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 with a mix of work and play. Sam is playing lots of tennis, as well as soccer and basketball. He swam on the elementary swim team this fall. He most recently tried out for the elementary school play and was cast as the CHICKEN in Jack in the Beanstalk. I have high hopes for my boy!

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 talent in this area. Before I knew it, she had found an old piece of cloth and cut out two sides of a “dress” and there we were, sewing it together. Luckily, she was content to put it on her doll, instead of giving it to the poor little girl! Next up was her idea of converting her closet floor into a bedroom. This closet is tiny – the floor space is maybe 3 feet by 1.5 feet. She lasted half of one night, fell out and ended up in our bed. Most recently, after playing at a friend’s house with a balcony, she has been trying to get me to collect cardboard boxes (BIG ONES) so she can build her own balcony! Ach!!! Imagination is a fine thing, but I now dread the next great idea…

I have been to Turkey twice this Fall, once over the Eid break with the family and then again with the intrepid Grade 7 for our annual Week Without Walls trip. The trip with Sam, Sophia and Jared was a 10 on Rodgers family vacations. We hit Cappedocia, the region I have been back to for the past two years now. Sam was in climbing heaven, as each hike we took had loads of boulders, perfect for scaling and jumping. Sophia is one game little girl. She kept up with her big brother, undaunted by vertical climbs and dizzying heights.
She only balked a few times when it was time to come down! We rode horses in the valleys, rented ATV’s which the kids LOVED, and hung out in local cafes for hours reading books and eating chocolate gozleme, Turkey’s answer to French crepes. The highlight of the trip was the hot air balloon ride we all took as a family! On my return trip with the 7th grade a few months later, it snowed and we all had a huge snowball fight. On the days it did not snow, it rained; luckily, we all come from the desert where it NEVER rains or snows, so the kids thought it was the best trip EVER!

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 the boxes and happily gave us each drinks and chips to thank us for our lovely contribution to cleaning up the planet. Check out the photo of the trash generated from this event and then take a gander at the pathetic pile of trash bags the group was able to collect from beach litter. Meanwhile, camels are dying daily, due to ingestion of plastic waste out in the desert. Lesson learned: home grown clean-ups are best! Of course, as we were leaving the event, trails of empty chip bags and plastic water bottles lay strewn along the corniche – good thing the Sri Lankan workers were not far behind!

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.