Shaa Allah

My learning of Arabic so far is pretty minimal (granted we arrived only 3 weeks ago).

So far, I can say shukran (thank you), funduq Rotana (Rotana hotel), and Askoon fee Al Ain (I live in Al Ain). H will probably pick it up much more quickly...he already says "Askoon a Al Ain."

Here's another thing I've learned that I think is hilarious:

In Arabic culture, it is customary to respond "In'shaa Allah" ("If God wills it.") when you're talking about something in the future/making plans.

Example:

-You: "Let's get together for coffee tomorrow at 2 o'clock."

-Arabic friend: "In'shaa Allah."

Now, let's say your Arabic friend shows up late at 3 o'clock. His response?

-"Shaa Allah." ("God willed it.")

HA! I love it and just may have to start using it.

Didn't get to the grocery shopping? Shaa Allah.

Didn't get a new post up on the blog? Shaa Allah.

Didn't get around to doing the laundry? Shaa Allah.

Kitchen Nightmares?

Let's start with the good news: Ramadan is over (!!), which will make life much easier. We can finally take a sip of water in public whenever we want! Ramadan was certainly one of the hardest aspects of adjustment so far. Basically any time we were out in public before sundown, we were unable to eat or drink (H could, but we still tried to be discreet about it). Another issue is that once restaurants opened after sundown, most served Iftar buffets to break the fast. I don't know about you, but I'm not a huge fan of buffets. You end up spending more money and don't necessarily eat your money's worth. Case in point, we went to a restaurant and spent 50 dirhams each and here's what I ate: pita chips and hummus, rice (2 differents kinds), and a couple of (bite-size) pieces of chicken. E ate more but he is a little more adventurous in terms of the food available here.

Anyway, the bad news is: we are STILL living in a hotel. We're not sure when we'll be moving into our apartment. The rumor mill is:

1. We will be moving into our apartments in 2 weeks.

2. We will be moving into our apartments in 6 months.

3. The apartments are spacious and very nice.

4. The apartments are tiny and dirty.

5. The apartment complex has a pool.

6. The apartment complex does not have a pool.

Well, with all this information, logic tells us...um, nothing. So, we are trying to "go with the flow" and be patient as we wait and wait.

Meanwhile, we were tired of spending money every day to take a taxi to a restaurant, pay for said taxi, pay for a meal which we (read I) didn't necessarily enjoy, take a taxi back to the hotel, and pay for said taxi. At the end of the meal, we were spending at least 140 dirhams, if not more. And our hotel has several restaurants but they are pretty expensive (and we are not into spending money when we could make it better and cheaper ourselves).

So, we took matters into our own hands.

Our hotel room comes equipped with a small kitchen area (a sink, countertops, and cabinets). Here it is in all its spacious glory:

Our tools:

A 99 dirham electric "multicooker."

A 49 dirham hot plate.

With this small investment, we (well, mostly E) started cooking our own meals at the hotel. He has actually produced some really good meals. Here he is preparing our steaks for fajitas:

And our guacamole made in a hotel mug:

The final product:

Mary and Dave would think this meat was wayyyy overcooked, but it was fine for me!

We eat our meals out on our balcony, which is enjoyable, but mostly a result of trying to keep the mess made by H on the tile floor rather than the hotel carpet.

(A different meal, obviously. I'm not yet a very organized blogger.)

H enjoying his meal (a different one again) on his plates

brought from home (so glad we remembered these!).

Some of E's beset efforts: fajitas, whole wheat pasta with pesto and sausage, and garlic-rubbed steaks (steaks are actually very cheap here so I think we will be eating a lot of red meat while we're here...yeah! a break from buying tons of chicken when it was on sale for $1.99 a pound at Kroger).

Last Night

Last night, we experienced our first sand/rain storm in Al Ain. We noticed the wind was picking up and went out on the balcony. Here's our view from the balcony if we lean out. Notice the cloud of dust at the top of the picture.

This is our actual, straight-on view from our balcony. Lovely air conditioning units (this is only a partial view). This is still mainly dust and sand (and trash) flying around.

We probably spent 15 minutes trying to get a picture of the lightning. This is the only one E got. Lighting is fast!

More of the air conditioning units after the rain finally started.

The wind was really strong and when we went on a walk this morning, we saw a lot of broken tree branches on the ground.

On another note, yesterday we went to the grocery store to get some supplies. E wanted to get some paper towels and we grabbed these:

Later, I was reading something on the internet and I hear E say "Is this what paper towels are?" and as I look over, he is holding this up:

HA! Now that I look at the first picture, I can see they are obviously not paper towels but in the store they really looked that way. I guess we need to start being more observant.

Anyway, now we are stuck with lots of toilet paper for cleaning the counters of our make shift kitchen. I'll post pictures of that soon.

Oops

What happens when you buy the cheapest adaptor at Carrefour?

You return to your 5 star hotel and plug it in.

And realize you wasted your money when it blows a fuse, burns itself...

...and the wall of your room. Oops!

Abu Dhabi

H is currently taking a nap, so I'll take this opportunity to show a few images of Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi is the capital and the second largest city in the UAE and, thankfully, not where we will be living. Not that it wasn't nice, but it was extremely hot and VERY humid. Like 80-90% humidity on top of temperatures of 110+ degrees.

On our first day in Abu Dhabi, they took us on a "tour" of the city. This included a two hour stop at one of the malls, sitting in the parking lot of a palace and not being able to go in because we didn't have a reservation, and a quick visit to this mosque:

A quick wikipedia search tells me that this is Sheikh Zayed Mosque, the largest mosque in the UAE and the eighth largest in the world. Too bad this is all we got to see of it. It was closed, so we only got these few quick shots of the outside before everyone climbed back onto the bus. Overall, not a very well organized tour but it got us out of the hotel room for a few hours.

Abu Dhabi is a typical big city...lots of people, construction (H liked to call all of the cranes "dinosaurs"), and traffic. It seems like they've made a lot of efforts, though, to create parks and outdoor spaces for people to enjoy.

One evening, we decided to take a walk along the Persian/Arabian Gulf on the Corniche. It is a nice, paved walkway along the Gulf. We saw a lot of people out exercising--they must have a much higher tolerance than us because even at 7 p.m. we were sweating like crazy!

Here are a few images from our walk. All of the images look really hazy (I guess from the heat/humidity) but this is pretty much how it looked in "real" life too.

Along the Corniche, they had these rest areas covered with "sails" to create some shade.

H really enjoyed this walk since we were cooped up in the hotel most of the day--it was just too hot to go outside. We attempted a trip to the playground earlier in the day which lasted about 5 minutes total.

We left Abu Dhabi last Thursday and are now in Al Ain. It is still hot here, but much less humid...in other words tolerable. : ) This is where we will live for the next few years, though we are still waiting to hear about our apartment. Right now, we are staying at the Rotana Hotel. It's very nice and has an awesome pool, which H and I get to frequent every day while E goes to orientation in Abu Dhabi every day. Lucky us!

Le Royal Meridien

Our hotel in Abu Dhabi was the 5-star Le Royal Meridien. It was vvvvvery nice.

It basically looked like any nice hotel in the US. Comfy bed...

Nice views...

We had a huge window overlooking the Persian Gulf (otherwise known here as the Arabian Gulf).

Two slight differences, though. Can you see what this sticker says?

It's pointing out the direction towards Mecca.

The second difference? A bidet (of sorts).

These are in all of the rest rooms. Can't say I've used one, though.

Bon Voyage

Well, it has been almost 1 week since we left the US. The trip was fairly uneventful, though very long. We left the house at 9 a.m. on Saturday, August 29th and arrived in Abu Dhabi on Sunday, August 30th at 8 p.m. local time (noon EST).

Here is everything we left with:

5 suitcases, H's car seat and stroller, and 2 carry-on bags.

The first leg of our trip was Atlanta to Toronto, Canada. H entertained himself on the plane, playing with "maggots" (magnets) and his Doodle-Pro--thanks Elaine!

Then, came the worst part of the trip...our looooong layover in Toronto. When we first arrived, we had to get all of our luggage and go through customs in Canada. Then we were stuck with our suitcases in the departure floor of the Toronto airport for about 7 hours until we could check our bags again. Once our bags were checked, we still had a 2 hours wait until we could board the plane. Unfortunately, the departure floor had very little in terms of restaurant choices. But, we survived! H entertained himself by looking at planes and snacking.

Once we boarded the plane, we knew we were in for a long trip when we saw this come up on our individual video screens:

That's right...6,928 miles to our destination!

H did great on the trip overall. He slept most of the trip from Toronto to Abu Dhabi. We flew Etihad (UAE's official airline) and they were great. Very comfortable, lots of overhead storage space, good food (and that says a lot coming from me!), and lots of entertainment choices.

We were glad to finally land in Abu Dhabi, though, and begin our new adventure!