My Favorite Sign

My new favorite picture:



The white gown the men wear here in UAE is called a Dishdasha (pronounced Dish Dash) and this sign is posted in the parking garage at the Marina Mall. It cracks me up every time I see it so I had to get a picture of it. I see the Dishdasha every where we go and most of the men also wear the traditional head piece that goes with the white robe, but my favorite look is when the men wear the white Dishdasha and a baseball hat like the one I saw the other day with the New York Yankees logo on it. Maybe I can get a picture of it without looking like an obvious tourist?


The women wear the long black robes called the Abaya. Some cover their faces completely, some cover everything but the eyes and some only cover their hair. The Abayas range from plain black to very fancy, almost like someone got a Bedazzler for Ramadan from the Home Shopping Network and spent the better half of her weekend snapping rhinestones all over her black gown. I always get a chuckle at the women who wear the traditional black veil but have their Ipod wires hanging down from their neck. Technology knows no boundaries!


We are starting to settle in here in Abu Dhabi. Artem has been sick the past few days with a 102 degree temperature and no appetite. Today the temperature is gone but now he has a red pimply-looking rash all over his body. His appetite is back and he's his usual happy self, laughing and singing.


The weather is getting better here, a teensy bit cooler and the humidity is dropping so it makes it a lot easier to be out during the day. We've been able to take Artem to a few parks here with the weather getting better. This city has parks EVERYWHERE including in the middle of a road on the medians, and the citizens use them all the time. Last night we bought Artem some play golf clubs so he can have some toys to take to the park with him.


We have been running around a lot lately looking for a place to live. Our lease is up here in February and with the market being so competitive we are starting to look now. We are also looking for something a little smaller, 7 bedrooms is a bit much for 2.5 people. The problem is that rent has gone up so much in the past year that it's almost impossible to find a place that is within our budget of 200,000 dirham/year. We've driven to several villas and we meet people that are currently renting them for 175,000 dirahm/year and are locked into a lease but when they move out the landlords are renting them for a minimum of 300,000 dirahm/year. Today we found some nice villas and they had a rent sign posted with a phone number. Randy called the number and inquired about the villa and the man said they are renting for 1,000,000 dirahm/year!!! Randy said to the guy, "We were looking for something more in the 200,000 range, do you have anything?" I'm sure the guy was laughing as he hung up the phone. We saw a villa that was in our price range today, it was on the third floor, very clean, HUGE patio, lots of crown molding and trim work. The only problem...there was no kitchen to speak of. It had a tiny sink, with a pipe coming out of the wall for the water. There was no stove and no refrigerator, which is common here, you buy your own and put them in your rental, but there wasn't an outlet or room for a stove or refrigerator. The realtor said we would have to keep the refrigerator in the living room, not sure where the stove would have gone...bedroom perhaps?? We got a call tonight from our realtor about two villas in our price range. The woman who owns them is named Marina and is from Russia. (Artem's birth mother's name is Marina) I called her and we are going tomorrow to see the places and we ended up chatting briefly about Russia. Maybe something will work out and we can meet some people from Russia that live here so we can keep part of Artem's Russian heritage going. I told her "dasvadayna" (have a nice day) at the end of our phone call. Who knew I'd be using my limited Russian in UAE??



This week we travelled to a city called Al Ain (pronounced Al In) to look for villas. What a pretty city!! On the way out to the city there are huge sand dunes along the road. Randy said one of them is supposed to be one of the steepest in the world and every year people travel here for an event to see who can make it to the top. The city is at the base of the mountains so it has a completely different look than Abu Dhabi. Trees everywhere and lots of plants and flowers. The city has a very small town feel about it and is much slower and less hectic than Abu Dhabi. There is a nice zoo and aquarium that I'd like to take Artem to and a natural hot spring in the mountains with a resort at the top that draws many visitors to the city. The housing market is much better out there but it's an hour drive doing 80 mph so we decided it would be too much of a commute for Randy to do everyday.
Sand dunes on the way in to Al Ain:

Apparently it's a big deal for cities around here to have the biggest clock. Here is Al Ain's clock:



Randy goes back to work tomorrow. We've been spoiled for the past week. Today is the last day of Eid (the end of Ramadan) so life will go back to normal tomorrow for the country and businesses will reopen and we won't have to wait for restaurants and stores to open at 9:00 at night.

This one is just because I think he's pretty stinking cute!