On our eight week anniversary, I thought it fitting to send you all a greeting and let you know how we're all holding up. We sure miss everyone and hope that this finds you fat and happy. Rich and I soon will be. Now that summer's officially over (i.e. it's only 110 degrees outside), and everybody who was smart enough to go away for the summer has returned, the embassies and consulates in the city are beginning the next round of diplomatic functions which we are not being invited to, but rather being required to attend. In non-polit-ease, "diplomatic function" is code for swanky parties with lots of great food and drinks that you can't actually enjoy because you have to small talk for three hours while juggling a can of Fresca and a plate full of small fried things while listening to the life stories of about a kabillion people, two of whom usually have something interesting to say. And it's only September. Oh well, life could be worse. We could BE the boring people at the party. . . hmmmm.
I am meeting many interesting people in my own job, however. I accepted a job teaching literature at the American University in Dubai and have now taught two weeks' worth of classes. I love how diverse my classroom is. On the second day of class when we all introduced ourselves, there was hardly a place of origin that was repeated in a class of 20 students. That's pretty incredible. I teach students from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan, UAE, Iran, Iraq, the Netherlands, Jamaica, America, Great Britain, France, Russia, Canada, etc. Although we live less than four miles from campus, my drive to work is always fraught with perils such as the Hummer who thinks the dotted yellow line IS another lane, the black-windowed Lexus who is obviously late for his accident and trying hard to make it there on time by driving at least 85 miles over the speed limit, and the rickety old pick-up truck hauling about 45 construction workers in the back who ARE late for their accidents at work. There is so much construction going on here at the moment (especially where they are building what will soon be the tallest building in the world), that we drive by and lose count of the cranes working all day and all night long. Construction accidents are common here, and last week a shopping center nearby our house that was undergoing renovations blew up. Fortunately nobody was in the building at the time, but it's enough to make you think twice about buying those new socks. Around here, if you're out shopping and see something you want, you should definitely get it; who knows if the store will be there next week. And regardless of construction quality control, or lack thereof, every time I find myself on the thirty something floor of a high-rise building or trapped under a gargantuan overpass during rush hour with mounds of sand as far as the eye can see, the song "The wise man built his house upon the rock" inevitably comes creeping into my mind. Fortunately for me, the underpass I always get stuck under on my way to work is right in front of a huge billboard for facial tissue that shows a giant hand reaching into a giant tissue box that changes colors every 3.5 seconds, thus makes the wait a bit more pleasant if not a bit more surreal.
Even though we've been here two months already, we are still getting used to the metric system and the rate of conversion from dirhams to dollars. In some ways the metric system is great: you are always going faster than you think you are, you always weigh less than you think you do, nothing is as far away as you think it is, and you've always run farther than you think you have. On the other hand, you're shorter than you thought you were, everything comes up on you faster than you think it will, and for crying out loud, can anybody tell me how many cups are in a kilometer??? I've just decided to stop asking new mothers how much their children weighed when they were born because answers like "two" still don't make any sense to me. Conversion also has its ups and downs. To give you an idea, one dirham equals 41 cents. So things are never as expensive as you think they are, but then you don't make as much money as you thought you would either. I guess all things become equal in the cosmos.
Christian finally got to see some camels on our trip last week. He thought they were cows. He also thinks he is a kitty cat now and insists on licking his milk from a bowl and talking in a really annoying high pitched voice that sounds nothing like a kitty cat but scares the heck out of Hendry. His new favorite word is Hooray! which he screams at the top of his lungs whenever he does things like discovers there is another box of Multi-grain Cheerios (he calls them burnt Cheerios because there are some brown ones in there), finds a pair of underwear in his drawer, or hears that we're going swimming or are going to drink some chocolate milk (his favorite treat). Christian got to visit Rich's office this week and when he was there he insisted on saying hello to EVERYONE in the building and shaking their hands. What a politician in the making. Now if he could just steal candy from himself. He is trying to use grown-up words now and it is so funny. Yesterday he was in the bathroom and I poked my head in and asked him if he needed some help and he said, "No. Go out, I'm having some privacy."
Henry can now pull himself up on things, fall down on things, cut his lip open on things, and get his fingers slammed between things. He is starting to cruise furniture as well, but his favorite cruise is from the bidet to the toilet and back, after sticking his hands in whatever's in the water in there. He has also learned how to either wave good bye or work one of those hand-held stress balls. Either skill will serve him well in his life to come I'm sure.
Well, that's it from our end. We'll keep you updated if you do the same.
"Now we have go-gurt, yogurt for people on the go. Since when did yogurt become so cumbersome?"
Ellen Degeneres, Modern Life and Other Inconveniences