Mars and Coke? Doritos and Wine? Running, Dubai style...

The heat and humidity it torturous... I took some photos of my windows, it really was so humid in that morning that it looked like it was pouring down rain... By the way, it was over 100 degrees out too...












I had a pretty crazy weekend, kind of like being back in college crazy and very unnecessary, but extremely fun. Enough adjectives? Thursday I went over to a friend's house to bake a birthday cake for our friend, I had brought a bottle of NW wine, he had a bottle of good wine too, we HAD to make sure we drank them before everyone else showed up, who wants to share? So, after two bottles of wine, Doritos for dinner and breaking a few things, I was home and in bed by 9:30 and up and running by 5:00. Surprisingly the run was awesome! It was beyond hot and somehow I ended up running around 16 - 17 miles at a minute and a half faster per mile than what I had been doing. When I first joined the running club I was shocked by the Mars bars and coke and water stops, I'm pretty sure they would think I was crazy if I carried around wine and ate Doritos, but whatever works. After the run all the counselors were all invited over to Diana's house for a Champagne Brunch. It turned into quite a day. We had a great time talking, drinking and just relaxing. A few of us went over to one of the apartments and went swimming, dancing and eating till late at night, very fun!

So, I'll take a quick break here... the other night, after not sleeping the night before and missing a day of work, I decided to write in my blog, take an ambien and go to sleep. I think it made me a bit crazy, the keyboard started swimming and I hardly made it to my bed. I vaguely remember it; the next morning it was all kind of coming back to me, then I went to check my e-mail and saw my blog, I was cracking up. Misspelled words, it didn't make any sense and then a long string of dddddd's....

Anyways, the rest of the weekend and the beginning of the week were ok. For whatever reason, I have stopped sleeping, I used to not sleep at home, but I was never tired, this week, I've been exhausted, and annoyed. I tried nothing and didn't sleep, ambien, and lost it, a different drug that didn't work and last night Benedryl, which just made me ridiculously tired and edgy all at once. I did eventually fall asleep around 2:30. Hopefully tonight will be different.

I'm trying to figure out what I should do next year. It's pretty much all I think about. I still cannot stand my job, I wish it would get better, because I like Dubai; it is a great place to travel from and there are tons of places I still want to see in the Middle East and I know that I won't have time to this year, I've already planned all my vacations. But... work is horrible. I keep thinking it can't get worse and then one more thing will happen. There is a job fair in Cambridge in February that I'm thinking about attending. I'd have to decide soon and I have no idea how I would pay for it and get the time off, but, I may try to work something out. I'd like to go to South America. Who knows...

HOT!!!

Well, the weather had been hot, and miserable, and humid... but nothing compared to last year. Just like most things, the second time around seemed much better. We'd had a zillion hot days and a bunch of humid days, but only a few hot and humid days. Looks like that's all going to change. This morning before 6 a.m., we were driving home from Safa, and Jess just said something along the lines of, I may be being overly dramatic, but I think this is the most humidity I've ever run in. I noticed that the running track was slippery, I didn't even realize that was possible! I got home and it looked as if it was raining because of all the condensation on the windows... apparently there is some 48 degree Celcius thing happening this weekend and still humid, that should be fun!

Weekend away...

Can you see us? Oh, no, you can't, you have to love the humidity! I'm sitting at home, watching the first season of Alias (I know, I'm just about 10 years behind) thinking about how nice it is to have NOTHING to do at times. Ramadan hours are great for work and tutoring, it leaves the whole afternoon and evening to relax. A group of us went to Fujairah, an emirate on the E. Coast, this weekend. We left Friday morning and came back Saturday night, just in time for Kim, Caroline and I to rush to the last half of soccer practice.

I was reminded of a bunch of different things about myself this weekend. Here's a few things, I'm not the best at group travel, I get overly annoyed at certain situations, people who get bothered by what kids may potentially do make me a bit crazy, even if they are my closest friends here and Dubai Lisa just can't get over it. I, of course, set some rules for myself to deal with the situation and ended up worked up anyways. I did not, however, decide not to go, which was an option earlier in the week. Cryptic enough? It has to go on the list of things that I just can't be annoyed about, yet, I'm still annoyed.

The weekend was AWESOME! It started off with a great Friday morning run, then we loaded up the car and left by 10:00. I rode out with Kate, one of the new counselor's and her family. It was a quick and easy drive out, at any given moment the roads and/or road signs change, so it's nice that we made it out there! We met everyone else out there, ate some lunch, lounged around on the beach and by the pool. We spent the evening out at the hotel restaurants (welcome to life in the UAE) having a completely relaxing time. The next day we I spent the whole day by/in the pool while other people did some snorkeling. Could not have asked for a better weekend!









View from our hotel room









Humidity at it's best...










Enjoying the Iftar tent










Becky and I at dinner










Does Mark have enough drinks? And what a creepy smile...











Patrick and Becky

Oh what a night... being in Dubai is at times the worst possible outcome, but this weekend, that wasn't how it felt at all... just another day in paradise...

Here we go again...

Almost time to start another week... I had a great weekend. Thursday was wine and snacks at a friends house, Friday was a 5 a.m. run, Lime Tree and errands, followed by wine and snacks at my place, then dinner out at this Italian place, Saturday, Lime Tree again, Nike store, hung photos, put together this kitchen thing I bought on Friday, cooked meals for the week, skype date with my sister, booked a long weekend trip... yes, another eventful weekend.

Let's see, what were the highlights... I drank NW wine two times... that may not seem like a big deal, but finding 14 Hands and Erath Vineyards in MMI was more exciting than winning the lottery. Oh, so the run was horrific. We started out at 5ish, went for a fast 10K, met up with the rest of the group a little before 6:00, and by 6:15 I was completely soaked with sweat, it looked like I had jumped in a lake or something, and it was really cool, my socks were completely brown because of the sand and dirt blowing up and combining with sweat to make a muddy disaster on my socks. Disgusting. We ran about 23km, I'm not sure how I'll manage the next couple of weeks, well six more apparently, before the weather becomes a bit more reasonable. So, I took one of the new teachers out to run errands, they (new teachers) probably think I'm crazy, constantly offering them rides, or trying to answer their questions, I could not have been more miserable if I tried at the beginning of last year. Not being able to do the normal everyday things, like drive to the grocery store, or buy a rug, etc is AWFUL! Ramadan is making life interesting. Work hours are great, but traffic and malls and everything is super busy at random times and not eating/drinking in public is bizarre.

We went out to dinner and used our coupon book, the buy one get one free deal is awesome... I made Jesse sit down with me because I hadn't taken any pictures in Dubai yet... so there we are looking so cute. That was right before we walked out to a wall of humidity.









Lime Tree was once again delicious... it's one of the few places we can go out to eat this month. We were planning on going out to IKEA to get a few things, but we stopped at the Nike store (where I had to pay nearly $200 for a new pair of running shoes...) and also to this jewelry store and by the time we left we didn't have the energy or patience necessary to deal with the traffic to get to IKEA or the store itself. I spent the rest of the day at my house trying to get it all organized and stuff up on the walls. It's really taking forever to get this place together...

I took a few pictures of my "office" at work. Otherwise know as the Counseling Cubes...












This is what you see when you walk in the door, Diana is a saint and she took the "front cube", basically you act as a secretary. People are scared to walk in, and when they do, you have to call out from your corner to see who's there and if you need to get up... it is humiliating and makes a mockery of our jobs.













This is my "cube". I'm in the back corner, so I have to go through two different cubes before I can get to mine. A far cry from my office last year...










I never thought I'd say that there was something good about last year at work, but I did have a door... It was particularly embarrassing last week when we had an assessment in one cube, a crying parent in one and then I was having a parent meeting in another. Awesome. I'm pretty sure if I was working in the states my counseling license would get revoked, here it's "just" unethical.