Ringing in the New Year

I've been on break since the 17th and it's been great! My mom and I did all the touristy things a person might do while visiting Dubai. I wasn't sure there would be enough for us to do for the 10 days she was visiting, but instead, I found that we didn't have time to do everything. I guess that means she'll just have to come back. A quick run down... we went to tea at the Burj al Arab, desert safari, the creek, the souqs, madinat, malls, beach, ice bar, E. Coast, the Friday Market and we went on a few different trips to IKEA so she could help me organize my too small apartment, and when I say "help" I mean do it for me. It was great! When she was leaving, she said something like, I'm sure you're ready to get back to your regular life, uh, no, I wanted her to stay forever!

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were both fun, I spent Christmas Eve Day at a friends house watching endless episodes of Gilmore Girls and then we went to another friends for dinner, after that, I stopped by another friend's apartment that lives in my building to hang out for a while. Christmas Day I went to lunch on this terrace overlooking the Burj al Arab and the Arabian Sea with some friends from work. Somehow lunch turned into sunset drinks at 360, then I took a golf cart over to a different hotel where I met some other friends for pre dinner drinks (just what I needed) then Christmas Dinner at an amazing restaurant that was out on this pier overlooking the Burj and had a delicious Champagne flowing Christmas meal, after that we went to another bar that had great views and wine. Not a typical Christmas, but very fun!

I woke up not feeling so great on the 26th, I figured it was just too much wine, but when I still couldn't move the next day, I figured I had somehow gotten sick. I decided downloading Prison Break and Grey's Anatomy episodes from iTunes would be a great source of entertainment, so I spent the next three days watching that. I finally went to the doctor on the 29th when it was 2:00 and it hurt so much to breathe I thought I might just stop and I still could not drag myself out of bed. I ended up being diagnosed with Bronchitis and hooked up to some crazy machine that I inhaled some sort of mist/vapor something or other for 20 minutes. It was like a miracle device. It was the first time in days that it didn't make me cry to take a deep breath. They gave me about a zillion different medications, but I'm still wiped out and laying on the couch and BORED. I've finished watching all the downloaded tv shows and am tired of just sitting around. It's New Year's Eve and there's people doing a bunch of fun things, I'll be at home lying on the couch watching Because I Said So for the zillionth time and being annoyed that I'm sick. But for those of you that remember my stellar New Year's Eve and New Year's Day from last year, alone, on the couch with Bronchitis is actually quite an improvement! It's no wonder I hate most holidays. But.... Happy New Years! 2008 should just be so fun...

Dubai Syndrome

So, my mom flies clear across the world to come visit me and what do I arrange for Saturday morning? Used car shopping, part of every dream vacation. First we head over to the Ford dealership where I am looking at a stylish Ford Focus and dealing with this guy Sameer, who we like to refer to as our good friend Sammy. We met him last week and he had a car and was going to call and drive it out for us to see, sure, sounds great. Basically a week goes by with nothing, at one point I called and he is all excited and says "my eyes have seen it" as if that's supposed to make me feel more confident in the whole process. So, we give up on him, go to the dealership, find this lady to help us who ends up being just about worthless. She gives us her whole talking to and then gets this car all set for us to drive, we get in and as we are pulling out she sort of taps on the window and says, there's this sound, new tires, we'll put on new tires and it will be fine. A second later we hear the most awful sound ever and know there is no possibility we would ever purchase the car. It takes us forever to get back to the garage because everywhere we go is a one way street or some other problem. We practically ran out of the dealership. We then went to this other place and sit down to talk to our new best friend Kartik. He's looking through his inventory, ever the used car salesman, talking away about life in Dubai, we're sort of listening, but not really until he says blah, blah, blah, we call that Dubai Syndrome. I could not stop laughing, basically Dubai Syndrome is what happens to everybody that moves here, back in what I refer to as "my real life" I would handle things entirely differently, but because everyone here is so crazy, you end up becoming just as crazy as they are. Some examples of Dubai Syndrome Kartik gave us was: When you call someone and they say they're on their way, that means they are leaving their house. If they say they're stuck in traffic, that means they're still in their house. I'll call you back in 5 minutes, that means 30 minutes on a good day. I'll call you back in a half hour, that would be 3 hours if you're lucky. He went on and on, we were laughing the whole time. Needless to say, he said we could see the two cars he found that fit what we were looking for that evening or Sunday for sure. Uh huh, that happened. I just called him now and he said "what's your number, I tried to call you and some guy answered" I asked if that was part of Dubai Syndrome. He didn't find it quite as funny as I did. And no, I still don't have a car. I did just run home from work to let the random Internet guys into my house and left, I'm sure that was a good idea. The guy took one look at my mac computer and said we just may head home, macs are too hard. Seriously? With any luck I'll have Internet tonight, but I'm sure these Internet guys have Dubai Syndrome too, so I'm not expecting anything will work out as planned.

My date with George...

The Dubai International Film Festival started yesterday and a friend of mine was smart enough to buy a bunch of us girls tickets to an interview with George Clooney; we had a great night! I've decided the Dubai lifestyle is not what I would have envisioned for myself, but I could be into it for a few years. I was very used to long runs on the back roads of HR and days spent lounging around Dog River. Now, things have changed quite a bit.

Yesterday was the perfect example. After work I hired a driver to take me on all my errands, went all over town and had this poor man waiting around for me while I attempted to hook up Internet, stood in line at the Dubai version of the DMV and, I live in Dubai, none of these things were fast. Then to compensate for the annoyance of waiting around for me, I just gave him a tip larger than the fare, because money makes up for everything here. Then, I rushed home in time to meet the first round of girls who were heading over to the Madinat to have a few drinks before the interview/question session with George.

The Madinat is decorated for Christmas with these amazing trees and everything is covered in white Christmas lights.

We sat outside, along the water surrounded by palm trees and drank wine and ate some snacks.

We then went to the thing and George was as hilarious as it seems like he would be. We were super close to him and it was amazing! Afterwards we were heading out and we ran into a few other friends and decided there was definitely time for just one more drink. So, we all found a table outside, ordered some drinks and sat around being amazed at what our lives have turned into.

We all got this random text message while we were sitting there from a friend of ours who lives in the teacher projects with us, that said something along the lines of, can you believe what is happening outside our windows! We were all curious since it was one in the morning, but we figured it must be construction. We eventually made it home and I could not believe the amount of equipment and noise that was happening at that hour. I called the Dubai Police to see if anything could be done, but all the companies have to do is get some letter from the Dubai Municipality and it's legal. Nice.

Let the countdown begin...

There are some random photos from Sri Lanka. A few are from when we hiked Adam's Peak and the others are at the beach town. Now that this site is not blocked, I should be able to add in photos as I go... we'll see though, this whole blocked site thing is annoying.

So, we only have six more work days till Winter Break, yeah!

It was another great weekend, I ran the Dubai half marathon, which went well, not as fast as I'd like, but it felt good. We also had our staff party. By the end of the evening I thought it was a great idea to stop at McDonald's and get a chicken sandwich and then proceeded to lose my wallet not once, but twice. Fortunately a friend of mine had it and delivered it to me the next morning. Today I will attempt for the third time to go and get my Dubai drivers license, the other day I went and they basically said, you're American, we don't do that. I'm also going down to the Internet place and filling out the paperwork to try to get Internet this week too. I took a loan out for a car and found one that I want to buy right now, but apparently right now is not an option in this country. I still can't buy a bottle of wine, but if all goes well by the time my mom gets here Thursday I will have a vehicle, Internet and a drivers license. Wow, and it only took 4 months. Does anybody else find it odd that I can't just call and have Internet set up? Or that it's taken three times to get a driver's license? Seriously? I'm really looking forward to taxi rides all through town to get these errands accomplished. We have tickets to an interview with George Clooney tonight, he's here for the Dubai Film Festival, and I'm supposed to be back to our apartment building by 6:00. If I had a vehicle that would be possible... with taxi's, who knows!

I knew I would need a wool hat...

I promised not to write a boring summary of my mini vacations...

but this trip to Jordan was amazing! We had a four day weekend so we flew up to Jordan, rented a car and drove down to Petra and then on to Wadi Rum. I finally got some pictures to upload correctly, but still haven't quite figured out how to format them. Maybe next time! The weather was perfect. During the days it was cool enough to hike around and by afternoon I was able to throw on jeans and a jacket; I even wore gloves and a hat one day!

Petra was even better than I expected it to be. The first morning we got up early and walked to the Treasury and then continued to the Royal Tombs, Amphitheater and then up to the Monastery.

We went out to dinner at the Cave Bar and had a glass of Sangria, the owner was insisting that we each tell 160 people about this place, so here's my start...

We hiked up to the High Place of Sacrifice the next morning, but the weather was windy, rainy and cloudy so the pictures were not that impressive; the hike was nice. I also rode a horse for the first time ever and a few of us caught a horse drawn carriage ride back to the entrance which was quite exciting!

The next morning we left for Wadi Rum to camp, go on a jeep tour and do some hiking. It was beautiful and so nice to be outside and hiking! We saw just about a zillion stars and I was happy to be cold.

Well, I've just spent about a zillion years trying to fix the formatting and erase the extra cow photo, but, apparently that's not going to happen. So I'll just write a little down here about the pictures.

Can you see us on top of the bridge? We're pretty tiny, I think you all would have enjoyed watching me get up there, actually, getting down would have been more entertaining to see!

I don't need to remind myself that cleanliness standards are a little different around here...

Our guide...