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.