Snakes are not Snacks, or are they?

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

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.