Work = BLAH, Dubai = Awesome

So, I thought about walking into the superintendent's office and quitting this week. Then I realized my mom would be here in a week and I have tickets to the Philippines to meet my brother and sister, so it would be pretty inconvenient to no longer have a place to live here... Whatever, 3 months and 11 days to go. I think I'll make it.

Another great week, a few of us went to the James Blunt concert, which was awesome! It was a perfect night and seemed like such a normal thing to do. I'm now listening exclusively to his newer cd, I think I'm the only person I know that can listen to the same exact song or artist nonstop for days and not get tired of it. I'm sure it will end up driving my neighbors crazy...

The next day I took a personal day to go watch tennis, which I did and it was great! The morning started off a bit frustrating; when I reregistered my car the other day, I had to pay a speeding ticket that wasn't even really me, it was one of those photo tickets and it was a different license plate, but, you have to pay and then go to the traffic department headquarters in Deira to get reimbursed. Horrible place to drive, I ended up missing the exit and literally ended up in Sharjah, a different Emirate because there are no exits... I had planned on running that errand quick and then taking a taxi to tennis, but by the time I got back to Dubai, I just decided to drive to tennis and worry about getting my car home later. Like I said, I was pretty agitated by the time I got there and parking was a disaster, so I just drove up over a curb and parked, basically in a construction site and headed straight to a happy hour to wait for my friends to arrive. We had great seats; it was so much fun watching tennis and taking breaks to go grab some food or drinks and hang out for a bit. 

The next morning I thought it would be a good idea to basically run clear across town to get my car. I didn't know exactly how to get there without going on Sheik Zayed, so I just ran for about 2 1/2 hours in the general direction and then hailed a taxi to take me the rest of the way. I was happy to see that my car was still there, it wouldn't have shocked me at all if it was gone. The rest of the day was relaxing. I had a hair appointment, organized my closet and went grocery shopping. Exciting. Although, the night did end with martinis, an argument with some random guy and a taxi home from the mall. I got up and ran with some girls from soccer this morning and spent the rest of the day cooking for the week and doing laundry... just another day in paradise. 

Perfect weekend...

Yet another great weekend! I had one main goal for the weekend, to lay at the beach and get a tan. Mission accomplished... This weekend was the RAK 1/2 marathon and I haven't been running that well lately, so I wasn't really looking forward to it, but a couple of girls from my soccer team and I headed out to RAK Thursday after work so we wouldn't have to get up at 4:30 or whatever, in order to get to the race on time. We arrived to the hotel and ate a buffet dinner and had a glass of wine, uh really? We got up the next morning, it was a great race, I was happy with my time, not my best, but better than the last one I did, so that was good. Some other girls from soccer and work also ran the race and then we all went to my running clubs brunch at this golf course, it was great! We sat around, talked, ate and just relaxed. We stopped at Barracuda (tax free alcohol... and you don't need a liquor license) on the way home and loaded up on wine. I had tickets to the Women's Tennis Semi-Finals that night, so a friend of mine and I went and watched Serena vs. Venus. Venus won, it was a great match, Venus eventually won the tie breaker at the end. We were sitting next to the world's most annoying kids, they were probably12 or 13 and I'm sure their parents were there, across the stadium, and happy to not be sitting with them. We met some more friends at Irish Village for a while and then headed home. Of course I stayed up late talking on the phone when I got home, but still managed to get up before 7:00 the next morning. I went over to the gym for day one of Operation Pull up. I don't even want to talk about how poorly that went! I then headed to the beach from 9:00 - 6:00, it was a gorgeous day! The only time I left was to grab a soy latte and a piece of delicious carrot cake. What a rough day! The whole day felt like a vacation, I ended the evening by inviting over some friends, a few bottles of wine and bags of popcorn later, I should have gone to sleep. Instead, I called one of my best friends from home and she asked me to be in her wedding. So, perfect ending to a perfect weekend. And, I did get that tan...

Wadi Bih Relay

I started off the weekend with pink champagne and a staff Valentines Day party, next I ran the Wadi Bih Relay Race with nine friends from work and then camped another night with some other friends. What a fun weekend!

The relay was awesome! We were divided into teams of five and had two 4 x 4's and we headed off around 6:30 to start the 75km relay race. There were about 13 legs and each person had to run a minimum of 12 km's. I had never been to Wadi Bih before, it was gorgeous! We had camped on the beach the night before and it was ridiculously windy and my tent was just smashing up against me all night long. I hardly slept at all, annoying. The legs all varied in distance and incline, everyone did an amazing job!

After the race, we had a brunch at the Golden Tulip, a hotel that was right there. It was the strangest thing, we were all sitting around the table, talking, eating lunch, having fun and out of nowhere, all of a sudden, some people were all set to leave and they were going to move stuff around and ahhhh, it was crazy. I was in no way prepared to make a decision if I was staying or going that fast, fortunately neither was a friend of mine. We decided to sit, relax, finish our lunches and then decide if we would go home or meet our other friends to camp another night. Fortunately my friend Jess called out to me as I was walking out to make sure all my things were in the correct vehicle and asked what was going on, or she may have been left behind. Weird. Anyways, when I got back to the brunch, I grabbed a glass of wine and we sat on some lounge chairs to figure out what we wanted to do. We ended up deciding to camp another night. We met up with our friends who had come from Dubai that morning and done some 4 x 4 stuff, all in Jeeps, made me miss mine! We found a great camping spot and just had a perfect relaxing evening. It was a really great group of people and we hung out, talked, , drank some wine played games and ate smores... delicious!

I'm working on getting some pictures up, it really was gorgeous!

I am really going to miss weekends like this when I move to Vienna. It was really fun to talk with Steph that night, she'll be moving to Vienna too. I can't wait!

5 B's...

So, last year around this time I started with the 3 B's, Beach, Barasti, Brunch. Well, apparently these days it's Barasti, Barasti, Brunch, Barasti and then Beach... The weather is still pretty cool, for Dubai standards anyways, but we did head out to the beach all afternoon on Saturday and it really made me sad to think about leaving Dubai. There won't be a lot of beach time in Vienna! I am super excited that a girlfriend of mine just accepted a position at a different school in Vienna. It will be SOOOO great to have someone else to figure out the city with. I was cracking up because before she had officially been offered or accepted the position we were discussing shipping options and other details, like cross country skiing, soccer teams, how we should probably think about learning German. Now it's a reality and I couldn't be happier! I want to hurry up and get to Vienna and at the same time I want to have lots of time here. It's nice to want things that you can't have... 

Oman... Why has it taken me so long?

A friend and I went camping last weekend, it was so great! I had a horrible week at work, I just cannot believe I still manage to feel bad about things. It's just so messed up here. Anyways, I decided to call in sick to work on Thursday, I've been feeling run down and just couldn't take another day. Of course, I ended up actually feeling sick and sleeping all the way till noon and almost decided not to go camping, but with a crazy weekend schedule for the next seven weeks, it seemed like the last chance to make it to Muscat before I moved to Vienna. Crazy. There are so many things I think I may not have time to do. We were supposed to leave right after work, so 4ish, but we were operating on Mark standard time, so I think we ended up getting on the road around 5:30. I didn't help things along that well either, we were just about to leave and he says, do you have your passport? Glad he thought of that. We had a few minor problems at the border, apparently you are just supposed to know that you stop at this random, tiny hut like building in order to get an exit stamp and then drive to the Oman border and cross over and stand in this line, then that one and on and on and on... long story short we ended up setting up our tents at around 3:00am. Since I am suddenly addicted to vampire books, I read till 4:00 or so and then fell asleep. The next morning we woke up and headed to Wadi Sham. With my excellent navigation skills, since I declared that I was an Omani road expert, we made it there without too many problems. We had a quick lunch of tuna sandwhiches and then set out on our hike in the Wadi Sham. The weather was perfect for a hike, warm in the sun, nice in the shade and still warm enough for a swim at the end. Well, I didn't swim, but more on that later.

This was the start of the hike

So, this is where Mark was able to swim to this awesome area, waterfall, through a little cavelike thing and all that. Oh, the benefits of being a male. I'm not sure how I haven't figured out that I have to have a one piece swimsuit and board shorts in order to feel comfortable, well, I guess somewhat comfortable, in the Middle East. Well, actually, that's not true, in Dubai anything is fine, but I should know that in Oman, in a public place, I need to dress conservatively. I guess that's how that goes.

Swimming area

My Omani friends

View of the gulf

Camping on the beach

The beach was perfect for camping, we just sat around, I read my Vampire book, watched that crazy electric blue thing that was happening with the waves, had a fire, drank some wine. Very relaxing. We got up the next morning, found our way to Muscat fairly easily, went to the palace area, walked through the souk and then had some lunch. Perfect. 

Palace area in Muscat

We left Muscat and headed home. While some people would be annoyed about having to wait at the border, I was happy because it meant I could read more of my book. The drive home was much faster than the drive there. We're now pretty much experts and could get back there easily... Right. 

This weekend should be fun, it's a friend's birthday and we're going to a brunch and then possibly some 4 x 4 activities in the desert on Saturday, or the park, beach something fun and outside. The next little bit is crazy busy. Camping and a relay race the weekend of the 13th, half marathon on the 20th in RAK, James Blunt concert and tennis match the next weekend, then my mom comes for the next two weekends... Busy! I'm hoping to get in Stairway to Heaven hike but it may be too hot by the time I have time...