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Egads! Yet again, time has flown by! Herewith, a few tales from the past six months…
From a Ramadan special overnight stay at the 7-star Emirates Palace, to sorting through garbage at school with our Green Team, the semester has been busy
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Sophia keeps busy with piano and tennis, and making up plays with her friends. She also has a propensity to want to recreate anything she experiences: we recently saw an exhibit from the Guggenheim and headed straight out to the nearest art supply store to get paints, which we set up at home and proceeded to paint madly for an afternoon. The paints were then shelved to make way for her sewing gear. Then, after a trip to the mall for clothes shopping, she got it in her head that she wanted to sew a dress for her teacher’s little girl. I have NO tale
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I have been to Turkey twice this Fall, once over the Eid break with the family
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She only balked a few times when it was time to come down!
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Traffic musings
I have commented on traffic in Manila and Jakarta and here is the take on car hell in Abu Dhabi. Basically, on the roads you see a disproportionate number of top of the line cars from Italy, Germany or any other kick-ass car-making country, ranging from mini sports vehicles to the biggest, most egregiously carbon-sucking Hummers I have ever encountered, usually painted in gold. This would not be so bad, if only the drivers had some road sense. The drivers only know two speeds: extremely fast and screeching to a halt. Even if they are approaching a red light, it is like a road race as each car jockeys for the best position at the red light. I can speed up to a light and still be passed by many cars, which then squeeze in ahead of me just before the light. Drives me mad. The other annoying thing is the way they zoom up your butt like a dog in heat, trying to sniff in places uninvited. I have recently bought a cute little Volvo, so I know my rear end is good looking, but yeesh! Enough with the snout in my rear! Often, you cannot even see the front of the car behind you because it is so close to my tail. The one good thing is that there are still stretches of road with little traffic, so you can really let it out – hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!
Go Green: UAE-style!
The other day I joined the 9th annual UAE Clean-Up event, sponsored by a highly regarded environmental group here in the UAE. I had high hopes, as I encouraged my middle school kids to meet me at 8.00 am on a Saturday morning, to help save the world. I have to comment on this event, as it was spectacularly awful. During the weeks that led up to this country-wide event, I made countless phone calls to the organizers, trying to find out where we would be meeting. Two days before the event, I was finally told to go to the Corniche, by the newly opened restaurants. This is a lovely area of public beach, cleaned by little Sri Lankan men each day, so it is one of the cleaner spots in the whole country. We met at 8.00, got our free t-shirts and caps (hmm….how much carbon output when into making those???).
Finally at 9.30, 30 minutes after the supposed start time and one HUGE unexpected downpour of rain later, one of the sheiks showed up to start the speeches. Yikes…another 30 minutes later, the speeches were finished, mugs were given out along with other various presents. Finally, we were ready!!!! We were given a glove and a bag and sent on our merry way, down the cleanest beach I have ever had the joy of cleaning. The four students I was with and I barely filled half of one small trash bag in our hour of searching. Upon return to the event center, I was horrified to see box after box of water bottles, juice boxes, and chips being thrown joyously out onto the beach. The event organizers and their little workers unpacked
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A bit of culture in our cultural wasteland…
Recently, I sang in Handel’s Messiah as part of the ACS holiday choir concert– we amassed about 60 people from the community, practiced FOUR times and put on quite a fantastic show, I must say, accompanied by a small orchestra of community members. It was a highlight to my Fall.
Meanwhile, Jared has been a busy boy – taking course for his masters, coaching a team of adults to run the Dubai marathon in January, going to Dubai for the rugby 10’s, attending the Killers concert, and generally giving up sleep in order to complete all the tasks he has set out for himself. A friend of ours recently wrote a poem about Jared – inside the poem was a hidden message, “Jared never sleeps”. It is true.
As we head into the Christmas season, we will head to the airport in a few hours, hop on a plane to Switzerland where we spend Christmas with Jared’s sister and mom and assorted in-laws. Then, to top it off, we will spend a week skiing in France – we are all so excited.
We wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season.