Saturday, November 30, 2013

Happy 42!


As I worked all week, I thought of all my teacher friends in Georgia and how they had the whole week off for Thanksgiving.  They obviously do not celebrate Thanksgiving here and I was so dreading the day b/c I did not want to work.  It turned out I did not have to work!! Dubai was one of the countries vying to host the World Expo in 2020 and they won. Immediately after the win, he Sheik announced school be cancelled so people all over the UAE could celebrate. So awesome!!
We wanted to celebrate the holiday here so Jeff and I invited friends and our "UAE family" here to eat turkey and HAM and all the sides.  We had about 50 people here and the food was yummy.  Imagine my surprise when a co-worker showed up with her Muslim boyfriend.  We apologized for having pork and told him to avoid those dishes:o) we had a wonderful time and it took away some of my home sickness. 
We are about to embark on the National Day holiday here which is where the country celebrates turning 42 years old. So awesome to see how far they have come in such a short time. Every where you look you will see red, green, black and white (flag colors). People wrap their cars and really get into the spirit. They have put up lights every where which actually looks like Christmas!! Too funny how that turned out. I am happy to be here to celebrate 42 years, but the question is, will I be here in 2020 when the World Expo hits Dubai?!
I am still loving my experience of living here.  We will have been here a year in January, time has flown by so fast. You have to love a country that has awesome weather (still 85 during the day and 65 at night). You also have to love a country that allows you to leave school early because it rained:o)
My invite still stands Georgia peeps-if you want to visit, please come on over! You will love it and you will have a free place to hang your hat!!-jamie


Sunday, November 10, 2013

Dubai and back

This past week I spent four unintentional days in Dubai.  We took a quick two day trip to visit a zoo and giant flea-market in this amazing downtown park called Safa Park.  This is the most green I've seen in Dubai and the view of the skyline is outstanding.  We also did the Global Village which was the biggest fairground event I've ever encountered.  Wow!
Long story short, while at the flea-market Jamie drops her wallet in the middle of hundreds (she says thousands) of people rummaging through second hand items.  So we headed home after looking around for an hour and skipping the zoo.  I get a call that night from a Philipino family who found the wallet and are really excited to talk with an American for some reason.  The aunt got on the phone to say hi, the sister, a friend...
The next day I'm heading back to Dubai to meet this family and pick up Jamie's wallet which had all ID, Medical, license, and money...we hoped.  HUGE ordeal if we had not gotten this stuff back.  We live about an 1hour 1/2 outside of Dubai.  The IPAD was tuned to Led Zepplin, cranked up and I headed back to Dubai.  
Long story short, meeting the family was a joy and the the Aunt was an 80yr old woman who wanted to share how she found the wallet and her work as a maid for a Jordanian family in Dubai.  She talked about character of honesty and that was what I should expect from a Catholic woman.  I was blessed to meet them.
A couple days later Jamie says, let's go back to Dubai!  There is another ginormous flea-market so we packed up and took the vast sand dune journey a few days later. Two trips in a row and I haven gotten lost so far.  I'm getting the regions and highway numbers figured out now.  I'm still like a kid when we drive by camels in the back of a truck.
We have talked about taking trips to Paris, Italy, HongKong but money is an issue since we ultimately want to save money and remove the chains of debt.  In the end if we do not get to visit these places close by, we can at least say we have been to Dubai.  It's beautiful at night, the creative skyscrapers are enormous, and there is more to do than we ever have time for.  We can't complain because we have gotten to live in the Middle East and experience all of this, just in one little space. - Jeff