. But the state of foreign laborers and the servant class is sometimes appalling and jarringly different from that of the expats like us and the native well-to-do Emiratis. Imagine 8 taxi drivers from Pakistan sharing an 8 by 8 room in a compound with 800 others, working 70 hours per week for 400 dollars per month. And then imagine the average Emirati household income of 275,000 dollars per year (that's an average), and the average number of full-time servants per household is 5.

Overall, the year has been an invaluable experience for me and my family, despite the stress, the workload, the obvious class issues and oh, did I mention Dubai and Sharjah's traffic? I hope you'll stay with us as we move through the next two years, get deeper into the Gulf lifestyle and travel more widely around this part of the world. Thanks for reading!

Salty Water Parks and Geckos

2009-06-07T09:21:00.000-07:00

For much of the month of May, we'd been not doing much on the weekends, mostly because we're so worn ragged from the work weeks here, but also because we joined the local dusty swimming club, where we can wear our (my) immodest swimwear without police intervention, and even order beers at the poolside.

But when we realized we only had a few weeks left till summer break, we got re-inspired to explore around town again, and tick a few more destinations off our list. We started with a trip to the rural emirate of RAK, where we discovered a golf club that actually has a bar (still not sure how these out-of-sight places get permissions in this Muslim land), and a friend from the college was playing in the band. Seeing my normally buttoned up colleague kick his shoes off and jam on his bass guitar, as well as traditionally-dressed Emiratis with Coronas in buckets, were yet a few more cultural experiences to add to this blog.

Also unexpected has been the invasion all at once by two chubby lizards (and one baby) in our villa. Back in October we had a visit from pest control, and exactly six months later, as predicted by the professionals, the little pesky lizards have re-invaded, and they continue to cause me great distress (and Liam fantastic entertainment) when they hop out from the curtains every morning and every night. (pictures coming soon to my facebook page)

Finally, we took the kids to Wild Wadi, the world's most 'totally awesome' water park (Brady's words). Perched at the foot of Dubai's famous Sail-shaped Hotel, the Burj Al Arab, and right on the gulf, the views from anywhere in the park are amazing, and the surprisingly salty water in the attractions adds a special flavour to the terrifying rides.

Shamal

2009-06-04T04:27:00.001-07:00

We're having Shamal, a special windy weather system that cools things down a bit, and so the temps are lower than normal. See here:

105° Fri

110° Sat

111° Sun

112° Mon

And since the weather is not too hot, we'll be visiting another one of Dubai's water parks this weekend, Wild Wadi. The Emirate prides itself on its water attractions, and according to Brady, every 3rd grader has been to Wild Wadi at least a dozen times already. So we'll be finally catching up with the Jones's (or the Ibrahims). And enjoying the cool weekend..

Staying out of Trouble, Mostly...

2009-05-22T04:48:00.000-07:00

Mid-East Police, Part II

I knew there was a reason we hardly set foot on Sharjah's beaches, even though they're only ten minutes from home. We've settled in to a routine of heading to beaches in Dubai instead, as those beaches are a lot cleaner and I've managed not to have any run-ins with the Dubai police because of my style of swimwear.

But I had a lapse in judgement this morning, when I agreed to meet up with Svetlana, Brady's friend's mom at the long stretch of public beach in Sharjah next to the exclusive Sharjah Ladies Club. If we didn't have our boy children with us, we could have checked into the ladies club, where the beach is immaculate, secluded, and yes, all-female. However, I not only had the boys along, but Billy as well and I thought hey, if Brady's pal's family hangs out there, it can't be that bad. So we located our friends at the beach, a gorgeous Russian women in a bikini with her brood (It should be noted that because of her American husband who looks a lot like mine, brown and mysteriously ethnic, her kids might pass for locals, as mine do if they simply don't speak).

It didn't take me long though to notice that all the other beach-goers were Muslim families or modest East Asian families. I know you're thinking, not for the first time, 'Shame on you Yuppie Expat flouting local traditions', but seriously, it was over 100 degrees, the water was at least 85 and beckoning, and hey, this Emirate is more than 50% immigrant anyway. But as I said, I was having a big episode of poor judgement, and maybe even experiencing a little bit of peer pressure. So as the kids ran towards the water, I dropped our gear and peeled off my sundress to reveal what I feel is a fairly modest Speedo bathing suit, and then, as if on cue, the Sharjah Police Landcruiser rolled up, its windows rolled down, with Emirati Police Guys inside shouting 'NOT ALLOWED, LADIES COVER UP'. They rolled to a stop, and patiently waited, and watched, as we peeled our sundresses back on.

Svetlana, who's been here longer than I have, grumbled 'stupid Sharjah, stupid stupid sharjah' (in her Ukranian accent), while I, coming back to my senses said, look, it is their country after all, this is Sharjah, we know the deal, we know the rules, shame on us really.

Of course this set the tone for the rest of our beach visit. But as I said, it was over 100 degrees and the kids had no reason to be annoyed with our plight, and so we settled in, and swam as the locals do, in our clothes.

Desert Drumming

2009-05-11T09:17:00.000-07:00

We thought we'd left mountain sports behind us, but last weekend rode some beat-up snowboards down the sand dunes in the desert.

We actually went out to play drums at a desert camp to the light of a full moon. But when we got there, the bowl of dunes surrounding the camp was swarming with kids and snowboards - called 'sandboards' if you're in the desert. Brady and Liam tuned into this immediately and roped Billy and me into helping them haul these heavy rickety boards to the top, so they could slip down the dune, followed by us on foot (or bottoms), only to head right back up to the top. Rosie was in on the action too, following us up, then rolling or sliding down on her own, no board required.

So although we could beat the drums along with the African & Arab drummers, ride on camels, get henna tattoos, smoke shisha, and best of all, cruise the desert dinner buffet, we spent the greater part of the evening riding on (and dragging up) these barely waxed snow-sand-boards up and down the slippery dunes.

We did manage to enjoy some grilled mutton and chicken, taboule and beet salads, a variety of hummous and garbanzo beans, an Arabic-style bread pudding with cardemon seeds and of course Arabic coffee, as well as a bit of drumming and camel rides, but ultimately we gave in to the allure of playing in the sand.

For pictures, check out:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=81587&id=536358651&l=e82c714852

Mid-East Police

2009-05-06T03:03:00.000-07:00

We've had numerous occasions for visits with the police already, and if we keep it up at this rate, we'll have six or seven more before the end of my contract in 2011. Let's cross our fingers I am wrong on this, since the general theme of these encounters is less than uplifting.

Since August, both Billy and I have dented up our insured rental cars, and had to file reports with police. Funnily enough, both of us, in our separate cars, rammed our tires into medians, damaging only our cars (and nobody else) in the process. The main problem in my case was that the multiple officers I got on the phone could not figure out where I was, even though I was at the intersection of two major roads (Emirates Road and Univercity City). An hour and a half after my initial call, the officer finally arrived, saw the exact spot where I rammed the curb, filled in a report, fined me 200 dirhams and actually apologized for making me pay.

Billy's incident was similar, but the police were far less nice, and actually accused him of drinking at the time of the accident, and not calling the police till the next day, to avoid jail. He also was fined 200 dirhams for damaging city property. We wonder if it might help to be a blue-eyed female in this country.

The details of our third police-worthy incident we'll share later. Just bear in mind that none of our family were physically hurt, only Brady witnessed something violent. While we waited to give our statement at the police station, we sat in a narrow corridor directly next to a steel padlocked door labeled 'DETENTION'. After sitting a short while, we could hear a faint knock on it from the other side, like a pencil tapping on a car. It came and went and eventually it was accompanied by some moaning and mumbling in Arabic, followed by the door being noisily shaken from the inside. Every time the noise started up again, Brady gave me a look with an uneasy grin and a shake of his head. Maybe he needs the bathroom, we thought. Finally a police officer came along with a Barney Fife-style ring of keyes, unlocked the door, escorted the dusty, tattered AND SHACKLED prisoner off to one of the ante-rooms adjacent to our seating area. We never heard from this man again.

A while later, another guy with a huge sturdy plastic sack was led in by an officer, who unlocked the little peep-door near the top of the steel door, where he peered in and sent food through the hole, prisoner by prisoner. At first we assumed this was the routine catering provided by the police. But as we had nothing better to do than to carefully watch this transaction, we realized that for each 'schwarma pack' being sent through, a fee in dirhams was being collected by 'the caterer'.

Finally, on another evening when I was at the police alone, finalizing our report, I was sitting at an officer's desk and right across from me was another tattered-dusty but FEMALE detainee, handcuffed to her chair. She wore a muslim headscarf, was barefoot, and appeared to be from Asia. She sat quitely in front of an empty desk, only to weep and shake her head when an officer occasionally came in to interrogate her, getting right in her face and screaming what were apparently accuastions. The only word in Arabic I understood was 'La' or 'No' which she cried over and over again as the police got back into her face. I do hope this was my last visit to the station.

Easter in a Muslim Country

2009-04-15T07:58:00.000-07:00

Another Christian holiday has come and gone for us here in the UAE, where the laws and supermarkets and work schedules are all governed by Islam. What this means for us and our celebration of Easter is digging deep into our pockets to purchase forbidden holiday sundry items such as ham and champagne, going out of our way to the Dubai Choithrams market whose holiday aisle includes chocolate bunnies, and the most strange thing is pretending it’s Easter when it’s actually Good Friday, since Sunday is a work day.

On Good Friday, we had 35 people join us for brunch, where we served leg of lamb as well as a large chunk of expensive French ham, along with quiche, mimosas, bunny cake and various salads and sides brought by our friends and colleagues. Our friend Heather even brought freshly risen dough and baked Challah in our uneven, hot-on-the-bottom Egyptian oven. Mini egg-shaped cupcakes were decorated by all the kids with our helper Chamry and her sister Ishara, and Billy and his Frisbee pals escaped for a half-hour of tossing the disc on the sandy roads around our house.

Holy Saturday was a special work day for me, and I spent half the day proctoring the local equivalent of the SAT exam. Though I was sulky about working on the weekend, the kids and Billy barely noticed my absence, and they spent the day eating chocolate and party leftovers.

Easter Sunday was a regular work day for me, but Billy’s company lets their people choose any religion and celebrate its holidays, so he was off work with kids while I tromped grumpily off to the office, again. It turned out to be a perfect day for swimming, so they made a day of it and went to Mamzar Beach Park, where they spent hours in the pools and at the beach on the Arabian Gulf (known as the Persian Gulf in America).

Finally, I made it home by 3:30 on Easter, just in time to help the kids shake off the sand, put on fresh Easter clothes (sent by Grandma) and head off to St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Sharjah, where just like at home, mobs of extra people (mostly Indian and Phillipino) showed up for Easter Sunday mass. Once again, as I’ve posted before, St. Joseph’s is an exultant experience, with loud and earnest singing, a pious Indian priest and a truly joyous observance of the most important Christian holiday.

Sigh of Relief

2009-04-14T10:36:00.001-07:00

Here since August 2, this cultural and professional and family ride has been challenging (making my diva students work), rocky (watching new colleagues not pass their probationary year), rewarding (getting to understand the veil /watching students learn to enjoy reading), exhausting (blogging, working, reading to my children and exercising all while attempting to make friends, and connecting from time to time with my husband), confusing (traffic circles, over and over again / road signs in Arabic / Urdu-speaking taxi drivers), shocking (falcons and tigers for pets, and yes, some local men do have multiple wives) and exciting (brunch in the world's only 7 star hotel).

And I am pleased to say, look at me - after all this, they're keeping me - I have passed my probationary period! Big deal, you say? Yes, in fact, it is. With the economic situation as it is, and thousands of work visas being cancelled every month, and the newly jobless having only 30 days to pack up, sell their stuff and abandon their unsalable cars at the airport, anyone who has their contract renewed or confirmed can exercise their bragging rights. And thus shall I.

Somehow we have figured out how to make it all work, the new schools for the kids, a nanny helping with all aspects of our domestic life (lunch boxes, dirty laundry and Sri Lankan meals), Billy commuting long hours through Dubai traffic and often missing kids' bedtime, and my navigating through my first year working full-time since Brady's birth in 2000. We're doing it. The kids are happy most days. We have a big and comfortable home, albeit sandy and remote. And my employer sees fit to let me stay on for year 2 of my 3-year contract. Lucky me.

Things Emirati

2009-03-29T03:41:00.000-07:00

We asked our
students to talk for 3 minutes about an item connected with Emirati culture. In the pictures you'll see a burka, the mask worn by many Emirati grandmas when they're out in the streets, a traditional coffee pot with coffee beans and the saffron and cardamom used to spice their coffee, a sweet fried food with sesame flavor called Ghemat, traditional clothes for men called 'Bisht', as well as a lady's housedress and a child's 'dressup' clothes, the process of applying henna (to me), an incense burner with some very expensive wood incense from India, as well as the noseplugs worn by pearl fishers with the tiny pearls someone's grandfather found himself. In fact, before oil was discovered, the main livelihoods here were pearl diving and date cultivation.

Though we thought the gals were tired of this year's theme of 'Proudly Emirati', they (and I) really enjoyed the project, especially since the usual 'no food' rules could be broken for the sake of an educational project.

From My Students

2009-03-14T06:17:00.000-07:00

These pictures were all taken by my students and sent to me via email, and here are their messages:

"Hi Ms.christina sorry for late to send you the picture that i take it for you'r hands. have a nice day "

"pepsi with yogurt flavor???
can you imagion this???"

Mosque Pics

2009-03-11T08:59:00.000-07:00

Grand Mosque

2009-03-11T07:40:00.000-07:00

One of the UAE's treasures, Abu Dhabi's Grand Mosque is the 3rd largest mosque in the world, and locals are proud to tell you that a whole Turkish quarry was emptied of its marble to build it.

By volunteering to chaperone the many themed field trips offered by my college, I can come close to the bonding experiences I had in the US, where I could easily invite foreign students to meals at home and ski trips in my own SUV, none of which are allowed here. Instead these field trips are the rare times when we can socialize with our students without being in the ever-watchful eye that is our campus.

Only two hours from Sharjah, and on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque is absolutely worth the trip, environmental quandries aside. With its real gold turret-tips, mother-of-pear inlay in bright white marble, the plushest and largest carpet in the world (a serious treat to my feet), along with a half dozen one-of-a-kind swimming-pool-sized chandeliers made of gorgeous semi-precious stones, all crafted by Islamic-trained artisans from all over the world, you will no-doubt be impressed from a design standpoint, if not also from a religious one.

In the photos here you can see a sample of the fine detail found all over the mosque as well as a few pictures of me and my students, all dressed respectfully for the occasion.

Pollination, Pirates & Found Object Art

2009-03-04T07:42:00.000-08:00

We've had a flurry of activity surrounding our palm tree, the lone thriving living thing in our dusty square courtyard, because it's pollination season. Landlord Nasir started calling and visiting a week ago, to see if the new seed stalks had opened enough in the middle of the tree for him to do his magic. Tonight he came over with bundles of male date flowers inside palm sheaves and stuffed them, all very gently into our female tree. He also trimmed the giant thorns from the low-hanging palm branches and cut away last year's fruit-bearing stalks as well, generally neatening up the appearance of the tree. He was bemused at my request to take pictures, but he obliged and actually started to get a kick out of my questions. In his own yard, he said he's got two trees like mine, and three other types of palm, all of which bear fruit starting in late April and into October. You can check out pictures in an earlier post (Arabian Harvest August 21), where I dutifully harvested dates, at Nasir's request with my mom and kids. We're still eating those fruits out of the freezer and turning them into muffins and breads, but I'd better clean them out quick. Since our tree is 5 years old now, and in its prime, we are due to have maybe twice as many dates as last year.

Aside from keeping an eye on our date palm, we went with the kids to our first UAE birthday party. Brady's friend and chess partner Vladimir invited all of us to a water park with at least 25 other guests, to take in the water rides, cake, and games organized by a flirty Asian pirate. On a daily basis, Liam has been building art in the courtyard, with dead palm branches, shells and broken bits of choral brick. Check out the pictures at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=68932&id=536358651&l=e9064

Dodging and Evading Objects

2009-03-01T08:03:00.000-08:00

If you'd like to know how the kids are, here are excerpts from the PE sections on Brady and Liam's report cards, issued by the Australian International School. Funny what skills are measured nowadays.

'This term Liam has exhibited an acceptable understanding and practice of running in a variety of directions, while changing pace and speed. Liam is continuing to develop the ability to dodge and evade objects while moving and whilst stationary. Liam has shown an appropriate performance when leaping, skipping and jumping in both vertical and horizontal directions, as well as landing with a variety of feet patterns.'

'This term Brady continues to work on the ability to dodge and evade objects while moving, and whilst stationary. Brady has started to show some success when leaping, galloping and jumping in both vertical and horizontal directions, as well as landing with a variety of feet patterns.'

Does evading objects whilst stationary strike any of you as a cruel sort of assessment?

What are we up to?

2009-02-22T09:16:00.001-08:00

If you'd like to see our kiwi custard, the local beach, and pictures from a run in rural UAE, check out this link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=66976&id=536358651&l=0940e

In the Absence of Hippies and Pork

2009-02-17T00:11:00.001-08:00

A little ranting on the local culture and touching on my mild and intermittent homesickness was what I was after in my last post. But it seemed to strike people mostly on two chords: A. Who on earth would miss the smell of hippies? and B. What a bummer about the pork.

So do I really notice the absence of hippies when we take in live music on the Gulf? (Get ready for some American pride here) I think it's really a sense of nostalgia for a society that doesn't quash things counter-cultural, rebellious and anti-authoritarian. It is true that hippies bring with them to music venues their dreadlocks (fun to look at), body odour (no thanks), patchouli oil (in passing it's ok) and various smokables (put your own assessment here). But remember they also share an off-the-grid lifestyle that is abolutely attainable in the US, and even cherished by those of us who sometimes wish we weren't too straight to embrace the unconventional. Doing such a thing in the middle-east is simply not an option.

But on the topic of pork, I made it seem as if it weren't available at all here, and I need to set the record straight. There is a chain of stores that has the proper license to sell pork, but the experience of buying it is unique. Go into any Spinney's in Dubai, and look for a small room with a big NO MUSLIMS sign, and that's where you'll find it: bacon, sausages and pepperoni, ham in several varieties and even pork chops. You'll also find it in the high end hotels who have the facilities to separate pork from everything else, and a discrete code can be found on the menu to alert you of anything containing it. But consider this: a pound of bacon in the US might cost six bucks, where a pound of bacon here might cost twice that, and it requires a special trip to a special store - suddenly it feels like a prized and shameful ordeal all at the same time. And then when you discover on Saturday morning that your nanny has cooked the whole pound of salty pork for the kids as a snack, that's when you truly miss the comforts of home.

Am I a Global Citizen?

2009-02-12T01:48:00.000-08:00

Someone recently asked whether I still felt good about our decision to come here. My answer is overwhelmingly yes, but it is my nature to make the best of any situation. Whether it's the snippy shop clerks of France, the underpant stealers in Japan, or the rude librarians of New York City, a good cry or some retail therapy usually does the trick to bring me back to my sanguine state of mind.

But here in the UAE, there are days when frustration bubbles up out of nowhere. This could be explained by reckless drivers, road rage and babies in the front seat, a littered desert, sewage spills into our favorite gulf swimming spot, as well as blocked internet sites, enormous speeding fines and students who are holier than thou.

However, I think it's really more about the stuff that's missing. Having stored our precious belongings (my estimate is 1 1/5 tons) in a block-long chain of storage units in dusty Colorado, we've come to the other side of the world without our sheepskin houseslippers, our quirky collection of coffee table books, seldom-used kitchen appliances, and art. And even though we had plenty of time to think about what life would be like in another country, (we'd been casually job-seeking for years), our own domestic attachments didn't become apparent until the dust settled and we started spending time in our new home. My longing at times for bagels, uncensored movies, unfettered Internet access, cheap bacon, and the smell of hippies at concerts is a sad but true betrayal of my fantasy self-image as a true citizen of the world.

Bicycle in Hindi

2009-01-30T05:35:00.000-08:00

A bunch of elder Indian ladies and I nearly had an altercation today at Dubai's Mushrif Park. In my defense, these old gals and at least 50 of their closest family members were grilling and picnicking, dancing and singing, and eating papadums right smack in the middle of the bike-dedicated lanes of the park.

And though I swear I have an affinity with Indians, I spent the good part of my ride in a state of ruined euphoria, annoyed at the Indians' propensity to lay down a picnic wherever a tree casts some shade. Shame on me.

For the past two weeks, the college has been on mid-year break and I've made it my business to find all the safe and good places to ride my bike. Though the UAE isn't the Mecca of cycling like Boulder County, I have found a few gems, and my favorite discovery is Dubai's Mushrif Park. With its low scrub trees and rolling sand dunes, the bike trail around the park is the most desert-like place to cycle without having to cross any roads. When I arrived this afternoon, I was like a kid on the way to Disney World, hardly able to appreciate my good fortune.

I got there at around 1:30, suited up with my helmet, water, fancy new bike shoes and mobile phone and set out onto the trail. Just as I was approaching the end of my first lap, I came around a shady bend through a long stretch of brush trees hanging over the trail and had to stop fast to avoid straw mats, strollers, rice cookers, lots of people sitting around Indian style with plates in their laps, and at least 8 older women weaving through the crowd handing out food from tin containers. I clipped out of my pedals, and a little breathless, tried to explain that this is a bicycle trail, a bike path, you know, a training place, and they moved (a little) to let me navigate around all the people, looking at me like I just dropped down out of a UFO. All I really wanted was to ride my bike, so I hopped back on, a little miffed and headed out for another lap, only to come around 15 minutes later, to find that their crowd had multiplied, and there were even more baskets of bread, babies, coolers and a full-on cooking stove in the middle of the path.

At this point I am ticked, and I know really, I need to get a sense of humour, but I was incapable at this point, and so even more loudly I said BICYLE PATH I AM TRAINING BICYCLE PATH PLEASE, all while dodging picnickers and plates. Some of the younger folks actually tried to slide over their straw mats and move stuff out of my way, but the older ladies were saying WE ARE ARRANGED LADY WE ARE ARRDRANGED ALREADY SO SORRY. Now I'm thinking, seriously can't these people read the giant white bycicle drawings on the path, don't they notice the dotted lines? And surely they can see all of the lovely picnic tables and shelters in the more developed parts of the park. But hey, shoot, I should stop at the rangers office and tell them about these renegade picnickers. But no, maybe I shouldn't ruin their party. What to do? Argh, shame shame on me, yuppie impatient expat with no manners yelling at old ladies. Shame on me.

I opted not to tell the rangers and when I came around for lap three, the party appeared to have parted for me (and probably the other two cyclists who'd joined the path by then), except for a hapless school-aged kid right in the middle with a hunk of bread in his hand. As I got close and slowed down they started hooting in a high-pitched woohooo all Indian-Bollywood-style while hollering something like bampling baaisick and rushing to get the bread-kid out of my way.

This is when my mood turned OK and I was probably even grinning as I came out at the other end, to lap their party twice more to the tune of bollywood bampling baaaisick. And though I said before that Urdu is the Language to learn, I should probably learn to say bicycle in Hindi as well.

Hopeful and Inspired

2009-01-20T21:44:00.000-08:00

The morning after the election, I watched Obama's acceptance speech live in my classroom, tears rolling down my face, thanks to a student who received a text from her husband that the results were definitive. Obama had won.

The extent to which we discuss politics in class varies, as we are encouraged to keep our students plugged into current events, but we are also encouraged to steer away from too much politics, and too much religion, as topics of discussion. So how does one address current affairs without politics, you might wonder. We faculty do too.

But lets face it, during an American election year, providing a weekly touch with current events would be a sham if it didn't at least cover the election, a bit. Therefore, over the weeks, it became clear to my students that I am a fan of Obama , and as the election drew close, the gals asked smart and sometimes funny questions. Why is his wife in so many pictures with him? Why does he have only two children? How many maids are there in the White House? Is he afraid of the middle east? And how on Earth is he not a Muslim with the middle name Hussein?

Fortunately one of the perks of being in a well-funded college system is that most of our classrooms are smart, meaning they've all got fantastic teacher kiosks, attached to the internet with drop down projectors, fancy speakers and in many cases smart boards, where where I can mark up an internet screen shot with fancy laser pens and then save or print the manipulated screen, instantly. So when my student reported that the results were in, somewhere between 8 and 10am local time, and near midnight DC time, I scrambled to get my class online, and like magic, Obama was about to start his speech.

I am grateful to my students, who watched me, speechless and grinning through tears, without saying a word till it was over. At that point, volleyball player Mariam, pictured in my Semester One posting, looked over and said, 'Miss, we are very happy for you and your new president'. At this point I was almost a total wreck and all I could do was nod in thanks to my dear patient students while I gathered myself up for another lesson on writing letters.

Before long, the inaugural was upon us, and though classes are not in session this week, I hope that some of my students tuned in to CNN, like we did here last night, to watch the swearing in, the inspirational poem, and Rev. Lowery's excellent final benediction, 'when the red man can get ahead, man' . We watched it here with friends, and I took great pride in the interest and attention Brady gave to the whole thing, including his worry that Bush might be sad, and bored now in Texas. Liam and Brady both were pleased that they've visited Washington and touched some of those monuments where mobs were gathered on TV. And though there are days when I question the decision we've made to live away from our country, I take solace now, knowing that despite the fact that we are abroad, our citizenship in the United States has the power to make us hopeful and inspired.

Dubai Shopping Festival!

2009-01-18T23:34:00.000-08:00

I was telling someone at work that I desperately needed new shoes, since most of my workaday zapatos have been beat up by the dust, heat and sweat, and made worse every day by the sand road in front of our house. It's gotten to a point where I carry my shoes to the car with me, and slip them on once I'm in, to prevent sand from getting down in with my toes. You'll see the wear and tear especially on heels, where the sand sneaks in and separates the heel from the shoe.

At any rate, I've managed to live in this country for 5 months without buying more than one pair of shoes (for a fancy event, so they don't even count), so I figure I'm long overdue for a good bit of malling action, with the goal of finding 2 (or 3 or 4) new pairs. Even the pairs I bought in the US for weddings and special evenings are biting the dust, literally, as those are the shoes most women wear here on a daily basis. The only pair I may get a few more months out of are made by Dansko, and by the time that happens I hope to be in the US where I can pick them up again at Nordstrom.

And just as I thought we'd done most of the major touristy things in Dubai, I consulted with my colleagues about where to go for shoes and they said, 'don't go yet, just wait for the shopping festival, it starts in two weeks'. At this point I stopped in my tracks, heart rate accelerating, and just stood there, waiting for more.

Shopping festival, I thought, hmmm. When I think festival, I think corn dogs, kitchy art booths, kiddie rides and overpriced sodas. But with the word shopping attached, it takes on a whole new form, a kind of grown-up dream land with giant discount signs and wall-sized price tags and jeans in every imaginable size. Sure enough, as I stood there soaking in the additional intel from my friends, my personal shopping fantasy was realized and described by my colleagues as a month-long event, sanctioned by the government, enticing hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists with deep discounts, crazy quantities and prices, mad-dash 10 minute sales in stores, as well as mall-events for kids such as camel rides and falconry demonstrations and clowns (it was a real festival after all). The malls (and boy are there ever malls in the UAE) and even the smaller shops participate, and the offers change daily, so if you're a real shopper, you can set out fresh each day, to get a different kind of deal on every outing.

I've only been out once so far, and I aquired a 59 dirham pair of jeans ($19) from H&M, a 34 Dirham red-fancy-leather belt ($12) and a gorgeous cashmere sweater for 69 dirhams ($21) from a store called Promod. I am told that you should pace yourself, because even as stores run out of some stock, they replenish others and the discounts deepen as the festival goes on. This year it ends on February 15 and I intend to go out several times before then. My goal: acquire belts, shoes and handbags, replace my 1990's out-of-style work pants and blazers, perhaps buy a new CD or two, and get Rosie some shirts where her belly doesn't hang out. If only the festival extended to hair salons and restaurants, I'd probably never come home.

Bus Carer

2009-01-12T19:38:00.001-08:00

As Brady, Liam & Rosie got onto the bus today, the bus carer informed our helper Chamry, that one of our children (I'll let you imagine which one) has been repeatedly naughty on the bus. In the words of Chamry, 'naughty naughty again and again, bus carer says to tell Sir (billy) please'.

Bus carer, much like invigilation and faffing around (see october 7 posting), is just another British English word I've had to get used to and secretly chuckle about. Only in this case, I was comforted by the English word. Bus Carer is far more pleasant than 'bus monitor', and on top of this, the carers are orderly and smiley, yet very serious about getting the kids safely buckled in. What's more, putting little 4-year-old Rosie onto the bus was a big step (for me) and the fact that two people are employed as 'carers' made the whole thing a little easier for this guilt-laden aspiring supermom to take.

But funny language aside, part of living in the Arab world is getting used to the help. Here at the office there's a gal who washes our coffee cups and freshens our break room and bathrooms througout the day. At the malls there is always an attendant in the bathroom for restocking and clean up and even help with your children. And at home, we are still getting used to the luxury of of having a helper. Chamry processes all of our laundry right down to the ironing of hankies, does the meal prep, lunch boxes, housecleaning, meets the kids' bus after school, and even runs errands by taxi if necessary. I couldn't be more grateful to her, as my transition into fulltime employee-hood in a new country would be so much more challenging without her.

But sometimes it's a little much, and you don't necessarily want the help. Or you don't care for them to know that you never finish your coffee, that your kids are picky about fruit, or that you've bought new blouses, or even that you prefer not to have your jeans ironed or your coffee cup emptied (I like the cold dregs two hours later). And on a more personal level, we now have both a helper AND two bus carers to (kindly and quietly) observe and pass judgement on our parenting.

It's bad enough to know one of your kids is creating havoc for the bus carer and likely other children, and that other parents get word of this from their kids who ride along with yours. I cringe to think that dinner conversation in a villa nearby includes 'Guess what that Watts kid did on the bus today'. But the transfer of this untidy information from the carers to our helper, to me and then billy makes me squirm with the discomfort of dirty laundry hung in the front yard.

Semester One

2009-01-04T03:10:00.000-08:00

I have made it through my first semester and it has been rewarding. Mostly.

I taught two groups of business students how to write essays, letters and technical summaries, listen to lectures, speak about books, films, food and business, and to read technical, scholarly and business-related literature. We practiced debates and test-preparation, discussed Islamic culture, shared pictures of family, and even watched a movie (School of Rock) as a reward for hard work.

One group of students even prepared a cake party in my honour, and this very special picture and attached video are here with the permission of the students.

Mariam is on the left. She is the head of the school volley ball team, runs her own gift-wrapping service and hopes to work in TV production. Noorah, in the middle, will make any excuse to plan field trips, and she would like to be a flight attendant after finishing college. She has visited the US (Minnesota) with her sister for some kind of leg surgery, and thoroughly enjoyed the Mall of America. Khawla on the right loves to go camping with her brothers and hang out with nieces and nephews. She's often wearing western-style shirts and cowgirl attire. Not sure of her future plans though.

And while the teaching experience has been rewarding, it has not been without frustrations. There is the occasional rudely demanding, impolite and even hostile student and those who show no mercy towards new faculty who do not have all the answers.

But all in all I am settling in and quietly celebrating the end of my first phase in the UAE. Fall semester 2008.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-03T01:55:00.000-08:00

Grandpa and Sarah came to visit for Christmas and the highlight was a day trip to Oman, for a day-long Dhow cruise through the fjords. We snorkeled, met fishermen, drank Arabic tea and lounged on boat cushions with a great local guide and some other mellow tourists. We also visited the Sharjah fish market, went dune bashing (again), took in the Dubai Museum and did some holiday baking. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!

Musandam, Oman

2009-01-02T00:39:00.001-08:00

Benign Dictatorship

2008-12-30T23:46:00.000-08:00

We purchased tickets to a fancy over-priced over-the-top New Years Eve party at THE LODGE, the same night club where we reveled before (see 'Indecent Expatriates' Post), but alas, our ruler has deemed parties at this year's end to be inappropriate.

Excerpt from Gulf News:

Mohammad Orders Cancellation of New Year Celebrations

Dubai: His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, has ordered the cancellation of all forms of celebrations marking the New Year in Dubai emirate, as an act of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

In support of the Palestinians in Gaza, who are enduring all kinds of killing, destruction and displacement by the Israeli military machinery, Shaikh Mohammad instructed all concerned authorities in Dubai to put this order in place and take necessary procedures to circulate the decision to all concerned parties.

The Heat is On

2008-12-30T03:35:00.000-08:00

Yesterday for the first time, when I got in the car for work at 7am, I was tempted to turn on the heat. A lot of people have been curious about the weather here and I am happy to report that December is a glorious month in the UAE. The temps hover around 75 on most days with clear sunny skies. The mornings can be chilly, but after about 2 minutes with the heat on low, I was hot and ready to open the windows. By 8am when I crossed the courtyard to teach my first class, I felt perfect in my short sleeves.

I'm not sure how long this gorgeous weather will last, but it's probably best not to jinx myself by asking. I am in no rush for the 116 degree heat of summer to return.

Holiday Meltdown

2008-12-23T00:50:00.000-08:00

Christmas wouldn't be complete if I (or one of my sisters) didin't have a total emotional meltdown.

People do get whacky during the holidays, and we surmise it's a result of too much to eat and drink, not enough sleep, heaping doses of family, excess money spent and the generally uncontrollable Christmas frenzy.

But sometimes it's the little stuff that sends us over the edge. Yesterday on my way home from work, I stopped into our local market with a list of ingredients for Christmas desserts. Forget that I have family in town for a moment and there are still several dozen gifts to wrap under my bed, and forget that I have to work on Christmas (this being a Muslim country and all), and pay no mind to the fact that if I wanted, there are many lovely Lebanese bakeries around who could sell me perfectly arranged and delicious holiday dessert platters. But I am a glutton for punishment, and darn it, I've just got to have my family's favorite two-layer sour cream graham-cracker crumb cheesecake on the table on December 24.

But it all started deteriorating when I couldn't find the graham crackers. When I asked the smiley guy in produce for graham crackers, he escorted me to the 'rusk' section - Rusk, you might wonder, according to Webster, is Sweet raised bread dried and browned in an oven but it doesn't even come close to our expectations for a cracker. In fact, it's more like a teething buscuit, and for some reason, local shelves stock a dozen varieties and flavors. Something didn't feel right at that point, but I said to myself, this is not a reason to freak out, graham crackers or not, Christmas will be a warm and wonderful day. And so I asked another guy who repeated 'BRAN' when I said 'GRAHAM', and that's when I knew I was in trouble. By the time I got to the middle of the baking aisle, after visits through cereal, candy, nuts, and even 'seasonal', the flood gates had opened. You know the type, major uncontrollable waterworks, Niagara Falls style tears gushing out of my face, onto my blouse, into half-dozen tissues, all through the store, as I moved on to find the cream cheese (called puck), rocotta cheese (soft Italian) and butter required to make this ridiculous recipe - with or without graham crackers... I continued to mutter to myself.

But pats on the back are well-deserved here, as I managed to re-collect myself, put on my movie-star shades, find a substitute for graham crackers (nilla wafers and local coconut crackers) and then pay and return home to make luscious-looking two-layer sour cream graham-cracker crumb cheesecake.

A Very Muslim Christmas

2008-12-18T22:58:00.001-08:00

I couldn't be happier that the kids have friends who are Emirati. A local family in our neighborhood send their kids to the Australian School with ours, and after school, they all play wild games of tag and share snacks of popcorn and chicken hotdogs when we see them in the park. They bury their shoes in the sand, climb to the tops of monkeybars, laughing their heads off while getting utterly filthy in the twilight.

Watching the sandy, teeming packs of kids, I forget that the culture and language here are totally different from my own. Or maybe not totally.

The other day, Gebrille, 9, was tooling around on the sidewalk showing off a shiny remote control car. When he came close enough for me to admire his car, he told me it was a Christmas present from last year. I said hold on kid, isn't your family Muslim? And he said well yes but it's ok it's ok, our family doesn't think Christmas is Haram.

Haram, pronounced 'Hah-RAHM', means Forbidden in Islam, and is one of the first words you learn here as a foreigner. Wearing shorts in Sharjah is Haram. Alcohol is Haram. Men and women socializing together is Haram. And therefore, I would assume, that anything surrounding a Christian holiday would certainly be HARAM. No miss no miss, he says, Christmas is OK, my mom speaks good English, so Christmas is ok its ok. Seeing my puzzlement he went on to say but No miss, even though we have Christmas, Halloween is Haram and we never do trick or treating, our neighbors wouldn't like it.

Before I could query him any more he took off with the car and left me to mull over a family whose mom covers her hair in Muslim tradition, but also doles out gifts on December 25.

Five Star Living? Not quite..

2008-12-16T00:48:00.000-08:00

It wouldn't be fair to write about life in the UAE if I didn't also let you in on some of the frustrations, confusions and make-me-almost-cry scenarios that are part of every day living in a developing country.

Though Dubai is well-known (read last post) for cutting-edge construction, building islands from scratch, and 7 star hotels, the country as a whole has only been rich for 40 years and didn't start formally educating people outside the mosques until th e1960's. That said, you can begin to understand that even though you get world class service when you pay five star prices, every day living is far from a five star experience.

Take the roads as an example. Eight lane toll-ways exist, with dirt and sand roads feeding into them, and truly maniacal drivers urge you out of their lane by flashing their lights, tailing you within inches and then passing at deadly high speeds. I honestly feel as if I've been harassed on the road sometimes, by people I've never met.

And we've been trying to buy a car for a month, but to do this, we need to provide paper checks to the dealer, written and post-dated for the duration of our car loan. Sounds crazy? But our check books got lost in the mail, a major religious holiday closed the bank for several days, and in the mean time, the car we want has been sold.

Then, making my life ever so much simpler, my mobile phone stopped working suddenly, because unbeknownst to me, I purchased a 'tourist plan', and my 'tourist phone number' expired without warning. The funny part is that it took three calls to tech support, and three visits to the phone store to confirm that I would need to change my phone number. So now I've got to alert the kids school, utilities, and my scant new friends of my new details.

On top of all this, the UAE started a new ID program, under which all of us, including the kids, must get a biometric id card, with eye and fingerprints embedded in fancy chips. The government issued a Dec 31 deadline, then closed their offices for religious holidays. So after the holidays, Billy got in line at 5:30 in the morning to get appointments for us all, and they gave appointments out to 80 guys. Billy was 90th in line. We've come to find out that most of the time when the government scares people with deadlines and required inititiatives, they back off, without exception, when they realize that their own offices have insufficient manpower to handle the request.

So as Billy is becoming more 'ZEN' by the day, I continue to dig in to my steering wheel and scratch my head over the absurdities of 2 star Emirati living.

2008-12-13T05:07:00.001-08:00

Shark Tank

2008-12-13T02:43:00.000-08:00

Dubai is known for more Firsts, Tallests, Most Luxurious-es, and Biggests than any other tourist destination on the planet. And so with our first visitors, we decided to try out some of the outragious touristy offerings we've been promising the kids (and dying to see ourselves).

Taking it Easy - Day 1
Janell and Scooby arrived at 1am on a Sunday. While the kids and I were at school, Billy, our jetlag enforcer, tapped on our visitors' door at noon and took them out to a Sharjah favorite, the Dhow restaurant - for Arabic lunch in an historic trading boat. They ate grilled meats, vine leaves and eggplant salad, while Billy gave them the lowdown on what we had in store for the rest of their visit.

Gulf-side Dining & Tallest Building - Day 2
After a quick kitchen-table orientation, we sent them off with a car, a map and directions to the Dubai Museum, which both visitors said is a worthwhile stop, with exhibits on pearl diving, architecture and local heritage. That night, we grownups ate on the water in Dubai, at a restaurant called Shimmers. Janell and I were given loaner pashminas to keep our shoulders warm and aside from the fact that the bar simply couldn't get the martini's right, first no vodka, then no olives.. the food was delicious, again with grilled meats and fish, and crusty walnut bread.

On our commute to and from the restaurant, we took in views of Dubai's newest trademark, the Burj Dubai. The Burj Dubai, to be completed in two years, is the tallest structure in the world. Designed by the same architecture firm as the Sears Tower (3 cheers for my Chicago readers !!), it features some of the same multi-level design features of the famous Chicago skyscraper. This building can be seen from any approach to Dubai, and you can't help but be amazed at how it dwarfs the surrounding high-rises.

Shark Tank - Day 3
Theme parks in the UAE are a big draw for tourists from other gulf countries where venues with bathing suits are problematic. We'd already been to a pretty d-luxe water park called Dreamland, but we'd been waiting to go to Aquaventure for a special occasion - alas, visitors from home gave us an excuse. For a mere $85 per person, we were let in to Aquaventure, which not only boasts the only rides in the world where you are thrust through shark tanks, but you also get to spend the day on the famous Palm Jumeira - the man-made palm shaped island which has made Dubai so famous.

Dune Bashing - Day 4
We chilled out for most of the next day (sliding through shark tanks and careening through wavy rivers is exhausting), while Janell and Scooby went on a shopping excursion. When they returned at 3:30, we were picked up by Ishaq the tour guide for a Desert Safari Tour. It started with Dune Bashing - where we followed a dozen other land cruisers into the desert, to sail up and over stories-tall yellow dunes and then down again, only to cruise up and down the sides of dozens more. Imagine pulsating Arabic music booming through subwoofers, roller-coaster style driving, with Brady and Liam howling and laughing in the back row, me holding on tight with my eyes-half closed trying not to acknowledge the lunch not entirely digested in my stomach, and Scooby taking it all in with a video camera in the front seat - and Janell and Billy nervously laughing their heads off at every crest of dune. Thank goodness we left Rosie home with a sitter.

Once we'd had enough bashing, we were dropped at a desert camp, where we ate (again) grilled meats, lamb kebobs, lamb chops and chicken, watched belly dancing, got henna tatoos, rode camels, dressed in local costumes and learned about the local past time (and bad habit) sheesha smoking. Needless to say, when we were dropped at home by 10pm, we were pooped, and thoroughly satisfied and impressed with ourselves and our adventure.

7 Star Hotel - Day 5
The Burj Al Arab is perhaps Dubai's most widely known building and hotel, as it is shaped like a sailboat. In addition to its unusual architecture, the hotel boasts a 7 star rating, with rooms starting at $2500, and entry to the lobby restricted to paying hotel guests and local 'members'. Though we are indeed NOT members, we happen to have a friend who is one. At 12:30, we arrived at the hotel gate with a reservation number in hand and we took pleasure in leaving our sandy down-market rental cars with the fancy dressed valets. Our friend met us in the lobby and took us to the poolside restaurant for their luscious buffet brunch. Everything on it was gorgeous, from the sushi and sashimi, fresh oysters and shrimp, to stewed beef in truffle sauce, (again) grilled lamb, roast beef, squid salads, loads of traditional arabic salads and vine leaves, lobster claws (a favorite with Liam), crab legs (for Brady) and of course fresh fruit (for Rose). I couldn't even begin to describe the dessert buffet, as the tarts, multi-layer cakes and ice-cream service were all quite original, with locally-found fruits, nuts and sauces. After the brunch (please do not ask about the ridiculous feed-a-whole-3rd-world-family-for-a-year price tag) our friend took us on a tour of the premises were we oooh and ahhed at the views of the Palm Jumeira Island, overflowing (real) gold flower vases and beautifully coifed multi-lingual attendants at every turn. But the truth is, once we made it back to our dusty cavernous home and got back into jeans, we were grateful we didn't have to indulge ourselves in such a stuffy fashion on a regular basis. Normal life felt pretty darn good.

Global Village - Day 6
While our visitors took in yet another local mall, we rested up for an evening cultural outing: Global Village. A 3 month festival-market, Global Village sits on what we might call a fair grounds, and features acres and acres of neatly arranged tents and stalls, organized by country and region of the world. Inside each tent and stall, you can buy handicrafts, artworks, packaged and ready-to-eat foods from the particular country housed in that space. Some countries, such as India and Saudi Arabia, take up entire networks of tents and stalls, and others, like Sri Lanka had a mere handful of vendors. The USA happens not to be represented at all, and all of Europe was housed in a less-than-impressive, rather dumpily decorated tent. I bought African art made with cut palms on banana paper, soapstone bowls, woven vases, a lambskin handbag from Pakistan, Janell bought African art and Indian shoes, and her husband bought Saudi dates. Billy ate his way through the evening, with foods from Egypt, Arabic coffee, and Sri Lankan dumplings.

Largest Pane of Glass - Day 7
On Janell & Scooby's last day in Dubai, we went to a local gem, the Mamzar beach park, where we hoped to enjoy a sandy afternoon, but the weather did not cooperate, and we were forced to visit the newly opened Dubai Mall instead. This mall boasts the World's Largest Pane of Glass, which encloses the the Dubai Mall Aquarium. You'll also find an ice rink, two food courts, several ridiculous fountains, and best of all for me: Dubai's first Gap store, and for the kids: the country's only Taco Bell.

Late that night I brought Janell & Scooby back to Dubai airport, and though I truly felt sad to see them go, I was content to reach the end of a busy visit, and satisfied to tick another 4 or 5 BEST and BIGGEST Dubai attractions off my to do list - and most importanty, to start saving the necessary Dirhams for the next round of visitors.

And What Do The Kids Think?

2008-11-29T21:29:00.000-08:00

Quiz Question: Which one of our kids could be described as being 'Off With the Fairies'? Read below to see your answer...

In response to Jill's comment (last post), because our kids go to an Australian school (which is co-ed and very 'normal' by our standards) and because I work in one of the most conservative institutions in the area, the kids don't necessarily experience some of the really different customs that I do. You do see completely covered women all over town, often surrounded by blondes like me in short sleeves. But after no more than the first week when the kids were asking 'why do the ladies look like nuns and cover their faces?' they have settled in and the seem to 'get it', that there is another religion here making life different from home. They are adaptable little people our kids, moreso than me in fact.

Putting off Thanksgiving for a couple of weeks, for example, in order to 'celebrate right' when I have a few days off and time to linger over pie, indeed made me funky last week, but the kids could have cared less. And sitting stuck in traffic, which makes me long for Colorado roads, sits well with the kids as long as we're allowing them to play with their game boys in the back seat. (But don't y'all get excited Aunties and Uncles, Video games for the home continue to sit on our 'Banned - DO NOT BUY' list, lest we fry their brains).

Even Liam, who has shown more signs of homesickness than the others, succeeded in organizing his own play date at the park, by dragging Billy there to see his pals after school last week. Though his teacher says he is oftentimes 'off with the fairies' (read: Australian slang for 'spaced out'), she said he doesn't miss a thing and that he loves a good laugh. And to confirm that he is truly at home in the Australian school environment, he spelled snake on his Christmas list just like an Australian would say it: SNIKE

And Rosie seems least affected by our move. She soaks it up when restaurant workers try to chit chat, and her best pal at school is a local little girl named Meera.

Alas Brady continues to remind us, when we get a little goofy and yodel along with the prayer caller at the mosque behind our house, that it is not good manners to make fun of someone's religion. Irreverent parents, are we?

Co-Ed Bluetooth

2008-11-23T09:01:00.000-08:00

The business department where I work sponsored a conference last week with the theme of Energizing the Emirati Economy (Otherwise known as E3). We had locally well-known guest speakers, a big food sponsor with gourmet goody bags, cosmetic samples and makeover coupons, a giant Pepsi display with chilled bevs on ice, and lots of talk about Emiratis getting involved with the multi-national business going on here.

But the subtext of this event was far from business-ey. Though we are a women's college, we invited guys from the men's campus and filled the auditorium with students. The rules for these events at our conservative campus require that the guys sit at the front, the girls sit at the back, and two rows of faculty separate them.

When the girls enroll at the college, we ensure the men who act as their guardians (dads, brothers or husbands) that this is a women's zone, (male faculty aside), and that their 'women' will be looked after and shielded from unwanted male company, let alone improper advances or flirting.

But the day before the conference, we faculty escorts were given a talk about enforcing the rules on mobile phones, namely, that they must remain off and out of sight inside any campus buildings. This was especially important at this event not because the phones might go off and disturb our distinguished guests, and not because it is impolite to chat on your mobile in a business setting. The main reason is that this would be one of the few opportunities this year when our female students would be in close enough proximity to the boys that they could 'blue tooth' each other.

Up to this point, my knowledge of bluetooth technology was limited to that awkward ear piece I sometimes try to use when I drive. I did not know that you can turn it on and use it as a sort of radar, to locate other mobile numbers in the zone where you sit, and exchange info, numbers, names, etc., without ever a phone going off. Go figure.

Along these same lines, I called tech support to the classroom this week and when the jolly fellow arrived and I opened the door without hesitation he looked at me like, 'lady, you can't just let me in..', and so while I coaxed him into the room, I turned around to find three of my gals swishing around their sheilas (or headscarves) to get more covered in preparation for his presence. Though I've been here almost 4 months now, it still happens weekly that I stop in my tracks at what seem to be absurd gender roles, rules and limitations. (See posting called 'unveiling'). As much as I'd like to think I'm getting to understand the custom, I don't know if I'll ever not shake my head (inside my head) when I hear someone talking about the guardian of an articulate and educated 22 year old woman.

Housemaid

2008-11-13T21:45:00.000-08:00

I try to post something here weekly, not only for my loyal readers at home, but for our kids, who might think this is a cool family archive some day. (Thank you all for reading by the way ;-)SHOUT OUT here to Jill, Ann, Connie, Michelle at the IEC, Trevor, Alicia, Mom and my sisters, and a mystery reader named Darsantre - Who are you?? )

But I've spent several days in the last week at the immigration offices in Dubai, trying to legally hire a full-time helper to live in the separate tiny quarters we have at our villa. Why isn't Billy doing this - you might ask? Billy has indeed taken charge of our cooking and food shopping (this means lots of cabbage and internet recipes from Iran), putting kids on the the school bus (picture Rosie with crooked pig tails) and watching over homework (resulting in perfect pencil renditions of the Japanese flag). But since I am the legal 'Expatriate Resident', I am the only one who can officially submit papers and sponsor a dependent employee.

This is all well and good with me, except that the language surrounding the help here seems third-world. The first time I heard 'housemaid', from a modern Swedish woman, I bristled. How old-fashioned I thought. As it turns out, 'housemaid' is the official occupation listed on the passports of people hired to be live-in help. So for the locals, the word is natural - and normal. And for those who've lived here for a while, it seems to become normal too. But as I meet more westerners and other Arab expats, I can see the struggle to use the right word, depending on the social situation where the discussion occurs. My Turkish officemate for example, uses 'helper' when talking about her housemaid to me , but she uses 'Maid' when she's talking with Europeans. Another American teacher uses the word 'nanny' mostly, because like me, I think she finds the term 'housemaid' distasteful. At any rate, full-time live-in help here is common and inexpensive, and you could say we're 'going native' as we work to hire someone ourselves.

The gal we're trying to hire is 24, married, and from Sri Lanka. She is smiley, hard-working and sending money back home. She is our friend's nanny's niece and has been coming to clean house every Friday for several weeks now.

So, after 5 visits to immigration, numerous papers which had to be professionally 'typed', sitting in wild yet bumper to bumper Dubai traffic after work, hanging out in the ladies sections of smelly crowded government offices (much like dingy U.S. government offices only with more marble decor), a $1500 deposit, and another $2000 in fees, we have officially and legally sponsored our own 'helper', who is moving in this week. As we move through the adjustment to having daily help with cleaning, ironing, after-school-care and kitchen-help, we'll let you know how our life is impacted and how our vocabulary for 'housemaid' evolves.

Pumpkins, Parties & Prayers

2008-11-02T08:51:00.001-08:00

UAE Halloween

2008-11-02T08:15:00.002-08:00

Good Americans love Halloween, and the really good Americans know where to find pumpkins, and have pumpkin carving kits in their kitchens. After paying about $30 for a smallish imported American pumpkin, I got a tip from a colleague that the fruit and veg markets have local gourds that can pass for pumpkins. With this info, Billy went out and found a two dollar and three dollar pumpkin to round out our project. This same colleague also lent us her special carving kit, complete with safe tools and stencils, so we were really able to get creative this year, without cutting off any small child's fingers.

Check out our slide show to see the kids in Japanese traditional costumes, our pumpkins and carving activities, and men and boys praying in the parking lot where we bought candy for the Halloween party. You'll also see the house of a Canadian family where we trick-or-treated all of their doors, and the kids got wild and crazy with their plastic samurai swords.

See, we haven't gone completely native..

Indecent Expatriates

2008-10-26T00:20:00.001-07:00

We have a lovely new Canadian babysitter named Chanel, which means later-evening outings have once again become a possiblity for Billy and me.

Less eager to explore nightlife than we were to have a social life, I organized a reservation at a Mexican restaurant in Dubai for the other new hires and their partners. Per the usual, since this is a restaurant serving alcohol, we found it on the premises of a hotel, precisely on the 8th floor. Not all of the bars are tucked away in high-rises, but many of them are, and so the evening started with the ilicit feeling of going to a secret place. Since the drinking & driving laws are harsh in this country, i.e. one drop lands you in jail, I was drinking Perrier while Billy and most of the others had margaritas and Corona Extra. Though we were tired and it was late, the single and childless folks coerced us into following them to a night spot called 'the lodge'.

Given the name The Lodge, we had fireplaces and deer heads in mind, and visions of ski lodges with warm after dinner drinks. But as we got closer to the venue and watched the folks piling out of taxis on the curb, it became clear this was to be a night of short skirts, high heels and yes > plaid school-girl outfits. At first we were thinking gosh, we must be really out of touch to NOT know that plaid jumpers had gained popularity. But as the night progressed, and we got past the underaged local boys hanging out at the velvet rope just to look and whistle, and moved through the bouncers to find our names on the VIP list and into the circular open air dance pit, we learned that this was the night's theme - '80's school girl night'.

I must admit that dancing in the middle of a taxi-filled city of highrises, in the open air and to the music of my youth proved to be so much more exhilirating than Hot Toddies by a fire would have been. But I also must admit that I wondered over the impression we were giving to the teen hangers-on at the velvet rope, guys whose sisters aren't allowed out after dark, and whose families don't wear western clothes or even dance for that matter.

But we carried on, sweaty indecent dancing expatriates, many of us dressed indecently even by western standards, and made our plans to find the off-license liquor seller the following weekend.

Unveiling

2008-10-16T06:32:00.000-07:00

It's week seven on campus, and until now I've had two students continue to wear their veils in class. The choice to be veiled is a complicated one, and as I understand, it has more to do with family tradition than anything else, though sometimes a strong male figure is imposing the choice.

While I was handing back papers to my group of twenty, wandering between the desks and having a good 8am chat with my students, mostly about which mall everyone enjoyed over the weekend, I came to M's paper. M has been one of my veiled ones, and I've come to know her eye expressions and the clear voice she projects from beneath her veil. I'm guessing you become an articulate speaker out of necessity when you choose to be veiled. As I looked up from my stack of papers to her usual spot I became disoriented to find her unveiled face. I audibly but quietly gasped in surprise and she looked pleased, grinned and took her paper. Because I spent almost three weeks getting to know my students names, and this was complicated by the two veils in class, it's been a bit of a fixation for me, and therefore, I was completely distracted and a bit consumed by the situation and had to actually focus my thoughts to carry on. Inside (and maybe outside too) I was smiling with the satisfaction of knowing that maybe I'd created a zone comfortable enough for her to feel at ease. Or perhaps her father or brother had decided to relax a family tradition. Either way, a positive threshold had been crossed and I was there to see it.

Spilled Juice and Desert Roads

2008-10-11T00:36:00.000-07:00

(For photos, see www.wattskidsinaction.shutterfly.com)

I should have known if we tell people we're driving to another middle-eastern country with our children in the back seat, that we'd have people worried and waiting for us to make it home safe. Sorry for this. We are home. We are safe. We had an excellent time. And if this travel sounds exotic and adventurous, just remember that kids will spill juice boxes and spouses will bicker about the map and that gas station toilets basically stink no matter where on the planet you are. So the actual drive was pretty much like driving from Chicago to St. Louis, only without the corn fields.

A Safe Trip?
Oman has been a peaceful place for a very long time, as has the UAE, and the whole pointed peninsula is safe for travelling around by car. The only questionable aspect is the 4 hour stretch of desert between Dubai and the mountains of Muscat, but there are gas stations every 80-100 kilometers and the Omanis do in fact speak some English.

Desert and Rocky Peaks
Dubai and Sharjah are mostly a developed coastal desert, and as you drive out of town towards Oman, the landscape is gentle rolling dunes with scrub. As you get further inland the dunes flatten to a more gravelly looking dismal gray. But as you near the Omani coast, you pass through the striking jutting rocky mountains of Oman, which are grey, pointy and jagged. These mountains press the city of Muscat into the Gulf of Oman, and the actual cityscape has been built atop and between the jutty peaks of rock. The gulf water is stunning, blue and warm.

Chamois Guy, Dolphins and Forts
We chose a resort called Shangri-la, a few miles down the coast from the capital, for their multiple pools, beach access, and a raved-about breakfast buffet. It was more D-luxe than we imagined, especially the chamois-guy, whose only apparent job was to wander about the pool and beach and offer to clean your shades, all done with a brilliant southeast Asian smile. With the variety of restaurants and pools, (and other doting melon-pushing staff) we could have spent the entire six days on resort.

But the tourist attractions were beckoning, and after just a day and a half of R&R, we embarked on a tour of the sites. These included dolphin watching, tiny mountaintop forts, old enlarged European sketches of the city, and an excellent souk where you could buy anything from traditional costumes to incense burners to henna powder for tatoos and giant shiny swords. My favorite thing though, is the public art of Muscat. The traffic circles and many of the overpasses offer sculptures (traditional coffee pots and boats) and tiled art (scenes of fishing and sword battles). Just imagine Billy driving around the traffic circles, window down, and me invading his driver-seat lap trying to get a good shot with my camera, with locals lined up in their cars behind us, beeping and annoyed. (photos at linkbelow).

Mutton and Fruit
The food in Oman is influenced by the Indians and Lebanese who for a long time were the primary immigrants, so we ate lots of lamb, eggplant and grape leaves. The kids enjoyed watermelon and mango juices every day for breakfast and we ate numerous shwarma (something akin to a gyro sandwich) and mutton-kebob.

The Road Home
After six days of chamois-guys, dolphins and Omani heritage, we were ready to get back to life. The road home was just the same as the road there, with its juiceboxes, gameboys and desert toilets, but we had a whole new geographical vocab to work with. Just ask Liam and you're bound to hear 'Omani, Muscat, Wadi, Henna and Shwarma'. Mission accomplished.

For photos and slideshow go to:
http://wattskidsinaction.shutterfly.com/

Maths Invigilation

2008-10-07T03:10:00.001-07:00

I know some of you are waiting for our news from Oman (amazing trip and lots of photos being organized now), and others of you are waiting for my response to your personal emails. But our Internet service at home has been down for several days now (Billy's about to strangle the technician scheduler), and I've not got lots of extra time at work. However, I've just been through an interesting cultural experience that I think I've got just enough time to share with you.

Bear in mind please that in the UAE and much of the Gulf region they speak an English that we linguists like to call 'Global English'. What that means is they've taken on a British vernacular in business, an American vernacular in daily life, and then put their own Arabic-influenced accent on top of it. My workplace is dominated by British materials and people, and therefore we operate under British norms. So you think, What does this mean? British norms. It means 'MathS' for example, MathS with an 'S'. And it means 'faffing around' instead of 'messing around', and it means that when you say the word 'meeting', you must say it in an awfully formal and English-ey way - super-pronouncing the T, ie. meeeTing, if you want anyone to take you seriously.

Two days ago, I got an email with this subject line: MATHS Invigilation. And I'm thinking this must be a typo or some wierd joke from the guys who teach mathS and statistics or some new word invented by a student assistant, you know, in the place of maybe invigoration, imagination, invitation and so on. But the Scottish, English and Turkish faculty in my little quad of cubes are all shocked when I ask 'what on earth is INVIGILATION?'! And so they tell me that it's the same as what on American campuses is called test proctoring. Now I love the English folks most of the time, and I find their accent lovely in fact, but here's where I say, come on guys, Are You Serious?

The email informed me that it was my turn to proctor (or INVIGILATE) a test for the mathS department. On the appointed day I showed up at the Multi-purpose Hall and in filed almost 200 first year business students with their pencils, erasers and calculators. My job was to make sure they all signed in and took their seats. Once the test began, I had to pace the aisles with 6 other faculty, looking over the shoulders of the test takers. During this 90 minute test here were some cultural observations I was able to make. First off, the vast majority of these women have large, bling-bling style, expensive brand-name handbags, all gently placed at the foot of their desks. Second, at least 6 in ten have elaborate henna tatoos on their hands. Though these wear off after several weeks, I've noticed that some of my gals go weekly for new ones to the salon. Also, though I have only two gals who cover their faces during my class, five more of them chose to wear veils in the test situation, due to the presence of male INVIGILATORS. This is still striking to me, since in some ways this country can seem so Western and only very mildly Islamic. But it's striking again when I think about how absolutely shocking the 'real world' (Mall of the Emirates) must be for these people whose parents hardly ever heard English in the streets or saw uncovered women around town. At any rate, the lovely thing about INVIGILATION is that since it is a completely silent environment, I was allowed the luxury of taking my cultural observations and mulling them over bit by bit, as I wandered between the Louis Vuitton and the Prada, the Henna and the Veils.

Road Trip to Oman

2008-09-24T05:52:00.000-07:00

The country of Oman borders the UAE and you can get to it's historic and temperate coast in about 5 hours by car. So when I got news from the Sheik in my email that the end of Ramadan this year will be celebrated with a whole week off, we decided to take our first road trip. En route, there is supposedly some unique mountain and desert scenery. We're leaving tomorrow and will be staying at the Shangri-La resort a few miles outside of Muscat, on the Omani coast. It's an historic coastal village with a renowned bazaar and old-time fishing boats. I'm not sure whether we'll be online much since the goal is to get away and relax - so watch for our next news in about a week.

Ramadan

2008-09-20T04:15:00.000-07:00

We are in the middle of Ramadan, a one-month religious period of fasting and prayer for Muslims and it's taking its toll on our Christian sensibilities.

For starters, it is illegal to be seen in public consuming anything, including water, chewing gum, tobacco and any form of food between sunrise (around 6:10) and sunset (round 6:30). This might not be so bad if it weren't still over 100 degrees most days. And though it does not apply to children (or pregnant women), most people put their kids on a kiddie fast, which means nothing between meals. For us, this means being very discrete about carrying water with us for the kids. If we are seen to be breaking the rules ourselves, the fine can be upwards of $300. On top of this, most shops are closed from 1pm till 8 or so, so taking care of any business or errands during this month, especially if you are a working person, is almost impossible. At work, hotels and even some of the western shopping centers, there are dedicated govt. approved cafes (tucked out of view) where non-muslims can legally eat lunch and drink water, but they're generally not convenient. So pretty much every other day at work, since the special cafe is two buildings away, my co-workers and I suffer headaches and loss of concentration due to dehydration. Fun huh?

On the flipside, because of shortened school and work schedules, people end up spending a lot more quality time at home, with their families, than they do during the rest of the year. It also means that if you do venture out after your kids' bed time, the streets are bustling, the shopping centers have special booths with decorations and Ramadan sweets and tents are set up for late community buffet meals. We've gone to a couple of these Ramadan dinners, called Iftar, and the food is wonderful, with traditional flat breads, spreads made with eggplant, beans and cream, roasted lamb and a local fish called Hamour, and a great variety of desserts made with dates, pistachios and honey. Philanthropic groups take advantage of the period to collect money since people are concerned about the community. The locals are very proud of their maintenance of this tradition, and if you ask them whether fasting is harmful to their bodies and dispositions, they'll tell you that Allah would not do any of his people permanent harm.

At work, though the students do go home early and supposedly get naps, they are all quite tired. Their family responsibilities during Ramadan during the dark hours are important. They eat together, visit the mosque, go out about town with their parents, and therefore they are not only dehydrated, cranky and hungry, but sleep-deprived too. This combination of teachers with headaches and sleepy students makes it very hard for us to accomplish our goals for the month. The cultural experience is definitely what I was after when I took the job, but it will take the whole month to get the hang of the tradition of Ramadan.

A Week in the Life

2008-09-16T02:34:00.000-07:00

Since it was my birthday, I finally had good reason to stop and linger at the pastry counter at the market. Billy and the kids helped me pick out a selection of local pastries, most made with honey, pistachios, fried dough or a delicate combination. As I have the naughty but comforting habit of scrounging for a 9pm snack, you can imagine how excited I was as we ordered the sticky, sweet, nest-shaped pistachio filled tarts and chewy cheese pastry topped with fine sweetened strands of dough. We put a candle into one of the nesty things (see photo) and had a perfectly luscious birthday dessert.

Also this week we took the kids to Dreamland Aquapark, in an Emirate called Umm Al Quwain (two emirates from here). Since it is Ramadan, and most families are resting and praying during the day with shortened work schedules and store hours, this month is a particularly nice time to visit tourist venues, since they're mostly empty. It was about 103 degrees that day, so even Billy and I stayed in the water the entire time - we were there for five hours, and when they closed early, due to Ramadan, the kids were bummed that we couldn't make a second round to all of the attractions, slides, luges, lazy river, vortex dump ride, family raft, volcano pool, large covered 12-pooljacuzzi (not hot but cold) and wave pool. We've promised another trip when it gets a bit cooler.

At work today, I had a student ask an interesting question. Consider that the topic in our coursebook right now is culture shock and that her question actually fit into a much larger discussion. Also consider that this is one of the more fluent students in the class. First she told me she had a question but she did not want to bother me, and she was sorry if it was a question that didn't matter and then explained that she was shy about this question but that her classmates all were curious, (this extremely long and hedging intro made me nervous by the way) she said this: 'I hear that Americans are afraid of mid-east people and is that true and then why do you come here'? I was kind of waiting for this question from someone but I was still surprised when I got it. I took my time and first let the student know that she need not apologize for her question. I'd tell her if the question wasn't appropriate. Then I said that some Americans are afraid of mid-east people because of a history of terrorism that people associate with Islam, which brings to mind the Gulf Region. I continued to say that many more Americans are curious about the mid-east, and have more interest than fear regarding the region, more because I felt that this was a necessary answer, whether it was really true or not. I'd love any of y'all's thoughts on this, since I'm sure it's not the first time I'll get this. Looking forward to your comments.

Arabic, Urdu, or English?

2008-09-11T22:57:00.000-07:00

I was just about to work on my latest pondering from our sand-road villa about Language, and Rosie sidled up to say, 'Can we go back to Grandma's house now? And play with my cousin Toby?' So perhaps first I ought to address the homesickness and the guilt you feel about dragging your kids away from the familiar, their own schools, their pals since birth, and of course, from a quick plane ride to Grandma's. Though we're settling in well, the kids are all enrolled at the Australian school, and Billy's been busy networking, there is a clear void left by Grandma and all the TLC the kids got while spending a big chunk of their summer with her. Grandma and Grandpa and the doting aunties Janell & Sarah, as well as Uncle Bern and his dogs in Colorado, our fake but FUN Aunties Jill and Ann in Chicago, and of course our best Colorado pals the Bieners made our transition here easier for sure. But at the same time it became even more difficult as we had to say goodbye to such an awesome and supportive American village. Thanks guys!

Now on to the topic at hand: Language. The language situation in the UAE is my current challenge, and so far I've figured out this much: I need to learn Urdu. With Arabic as the native language and English as the language of commerce you'd think that being American would give me an edge. But it doesn't mean a whole lot when an Urdu-speaking taxi driver from India, who's only been here 13 days picks you up, and can't figure out where it is you want to go. It also doesn't help when the Pakistani Urdu speaker who has come to put together your Ikea furniture tries to tell you he'll come back and finish the job another day. So I've learned to say How are You in Urdu - maybe this will help.

Because the locals here are a minority, (Emiratis make up less than 25 percent of the total population), and because cheap foreign labor from poor countries makes up another 25 percent, the language most often spoken is indeed English. This makes the prospect of learning Arabic for me and Billy quite hard, as anyone we'd want to practice with will either not be a speaker of Arabic in the first place, or simply be unwilling to tolerate our attempts at Arabic. So in the mean time, I'm relying on Arabic lessons from Brady. He studies Arabic every day in school and comes home with tricky Arabic body part games. As you might imagine, he gets a great thrill when I actually get it wrong.

So for those of you planning to visit here, you need not have any anxiety about speaking the language. You will certainly get by with your English, but picking up an Urdu phrase book might not be a bad idea.

On the Job Front

2008-09-05T23:09:00.000-07:00

After three weeks of orientation and training and one full week of teaching, I am finally ready to write about my job. I got exactly the type of assignment I was hoping for but was told I probably would not get during my first year. Here's the lo-down:

The Institution
Sharjah Women's College is a division of the Higher Colleges for Technology (HCT), which was founded 20 years ago. HCT is the biggest institution of Higher Learning in the UAE. We have sixteen campuses, mens and womens, around the Emirates, with six major degree programs: Education, Business, IT, Health Sciences, Engineering and Graphic Arts. Degrees are offered at the Diploma level (like an American Associates Degree), Bachelor's level, and soon there will be Masters programs available. Currently, only Emirati students are admitted and student fees are paid by the government.

The Campus
Our campus is located in University City, a giant well groomed desert village where four major Universities and several smaller institutes have taken up residence. Imagine large white stucco-colored domed buildings surrounded by wide marble plazas with palms and fountains. The Women's college, Men's College and shared Sports complex probably span five kilometers. The Women's College has about 8 buildings, mostly connected by covered walkways as shelter from the sun.

The Job
I teach English to groups of 18-20 students who are doing Business and IT degrees. These gals have already taken one year of English-only intensive courses, so they're able to converse casually and write paragraph-level papers in English. The goal seem s to be vocational and commercial English, aiming towards work-placement. The huge influx of foreigners has got the locals wanting a more prominent place in commerce, thus a push for 'Emiratization' of the work force, and the education of any willing college-aged student, with a focus on fluency in English.

Students
Most of my students are 19 or 20 years old and from large Muslim families (7-9 kids)
The dress code for students requires the abaya, a simple black robe typical of locals around town, with 'decent' clothes underneath. There is not any head-cover requirement, so the students' choice of cover varies. I teach a total of 38 students between my classes and two of them choose to be totally veiled. Two others choose no head cover at all. These two gals are usually sporting Converse brand shoes and blue jeans under their abayas, and make no effort to conceal what they're wearing under the uniform. The rest cover all but their faces or have a little bit of hair (often highlight streaked) peaking out.

My Colleagues
A third of my colleagues have been here for more than three years, another third are in their first three-year contract, and about a third just started like I did. Americans are a small minority among the faculty. The countries represented are Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, Turkey, Hungary, Scotland, Ireland, England, Canada (lots of them), Columbia, Sudan, Egypt, Malaysia, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. I have a spacious sunny cubicle (will post photo later) and my cube faces the work space of Aysen (from Turkey), Scott (from Scotland) and Nikki (from England).

More to come later:

Facilities and Resources

Campus Rules

Classroom Anecdotes

Work Ethic

Calendar

Teaching During Ramadan

Billy & Rosie Have Arrived

2008-09-02T10:50:00.000-07:00

Since Billy and Rosie got here two nights ago (I can't say how happy this makes me to have us all under one grand roof again), we've been to the Choral Beach Resort Club in Sharjah and the Gold Souk & Textile Souk in Dubai.

Expats living in Sharjah join the beach clubs at waterfront hotels, where bikinis are de rigeur, and you don't need to worry about funny looks from the mostly local male bathers at the public beaches.

The Dubai Souks are grand bazaars where hundreds of stallkeepers maintain tiny store fronts to sell their wares.

Enjoy the pictures, and I'll send along more details at a later point. Working by day and getting to know the area by night is seriously tiring..

The Long Version of the Week Ending Aug. 31, by Angie Brady

2008-08-31T08:43:00.000-07:00

This past week has provided me with some new adventures....firstly driving...oh boy! Christina went out with me and acted as navigator while I did the driving. Firstly, it gave me some experience behind the wheel in this place of crazy drivers...by the way, the number one cause of death in this area is car accidents...scary! Secondly, it gave Christina a break from trying to navigate while driving. I have a problem of trying to read street names like Sheik Mojid Bin Sawr Al Qasimi Street or Abdulla Bin Salim Al Sabah Street or Sheik Saleem Bin Sultan Al Qasimi Street. Then...these names are on round-a-bout signs along with the Arabic writing with other names that are telling you which way to go. Most intersections are round-a-bouts and not real turns. It's a real challenge. Christina & I have driven around round-a-bouts several times just to try to get on the correct roads. The day that I took Brady & Liam to school for their assessments I drove by myself. I was very pleased that I arrived at the school with just one minimal problem. Going home, however, was another story. I thought I would do some grocery shopping for Christina. After leaving the grocery store, I spent 2 hours trying to find my way home. I knew I was close several times. Finally Christina arrived home and talked me through it on the cell phone.

The shopping here is unbelievable. High end stores from European and American countries have a big presence. We went to the Mall of the Emirates....the famous giant mall on Sat. It was big and beautiful. I loved all of the shops that carried clothes and items from the Mideast. I feel like I need to be listening to Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Adventure while writing about this.

This is where the famous indoor ski area is located. It was an unbelievable sight to see people skiing and tubing in an indoor arena. Christina & Billy & the kids will celebrate Brady's birthday there in the next week. He will be 8 tomorrow.

There were also water fountains spurting from the ground dancing to synchronized music. The boys played in water fountains until a security guard came to scold us for breaking the rules that we were unaware of. We were scolded but did not cause an international incident.

When we left the Mall of the Emirates we were lucky to secure a wonderful Indian taxi driver who was willing and happy to take us on a tour to see the Jumeirah Palm Island, the 8th Wonder of the World (island shaped like a palm tree); the Burj Al Arab (The world's tallest and most luxurious hotel)...the first 7 star hotel. We also saw the construction project of the tallest building in the world to be completed in 2010. Another taller building is being planned to begin construction in 2010. Dubai is truly a cosmopolitan city. People from everywhere in the world work and visit here. The taxi driver pointed out that the skyline of the city was not in existence 3 years ago. EVERYTHING is new! The architecture is very modern. We drove along the road along the Gulf through Dubai to Sharjah. These emerits are side by side but getting from one to another can be a very long haul during rush hour.

We attended mass at a Catholic Church in Sharjah. The congregation was almost all Indian with other people probably from Asia & the Philippines. There were only 2 other Anglo's besides us in the full church. People arrived early and said the rosary before mass. The whole altar area & most of the church was white marble. It was beautiful and bright. Most of the songs were familiar and the mass was sung by the priest, which does not happen very often anymore in the US accept for very special occasions. The people sang heartily...a pleasure for me. The Indian women had beautiful traditional dresses of many colors. As I said before in an earlier entry, the women are of great interest to me. Of the men, I have yet to gain any understanding except that they come from a different planet when they get behind the wheel.

The wealth here is another aspect of this area that is really amazing. The families, average 7.7 persons per household, and have servants, not usually one but possibly many. There are nannies and house keepers...some acting as both. There could be a few nannies in homes depending how many children are in the home. I see the nannies everywhere we go. They are generally with the children trailing behind their mother. I don't see much joy in their faces and feel like they are sad. They work hard and are away from their homeland and really have tough jobs caring for these children. The guide book stated that abuse of these house helpers sometimes exists but there is no recourse for them. The advice is that they work harder to get along with their employers. The country is now working on human rights issues. I really don't know much about that yet.

Enough for now.

Photo Upload Issues

2008-08-30T11:55:00.000-07:00

If anyone knows a secret to posting photos here I'd love to know it. I have 15 additional pics to share with the previous post but the system asks me to try again later. Any ideas? Should I just post them at shutterfly and provide a link here instead?

Mostly Pictures Here, and the Skinny on Booze

2008-08-30T10:36:00.000-07:00

Hello All,
If you've asked for more photos, we've got some here:
Brady & Liam's new school bus, which has drop down DVD machines
(we are currently on the wait list for bus service)
Liam in kitchen
Catholic church in Sharjah, St. Michael's
Shop signs with Arabic
Ski Dubai (we went just to look and gather info., will actually ski some time soon)
Lebanese restaurant overlooking Ski Dubai
Mall of the Emirates (they claim it's the biggest in the world)
Burj Al Arab - famous sail-shaped building in Dubai
Hotel on the Palm Jumeira (famous palm shaped island in the Gulf)

As for your questions about alcohol, it is true that there are no bars or liquor stores in Sharjah where we live. But imagine Louisville, Colorado, 12 miles from Boulder, and that's our relationship with Dubai, where there are many bars and hotel restaurants serving from fully stocked bars. We also can get a personal alcohol license to purchase alcohol from a state-run store in Dubai, for consumption in our homes. However, this is not available until October, when the Ramadan fasting period is over.

Enjoy the pics from Grandma's camera, and I'll write more soon when I've gotten over the inconvenient cold that's currently wearing me out. By the way, no alcoholic cough remedies here, but I did pick up a completely root-based remedy at the pharmacy which was 100% effective for my cough.

Four Cool Events: By Brady Watts

2008-08-28T09:15:00.000-07:00

Number One: The Swimming Pool Fire

We were out at the swimming pool called the Wanderer’s Club having fun. I was diving for diving stuff. But then we saw flames bursting up above the pump house and then they died down really fast. Then, all there was, was smoke. We ran out of the swimming pool through the bridge and out. We were right in between two poles. After a while the firemen came running in with fire extinguishers and a hose, spraying it and putting the fire out. It was cool watching the firefighters but it was scary thinking about the whole thing burning down. We had dinner then at the Wanderer’s restaurant, a great dinner, I had pasta, and then we went home.

Number Two: The Dubai Drums

Last night we went to the Dubai Drums. It was very cool. At first, there were just two people with a guitar playing for two songs (Spanish style). But then the whole band came out and played with the guitar people and it was very fun. After that in the second half they gave people lots of drums to drum with them. They told us to do what we felt was the right beat to fit the people around us.

Number Three: Australian International School of Sharjah

Yesterday we went to the school for an assessment. Our Grandma arrived in the signing up room and then after a little while everybody who were the teachers brought us for the assessment. It took a long time. It was a test that we had to do. I did it on paper but the rest of the class did it on the computer. I didn’t know how to use the computer and the teachers were really kind of surprised you know. One day later we found out that I passed the test and I could be in the grade I wanted to be.

Number Four: Arabian Wildlife Center

First we started driving. We forgot that was the wrong turn. We turned at the wrong time and we got lost. But soon we caught up and arrived at the Arabian Wildlife Center. It was really cool with dark places with bats, little windows to see the habitat and another place where you just looked out the window where there were jaguars right next to the walkway. We never had to go outside. It was a long walkway which went squiggly with lots of turns and sometimes we went through vines hanging from the ceiling and we saw not only the habitat but we were inside the habitat looking at all the birds in the desert around us. After that we got to see how the big waterfall was coming down from part of the desert. It was cool. Before that even, we saw bats. They were flying around behind the glass, hanging from the walls of the cave behind the glass and looking as if they were going to land on one of our heads. It was a great place and a great time.

The four cool events were very awesome! I hope you had a great time reading this story. Bye!

Angie's First Week, by Angie Brady (Christina's mom)

2008-08-25T05:09:00.000-07:00

Marhaba! (Hello)Note Two:It's now been a week in the U.A.E. Besides adjusting to jet-lag, Brady, Liam, & I have experienced many new things.
First the food...Most of you who know me, know that I am pretty adventurous so this is a great culinary taste adventure. Dates...off the tree are awesome! Camel milk...well, a little to grainy in flavor for me. Yogurt is not only delicious but sold in the typical sizes that we are familiar with and also sold in 1/2 to 1 gallon containers. I saw many ladies putting the large buckets into their carts. The yogurt selections in the grocery stores are huge. Desalinated water is also something new...maybe not too far off in the U.S. future. It has a slightly different taste. Christina tells me that the water has more calcium from the salt removing process. Thus, she is using bottled water. I read an article that the U.A.E. uses 150% more water per capita than the people in the U.S.
On our first full day here, Tuesday, we slept until noon and just vegged out the rest of the day until Christina came home from work. We took a ride and went to the coast to see the Gulf and eat dinner. We saw our first camel resting comfortably on a rug at the beach. A gentleman was waiting for some folks like us who were looking for photo-ops. We had no money with us so there were no photos. However, Brady managed to get on the resting camel before we could tell him we were not taking photos this time. The camel wasn't the most friendly guy, making noises and raising his lips to show his teeth....I think this is just normal camel behavior. I'm just glad he did not decide to spit. We were able to enjoy our first dip with our toes into the Arabian Gulf in Sharjah, not called the Pursian Gulf in this part of the world. No swimming as we did not see any women in the water...only a couple dipping their toes. There are rules about beaches that determine what days are permitted for Women & Men. We haven't seen the costume for women for public beaches. Christina is going to check that out. I did see some Muslim women in the Chicago Triathlon last year and an Arab woman in a magazine report in an outfit they referred to as a berkini. I'm not sure of the seriousness of that term. We ate at a little restaurant across from the beach and had our first Arabian food: One bread type pizza covered in spices and another more typical to us with shrimp, tomatoes, & cheese. We shared an Arabian type salad. Many men were out walking and a few women with men. On our drive home and every day since, there have been men congregated in front of stores at tables or on the ground or just standing around talking. Imagine that....no bars! Getting together in the evenings when the sun sets appears to be a favored activity here. The world comes alive after dark. Men socialize, women shop, and life is abuzz.
On Wednesday and Thursday we rested during the days and went out on exploring missions with Christina after work. Getting around here is very time consuming and exhausting. We went out on one mission to find a store called "Lucky" and and never found it...Lucky, huh? We went home. We toured the Australian International School where the kids may go to school....easy to find. We visited supermarkets for shopping. It's better than going to Trader Joe's. I could spend hours just looking at the merchandise.
On Friday we went to a huge beautiful mall. The U.A.E. weekend is Friday & Saturday. I believe that shopping is a national pass time, maybe because it is a cool activity. Most women are accompanied by men. I am continually interested in the women. They are dressed in a variety of gowns. Most are dressed in black and have veils on their heads, some have their whole face covered, and some have the lower half of their faces covered or only a small slit for their eyes. I also saw some women totally veiled with a see through veil. Some veils/dresses were jeweled and others had beautiful embroidery. Colorful veils were worn by some women. Since the population is made up of people from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and a variety of other Asian and Arab countries, there is a large variety of dress customs. The Indian women look so pretty in their beautiful gowns with beautiful patterns. There were people who look like me but only a small fraction.
At the mall we spent 2 hours at a Lego building exibit where the boys participated in a building project. This event celebrated 50 years of Legos. We ate at a food court: Brady had sushi, I had a Beirut combination plate, Liam had Burger King (the toy), and Christina had a baked potato. Something for everyone. There was a host of other new foods. I'll never get to try them all before I leave here. Weight Watchers is on the back burner for now. I guess I'll have to make several trips. Before we left the mall we went to see Space Chimps in a theater with assigned seats.
Holy men called Muezzin give the call to prayer every few hours on a p.a. system to the whole neighborhood. There are mosques everywhere in every neighborhood, one less than a block from home. When I hear the Imam's chant, I sometimes feel kind of prayerful and other times I burst into my own rendition of the Imam's sung prayer...I can't control myself! We can't quite tell if they are taped prayers coming over the loud speakers or a real person singing them. Then there are the roosters down the street. I think there are three of them. They cocadoodle doo day and night. There are also wild cats who lay in the shade during the day and can be heard meowing and possibly fighting every night. With the air conditioning on all of the time these noises are not bothersome at all. Oh, and the dust....it never ends. Sand is everywhere..yeah right, it's a desert, which leads us to camels. We've seen camels out in the desert. I believe most of them domesticated. I haven't yet enjoyed the scenic view of a camel train traveling over the tops of sand dunes. I'll keep looking. Have I watched too many movies?
I'll continue in my next note.
Ma is-salaama (Good Bye)

Arabian Harvest

2008-08-21T21:36:00.000-07:00

The kids and Grandma have been here three days and we've experienced three regional foods since then: dates, olives and camel milk.

Dates: Liam and Gram harvested dates from our tree, while Brady preferred to stay indoors and build castles with the giant appliance boxes I put in the dining hall with tape and rope. The date palm tree only fruits once a year and the locals pick and freeze the fruit and bake with them throughout the year - so we decided to do the same.

Olives: Olives are served with everything called 'Arabian', such as Arabian salad or Arabian breakfast, and they're available in staggering variety in big pails in their own section at the supermarket. Here in my kitchen I've got green ones from Jordan and black ones from Lebanon. The prices at the store are less than half of what you'd pay in an American grocery store and the variety is amazing.

Camel Milk: My local grocer has a big dairy section, a whole third of which is devoted to camel milk. I haven't gotten courage to take photographs there yet, as it is crowded with local women, mostly in traditional clothes, and I'm not sure whether I'd cause offense. I did snap a picture of the milk once I got it home and we had a good talk about the qualities of this 'alternative milk' over dinner. Brady says it vanilla-ey, or like soy milk, Gram says it seems grainy. I think it's best mixed into my coffee. Liam said no thanks to the local item, claiming loyalty to the stuff that comes from cows.

Arrival Report, by: Angie Brady (i.e. Grandma Brady, Christina's Mom)

2008-08-20T05:21:00.001-07:00

We arrived last night on time at 10:00 U.A.E. time. Getting through customs with the customs assistant was easy. The limo service that was canceled by Christina showed up to pick us up. Good thing. The two limos were loaded with luggage before we were in contact with Christina. She was waiting at another location for us. After all the confusion we were on our way...two limos loaded with luggage and Me. Christina's newly rented car loaded with the most precious cargo...Brady & Liam. It took a very long time to get home because the limo drivers did not know how to get to Christina's house in Sharjha. They kept pulling off the road and stopping to make a cell phone call to Christina. When they did that, she had to pull off and talk to them and then she became confused about the correct roads to take home also. Street signs are just starting to be used in the U.A.E. so most streets are not identified with signs. Finally, we made it home after midnight. We all enjoyed dates off the date palm in the front yard, took a tour of the house and went to bed. I noticed that I had a room mate before I went to sleep. There was a little lizard at the top of the wall next to the ceiling...too high to do anything about. Lizards are good for catching insects so I guess he's a good room mate to have.
I woke Brady & Liam at noon today.... a little tired. Christina had set an alarm for me to get up at 9:45 because the internet company was coming at 10 and the cable guys were coming at 10:30. The alarm clock malfunctioned and I woke to the door bell (gate) ringing. I let the internet guys in in my pajamas. They said that they would come back. Of course I said that they could stay...One can hardly live without the internet these days.
My first impression is very favorable. The house is beautiful, the limo drivers, cable & internet guys all very nice people. The men workers at the airport look very handsome with their white gowns and head pieces. The women at the airport all had their heads covered but were obviously well manicured with make-up, bracelets, waxed eyebrows, polished nails, and glitter at the edges of their head coverings.
I glanced through the Dubai traveler book and could see that there is much to do and see here. Parks, Museums, Beaches.....And oh my gosh.....the shopping! Don't get nervous Bernie.
It is very hot here today. An hour before we landed at 9 pm. it was still 110 degrees in Dubai. It was 102 when we landed. There were water misters at the airport that you pass through while walking to the exit. I'm not sure that they do any good.We are staying in the house today doing a slow recovery after the long journey. The boys did great! Eating was the biggest challenge on the plane. Every time I tried to help Brady with his food some spilled on him. Fluids were spilled at every meal.The tight quarters on the plane are very difficult for kids for eating as well as their grandmas. That's it for now.

Kids are Here!

2008-08-18T22:37:00.000-07:00

Brady, Liam and Grandma got here last night, their flight was early, and I met them at the airport. While we loaded into the taxis at midnight, Brady was already peeling off his shirt because of the heat. It's been hot here this last week, around 110 degrees and hotter on most days. It is so hot that lipstick in your purse will get soft while you wait just 6 or 7 minutes for a taxi. I am told that we will settle into a gorgeous late fall and winter though, where the high is around 85 and dry, for about five months from November to April. We'll look forward to it.

The kids and Grandma picked and ate ripe dates from our tree when we arrived at the villa. Brady and Liam then combed the place from top to bottom and gave it the seal of approval, 'good house mom'. When I left for work this morning they were all out cold and I set an alarm for Grandma because the cable guy is coming.

More news to come later on gender, language, driving, hired help and the grocery store, if the Cable/Internet guy shows up.

Last Week at Grandma's

2008-08-17T11:36:00.001-07:00

I had a sleep over with Jill and Anne it was fun. We went and saw a very cool play called Walking with Dinosaurs. Then we went home and went to sleep at Jill and Anne's. We watched TV until we fell asleep. We woke up in the morning and turned off the TV.

Then we went home and we played with our toys. We had lunch, then the next day we went to the pool with Uncle Scooby and it was fun. We got to get in the big wirlpool and got water dumped on us by the bucket. It was a great day with Uncle Scooby.

The next day we had dinner with Uncle Scooby, Aunt Janell, Grandma and Grandpa. It was a great dinner, then we went to see the neighbors trailor. It was a very cool trailor. It had a big gigantic couch that could fold into a bed, and a really fun table right next to it with a booth. That was just a super cool trailer.

We then showed Uncle Scooby, Aunt Janell, Toby, and Alaina our stepping stones. The next day would be today. We are flying on the plane at 7:50. It will be super duper duper fun.

A Day at the COSI Museum by: Brady Watts

2008-08-10T07:34:00.000-07:00

It took ten minutes to get to the museum.

First we went to the Space Exhibit, then we went to the movie. The space exhibit was really fun. We pressed a button and it shot a bottle up like a rocket. That was really cool. Then we saw a space probe and got to control it, we even went into a worm hole (a black hole and white hole mixed together).

The movie was a 3D movie about the Ocean. It was so cool, and I've never seen a 3D movie. Then we went to a crime exhibit. We got to solve a crime. We looked at the scene and knew what happened by looking at clues.

Then we saw this cool foam thing. The sound waves vibrated and it made the foam bounce.

I really liked the museum. We went to the ocean exhibit, and shot water out of the pumpers, and we got to go in two submarines. Both submarines looked different. One was bigger. Then a fountain overflowed.

After that we went home and spent the rest of the time there. Next time on Brady's article it will be a Santa Maria Boat, Hope you see it! And that is "the end" of the really cool article.

So Far So Good

2008-08-09T06:33:00.000-07:00

So far I've been doing pretty well with out my mom and dad. Well, on the first hand my dad is at home, and my mom is getting a new house out where we are moving. And I am all alone at grandma's house with my brother Liam. My sister is not here because she is at home with my dad in Louisville, Colorado.

So far we have been doing lots and lots of fun stuff at grandma and grandpa's house, like making stepping stones. I had the butterfly stone and my brother had the square stone. And so far I have been having a lot of fun talking to my mom on the phone. It is really fun having conversations on the phone. I have also been talking to my dad.

Now I drove all the way to Aunt Sarah's house, it took seven hours. My grandma lives in Chicago, Illinois, my aunt lives in Columbus, Ohio that is why it took so long. Columbus Ohio is pretty far away.

I really miss my mom and dad but I know it is going to be good here with every body else. And it's been so far so good, you know? And now that I am at Aunt Sarah's house it has really been getting fun.

The next blog will be about my trip to the museum and Santa Maria Boat. End of article...

Pictures

2008-08-09T05:45:00.000-07:00

First, as promised, some pictures:

I just spent my first night at the villa in the suburbs of Sharjah. Though I have no land line, internet, cable or gas for my stove yet, I still managed to have a good night - watched West Wing on DVD, fixed tuna salad and microwave Ramen noodles, then took a taxi with another faculty mom named Maria to Dubai. The taxi from my Sharjah villa to the Jumeira Beach neighborhood in Dubai took 25 minutes and cost around $17. Though I look forward to getting my local license and a car, I've decided that it's great to get familiar with the area via taxi, so that I've got my bearings when I finally get out onto the road, where tailgating at high speed is the norm.

We met the single faculty folks, most of whom requested Dubai housing, and had drinks in a Cuban bar. It was much like Latin places in Colorado, only the women were much more dressed up, and there seemed to be a lot of tall gorgeous Russian girls. Then we went to a Shisha tent, a cafe where the main consumable is tobacco, smoked through a Hookah. Because Maria has lived in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as well, she knew what to do and how to order. Though I only tried a little orange flavored Shisha (I've worked too hard to obtain my Colorado cycling lungs!!!) , I had a really enjoyable time sitting on low couches with two nice gals and taking in the others around us, many of whom were playing cards.

Some other notables:

1. I exploded Brady's Karaoke machine when I plugged it into the wrong kind of electrical adapter. (Fortunately the DVD player I just bought is Karaoke compatible)
2. I discovered a little rotisserie chicken vendor on the outskirts of my neighborhood - I will buy one tonight hopefully and report back tomorrow..
3. Yes, my Samsung fridge does have an icemaker but it's this funny manual thing that you have to pour water into - it works great.
4. Haven't actually been inside the McDonalds, but signs everywhere advertise the soft serve cone for 1 Dirham (about 30 cents..) - that's a deal!
5. To the Bidingers, it's so great to hear news about Rosie from you guys :-)

Setting up House: Rooster, Deliveries, Christian Paki Gardener

2008-08-07T21:05:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last two days mostly waking up at the hotel, quickly checking email, running a shopping errand or two, then waiting for deliveries at the villa. So far I've received delivery of a Chinese washer, Egyptian stove, Samsung Fridge, TV, and six bed mattresses. The delivery guys are all Pakistani or Indian, wiry, smiley and courteous. The only problem is they give you a 4 or 5 hour window, and then they're still late. On top of this, since they do not do conventional street addresses here, I write down the name of my neighborhood for them at the store, and then the delivery guys call you at least twice when they're on the way to get specific directions. So though it's exciting to be getting all the necessities, it's a time-consuming and often frustrating experience.

I promise my next post will have interior photos of our villa, but here are more details: it has high ceilings with, big beautiful windows tinted for privacy, a quaint courtyard, a huge bathroom adjoining each of the four bedrooms, powder room off the dining room, a foyer bigger than at least two of the apartments I've had in the past, and an entirely separate housekeeper's quarters off the back of the house. All of the floors are a light beige tile and the walls are painted a cream color. Ours is one of the smallest villas on the block and I haven't yet seen any westerners. While it's exciting to really be 'going native' in terms of housing, it makes me feel a little lonesome for my colleagues and Billy and the kids while I wait there for hours at a time.

There is however some neighborhood racket to keep me entertained. The mosque which is one block over, broadcasts prayers over a loud speaker, several times a day, which are sung (or chanted) in Arabic. These only last a minute or so, but if I ever wanted to sit and watch West Wing, eat pizza and forget that I'm in the middle east, I can forget it. A rooster lives nearby as well, and he probably cockadoodles twice as many times per day as the mosque. I finally saw him when walking by a neighbor's gate. He's a beautiful plump deep red and brown bird, like from a children's book, and he appeared to be walking the grounds like a beloved pet. I can't help but think of my brother Bern in Wheat Ridge, and his neighbor's rooster - perhaps Wheat Ridge and suburban Sharjah are not so culturally different..

The prior tenants left a lot of junk behind and a very dirty kitchen. I am told this is the tradeoff for living in a spacious villa instead of a shiny high rise. So yesterday while waiting for my stove, I opened the gate and started hauling junk to the dumpster which is two villas down the road, which by the way is a sand road - not paved. On the way, a Pakistani gardener saw me, stopped me, and said 'Please, I help you'. Since it was at least 110 degrees, broad daylight, and I had a good feeling about the guy I said ok. After getting the first item (old exercise bike) to the dumpster he said to me 'Are you Christian'? I said 'yes, American Christian'. He said, 'I am Christian, my name - Elias. I help you OK?'. Now I am not sure what would have happened if I said anything other than Christian, but I am thankful for Mr. Elias. Once we finished, perhaps 20 minutes later, I said 'Please take these Dirham (about 5 bucks)'. He said, 'no, no, I am Christian, you are Christian, please no, please water'. OK, I'm thinking I'll give this guy water, and then some money. So we stood on my grand marble front porch and drank some cold water from my new Samsung fridge. After another offer and refusal of money, we established that if I ever needed any help, I should call his mobile and he would come.

Dad goes to Colorado

2008-08-05T09:20:00.000-07:00

Because he has to go back to sell the house in Colorado, Dad has to leave with my sister. Liam and I are staying at my grandma's house until Grandma takes us on the airplane to our new house while Dad stays in Colorado. We will really miss Dad when he leaves but that's ok because I know Grandma will take good care of us.

I feel kind of bad because I'm gonna miss my Dad and I already miss my Mom. It'll be kind of hard, but I know Grandma will take care of me.

Qasimi the Cabbie, and my "Medical"

2008-08-05T05:31:00.000-07:00

As the days are so packed full, I'll share just the highlights from the last two days.

Qasimi the Cabbie
A teacher named Pamela Johnson and I decided yesterday (day 2) that since we had to accomplish some of the same sorts of shopping and errands, we would join forces, share taxis and get things done together. The first taxi was painless, since we asked to be taken directly from our hotel to a large well-known mall in Dubai. There, at the Reef Mall, we visited the cell phone guy, and the Home Center store, procured large bags of merchandise and went back out into the 110 degree heat to hail another taxi. We ought to have known to expect an adventure, when as we pronounced that we needed three stops, one in Dubai (Pamela's apartment) one in Sharjah (My villa), and a final destination of our hotel, our driver grunted and looked at us as if we were stinking up his taxi.

Our first stop, Pamela's apartment in a newly completed shiny Dubai high rise, was not far. But since landmarks are understood well better than street addresses which really do not exist, and since our taxi driver was new (we only learned this later), and he couldn't read roman letters on our map very well , and due to various (as yet unknown to us) cultural misunderstandings, we ended up needing to call Anwar, our dear Pakistani university housing officer, on his cellular and handing the phone over to the taxi driver (two times) in order for them to discuss the apartment location in Arabic. We arrived and requested that the sweaty grunting taxi driver stay and wait for ten minutes while we dropped Pamela's stuff off on the 11th floor. He grunted and agreed and then probably went behind a building somewhere to have a smoke. We can only guess this, since when we got back to his cab, which was full of my bedding, it was locked and he was gone, and then he came back smelling of smoke.

We then showed him my villa on an English language map. I watched him slowly read over the words on the roads near my villa, and discovered that like many speakers of Arabic, he was not proficient in reading the English letters. So I figured at that point that dear Anwar the housing guy was likely to receive a few more calls from Pamela and me and the taxi driver before the night was over. Complicating matters is the fact that there are at least a dozen streets and landmarks near my villa with the name Qasimi, Al Qasimi Street, Qasimi Square, Abdul Al Qasimi, Saud Al Qasimi, and many many more. Indeed, after combing the map for clues and matching them to the street names we passed by, and after many u-turns and discussions of where we actually were on the map and which Qasimi street we were driving on, we had to call Anwar, again twice, to accomplish our destination, my villa. Pamela and I were also sweating at this point, as the frustration over a taxi driver trying his best but failing was wearing us out.

Finally, we emerged from my villa, restated our final destination, Carlton Hotel Sharjah, and made our way back to home. Over our third hotel dinner we decided that the cabbie, whose name we never really knew, would for storytelling purposes be renamed Qasimi, out of respect for whichever Emirati leader had the good fortune to have so many landmarks named after him.

My "Medical":
As part of my contract, I had to undergo a physical exam before my employment status became permanent. This is called my "medical". Ten other new-hires and I gathered in the hotel lobby with a van driver named Samir to make the trek to the Department of Health together at 7:30 this morning. Though the interior of the clinic was clean and modern, the road and surroundings nearby were dusty, old, in disrepair, and entirely removed from bustling Sharjah. This was not ideal for inspiring confidence for those of us about to encounter yet another unfamiliar cultural experience.

The exam consisted of an x-ray to rule out TB, a blood test to rule out HIV, a vision exam and a urine test (drugs). These procedures themselves were harmless, professional and non-invasive. But some of the circumstances are worthy of mention. First of all, we faculty were escorted to the front of the line, in every part of the process, in front of however many people were waiting before us at that particular stage. It should be noted that most of us faculty are white and most of the others whom we jumped in front of were not.

Aside from the peculiarities related to our race and class in this culture, there seem to be gender issues as well. There were male and female waiting rooms for each procedure, but most of them weren't labeled well, so at least twice, Pamela and I were urged out of a room that we had just entered by mistake.

Finally, for the urine sample, we were handed a sample cup wrapped in toilet paper, which we thought at first was for its usual purpose. We went into the ladies room and encountered squatter toilets. This is not the first time I've run across these 'hole in the ground' style toilets - I've seen them in Europe and Asia before. However, this is the first time I've been asked to use them to provide a sample. After an uncomfortable squat and lots of unsanitary splashes onto my shoes and pants, I emerged with a sample and brought it to the veiled woman at the desk, where I noticed that the other sample cups brought to her already were neatly wrapped in the TP we were given at the start. I can only guess that the sight of others' urine is some kind of taboo, and that carrying around the deep yellow sample for all to see is considered rude, but I've yet to find someone who'll know the answer and not be offended by my question. All in all, it wasn't a terrible experience. I only kept asking myself, why are things done this way here? Why the hole in the wall toilets? Why do we get such preference? Why is pee pee something to hide? Why when only waiting for a blood draw must the women be separated from the men? If any of these answers are revealed to me, y'all will be the next to know.

Smooth Arrival

2008-08-03T18:07:00.000-07:00

I am awake at 5am due to jetlag, there is no CNN on TV and the only English language channels are BBC news and cartoons. So I thought I'd put down a few thoughts on my first 24 hours in the UAE.

Safe Arrival? I arrived safe and on time, but one of my five bags did not make it. (My and billy's bikes DID make it!!) I was met by an immigration helper, who was paid by my employer to 'fast track' me through security and immigration - I don't know the cost of this, but I'm planning to hire the service for my mom, Billy and the kids so when they arrive after 24 hours of travel, they can jump the lines too. Please don't remind me that I thought the same kind of line-jumping for a 15 dollar VIP fee at Six Flags was obnoxious.

The airport seemed modern but heavily used, and I was surprised at the crowds and disorder as I collected my bags close to midnight. Once the immigration gal connected me with the Hotel bus driver, I was led (with the help of a porter) across a busy pickup area where at least 300 drivers and greeters waving name cards and hotel signs, hanging out under rows of mist blowers, clogged the way. We crossed a street, went up a giant elevator, across a bridge, then down another elevator to the parking area, where a hotel van was waiting.

Hot?
Yesterday it felt like 100 degrees and 100% humidity - only a little more uncomfortable than Chicago the day before. My linen shirt stayed clammy all day.

Skype? Due to the telecom monopoly here, Skype is banned, so our planned mode of video chat with our family and pals in the US is not an option. I'll probably be able to get Skype at the office, but unreliably. So, we're going to try MSN instant messenger - it is not yet banned.

Cell phone? Not yet. I upgraded our cell phone for local use at the mall kiosk for Etisalat, the state telecom, but now that I'm back at the hotel, I can't figure out the security code on the phone. I'll be going back to the kiosk tomorrow.

What does it look like here? Hazy with dust and sand and new construction, highrises and half-finished buildings next to empty lots with big piles of sand, and of course plenty of palm trees.

New house? Our housing seems awesome. I've been shown a villa by the University housing officer and it's fancy (pictured above). It's basically a large two-story townhome connnected to an identical one and surrounded by a stucco wall. There are four giant bedrooms, big kitchen, dining and living rooms, four full baths, separate maid's quarters, a fat date palm tree in the yard - (yes I ate one, it was delicious), and gated yard and driveway. There's a playground near by, but I have to show my work visa and passport to get a park permit for our family. Seems strange to have such controls over a public park. Maybe it's actually not public.

Food? I've been served olives with every meal so far.

Next few days?
I'll stay in the hotel for another few days until the cable and internet are turned on at the villa. In the meantime, I have to shop for a stove and fridge, washer, dryer, microwave and beds. Apparently fancy villas come totally unfurnished.

Mom Leaves, From Brady (7 3/4 years old)

2008-08-01T06:10:00.000-07:00

Well, we're at Grandma's house and my mom is leaving at eight o'clock tonight. She is going to find a new house for us to live in when we move to the UAE. I suppose she might be in a hotel first. I'm really excited about moving and having fun there, but I'm kind of worried about not seeing my friends for a long time! I'm kind of worried about if she never finds a house for us, but she will.

I think my mom might find a new school for us too, and if she does, it's going to be a really good school. My teacher in the school is going to teach me to speak Arabic and I can teach you some if you want me too. Just call me on Skype phone.

For my birthday, I'm not going to have lots of friends yet. So what's gonna happen is, I'm going to go to an amusement park in Dubai for my birthday and it's famous and I like that.

About to Embark, from Christina

2008-07-27T13:08:00.000-07:00

Background: Six weeks ago I signed an offer letter for a 3 year gig in Sharjah UAE, which is practically a suburb of Dubai. The women's colleges are in need of English faculty and they've seen fit to hire me after a 90 minute teleconference interview and an extensive reference check. Since Billy and I are world travellers and language buffs at heart, and our hopes for our children are lives rich with cultural awareness and travel experiences, we decided to take the gutsy plunge into expatriate living with our children into the middle-east.

Task at hand: I've got five days to go and ten 30x15x15 duffle bags to pack. We're each allowed two 50-pound checked bags, a 22-pound carry-on and one purse or laptop bag, within which all of our necessities for the next three years must be prioritized, organized and packed for air travel. We've been advised to store, rather than container-ship our furniture, as more than one faculty family's belongings got interminably off-loaded in Yemen, so we're travelling light.

The kids: They're hanging in there, after tearful good-byes to Dog Dukie, cool sausage-making-fishing-expert-best-satellite-tv Uncle Bern, zucchini plants, Spyglass Circle neighbors, pool, best friends, bunk beds and sand box. As much as we'd love to pack these items, along with the tether ball pole, bicycles, giant bean bag and about 1500 books, we are holding these things dear to our hearts and then packing them carefully off to storage, to new homes with friends, and to Grandma Brady's cavernous Tinley Park barn.

What the kids have chosen to bring along is revealing, as Brady insists on his karaoke machine, Liam his legos and Rosie her blankie and a bucket of hair scrunchies. I, however, have not been nearly as minimal, as the Dubai pile in our giant Colorado master bedroom comes closer and closer to taking over completely.

Billy: Since Billy is now between jobs, and not leaving for a few more weeks, he's got the ugly task of hiring the movers and preparing parcels from our deep and overstocked pantry to be surprise-dropped on our Boulder friends' porches. He also intends to get as much ultimate frisbee time as is possible for an unemployed man charged with the care of 4-year-old Rosie and the final sale of our Louisville home.

Christina: After three farewell parties and big hugs from my circle of dear friends
I am ready to go. All I need is for my friends and family in Colorado and elsewhere to stay healthy, keep in touch, and hopefully come and visit in the UAE.