July 19 - 29
July 27th marks our two-week anniversary here in Dubai. Rich had a chance to practice his belly dancing skills on a boat tour we took last weekend. Of all the unlucky schmucks the belly dancer forced to come up and dance with her, Rich was by far the best (and best looking, I might add). We got a couple of great shots of it as well, so the whole family can enjoy the action. At least we know there is a career after the foreign service.
Christian has been having fun visiting various indoor playgrounds. It is so hot outside that a small child in our neighborhood ran outside on a metal grate without shoes on and suffered 2nd degree burns on the bottoms of her feet. So, Dubai has lots of indoor places where kids can play. We went to one last week in a little grocery store with little carts the kids could push around and a little cash register for checking out. Christian loved it. He stood there ringing up the food for almost half an hour, saying “beep” whenever he rolled the food across the scanner. He also slid down this really steep, scary slide into a huge ball pit. He did it once, and then he insisted that I slide down with him. Fair enough; that kid’s no dummy. Then we went down together, but I doubt if he will ever go again. The staff was impressed he even went once.
Henry is having a good time here as well, as far as we can tell. I guess if he isn’t crying a lot, that means he’s having a good time. He is crawling all over the place, and whenever he sees something he wants, he races at breakneck speed to grab it before Christian can yell, “No, Henny; you can’t have that.” If Christian had his way, Henry would only be allowed to play with dust bunnies and old, stale Cheerios. We’re still working on the whole concept of sharing (not bad, however, considering most of us could count on two hands the number of adults we know that have this concept down), but to his credit, Christian makes Henry laugh a lot, and Henry just adores Christian.
I have been staying busy trying to get our house in order. It’s really hard here when accounts for things like telephone service, internet service, and cable service cannot be joint accounts, but can only be issued to the ‘man of the house,’ if you will. The nice thing is that most of these service places have split days; they work from 8 am until noon or one, close up shop for a few hours and then reopen for a few hours in the late afternoon/early evening. Restaurants don’t even start serving dinner until around 7 pm. No wonder you don’t ever see any older Emiratis; most of them probably perish by 4:30. We’re still in the market for a second car, and as soon as I get that, it’s off to the MALLS to spend whatever money Rich can weasel out of the federal payroll office. I’ll have to try really hard not to spend it all in one place. . . .
We’ll email again next week and try to send some pics of this lovely place and the grand ol’ time we’re having when Rich isn’t at work from sun-up to sun-down. We love and miss you all.
“Vahm milk, peh-haps?
“No, thank you. I’m quite TIRED!
“. . . Ovaltine?”