It's been awhile...

I'm sorry to say, it's been quite a long time since I posted anything new on this blog. This cannot go on! I hereby swear, from this day forward, to update this blog on a regularish basis!

To catch you all up then, Lacey and I have been up to many new things -- some of them fun, some of them in the farthest corner, in the deepest crevasse, under the crushing weight of the great abyss of un-funness. So, let's see... I'll begin with the fun things, because that's what I feel like, and end by leaving you with the bad taste of utter un-funness. Don't worry, I'll think of something to brighten the mood in the end!

The oldest news is that Lacey and I got a car. It's a 2006 Mini Cooper, actually, and is a ton of fun to drive -- spunky, yet refined and comfortable. Astonishing, is its ample interior size, being that it's such a small car on the outside. There's legroom enough for me (of all people) anywhere in the car and it can hold a metric ton of groceries!*

Next, there were my trips to Greece and Oman as a chaperone with school.  On both of these trips, the students were very well-behaved, and I was truly impressed with how well they travel, being so young.  But, I suppose, all of these kids are used to traveling quite a bit.  That's one aspect of ASD that makes it quite unique; students and teachers see the world so much smaller than people do back in the states.  I hear students talking every day about some faraway place they had been to, or likely lived in for awhile, that I have only heard of in some obscure news report.  I wonder if Lacey and I will ever begin to see the world like that.  I'm not sure if I want to or not...

In any case, the Greece trip was with 6th graders and it was very interesting and a lot of fun!  We went to Athens, Delphi, Mycenae, Olympia, Epidorus and Corinth, among other less significant places along the way.  We saw the Parthenon, Temple of Apollo (where the "Oracle at Delphi" gave her drug-induced hallucinations, ehhem... prophecies!), King Agamemnon's tomb, the original Olympic stadium and the Temple of Hera (where the Olympic flame comes from every year), the Theater at Epidorus (and its perfect acoustics, which architects today still can't figure out how to duplicate), beautiful Corinthian columns, and the most elegant of all temples - the Temple of Poseidon (where King Aegeus committed suicide by jumping into the sea that takes its name from him).  There is so much to tell about all of these places and more, but I don't want to make this entry too much longer than it is already becoming...  I did get some great pictures that hopefully will fill in some of the blanks!

       

The trip to Oman was also fantastic!  It was with 5th graders, so I observed the astonishingly significant difference between elementary and middle school students.  It was very interesting indeed!  We did a bit of hiking in the hot mountainous wasteland, visited an oasis and learned about how the people who still live there use their unique surroundings to make life easier in the desert, and took a trip to "Gastropod Gulch" where literally thousands of marine fossils were embedded in the rock that used to be covered by a great ocean over 500 million years ago.  At the end of the trip we played a rousing game of Predator vs. Prey (which is basically a complicated game of tag where the students learn a bit about what it is like to live in the animal kingdom) and feasted on a traditional Arabian dinner at our hotel resort.

Lastly, Lacey and I have everything arranged for our spring break trip to Jordan, which will serve as our late honeymoon!  Jordan is supposed to be an eye-opening place to visit and one with less volume of tourism over spring break (thank goodness!).  We plan to visit the Dead Sea, the gorgeous capitol, Amman, and of course, Petra -- one of the "New 7 Wonders of the World" (not to be confused with the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World).  We will upload pictures of this trip as well when we have them ready!

As for the "un-fun" things... well, basically, it's been a royal chore getting my residency visa and finalizing our registration with the car and doing taxes as a newly-married couple out of the country and trying to find a job for me next year!  BUT... all of these things are coming together now, so the un-funness is almost over!  After that, well... I don't know... I guess we'll just have fun ALL THE TIME!!

With that, I leave you.  But not for long!  Because Lacey and I will now be updating this on a regularish basis!

Thanks for reading!

*This is not fact, only speculation on behalf of my imagination

Dragon boating

Our most recent Dubai adventure has been dragonboating.  A teacher at school (Crystal) got into the sport when she moved here 6 years ago, and decided to create a teacher team for February's Dubai Dragonboat Races.  Erik and I volunteered.  If you're not familiar with the sport, 14-20 people sit in pairs in a long canoe-like boat.  The key is coordination.  As a paddler, you have to stay on stroke with your partner and with the people in front and behind.  Weight distribution is also important, therefore, Erik and I are not partners.  :)  We've had two practice sessions to prepare for the competition that will take place next weekend.  The first was with Crystal's coach who lives and works in Dubai.  It wasn't very intensive...just learning the basic stroke.  However, our second practice was with a coach from Canada who has coached the Manitoba team regularly for the Canada games, and has coached 3 olympic teams!!!  Needless to say, he worked us a bit harder!  We felt proud when he told us that our team was paddling "quite well."  Especially when 19 of the 20 are doing this for the first time.  We'll be competing in a 200 meter race, and can't imagine the physical endurance necessary for 1 or 2 kilometers.  So, think of us on Friday as we're splashing our way to victory and attempting to not swallow the salty gulf water that may or may not contain human waste.  Yum!

Desert Camping

When I think of camping, I imagine tall trees, clear streams, waterfalls perhaps... maybe a lake... Anyway, I certainly don't imagine miles of empty sand dunes.  But that is exactly the scenery that Lacey and I had on our recent camping trip outside Dubai.  We road tripped out to Al Sharja, a neighboring emirate, and then turned our 4-wheel drives off the road directly into the desert.  After tooling around for an hour or so (partly to find a good camping spot, partly to have fun "duning" in the sand) we settled down and set up camp.  Luckily, none of the SUVs in our caravan got stuck, though

 there were some close calls sliding down the sides of the 50+ foot mountains of sand.

Finally we arrived, set up camp, and started a fire; we set up a disc golf course around the edges of the "bowl" we were in and played a couple rounds before it began getting dark.  Then we made some grub on a grill someone had brought. While we sat around the fire talking and eating, we decided that we would play a game of Capture the Flag.  The question was, how would we see where the flag was?  Miraculously, someone had an inkling that we might play this game and brought glow-sticks to use as flags and also to hang around each person's neck.  It worked perfectly!  The blue team won (go blue team!).

When it was time to head to bed, we crawled into our cheap tent we picked up at Carfur, the Wal-Mart of the Middle East, and went to sleep to the sound of nothing...

Here are a few more photos you might enjoy taking a look at.  All of these enlarge if you click on them.

First Impressions

It's been quite awhile since we arrived here in Dubai, but with everything going on, this is the first time we have been able to sit down and begin this oh-so-important blog.  Right now, Lacey is dust-mopping the tile floors of our apartment -- a chore that is ceaselessly needed in a place where, instead of a visible bubble of smog around the city, there is a visible bubble of dust from all of the construction.  I'm sitting on the futon gazing out the glass doors of the balcony (working diligently on this blog) at a multitude of tower cranes each working on a separate 15+ story building.  I can't say exactly how many buildings are going up in our immediate vicinity right now because there are just so many.  My guess would be around 8 or 9.  I just cleaned the balcony last week and now it is completely covered in construction dust once more.  Even being on the 10th floor of Art IV, our apartment, this happens constantly.  There is talk about the economic crisis affecting Dubai, but there is little that points to this notion.  We see scores of new architectural wonders going up all over the city and Bentleys, Aston Martins, Rolls Royces, and the like daily.  However, Lacey has noticed a significant decrease in traffic since the December lay-offs all over the city.

Dubai is an interesting and exciting place to be.  We come in earshot of 4 or 5 different languages a day, witness firsthand the vast disparity between the social classes, and see new cultural and technological features of this part of the world almost too often to discern their qualities.  We enjoy this energy here.  Waking up in a new place every morning has the effect of invigorating the spirit.  Even if the uniqueness of Dubai comes from its utter wealth, there is a depth to our experience here that we can't imagine finding in a familiar place.

After this, Lacey and I will be writing in small doses about different aspects of our lives, the city, and the goings-on here.  I hope you all stay connected!