Christian’s fascination with scuba divers continues unabated, and my fascination with its origin continues as well. It’s all thanks to the movie “Finding Nemo.” Having watched the film several times myself, I can tell you that the diver is only in the film for a matter of seconds, really. It’s strange to me that it was so impactful to Christian, but since those hot summer days of repeated viewings, he hasn’t stopped dressing up with gloves, tank, and goggles and going around snapping pictures of stuffed animals, sibling(s), parent(s), and anything else that comes across the viewer of his imaginary underwater camera (or, ‘crama,’ as he calls it). He even asks people to reenact the scene: “Okay, daddy, you go over there, and I’m the diver, and I’ll come up to you, and you be scared when I take a picture of you.” Christian just about had a conniption when a friend of his gave him a real, child-sized snorkeling mask. He carries it around the house, dives with it during bath time, and it is his new, latest bed fellow. He is also crazy about Batman, who knows how or why. We are currently using it to our advantage by informing him that Batman eats lots of carrots and broccoli and fish so that he can beat up people and ride his cool motorcycle really fast. We're not sure how long this will keep him fooled.

Christian has also caught on to church primary in a big way. When the older children got up to give talks and read scriptures in closing exercises last week, Christian kept blurting out loud, "Now it's my turn: I want to do that." It seems at church that the kids only have two volume levels: loud and loudest. Henry's verbal excitement at seeing the sacrament trays loaded with bread and water is becoming almost ridiculous. I've never seen a kid so carried away by the spirit . . .

Henry’s alimentary likes and dislikes seem to be more related to place than substance. He can only stand to be in his high chair for three minutes before he’s throwing a fit to get down. (We have a sneaking suspicion that when the nanny’s watching him, he never makes it into the high chair, and she literally has him eating out of her hand . . . .) Of course, he can’t reach this temper without first throwing food from his tray onto the ever so recently cleaned kitchen floor. When told not to throw food onto the floor, Henry responds with a devilish smile as if to say, “Had I known this simple attempt at getting rid of food would draw so much attention, I would have been doing this months ago.” So Henry, who doesn’t like much of anything, usually ends up wandering around the kitchen clearing out every single cupboard of pots, pans, bowls, etc. during dinnertime . . . and lunchtime . . . and snack time . . . . He has also become fond of throwing everything he can hoist a foot off the ground into the garbage bin. Just this morning, we found one of my socks, a lid to one of the pots in the kitchen, and the cord that connected the TV to the VCR. Who knows what else he has thrown away in the meantime, but Amy is having trouble locating one of her student's writing journals . . .

Amy’s opinion of food has mysteriously changed in the last few weeks. Lately, she just feels sick to her stomach all day and nothing sounds good. When she is hungry, she wants very specific things, down to the brand, e.g., “No, Rich. How could you think I want that disgusting excuse-for-a-pizza from Pizza Hut? How insensitive. I want Little Ceasar’s. Duh!” So I bravely go into Dubai rush hour traffic and drive across town to the only Little Ceasar’s in town (AND the only pizzeria whose delivery area we live just outside of), and order “anything that has pineapple on it” per strict orders. At home, Amy bests me for the most-slices-eaten award and then tops it all off chugging a quart of chocolate milk. “I’m impressed,” I concede. It's rare, but at times it's like she's eating for two.

Okay, okay, okay: now for our good news. Amy is actually eating for two! We are expecting our third bundle of joy sometime in mid-September. We are hoping for a healthy (read girl here for Amy) baby that will sleep a lot, eat well, and keep the poop to a minimum. Since we haven't had one of those kind of babies yet, we think we're just about "due."

Me? I'm just waiting for Girl Scout cookies. Yes, thin mints, samoas, peanut butter delites, all here in the middle of the Middle East. All you folks out there who think we're eating locusts and honey: eat your heart out. Even in Dubai, I hold the record for the most contraband cookies smuggled into this household! Until they arrive, I'm forced to snack on Scottish shortbread and hobnobs. But Amy's unusual cravings are certainly rubbing off onto me. This week, I couldn't drink enough milk. Normally, I'm an h-two-oh fan, but this week it was cow juice that floated by boat. The other strange sympathetic occurrence is the having of vivid and strange dreams. Amy can't get through a single night without seeing pop star Sting take her hostage or help Rich plan a snowshoeing trip across the desert for his work colleagues. I don't know if it's just hearing about her dreams, but recently I've started experiencing this odd phenomenon as well.

We hope that all is going well for our beloved family and friends -- that's you guys! Keep us updated on what your cute families and yourselves are up to. We would love to hear from you.

Our movie quote is in honor of all the Brits living here and on that little island of theirs:
Who are the Britons?
We are all Britons, and I am your king.
Well, I didn't vote for you.
You don't vote for kings.
Well, how'd you become king then?
The lady of the lake . . .
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail"

This goes back to a very cold night in Boston about three years ago. A friend of ours invited us to a no-expense-spared, full-on Chinese wedding dinner. In the middle of the eighth course, Amy pointed out the empty dance floor. By the tenth course and after several like hints, she finally asked her blockhead-husband to dance. The blockhead was shocked, nearly choking on his half-eaten egg foo yung. “Dance? In public?! Without anyone else to hide behind?!! Is she crazy?” he thought. By the time the lo mein was served, the blockhead knew he would never live it down if he simply refused to dance, no matter the reason. He downed a tall glass of water (as if that would help!) and ran out onto the parquet, eyes half-closed. It was the classic scenario: we were the first couple out there, but that’s all it took before a few other couples joined in.

In the end, I’m glad to have saved our marriage, but may I say: the point that Amy thinks being asked to a dance is romantic was not lost on me. By the time I was making anniversary plans this year, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find a venue here in Dubai to actually go ballroom dancing; since most nightclubs here focus on genres such as trance, European house, and Top 40, I thought we would have to settle for dinner at Noodle House and a viewing of “Brokeback Mountain,” equally as romantic, but no embarrassing attempts to remember dance sequences from Footloose, right? Well, I was pleasantly surprised: The Ball really was quite classy, attended largely by gentlemen sporting tuxedos and ladies with flashy jewelry. There was a buffet to keep me happy, and I really did have fun trying my two left feet at a swing-tango-waltz-polka dance I created from thin air. It was a great night and we did fall in love all over again, promising that maybe we could make it work for just one more year. ☺

Not to be outdone was the spread at the Nad al-Sheba horseracing course. We were invited to a very elegant three-course buffet dinner in the sky box of the country’s most prominent horserace organizers. It was a fun “local” experience, each course of the meal punctuated with a quick and exciting race of six to eighteen Arabian thoroughbreds. The horses were absolutely stunning. Since there is no gambling allowed in the UAE, you merely fill out a card of “predictions” and win things like shirts, hats, and cars. I guess it is a little bit different from gambling; well, actually it’s not, and of course these little exercises in “predicting” excluded the real horse-betting that was going on under the table. You gotta love this place for its attempts at the euphemistic lifestyle.

Perhaps the best show that can be put on is by mother nature herself. For the second time since we’ve been here, it rained. It poured, rather. For three days. You are reminded that you live in the desert when you have to pull over to the side of the road to figure out how the windshield wipers on a car you have owned for nine months actually work. The first day was a serious thunderstorm, complete with flashes of lightening and rocking thunder. Christian who hasn’t seen a thunderstorm for nigh a year was thoroughly entertained. He also enjoyed the day after when we got to wear jackets to go on a walk as a family. He rode his red tricycle around the neighborhood, delightedly making a watermark trail on the pavement of every road that had a two-inch deep, ten-foot long puddle. And there were lots of them. For all its incredible infrastructure (note the sarcasm there), the city of Dubai could use a few more drains here and there or at least a road with the semblance of a slope.

It was about the time of this storm that Henry’s human development sky-rocketed. He can build a tower with Megablocks; he can say “dzoo-dzoo” for a train (although now he says it for anything remotely like a train); he can give high fives; he loves eentsy-weensty spider (and can do some of the actions); and best of all clearly says, “Dada” when daddy comes home. He’s still a pill when it comes to eating, but has an insatiable appetite for navel oranges and knows the sign language for “more” and “all done.” You can guess which one he uses most often.

And the two boys are playing together better. Christian almost loves being chased around the house by Henry as much as he loves to chase Henry around the house. He’s on something of a roller-coaster as far as sharing goes: just when you see him consistently find a toy for Henny to play with, the next minute you see him yank one from Henny’s hands.

Last week in church, Christian was assigned to read a scripture for sharing time in Primary. He did a wonderful job (assisted by dad), insisting I not lift him up to see the congregation of children, preferring to stand on his own two feet, WAY below the pulpit. After he had finished his scripture and sat down, the Primary leader started preparing for the spotlight when she looked up and noticed that Christian was back up behind the pulpit offering what began to sound like a sincere, unassisted prayer. He thanked God for fooooooood, and bwessiiiiiiiiings, and Daddy and Amy (?!?), and the Primary Party (held just the day before), and Gracie (the neighbor’s nanny) . . . . The Primary leader reminded all the kids what an important lesson Christian had taught them all, that prayer is something we can do anytime.

We pray for our family and friends, and hope that everyone is feeling successful and healthy and enjoying life. We miss you all.

Movie Quote: “Are you crazy? Throwing trash around in the street in your pajamas. Who’s gonna pick up all this garbage? “You are, because you’re the garbage man.” “I hate cul-de-sacs.”
The Burbs

And for all its majesty, we found out we’re just too manic to be “cruise people.” The upside of an organized tour was that we had a tour guide with us everywhere we went. In fact, sometimes, it was just the five of us and a highly trained Egyptian expert who walked us through some amazing places, giving lessons in Nubian history, reading hieroglyphics, and Egyptology. Being in Egypt was cool, but I could have settled just for the lectures! I can’t overemphasize how good the guides were: they each must take five years of courses in various topics to qualify as an official guide, earning the equivalent of a Bachelor’s degree. One of our guides was stopped outside the tomb of Ramses II by younger tour guides who informed all of us tourists that he had taught them everything they know.

The downside was everything was so arranged. When we arrived in the Valley of the Kings, our guide gave his spiel and told us to meet back in twenty minutes. Maybe you can picture it: being in the bullseye of ancient history and having less than half an hour to soak it all in. Also, for as professional as the tour guides were, it was a bit too obvious that they had built-in shopping time to our schedule, no doubt at stores where they got a kick-back for bringing dumb, rich Americans to frivolously throw their cash around. We resisted most of the time and gave in when we came to a papyrus shop that had what we truly consider some beautiful artwork. And, heck: we got to try our hand at old-school middle east bargaining techniques. Still, we would have much rather spent the time in the Cairo Museum or visiting Coptic Cairo.

So we know we have to get back to Egypt and we know we have to go back on our own time.

If we could somehow go back and avoid all the peddlers, that would be nice, too. One thing we had become used to in Dubai: everyone just about everywhere has a bit of class and isn’t into pressure salesmanship. Egypt is the photo negative. Every site we visited had what we started to call “the gauntlet”: a rather long passageway with no alternative route lined with anywhere from six to two dozen small shops, each one selling the exact same souvenirs and each one watched over by one or two rather forward salesmen. The tactic of the aggressive shop tenders is to man-handle, grope, and otherwise encourage any European who even glances in the direction of their wares to come in and have a look. Even blatant lies like, “Everything is free,” are completely acceptable. At one site, we were a bit surprised that Egyptian police officers (who, by the way, are supposed to be preventing a lot of this activity) cozied up to us just to ask us for a “souvenir” American dollar. Perhaps the best were the camel drivers at the pyramids in Giza. They told tourists that camel rides are free . . . getting off the camels, however, costs five bucks. Or others that threw out prices in dollars only to reveal at the time of purchase that they meant Nubian Dollars (which don’t exist) at the exchange rate of twenty US Dollars to one Nubian Dollar. Back in Dubai, we were happy to ride home in a taxi whose driver didn’t even hint that he expected a tip.

I suppose the other reason we can say we’re not cruise people is that two of our motley crew of five were sickened, possibly by cruise food, a cuisine unto itself, usually served in buffet fashion with large quantities of fat, lard, suet and/or butter. While those of us with steel stomachs didn’t seem to mind and even had seconds, Amy got a particularly bad case of Ramses’ Revenge and spent our last day in Luxor either resting on the bus or popping out for a token glimpse of some of the world’s oldest ruins. Her stomach still hasn’t returned to normal.

On the flight to Cairo we finally settled on a possible name for our third child (if it’s a boy): Seth. Both of us have always liked the name, and it has something of a middle eastern flair. Only trouble is, it’s also the name of the Egyptian god of the underworld, the evil brother of Osiris who murdered him and was only centuries later avenged by Osiris’s son, Horus. Amy was quite convinced Seth wouldn’t work under these circumstances, but I merely had to point out that Horus, while having a clean conscience, has a less appealing ring. Better to have a name with some Egyptological baggage than one he’s going to get beat up for throughout elementary school. If it’s a girl? What else but Osiris’s sister’s name, Isis?

Henry can now say “heddo,” “bye-bye” (which he repeats no less than a dozen times while waving his hand), and “dada.” He’s catching on to prayers, too. He puts his hands together and shouts “AAAAAA!” when everyone else says, “Amen.” And from the pews last Sunday, Christian saw Bishop Stewart near the pulpit and rather unexpectedly shouted as loudly as possible in the quietest moment of the service, “Hi, Bishop!” Something else unexpected that Christian did was sit through a 2-hour movie in a theater! We took him to see “Howl’s Moving Castle,” an animated feature by Hayao Miyazaki whose films we rather enjoy (thanks to Jessica and Kevin Quire!). We predicted he’d lose interest after an hour or so and just run around the theater, but to our surprise, he watched the whole thing and still talks about the magic scarecrow.

The day before a birthday party, Christian helped pick out a gift for his friend. It was a toy airplane which he repeatedly insisted belonged to both his friend and himself. Besides missing the concept of ‘gift,’ he also missed the concept of ‘surprise.’ We instructed Christian over and over again not to tell anyone, especially the birthday boy, what it was. Thirty seconds after arriving at church the next day, Christian ran up to the Primary leader and said, “It’s a surprise! It’s an airplane!” Thankfully, the birthday boy was not there at the moment, however, later that night at the birthday party, Christian presented the gift to his friend and said, “It’s a surprise! It’s an airplane!” before he could so much as think about unwrapping it!

Well, that’s about it folks. We will spare you all the slide show of Egypt--everyone, that is, except our family members whom we will be visiting really soon. You’ll have to come up with your own excuses to miss it then. We are excited to see you all soon.

Movie Quote:
“What have I always said is the most important thing?”
“Breakfast.”
“No, family.”
“Oh, I thought you meant of the things we eat.”
Arrested Development television series

Baby-Naming Contest Begins
Christian’s Linguistic Forays
Henry Potter and the Torturer’s Chamber

So as many of you know (I am speaking to our loyal readers here), we are expecting a new addition (that kind of makes me sound like a house: I’m not quite that big yet, just for the record) to our little family. We would like to announce that we are looking forward to adding a healthy little BOY to our already man-heavy household on or around September 12th. We are both very excited and happy about this great news, albeit for different reasons. Rich is happy because as a Republican, he spends most of his time making sure the world is a better place for men, and Amy is happy because after living with six brothers, a husband, and soon-to-be three boys, she is all about the male psyche. Not that men are that hard to figure out, but figuring them out and then learning how to manipulate them to get whatever you want is truly something to be proud of.
In lieu of this exciting news, we are starting an official baby-naming contest. Rich and I have a few ideas, but we haven’t really settled on anything yet. We are therefore enlisting the help of our friends and family in the search for the perfect name. The rules are as follows:
1. It has to go with Bangerter. This is HARD!
2. It cannot be easily made fun of. We had originally liked the name Taggart, call him Tag, but I’m sure at least all you males out there can see why this is no longer a feasible option.
3. It has to be fairly unique. Not something so unique that it sounds like one of Gwyneth Paltrow’s ill-named children, but not something really, really common either.
4. You can enter as many names as you want, as long as each entry is different from the others.
5. You CANNOT enter your own name. We know what your names are, and if we liked one of them that much, we would have already chosen it.
6. There WILL be an unspecified award for the winner inasmuch as this is a bona fide contest. However, if none of you can cough up the winning name, then you all owe us a new camcorder. Just kidding.
Good luck to all the participants out there. Contest ends the day the baby is born.

I wanted to get one more blog off before the children and I fly home to visit family in the States in case I kill one or both of them on one of the three horrifically long flights there. While I can’t imagine it will be any more enjoyable for the children to be trapped on an airplane for 18 hours with a woman who is 5 ½ months pregnant than it will be for a 5 ½ month pregnant woman to be trapped with two small children, I may be more cognizant of my own misery and therefore a bit more dangerous. Therefore, this blog will consist mostly of amusing, cute anecdotes about the children which I will then print out and take with me: my reading this blog during Henry’s rage against the car seat and Christian’s fascination with the airplane lavatory may just save a life.
Christian has reached that age where his language acquisition is both a source of amazement and amusement. He makes up new words all the time for everyday objects. The other day, in all seriousness he came up to me, held out a jar of lip balm, and told me in an excited voice that he had just found his “commensation” which I guess is a cross between his common sense and his condensation. I just call it Blistex. He has also created a whole new language which he decides to employ at strategic times like bedtime or mealtime. He’s already caught on to speaking in tongues as a stalling tactic, and he doesn’t even know about the Tower of Babel yet. (As a side note, one of his other tactics for stalling at bedtime is to hold up four fingers and say “only two-once more (we think this means only two more minutes) and then I’ll go to bed.” Since he has no concept of time, this strategy isn’t really working for him, but fortunately for us the books say he won’t discover that for at least another year.) Unfortunately for us, Christian’s new language only consists of one word, repeated over and over using various accents or voice fluctuations. The word is wegu (pronounced weigh-goo), and while it appears innocent enough, if you say it more than three times in a row, you begin to understand the annoying nature of this word/language that is wegu.
Speaking of dinner time, Christian hates to eat almost as much as he hates going to bed, and we have had to resort to way sneaky tactics to get him to eat anything. Even chicken nuggets and French fries, when we allow him to eat them, are a struggle. The one thing he doesn’t seem to have trouble downing is soda pop. That seems to slide on down the old esophagus just fine. So we used to tell him that if he ate his food, he would become strong like Batman, but he’s already on to that one. So then we had to pretend like his mouth was the bat-cave and feed him unsuspecting food which was lured into the cave only to suffer a horrible and ignominious death. Oh yes, it sheds a whole new light on the concept of “dinner theater.” That worked for awhile, but ever since we read a story about a monster who liked to eat kids – on toast – our problems seem but a distant memory. As long as we serve him whatever we are eating on top of toast and pretend like the substance is kids, he will eat it. The strategy really only breaks down when all we are having is toast. . .
Christian is also learning about how mommy and daddy communicate with each other. At dinner every evening (ah, that glorious, peaceful, angelic event), Rich and I like to TRY to talk to each other about our work that day. Like all children (I am assuming, and don’t tell me if I’m wrong because sometimes the only thing that stands between Christian and imminent death is the reasoning that all the other kids in the world are acting off in the same way, and since their parents have managed to control themselves, we should be able to as well), Christian continually interrupts us by asking very loudly, “What are you guys talking about?” So we tell him to raise his hand and wait for his turn, so he raises his hand, and in an even louder voice, announces to us that his hand is raised and he is ready to make a comment. So one day when Christian and I were alone eating lunch in the kitchen, Christian turns to me and says, “Let’s talk about work: I’ll be daddy.” So we had a nice discussion about the work that he had done that day which of course didn’t last long since he doesn’t really do any work except throw his dirty clothes in the dirty clothes hamper, open and close the garage door, and ensure that Henry doesn’t even breathe on any of his toys. Come to think of it, that last one is a pretty big job.
And finally, Christian has become acquainted with the concept of “umm” as a linguistic filler: at least he hasn’t discovered the word “like” yet. However, instead of employing “umm” when he doesn’t know what to say next, he uses the word “is.” So you hear great sentences like, “I want this because . . . is . . . I like it,” or “I want some . . . is . . . soda pop.” Hours of entertainment, I tell you what. And people wonder why we don’t watch more television.
Henry is making linguistic breakthroughs of his own. He can now say da-da, and he uses it to refer to either dad or mom. He can also sing the e-i-e-i-o part of the Old MacDonald song, but his favorite song by far is the Hokey Pokey song. We have this precious song on CD, and every time we walk past the living room where the radio is located, Henry starts to sing the “Oh, do the hokey pokey part of the song,” except he can only say the “Oh” part, and he finishes up with a rousing “ba ba ba” for the “that’s what it’s all about, bout, bout” part. He also knows how to do some of the steps of this dance, and he is getting really good at doing the chicken dance as well. Henry is most happy when he can be doing something with his body: thus, you see my impending doom on the airplane soon. He really likes dancing, throwing, running, waddling, chasing Christian, tormenting Christian, biting Christian, pulling Christian’s hair, and mocking Christian. We count to three with Christian so much as part of his pre-time-out routine, that Henry now speaks a version of it (un, du, da!), and says it when we are disciplining Christian which drives Christian right into the time-out chair more often than not. I’d like to find all those people who told me having two kids close in age was a brilliant idea and slap their silly little faces. Hopefully, the kids will become friends eventually, but until Henry stops taking a perverse pleasure in Christian’s pain (and boy has he got the mischievous smile to go with it), I don’t think there’s much even the U.N. can do for their relations.
Well, that’s about it for us. Rich is going to continue to work hard until he can join us in the States in June, and since I have finished teaching this semester, I am a free woman. I actually had a student email me and ask me if they could drop the class after they didn’t show up for the final. Since the class was by then officially over and my grades were turned in, I asked them what exactly it was they were trying to drop. Genius, I tell you. We love everyone, and really appreciate you all keeping us informed about your lives as well. Please keep it up.

By the way, if you like what you read here, check out more of Amy's writing on www.31mag.com.

Movie Quote: “Momma says he’s bona fide.”
“I am the only daddy you got: I’m the damn pater familius.”
“But you ain’t bona fide.” "Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?"

My loneliness wore off after about 30 minutes when I re-discovered my stash of canned lemon pie filling and my list-of-really-cool-movies-that-Amy-will-never-watch-with-me-because-they’re-not-chick-flicks. After another 30 minutes I became depressed again when I found Amy’s honey-do list. After drowning my roller-coaster of pregnancy-like emotions in lemon pie filling, I realized that our housemaid Shanti would be around for another week or so and she might be convinced to help me hide the honey-do list in exchange for a hefty pay raise. Then I realized we could never actually afford such a conspiracy. And I also realized that Amy had never left me the PIN code to our checking account. So, with the stark realization that I am broke, totally dependent on my wife, and that my face is covered in lemon pie filling, I sat down to watch “Ong Bak: Muay Thai Warrior.” (That’s—er, a foreign film, Amy.)

For those of you who do not know because you do not subscribe to our DAILY newsletter (and you thought this blog was annoyingly frequent!), Amy went back to the States on that fateful day: Black May 12th, as I shall call it. (Despite the connotation, please note that many cultures consider black the color of purity, whereas white represents absence or even disease.) So, I laughed one maniacal laugh when I realized I would be drafting this very blog entry without any supervision. The echo created by the marble floors was deafening, to say the least.

Well, the most important thing to avoid loneliness/boredom/putting on weight is to keep busy. So, first off I started planning a trip. I was a bit surprised when this visa officer was ironically refused a visa to Syria, so I started looking at more friendly nations to visit. I tried Sudan, Lybia, North Korea, Canada, and the People’s Republic of California. Unfortunately, socialism seems to have added quite an airfare tax to these destinations. Turns out Switzerland was the cheapest ticket around, so I took it.

Skip the next few paragraphs if you don’t want the travel log, and let me start the log with a declaration followed by a question: Switzerland has got to be the most beautiful country on earth. Why on earth did my grandfather’s grandfather leave there over two and a half centuries ago?!

I only had three and a half days, but I think I covered some good ground. I landed in Zurich, the least appealing of the cities I visited, and that’s saying a lot. From there, I took an eye-popping train ride to Lucerne and met up with some old friends (don’t think I didn’t notice the grey hairs, Matt) in Lucerne. We checked out the city, visited the transportation museum, and then drove to Italy. (Woops! Amy, remember I said I’d never go to Italy without you? I was forced! I didn’t know! I thought it was still Switzerland! . . . Now I’ll have to amend to I’ll never visit certain Italian cities like Milan, Florence, Rome, or Venice without you . . . .) After making it past a two-faced, East German hostel nazi, a drunk and bored Italian border guard who was on a power trip to try and protect his country from the threat of Americans, and a brief but poorly-timed power outage, we slept.

My friends Matt and Trish might also try and convince you that their little Claire’s pre-bedtime “meltdown” should have been included in my list of Scylla-and-Charibda trials, but I got news for ‘em. Claire ain’t got nothing on Henny. In a multi-national whine festival, Henry would get the big, blue, slobbery ribbon. (Point-in-case: Henry did not sleep a wink during the 20-hour flight home. Neither did Christian. And Amy even gave them both a spoonful of “help”! I don’t even ask about that day, and I think Amy has blocked it from memory anyway.) Anyway, Claire is a doll and it was interesting to see that kids really are quite similar and/or peek-a-boo is a global language for all ages.

Over gelato—real Italian gelato—Matt and I had a philosophical discussion about the particulars of working for the private sector versus government. Turns out they both suck. Good gelato, though.

We spent most of the next day in the Italian Alpine villages of Bellagio and Veranna. Both were quaint, centuries-old towns with tiny streets and great shops. After searching for a pizzeria which sells pizza by weight rather than slice (actually quite common in Italy), we settled on a little restaurant that served up a mean beef and parmesan sandwich. We topped it off with gelato from a gelaterist who spoke no English. No problem: gelato’s just as good when you point and grunt at which flavors you want.

I hopped a train back to Bern, going in and out of sleep until striking up a conversation with a family in the cabin, the wife translating my every word into Schwyzer Duetch, a dialect of German that sounds to Germans like a mixture of bad Dutch and bad English. “But,” she pointed out, “if you are sure to find three things in the world, it’s Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and obnoxious Germans.”

That night I stayed in a hostel near the Mormon Temple in Bern. Many of the guests were visiting the temple for the first (and for some, only) time in their lives. Consequently, they planned to use every minute they could and set their alarms for 5 AM. I languished with my face in my pillow for an hour or so longer, but then got started on the day.

After a quick ride on the tram, I was in Bern city center. That early in the morning, nobody was out and I had the entire town to myself. It had been raining earlier, so there was the smell of rain in this town that is still very medieval-looking.

At the car rental agency, I asked the sales rep if she had heard of a tiny village nearby called Bangerten. She said she had not and looked even more confused when I pulled out a map of the town’s location. (Are Americans the only ones who get maps?) While I still had no idea where I was headed, this ploy was useful in guaranteeing I got a car with a satellite navigation unit. When she handed over the keys to a Peugeot that did not have a navigation system, I did not have to say a word. The look on my face said everything: “It’s my first time in your country and I’m trying to find a tiny village that no one has heard of. Besides, that car is French.” She put me in a nice Mercedes-Benz with a navigation device. I smiled big and drove to the parking lot across the street.

You can imagine my surprise when I punched in “B-A-N-G-E” and the computer came up with not one, but two Bangertens! Having done a bit of research, I knew that my ancestral hometown is the first of the two and proudly clicked on the correct one. A rather sultry female voice gently guided me to turn left here, right there, or to “please turn around and start over, you idiot.” Fifteen minutes later I had to pull over. I got quite choked up when I saw street signs pointing me to Bangerten. I can’t explain why exactly I became so emotional—I didn’t even have Amy around as an excuse to claim sympathetic hormonal mood swings. I can say, that I truly felt like I was coming home.

When I got to Bangerten town center (a town hall, a restaurant, and a workshop attached to an old farmhouse), I realized that Saturday was not the first day of the workweek as it is in Dubai and that I might have trouble tracking anyone down. I wandered into the workshop and sure enough: the town carpenter gave me a good Swiss-German stare. Two minutes after explaining why I had come to visit the town, he was introducing me to the mayor (his best friend). The introduction began with our walking into the attached farmhouse, the carpenter pounding the ceiling with a broomstick, and yelling “Hey, Tom! Tom! Wake up! You gotta come down here!” in Swiss-German, of course. Mayor Tom came down and had a cup of coffee while I pored over a copy of the town’s history which had just been published a few years ago. We chatted about life in America versus life in Switzerland, life in the city versus life in the country, and about life.

Those of you who know your European history know that crests are very important to a group’s identity. Each family, town, canton, and country has a crest. Bangerten’s crest is a green tree on a red field bearing seven pieces of golden fruit, a golden fence in the foreground. I had seen this crest before, hanging on my grandfather’s wall and then saw it again on the front door of the old farmhouse Mayor Tom lives in. I asked the carpenter if a wooden Bangerten crest is available, but he didn’t pick up the hint. We all traipsed over to the town hall and Tom gave me a bit more history of the town. The town hall was several decades old, but the farmhouse he lives in had been passed down generation to generation for over 200 years. I asked Kuschi (the carpenter) if the restaurant was any good. He explained that since it’s on a farm and the cook uses fresh produce, it’s one of the best.

I returned to the temple near Bern to worship and to re-energize my spirit and then spent a few hours in Bern proper, but not before grabbing lunch at a local baeckerei. The waitress didn’t speak English, but I somehow communicated that I wanted whatever’s good. She brought a tenderized beef steak that was wrapped in bacon and covered in a mushroom sauce. I topped it all off with a slice of zitroenetart (a citrus tart) and prided myself in knowing enough German to explain that I didn’t want to drink.

Since it was the weekend and the weather was absolutely gorgeous, a makeshift market popped up in the middle of Bern which was quite crowded, actually. It was fun to check out the shops and churches with the small city business happening all around. Promptly at 4 PM you would have thought the entire town spotted a political activist: everyone closed up shop and returned to their homes. By 4:20 Bern was empty. For fear that I would be put in the stocks for public vagrancy if I remained, I too left town. I checked out a couple of villages surrounding Bangertern: Rapperswil, Iffwil, Muenchenbuchsee, all absolutely wonderful. Then I went back to Bangerten to check out the restaurant.

Kuschi was still in his workshop and happily explained that his wife had nearly killed him for not introducing me when I had come earlier that day. He showed me his home, and we chatted for a few minutes before heading over to Wirtschaft Loewen (the Lion Restaurant) for not only Swiss cuisine, not only Swiss country cuisine—Swiss country cuisine, Bangerten style: fresh asparagus with herbed mayonnaise, veal steak, and roesti. Roesti is a Swiss specialty, something like homemade hashbrowns, but Bangerten makes them different (and better) than anywhere else. They throw in bacon AND ham, onion, and cheese, and then top it off with a fried egg. Wow. “Schmeckt zehr guet” was all I could say.

Kuschi and Sandra are incredibly kind people. And good parents, too. Kuschi knew early on that his 11-year old son Joel was not good with his hands and would not make a good carpenter. His mom and dad encourage him to play soccer and dream up business ideas. Kuschi and Joel are going to the Iron Maiden concert together next month. I smiled and looked forward to attending rock concerts with my boys.

On the last morning, I had a few more moments in Bern. The shops were still closed, but churches started to fill up. By the time I was making my way to the train station, church bells were ringing practically everywhere. Sitting on the 9:28 intercity train, I reflected on what I the few days I had spent. The trip had reminded me of two things: Swiss women are some of the most attractive on earth and how lucky I am to have lured one into marrying me.

So the three-flight, 22-hour plane ride really spoiled Henry and Christian in some ways, so much so that we had to begin systematic deprogramming of their cute little minds to remind them that life, real life, is not like being on an airplane where mom and dad are obliged by the fear of offending other passengers to respond to your every wish. (We haven’t told them that the secret to getting anything you want from mom and dad is to find a similar weakness and exploit it.) They’ve done surprisingly well. Most importantly, they are sleeping when (and where) they are supposed to each night. Henry, for his own part, is much better at saying “beeeee” (for “please”) than whining or grunting to emphasize his wants. And Christian is free to run around the house wearing his batman mask and Charlie Brown blanket for a cape.

But I’m jumping ahead. Before all this we spent a wonderful (if short, as they always tend to be) vacation visiting our families in southern Idaho and northern Utah. I wasn’t surprised that the only thing difficult getting used to was—you guessed it: temperatures less than molten lava. Along with the lovely weather here in Dubai comes the forgetting of what clouds look like, five minute pep talks before going outside to walk to your car, and another reason besides Mormon theology to give funny looks to coffee-swillers. I even wore a jacket on a walk to the Shelley Municipal Park once!

So after a few days in the cool summer Shelley air, I was back into it: clear, blue skies; white, puffy clouds; and brisk mornings. Two days later I was at a family barbecue, downing my third char-broiled, American hot dog when I started to feel the jet lag (and a head cold) wash over me like a Persian Gulf high tide. I was down and out for three days, but happy that World Cup Soccer and lemon tea were accompanied by waking up late and just laying around “recuperating.”

Christian and Henry had definitely changed in their three weeks away from daddy (which, incidentally, begs the question as to the benefits of maternal over paternal influences): both of them were much more mature. Henry played happily with a food processor and wooden spoon for 3 out of 4 morning hours. One night, for the first time in Henry’s short-but-active existence, he paid attention to something for more than ten minutes. What, you ask, could that be? An episode of “Emeril Live.” I’m telling you: the kid is destined to be a chef . . . or maybe a short-order cook . . . or maybe head tortilla-roller at Taco Bell? sigh (Amy reminds me often that kids generally don’t grow up to be world-famous swimmers, renowned speech-writers, nor Michelin chefs. So, I put down the phone, mid-sentence, and cancelled my order for Le Creuset Kids’ Cookware set at $1499.95.)

Christian got in the habit of putting himself to bed. In fact, most nights he insisted. Of course, a couple of nights into it, he realized the real advantage of this: he could stay up as late as he wanted as long as he stayed in his room. Still, I’ve got to give the kid credit. He would generally go into his room, look at a storybook or two and then hit the hay.

Perhaps the best thing, though, was just seeing the boys have quality time with their cousins and even moreso with Grandpa and Grandma. We’ve got great photos of Henry riding Grandpa bareback, rodeo style and of all four of them jumping on the trampoline together. And, yes, while they were playing “Ring Around the Rosie,” Amy and I were off on a shopping date. After a healthy round of buffalo wings, we skipped the movie and knew we’d have a better time playing Settlers and hanging out in or around the hot tub.

And I haven’t even gotten started with the Utah leg of our vacay! This leg was a bit trickier since we crashed at a few different places and had to cart our luggage around with us. It was also more complicated just because we were closer to our return trip. We made two separate phone calls to the airline to confirm our seats. Based on what could only be called a truly heavenly prompting, Amy called one last time . . . just to be sure. I suppose this third customer service rep detected our skepticism that everything was “confirmed” and suggested that if we wanted to be really sure, we could go to the airport a day early to have our paper tickets converted to e-tickets. (As a side-commentary, have you ever thought how strange it is that an e-ticket—which I can only assume is a ticket that is floating out there somewhere in cyberspace—is somehow more valuable than a tangible paper ticket?!) We took her suggestion and traipsed to the airport. Lo and behold, after not 5 minutes, not 10 minutes, after 50 minutes: no ticket for Amy! “She’s confirmed,” said Duane, whose name I divined from the miniscule badge attached to his polo shirt and next to a presidential-campaign-style button reading, “How May I Help You?” in big, red block letters. “Well, Duane,” I said rather frustrated, “if your airline is willing to take my money and even says that the seat is confirmed, I think the best thing you can do to help me is to print the &*(#@ ticket.”

“It’s a problem with the pre-payment code,” Duane replied, in either a clear display of the lack of his ability to grasp the real problem or in an equally clear attempt to distract me with mystical airline terminology.

“I don’t even know what a pre-payment code is,” I said, “And, quite frankly, I don’t care! The point is, Acme Airlines [names have been changed to protect the guilty] took my money, agreed to provide a service, and WEEKS after I made a booking, you’re telling me that the definition of ‘confirmed seat’ has magically changed? Look, let me put my problem another way. I have two very young and very loud children. If you would like to wait until you can solve this problem to fly their 5-month pregnant mother across the Atlantic on another day, that’s fine: she’d thank you immensely. And I don’t mind doing my best to help my sons through 30 hours on your airplanes. But don’t you really owe it to the other passengers and the flight crew who will certainly be asking the question, “Where on God’s green earth is the mother of those bratty, snotty, screaming devils?”

Duane stared at me. I stared at Duane. I flicked his circumstantially hilarious customer service button with my fingernail and said, “Change the ticket, Duane. Please.” He picked up his phone and dialed the central office which reportedly sent a message to the Dubai office to change the pre-payment code so the ticket could be printed. I wish I could say I walked out of the airport with the four tickets in my hand, but, alas, even Duane—moved to fear or compassion by my vituperation—had not the ability to make rocks bleed. I spent another 2 hours on the phone with Acme Airline’s customer service reps to finalize the solution. In the end, we all four did get our confirmed seats. Funny enough, on two of the three flights, the seats were scattered all over the plane. I guess you have to pick your battles.

Thankfully, this was all preceded by very fun times. At a birthday party for my mom, my brother, his wife, and my sister had rigged up a piñata donkey from the basketball hoop over their carport (rather Napoleon Dynamite-esque, eh?). Christian, whose age, we felt, did not require a blindfold, tried his best at releasing its treasures, but did little more than bruise a hoof or two. When Aunt Joelle beat the thing into oblivion, nearly destroying the candy as well, all Christian could say with wide eyes was, “Joelle is strong like Batman!”

My sister Jen made an absolutely divine pasta carbonarra (where’s that recipe, doll face?!) and Joelle made an equally delicious stroganoff (same here—where’s the blueprint, babe?!). We also tried a couple of their favorite restaurants and had some deelish dishes, BUT by far the best gastronomic experience was incarnated in a cylindrically-shaped, corn-batter-covered, deep-fat-fried delicacy known as corn dog. Some of you readers are gasping, others’ stomachs have turned, but a very elite few know the glory of a truly well contrived corn dog. And certainly all of you—disgusted and gusted alike—can sympathize with having an annual craving. It’s not that I like to eat corn dogs all the time. I can honestly do with one to two per year and I’m satisfied. But there was something about returning to the motherland that made me “corny,” as corn dog lovers say, in the same way there’s something truly American about a corn dog.

And while I’m on the patriotic high-point of this blog, I might as well mention the great time we had celebrating Independence Day in the United States. Christian especially enjoyed the carnival, and it was—joking aside—a great chance to teach him the significance of our nation, even if in very basic terms. We had arranged everything so that Christian and Henry could see a fireworks show that night, but then decided they were so tired that we could see fireworks from my dad’s porch. We came back to his place and had a great time playing my brother Aaron’s favorite game, Killer Bunnies.

At my dad’s place we enjoyed hot breakfasts nearly every morning. Amy enjoyed it so much that she continued the tradition at our house. Then, when she coincidentally hit 32 weeks pregnant, we were back to cold cereal.

Everything is on track for our first international baby delivery. We can only pray that it looks like Amy.

Besides the Movenpick, we just did a round-robin of all our favorite restaurants in Dubai, ending on a high note of the best chocolate mousse cake in all the world.

We also went swimming. Christian has learned to dive with daddy. . . better said, to dive ON daddy. He holds on to my shoulders and will go all the way to the bottom of the deep end to touch whatever shiny metallic fixture happens to be there. On a separate trip to the pool, Christian saw me do an underwater forward flip and asked if he could hang on for a ride. I thought it would freak him out, but he loved it! Instead of gasping for breath, his first word after resurfacing was an emphatic “Again!” so that we did a series of maybe a dozen piggy-back, underwater flips!

Just when we started getting used to the Thursday/Friday weekend, the UAE Government has decided to switch the weekend to Fridays and Saturdays (although Fridays remain the Muslim holy day). After reversing the decades-old habit of saying “Saturday” or “Sunday,” we had finally got it straight. Now, on top of switching the day names, we’ll have to get comfortable with having church services on the first day of the weekend followed by “fake Saturday”—as it used to be called in the early days of us trying to adjust. Now “fake Saturday” is really Saturday, so there is no more “fake Saturday,” only “fake Sunday” which is “real Friday” which is when we attend church services.

On Sunday, August 13th (that’s “real Sunday”) Amy went in for her 36-week check up. We asked her doctor about our options to avoid delivery of a baby over 10 pounds (many of you may remember Christian was a whopping 10 lbs. 1 oz. at delivery!). We discussed mechanical induction and chemical induction, but all of us agreed that we didn’t want to start anything too soon. A week later, the doc did a “growth scan” and saw that the baby was 3-weeks ahead of schedule by weight. In other words, he was right on target for a birth weight of sumo-wrestling proportions. Even the previously-skeptical obstetrician dialed the hospital maternity ward to schedule an induction for one week later.

Meanwhile, a friend of ours threw a baby shower for Amy (and for three—yes, three other women—in our church group who are close to delivering). Later that week, we had a smashing dinner at our favorite restaurant to celebrate Amy’s birthday. The next day, Amy’s doctor started “mechanical induction” wherein the amniotic membrane is separated from the uterine wall. Hours later we were on the road, headed for the American Hospital of Dubai.

Now, there were several aspects of this delivery that made it, by far, the best child-birthing experience. First, the obstetrician came to the hospital and was close by the entire time. (In fact, Amy was a bit beside herself since this Lebanese doctor and I started in a heated debate about U.S. foreign policy in the middle east while she was concentrating on breathing!) In the States, a mother’s doctor sometimes shows up late in the game and nurses or an unfamiliar doctor end up delivering the lad or lass. Furthermore, there is no shortage of nurses here (as there is in the US), so nurses can really devote time and attention to you alone.

But the absolute best thing about it all was 24-hour room service. Yes, when Amy was craving a turkey on wheat with mayo, mustard, lettuce and tomato with two glasses of skim milk, she got it. In fact, I didn’t know what to say when the nurse interrupted my exposition on the benefits of US action in Iraq and asked if I wanted anything: a burger, pasta, a sandwich . . . ! (Amy was none too pleased that, first, I was discussing politics with her obstetrician while she was in labor and then ordered food, too.) Anyway, the delivery went very well and we all knew immediately that Amy’s mother won the naming contest: the name we had chosen for him, Cyrus Aaron, suits his look.

On the down side, Cyrus took a bad turn about an hour after arrival. His breathing rate was too rapid and he was expending every shred of energy just to pump air in and out. His lungs were fully developed and there was only a small risk of pneumonia or another infection. Still, he had to stay in the neonatal intensive care unit for observation for a week. We experienced a taste of the burden that many parents deal with of not being able to hold, nurse, or cuddle the cute little guy. He was under an oxygen tent for the first few days and was hooked up to a number of wires and monitors. Thankfully, his 8 pounds-plus of bulk made him by far the biggest kid in NICU and probably helped him get over whatever it was that was bothering him.

We brought Cy home, and the boys took right to him. We have some gorgeous video footage of the two of them taking turns giving Cyrus kisses. (This footage did follow a very clear lecture laying out the ground rules of having a baby brother around, but Henny and moreso Christian both got the idea.) Henny squeals with delight whenever Cyrus is around, and Christian insists on waving hello to him and figuring out why he doesn’t just say what’s on his mind.

And speaking of the two newest Bangerter brothers, they’re doing some very cute things themselves these days. Christian wears a Batman mask about 50% of his waking hours. Thankfully, there doesn’t appear to be any identity crisis, but he does insist on being called Batman when he’s wearing the mask. It’s hard not to smile when he says, “I’m not Christian, I’m Batman,” but that could have more to do with the Charlie Brown blanket tied around his neck as a cape or the dark socks and white sneakers he’s wearing or that he may or may not have pants on at the time he says this.

Henry is on the brink of starting a real vocabulary. Amy and I have each heard him say full sentences, though neither of us was around to confirm the other’s outrageous claim: I reported to Amy that Henry had said, “I like pasta,” while Amy reported that (while no one else was around, of course), he had said, “Wherein the differentiation of paternalistic orders of societal organizations recuses itself, concomitant institutions of wealth adduce vituperation.” Well, as you can imagine, we didn’t know how to respond. He does call all beverages “joo,” all adults “dada,” and definitely learned “mama” while she was in the hospital. Apparently, he woke up every morning, walked into the empty master bedroom and said, “Mama.”

Well, Cy is the best baby we’ve had so far. He sleeps for several hours at a time (unlike Henry did) and consumes an average amount of food each feeding (unlike Christian did). He’s doing what a text-book baby should do: eat, sleep, and—well, you know the rest. We’re not sure how to get new baby pictures up on the blogsite, so we’ll be sending them out to you via email. Let us know if you don’t want your inbox crowded with pictures of somebody else’s kid.

“For a diplomat, you’re not a very good liar.”
“I haven’t risen very high.”
--The Constant Gardner

Another major difference between the two systems can only be demonstrated by the conversation that followed, a conversation which NEVER would happen in the US:

Agent: Yeah, six thousand dirhams (almost $2,000) is quite a bit to pay.
Rich: I just don’t understand how I paid 3,500 dirhams last year and now it’s almost doubled. I thought it was supposed to decrease!
Agent: It’s true. Six thousand is too much. . . . Listen, let me call a friend of mine who can give you a quote from another company.

Now, at this point, I’m thinking, “Wow! Finally, a corporate lackey who’s admitting that his employer's services are highway robbery!” But after a few attempts of dialing his “friend,” without success, the agent promised to get back to me later; I was half expecting him to tell me to meet him in a dark alley behind the Gold Souq and ask for the guy who goes by "Tony," no last name, just "Tony." Then the agent started talking in a hushed voice and shifting his eyes to and fro.

The next day, the agent gave me a quote for 3,500 dirhams and passed me the name and mobile number of “Mohammad” (the Arabic equivalent of "Tony.") So I called Mohammad.

Mohammad: Just email me scans of your passport, driver’s license, vehicle registration, and previous insurance policy. I’ll even come to your home or office to finalize the policy!
Rich: Uh, yeah . . . that sounds great. Look for my email.

That’s what I said, but what I was thinking was, “So, all I have to do is send you ALL of my personal information, pay you almost a thousand clams and, voilà, I have insurance?!” Then I had images of a guy sitting on his couch watching reruns of “Knight Rider” (which is where this guy probably learned English) taking my call and then stumbling over to his “home office” and spending 30 minutes to draft an insurance policy on Wordpad. He makes off with all my info and a load of cash while I hold an insurance policy not worth the paper it’s printed on.

Needless to say, I shopped around and got a much better deal. And speaking of shopping, would you imagine that I could go to the largest mall outside North America and the only “shopping resort” (that’s what they actually call it!) in the world and not find an alarm clock radio?! For Pete’s sake: I went to a store called “Jumbo Electronics” which is the largest electronics retailer in the world’s only shopping resort: no digital alarm clocks. In fact, it was kind of amusing to be in store surrounded by boxes of the latest tri-modal satellite phone with digital audio and visual recording, MP3 storage and playback, and Bluetooth nuclear launch capability, and the saleslady pulls out one of six alarm clocks that has the two bells on the top; you know, the old school analog clock with a winding knob and radioactive glow-in-the-dark hour and minute hands! Yes, the kind where you set the alarm to halfway between the six and the seven only to find out the next morning that this translates to 6:39 AM so (after winding it up) you have to reset the alarm hand back just a few centimeters, but not too far . . . . And this is a first-world country?!

Why we need a new alarm clock is an equally good story in this Month of Incompetence. The state-run telecommunications company charged us 200 dirhams (about $80) to move our internet hook-up from the lower level to the master bedroom in the upper level. What they didn’t explain is that it would cost us $80 and one piece of electronic equipment, thank you very much. The technicians had to unplug our alarm clock radio so they could install a new fixture. They spent about an hour doing whatever it is they do and afterwards plugged our 120-volt alarm clock radio into 220 volt socket rather than into the power inverter. Of course, the technicians skiddaddled and didn't say anything about it. So now we are left to using my mobile phone as our alarm clock and there's no way to tell what time it is unless you pick up the phone and fiddle with it to turn on the backlighting. Let me tell you: it’s pretty tough waking up in the middle of the night having no idea if you’ve got 2 hours or 20 minutes of sleep left before you’ve got to get up.

So, I spent an hour at the Mall of the Emirates looking for an alarm clock and decided the only thing that could soothe my anger was eat a Blizzard from the only Dairy Queen in Dubai. I looked at the menu board and asked the Filipina server what’s in the “Chocolate Xtreme” Blizzard?” She rattled off a list of about six items which she had obviously memorized and recited before she could wear the DQ uniform but which I couldn’t understand. When she saw my confused face, she pointed at a placard that had thumbnail size photographs of each Blizzard flavor. I never found Chocolate Xtreme, but was side-tracked by the Pecan Mudslide Blizzard. I told the server, “Instead, I’ll have a Pecan Mudslide Blizzard, please.” The conversation that ensued speaks for itself:

Server: I’m sorry, sir, the Pecan Mudslide is not available.
Rich: Not available? Why is it listed on your menu?
Server: I’m sorry, we don’t have pecans. But we can substitute almonds if you’d like.

I looked up at the menu board in search of another option and saw the “Georgia Mudslide.”

Rich: What’s in the Georgia Mudslide?
Server: [Memorized, imperceptible list of ingredients] and pecans.
Rich: What was that last ingredient?
Server: Pecans.
Rich: Wait a second: you have pecans for the Georgia Mudslide, but not for the Pecan Mudslide?
Server: No pecans, we can substitute almonds.
Rich: Wait—do you have no pecans or no pecans for the Pecan Mudslide?
Server: You can have almonds instead.
Rich: Nevermind. Just give me a Chocolate Extreme.

I couldn’t help but rolling my eyes: as she handed me the cup, she smiled, turned the cup upside-down to show me that the Blizzard was so thick as to be anti-gravitational and said in a too cheery voice, “Enjoy your treat, sir!” I can only interpret the cup-turning marketing scheme as some sort of ploy to try and compete with the popular fast-food Chinese restaurant next-door whose kung pao chicken would obviously fall to the ground in a similar demonstration: there is not another restaurant offering anything close to a Blizzard in the entire resort.

This is not the first run-in we’ve had with Al Dairy Queen. In fact, our first run-in was also our first visit there. We were floored to see “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups” listed on the Blizzard menu. This is remarkable because peanut butter is not often found outside the U.S. since most Europeans, Asians and Antarticans think that, between peanut butter and root beer, American taste is, er--unique. Anyway, we ordered a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Blizzard and let our mouths water while they prepared the treat. When I came to claim our order, the smiley Filipina server turned the cup upside-down and said, “Enjoy your treat, sir.” I gasped and said, “You’ve mixed up our order.” Her well-trained smile stayed, but the corners of her eyes turned down as she tried to process an anomaly in what is a rather simple business of mixing candy into soft-serve ice cream. “We ordered Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. This is made with Reese’s Pieces.”

Now, most of you are thinking, “Well, same difference—it’s a candy treat based on super-sweet peanut butter.” But true connoisseurs of the delicious paste (you know who you are if you have ever explained the horrific number of tons of peanut butter that are discarded every year in the U.S.) know the difference is huge. Again, a transcript is necessary:

Server: Right—Reese’s Peanut Butter. But you want it in a cup?
Rich: No, no—your menu says ‘Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.’ That’s what we ordered.
Server: Yes, this is Reese’s Peanut Butter and it’s in a cup.
Rich: Uh, this is Reese’s Pieces—the candy, not the chocolate cup with a peanut butter center.

The server was not getting my drift and finally the manager saw a customer about to go ape on one of his employees who had just passed off the latest ingredient recitation and intervened. I re-explained with more detail this time. Now, I really hate to be the type of American who is living overseas and starts any sentence with these words, but I measured the need and started,

“In the United States, there are two different candies . . . .”
Manager: So, you want this in a cup?
Rich: No! I want a different candy! This is Reese’s Pieces; I want Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups as listed in 2-inch letters on your menu!

By now a few employees had come over to watch the ugly American explain how the DQ in America works. They all looked up at the menu and just apologized in desparation.

While we choked down the Reese’e Pieces Blizzard, the manager got up on a ladder, took down the panel with “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups” written on it, cut off the panel after the word “butter” and replaced the panel. Now, because of Amy and Rich Bangerter, two fine, Americans, the DQ in Dubai sign now no longer mistakenly says “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup” but now mistakenly says “Reese’s Peanut Butter.” sigh

Two weeks later, we couldn’t let it die. We went to Carrefour (a store like Walmart or Target) bought a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup candy bar and walked 50 feet to the DQ. After re-explaining the difference between cups and pieces, we asked the manager if they would make a Blizzard with the candy we had purchased. The only vindication in the Week of Incompetence was that a DQ manager beleaguered by two obnoxious and insistent Americans (but who also operates a store in a country where “health inspections” means going to a doctor for a medical check-up) conceded. We ate that Blizzard slowly, savoring each bite.

"Ah, you're a mute. . . . An extremely big mute. You must have been the tallest kid in your class."
--Young Frankenstein

Istanbul
Christmas
Cute Kids Doing Cute Things

Since arriving in Dubai, Rich and I have both been able to fulfill one of our respective life-long dreams. Rich has now seen the Temple of Karnak in Egypt and Amy has been to Istanbul. What an amazing city. We spent the first two days just grateful Christian and Henry were a four hour plane ride away, and then we spent the last two days falling in love with the city. It could be the fact that Dubai is basically just one big mall, but we were overwhelmed with the sense of history and culture in Istanbul. It seems like every major ancient civilization has been there and left brilliant reminders of their reign. Our favorites were: of course the Hagia Sophia where you can see a fresco of the Virgin Mary and the Christ child right next to an enormous metal pendant that reads Allah is great; the enormous underground Roman cistern complete with two Medusa head pillars to keep the evil spirits at bay; St. Chora Church which boasts the largest collection of Byzantine mosaics in the world (and may I just say that these mosaic and frescos defy description); the Dolmebache Palace where Ataturk died which was visible from our breakfast nook in our hotel; the bustling Istiklal Street which I think we visited at least once a day every day we were there (a great place to eat, window shop, and people watch); and the Spice Souk where we found the best Turkish delight while the scent of saffron, tumeric, and Ottoman spices wafted all about us. We also found some really neat old churches, wandered around neighborhoods where real people live, and drove across the bridge that connects the Asian and European continents. The Turks we met were fantastic people. We had heard the Turks like babies, but we had no idea what that meant until we were out walking around with Cyrus. I don’t think I’ve ever seen sixteen-year-old boys make such a fuss over a baby before. Everywhere we went people would stop us for a better view of the baby, stroke his head and mutter, Mashalla, Mashalla (God protect him). On a couple of occasions we would look behind us to find a group of people following us trying to see the baby. Cyrus, bless his heart, slept through the whole thing. We would stop every once in a while to change his diaper and Amy would nurse him in the back of the taxis. It was one of the best trips either one of us has ever been on or may ever be lucky enough to take.

This year our Christmas was a rather low-key event, as low key as it can be for a family that traditionally breaks out the Christmas CDs on Labor Day Eve. It was great fun to hear Christian walking around the house this year singing, “Do you see what I hear?” On Christmas Eve, Christian was really excited for Santa Claus to come and give him a new ‘puter’ (computer), even though on Christmas morning when we were asking him who came the night before he hadn’t the foggiest idea what we were talking about. (Who? Who came last night? he kept asking us.) Henry was a little bit disappointed that there were no more chocolates left in our advent calendar on Christmas morning. He kept sitting in his high chair asking for chocolate, one of only 30 words he knows. You can tell he is spending way too much time with his mom. He’s also spending way too much time with the maid since his favorite Christmas present was a little cleaning cart complete with working vacuum cleaner (Christian has already vacuumed up a bunch of popcorn, a jelly bean, and two candy wrappers), mop, broom, bucket, sponge, and cleaning rag. Henry also liked his little garage and the GeoTrax set that Santa brought Christian. Henry is much more into trains than Christian is: I don’t know what Santa was thinking. Christian’s favorite toy was a rather large rescue copter, complete with rolling stretcher, little plastic casts, an IV line, a rescue four wheeler (which Christian insists on calling a “fwee wheewer”) that fits inside the helicopter, and a machine gun mounted to the copter’s front end just in case they have to shoot their way out of the jungle after rescuing a fallen hiker. Clearly a Republican Party approved toy. Christian also got a computer with reading games on it, and an SUV/robot transformer SO complex it took Rich about 45 minutes to morph. We’re talking removing hatchback doors and attaching anterior wings, etc. Ages 5 and up my eye. Santa brought Rich a bunch of music and videos, and Santa didn’t bring Amy anything: darn APO. She didn’t get any coal either, which seems to indicate she wasn’t THAT evil last year. Cyrus was just happy to be here.

The kids are growing up so fast. They (whoever that is) say that the days are long but the years, or in our case, the months fly by. Christian is becoming a curious mix of immaturity and eldest child syndrome. We were driving past a local bank the other day when Christian made the astute observation that the bank looked a lot like a temple. As Rich was about to launch into the historical connection between the architecture of banks and temples for Christian’s sake, he happened to glance in the rearview mirror only to find Christian with his finger up his nose. Needless to say, the impending conversation took a different turn. One of Christian’s favorite joys in life is telling Henry what he can and cannot do, and contributing his two cents to his parent’s discussions about discipline. It’s usually along these lines: “Mom, if Henry does X one more time, he should go to time out.” And it’s not just us. Christian approaches total strangers and tries to have adult conversations with them. It’s like he feels he has some special access to the adult world that Henry or Cyrus will never have. Perhaps there is a bit of truth to that after all. Christian always begs you to play with him, but refuses to share the cool toys with you and he has these long, drawn out scenarios, like mini plays, which he explains to you in great detail and which you are then supposed to remember and act out with the nerdy guys he has allowed you to play with. Christian’s favorite word is “pizz”, his version of because. He also says things like, I love to be “taked”, meaning he wants to go somewhere, and regularly informs us at sunset that the sky is bleeding. He heard his name for the first time last week in church in a talk about how to be better Christians. He turned to Rich and I and asked us why that guy was talking about him. He is enjoying being here in Dubai (he likes to find large snails on the beach and throw them into the water), but we think it’s about time to get him back to the States: he thinks the first president of our country was George Washing His Head.

Henry’s language development has skyrocketed these last few months. Some of his favorite words are “Shishan” (Christian),“e-ya-yo” (stands for cereal which he and Christian would eat until their brains turn to fruit loops), “appy” (happy, although Christian insists Henry is talking about his cousin Abby), “meamy” (a unique combination of Mommy and Amy; the funny thing about Henry is that he tries to get my attention by calling me Meamy-Daddy and the same thing for Rich), “oo-oo-aah” (a monkey), “eeein” (electric beaters or blender), and bye-bye IS the car. We walk into a parking lot and he points at all the cars that aren’t ours and says, “no bye-bye.” He also calls all crackers and cookies “fishies,” in honor of his all-time favorite snack on the planet, Goldfish. In his childhood innocence, he also thinks that every time somebody on the road honks their car horn they are saying hello so he waves and says hello back.

Cyrus is the most alert of all the Bangerters, which isn’t saying much considering how tired his parents are, how spaced out Christian is, and how bent Henry is on destruction. He doesn’t sleep but a few minutes a day, and when he is awake, he watches everybody’s every move. It’s probably a self-defense mechanism since at any moment his two older brothers could crush him into oblivion. The threat is mitigated by the fact that he now weighs about as much as Christian does. Henry loves to snuggle with him, although Cyrus doesn’t like eating Henry’s hair that much. Cyrus can already swordfight with Christian if mommy helps him, and he is so very smiley that we all love to be around him. His presence has truly made us a family, and a happy one at that.

We miss you all, and hope that one of your New Year resolutions is to let us know how you are doing at least once this year.

Movie Quote: “Dinner, the Japanese word for the evening meal.”
“Roast beef, the Swedish word for beef that is roasted.”
Count Olaf, A Series of Unfortunate Events

I overanalyze just about every situation. Amy regularly taunts me because I can’t help but feeling a tinge of self-consciousness whenever we are tooling down Al Wasl Road and somebody honks. “Are they honking at me?” I inevitably ask. “Did I cross the lane marker? Am I driving 5 kilometers per hour too fast or 5 kph to slow? Does the color of my vehicle offend them?” I wonder half-aloud. It’s not that I’m really self-centered. It’s more that I’m an obsessive analyst and I can’t stop my brain from trying to find the cause and the likely results of a given situation.

In stressful circumstances, this gift-to-a-fault really kicks in and I create an explanation for every cotton-picking event.
These days we are waiting to hear back from four universities (Brown, Virginia, UPenn, and Iowa) whether they will accept me into their doctoral religious studies programs. I recently contacted a few of these schools to let them know that receiving their decision by mail would be about as useful as a new scrunchy for Britney Spears since we are still receiving Christmas newsletters in our mailbox.

Each school I called listened to my question and then responded to the question they thought I would be asking, i.e. “When are they going to make a decision about my application? Huh? When? When are they? Are they looking at my application now? Are they almost done? Huh? Huh? Are they? ARE THEY?” So before any of them would agree to sending an email instead of a #10 envelope, they would say, “Now, they haven’t made any decisions yet, but probably within the week.” One department secretary was very helpful in providing details about the process. She said, “We have been absolutely flooded with applications this time and so the Graduate School has only allowed a few spaces.” She asked my name and continued, “Ah, yes, I remember your application. I have your email address as such-and-such. Now, tell me your phone number one more time so I make sure we have it.”

Now, to a normal person, this information would be very helpful. Since I’m already on the brink of OCD as it is, this information has WAY too much room for analysis and (in my case) over-analysis. My heart sunk when she said “there are only a few spaces this year” because my mind hears her saying, “There’s so much competition, I can’t figure out why you applied.” But then in the next breath her comment that she remembers my application is over-analyzed into “Despite the myriad applicants, your application sticks out to me and I will make it my personal mission to ensure that a positive response is communicated to you in your preferred method. Thank you, sir, for gracing our department with your resume and writing sample.”

The added insanity to this sordid tale of a crazed person is that Amy used to work in George Washington University’s Medical School admissions office. Okay—religious studies and medical school probably don’t have a lot in common, but I’m sure the basics are the same. So, again, useful information which ends up driving me batty! Amy honestly and simply replies to my complex, loaded questions with answers like, “Well, you know, Rich, I wouldn’t alternate hourly phone calls and emails to the department. They are not likely to look on that favorably and it might affect their decision if they see you as desperate to get in.” And it just burns me up that she’s right!

So, last Friday night Amy and I were watching a movie when our home phone rang. We just let it ring, and it was about 30 minutes later that I did the calculation of the time difference and said to Amy, “What if that call was from Brown or UVA? If it was them, maybe they will reverse a positive decision on the grounds that if the guy can’t even pick up a phone, how will he survive grad school?” So I’ve spent the weekend repenting of my erroneous ways in not picking up the phone when it rings. Lately I write beautifully sad poetry, have taken up learning Esperanto, and am thinking of cutting off my ear and sending it to my brother.

Hopefully, by the time our next blog is written, I will be cured of this madness. . . .

In other news, Amy’s parents recently visited us and discovered that Dubai is NOT at all camels and sand dunes. In fact, it was a week and a half after they arrived that we went to visit the Empty Quarter including the world’s tallest sand dune. That was a truly amazing experience, but doesn’t really capture Dubai. Furthermore, I think the best moments of their visit didn’t have much to do with this town and had more to do with watching Christian and Henry reconnect with their grandparents. Henry still asks about “abot and abot” and Christian was quite proud to show off his swimming skills. Best of all, we got some family portraits taken and are happy to have some very nice shots of everyone.

For their part, Mom and Dad enjoyed visiting Makati City II. They weren’t five minutes off the plane before they were chatting it up with the Filipino staff of the airport coffee shop! Everywhere we went, Mom and Dad’s Fili-dar (that’s short for Filipino radar) would vector the exact location of Filipinos; within seconds they’d be asking them where they’re from and if they’d heard of the Church. Of course, it’s a big pond: the Philippines is the greatest labor exporter and the UAE is the greatest labor importer. Mom and Dad met a few familiar faces at Church services one Friday, Filipinos with whom they’d worked at the Employment Resource Center in Manila.

Dad took the opportunity to read parts of the Quran and was surprised at both the similarities and differences between Mormonism and Islam. Both Mom and Dad visited a local Mosque and had the in’s and out’s of Islamic rituals explained to them. We cooked a couple of our favorite Iranian dishes, and believe it or not Dad liked it (unless he was just pretending)! On one of our last nights together we made a dangerous trek to the Gold Souk—there’s no real physical danger, just danger to a husband’s pocketbook. Mom and Amy made off okay (even Annisa made off with some gold and she wasn’t even here!), and now Dad and I just have to take night jobs to pay it off.

(Alright, alright. Rich makes it sound much worse than it actually is.) Here’s an update on the kids.

Christian continues to polish off his acting and screenwriting skills. His latest venture into the medium consists of replaying scenes from our favorite television show, “Pimp My Ride.” I know, I know, you are all thinking Rich and I have three too many kids to be watching any show aired on MTV, but think again. It’s really quite a nice family show out here since every other word is bleeped out. Anyway, so he always gets to be the host, rap artist Xzibit, and I always play the unsuspecting hopeful pimp-ee. This is how Christian explains it (and keep in mind the whole situation is much funnier if you have actually seen the show):

“Okay, so I will come and knock on your door and then you open it and jump up and down and be really happy to see me and hug me a lot. And then we’ll go outside and look at your car and I’ll tell you how much I don’t like it. Then I will drive it to the West Coast and fix it up and when I’m done you look at it and jump up and down and be really excited to see it and hug me a lot.”

So I wait in the kitchen for him to knock on the door and notice he is outside walking around the car, talking to himself. Then he comes to the door and knocks, and after he tells me how much he doesn’t like my car and points out things that are wrong with it (of course my car is actually the plastic toy car), he gets into the car and says, “Off to the West Coast,” and Fred Flintstones it out of there. After he has finished with the car, he comes back into the house and tells me it is ready. When I walk outside, he has even picked up a beach towel that has been drying on the rack outside and has covered the car with it, just like on the show. When I come out he rips the towel off and says, “Your new car!” Then I jump up and down and hug him a lot. Then he gives me the keys and tells me I have officially been pimped. It is truly hilarious.

Two days ago we were in the middle of an episode when the phone rang inside the house. Christian raced to answer it, and as I walk in the door I hear him telling someone on the other end, “Yeah, I’m the guy who pimps Mommy’s ride.” Fortunately it was Rich on the other end, and no legal action was taken.

Christian is also harboring a borderline obsession with chewing gum. We keep reminding him he can have gum when after he turns six years old, and he keeps telling us that he is going to get gum wrapped up as a present for his sixth birthday. We cannot escape the grocery store without him handling at least a pack or two longingly before we head for the door. If only adults were so easy to please . . .

Henry is full of energy. He knows no fear and is coordinated enough to pull off most of his dangerous-looking stunts. He is catching on to the adults, however. He really loves Cheetos, and one night we were trying to get him to eat some lunch meat and so we kept interspersing Cheetos with the lunch meat: if he ate some meat, he could have some Cheetos. After each round of Cheetos, Rich would put some more meat on his plate and the cycle would begin again. After about ten minutes of this, Henry finished some Cheetos, suddenly looked up at us with new understanding in his eyes and in a loud voice declared, “Hey! No meat!” Not bad for a two year old.

Henry is also learning to go pee-pee in the potty. We’re not full-on trying to train him, but if we let him run around sans pants, he will go in the potty in exchange for gummy bears. He has had very few accidents, but I’m hesitant to issue the potty ultimatum until I am sure he is totally ready and wants it bad enough. He is such a strong-willed kid, this thing could backfire badly and he’ll be the only seventh grader with pull-ups.

His foray into the world of organized sports is proof of his will. He has been taking swimming lessons for a few weeks and he has already begun to swim minus the small flotation devices that came with his first swimsuit. As of late, however, he has decided he doesn’t want to go to lessons and he becomes very angry when he gets in the water. Of course this only happens at group swim lessons when everyone is listening to him howl and thinking in their heads what a terrible mother I am: at home he paddles around the pool calmly and happily. His anger stems from the consequences of screaming and crying in the middle of the pool: if he does, he gets a mouthful of water. So it is totally quiet while he is out in the pool swimming toward the edge. When he reaches the edge and grabs on, however, he opens his mouth and starts howling again. Then the teacher comes and takes him back out into the pool and starts him all over again. I think he doesn’t like to give up the control he has at the edge, and it infuriates him that he has no choice but to shut his mouth in the middle of the pool. For all this, I think he is getting better; hopefully he will soon realize that resistance is futile. It’s not like I am pushing him to become some Olympic swimmer or anything; it’s just that to give in at this point only teaches him that enough protests can get out of doing things he doesn’t want to do. Heaven help us all if that happens.

Cyrus is no longer toothless. He has one SHARP tooth on the left side of his bottom gum. At nights and for naptime, he not only puts himself to sleep, but he sleeps a dozen hours a night. He signals his desire to go to bed by shrieking shrilly for about two minutes at which point we put him into bed and he immediately falls asleep. He has been the happiest of our three babies, and his favorite activity is to stand on your lap and smile at you, stick his tongue out, and make smacking noises with his lips. He can roll over onto his massive stomach now, but gets frustrated when he can’t roll back over onto his back. He is almost grown out of his 6-9 month old clothes, but only turned 6 months old 3 days ago! What can I say: Rich and I, we make ‘em big.

We miss you all and look forward to seeing many of you in the summertime as we make stops in D.C., Idaho, Utah, and California. Stay safe.
Love,
Rich Amy Christian Henry Cyrus

Movie Quote: “Are you insane? He has a rotten brain!”
“It’s not rotten.” It’s a good brain.”
Young Frankenstein

We’re leaving at a good time in some ways. The cost of living in Dubai has gone up considerably, and nowadays even gasoline has crept up to over 60 dirham per 30-liter tank (about a buck and a quarter per gallon). We know what you’re all thinking: “These guys are gonna get a rude awakening when they come back and fill up their 1985 Chevy Suburban at over three dollars a gallon!” But I must say in our defense that we have always known that we have been living a petrol dream; and for the record, we pay the difference in string cheese which works out to about $2.50 a stick. But I digress. The point is that driving in Dubai, along with a lot of other things, has become quite pricey. Just today they installed the first toll plazas in Dubai. Average drivers can expect to pay over $1500 per year in tolls.

(As a side note, this entire toll-road issue has become quite controversial. Local officials have stated that the toll’s purpose is not to raise revenue but to control traffic. Residents called their bluff, and the officials’ response to this criticism demonstrates a somewhat amusing philosophy of public service: see this hyperlink to read the toll authorities calling the public whom they should be serving ignorant!)

I thought the last three weeks in the office would be a gentle slope towards the pleasant meadow of departure . . . . Unfortunately, my managers are not familiar with the words “gentle,” “pleasant,” or even “departure”: they seem to be in denial that I WILL get on that plane. This denial is demonstrated by the mid-tour level of to-do items that they have been dropping in my inbox. Last Thursday, I finally pointed out that I would not have enough time to do yet another “cut the text of one report and paste it into another report” project. Given the past two years, I was hardly surprised when my supervisor tried to negotiate with me on this and actually spent more time arguing than if he had just done the job himself!

My most immediate supervisor, like us, is departing soon. Her own anxiousness to move on distracts her from my attempts to scale down my workload. Still, it was different even a short time ago when she asked—no, begged me to return for four or a few weeks to cover the summer turnover. (It’s amazing how dispensable you are in the early days and then how indispensable you become as your departure nears!) Despite my overall professional unhappiness in this position, I have yet to lock down another job offer anyway and think it would be a good chance to earn a little overtime and per diem, so I agreed.

Knowing that I want to move on, but not knowing what to move on to, has been frustrating. I have attempted to dialog about three different internal positions, all of which were resolutely and quickly shot down. My sponsoring office in Washington is going through something of a reorganization and is not about to let a single warm body out the door. So, here I am: stuck with a bureaucrat’s job on a bureaucrat’s salary, living in one of the most expensive cities on the globe. Since we’d much sooner change jobs than send Amy job hunting, we’re looking at a range of other options. (Months ago, we looked at San Francisco, but this is also a bit out of our price range right now.) One place that seems quite reasonable and might allow us to live normally is Portland, Oregon. There is a job there for which I am well qualified and which might provide future opportunities to live overseas again. It’s with Department of Homeland Security, one that has offices all across the country as well as overseas opportunities. When that two-year itch comes up again, we can no doubt look at Orlando, Sioux City, New England, or Arkansas . . . Well, maybe not Arkansas—Amy’s not going to chop on that anytime soon . . . .

The kids are taking the move well enough, we suppose. Christian was excited to see all of our things in so many boxes. Borrowed toys (which we were lent to us by friends) are about as good as new toys for both Christian and Henry, so, added to the repeated messages about flying on an airplane to see grandma and grandpa, this is practically as good as Christmastime for them! Luckily, we have flights to Washington that start at the crack of dawn and go till evening of the next day; this means that even if the kids don’t sleep until we’re in Washington, they shouldn’t be a bother to folks trying to get some shut eye over the Atlantic Ocean. And in-flight entertainment should do a lot of the hard labor of airplane parenting. What we have, however, is Cyrus: an unknown quantity when it comes to flying for nearly a full day. He’s such a good baby almost all the time, but he’s a Bangerter true to form: if he doesn’t get his nap, somebody, anybody, everybody’s gonna pay.

Henry is in his bossy stage. He goes around ordering everyone to “Don’t talk to me,” “Stop it,” and “That’s ‘nuff.” Last night we sat down to dinner and he pointed to Amy and then me and said very sternly, “You don’t say prayer. I say prayer,” and began his sweet-but-incomprehensible prayer whisper. He begins with mumbling; somewhere in the middle we always hear “Mommy, daddy, Sheshing, Henny, Bay-beece,” and then more mumbling which would continue non-stop unless one of us suggests the word, “Amen.”

Cyrus is crawling around and, strangely enough, explores less by putting things in his mouth (what most kids his age do) and more by slapping them with his palm! He’s definitely a mouther, too, but more often than not, he’ll give something (or someone) a good whack or two to figure out what/who it is. His next choice for sensory learning is still tactile: he’ll grab the thing (or person) with his kung-fu grip and just mush it around in his hand for a spell. Cyrus has done this so often to people that my face has begun to resemble a bull dog! Cyrus is also very happy (most of the time) and quite smiley. Several people in Dubai Ward (our Church group here) call him the ward baby; almost every Friday, he is being looked after by this friend or that. In fact, a friend of ours at Church paid us a very nice compliment a few weeks ago, nothing that on any given Friday all three of our boys will be off sitting with different people!

Well, it really is sinking in now: how much we’ll miss good friends we’ve made here in Dubai and how much we miss friends and family in the States. One thing we’ve learned about ourselves is that overall we do like living abroad. It’s hard to be so far away from family and from certain aspects of American culture. Still, there’s so much adventure involved in getting out of our comfort zone and having to do with what’s at hand. Besides, being overseas is a great platform for accomplishing another of our life’s dreams: world travel. And maybe some of you will be able to benefit from us living abroad: a free place to stay in Istanbul, Shanghai, or Nairobi. Our door is always open, even if we’re in plain ol’ Virginia!

While Dubai is quite Western, there were some things that did take some getting used to. For one, it was so refreshing to hear political debate, especially in the context of next year’s presidential election. In the United Arab Emirates, there is little of this since it’s a monarchy (and not a very enlightened one at that). Like most of its neighbors, the principles of Islam guide social, economic and political policies. More often, however, the principles of economic growth guide policymaking. This isn’t to say that the king isn’t a benevolent leader: one could easily argue that the king makes a serious and sincere effort at bettering the lives of his subjects, and indeed there are a lot of freedoms that other middle eastern countries do not enjoy. It’s just that it’s all so one-sided, and I have very much enjoyed hearing my fellow Americans debate politics and policies.

On the job hunt front, we were recently informed that the job in Portland is a no-go, so for now we’re back in northern Virginia, getting set to put out another round of resumes. It’s tough times in a way, but we are deeply grateful to a loving God who has provided every needful thing. As Amy often says, it is His tender mercies, the little details, that are subtle and difficult to detect but perhaps the greater evidence of His divine involvement in our lives. For instance, the fact that I am not obliged to look for another job and that I do have a job is one such “tender mercy.” My respect for people who have to live off of savings while they look for something else is immense.

Another blessing is that we survived the cross-country drive from Idaho Falls to northern Virginia, a tad bit under 2200 miles. We found a great deal on a car in Las Vegas and convinced ourselves it would “be an adventure” to trade in our plane tickets for cup holders and cram all five of ourselves into a car for three days. Well, it did turn out to be an adventure, and the kids were amazingly well behaved. Christian was an utter gem; Henry only had one ten-minute melt down; and Cyrus cried his way into naps but was otherwise quite content in his one-position car seat. It helped that we had a full 24-plus hours break halfway. It was a lot of fun to visit Amy’s brother who had just moved his family to Jacksonville, Illinois and a needed rest, too. On this trip Henry learned to tell people who’ve upset him, “You’re not my friend,” a phrase we heard time after time, and even after we had instituted the “you want it, you get it” junkfood policy for the trip home. So with his mouth full of “hot chips” (Henry’s designation for any chip: potato or tortilla, flavored or plain) and a “lolly” (lollipop) in hand, Henry would ask for a root beer to wash it all down. We’d explain that he would have to wait till the next rest stop and he’d frown and say, “You’re not my friend, daddy.” As much as it hurt, I’d know that I could bribe him with a frost A&W 100 miles from then . . . . Henry was also very often distracted with watching “big trucks,” his title for a B-class children’s documentary about everything from the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile to industrial snow blowers. After the fifth time watching it, Henry loved it five times as much as when he picked it out in the store and Amy and I loathed it five times as much as when he picked it out. But, hey, it kept him entertained for several hundred miles.

We stayed in Leesburg, Virginia, for just about a week, put up by some very generous friends, the Palmers, who have their own little bundle of joy: reason enough to close the door to our family of five (six, if you include Henry’s evil alterego). It was here that Cyrus learned to say “goggie” for doggie (pretty close!), and I have to say it was thrilling watching him make several attempts before getting it right! His bark is more like the hoot of an owl, but not bad for a 13 month old. He is so easy-going and cheerful (except when he’s not) and we couldn’t be happier to have his personality in our family. We had fun running into some of our friends from Sterling, but were really quite overwhelmed with the stress of finding a place of our own. We had had a bead on a townhouse, but at the signing, we discovered that the contract was not what had been advertised, so we backed out. Amy diligently spent an entire Saturday with our realtor and found a place even closer to DC and still in the Falls Church Ward, the first church group we were in after we were married. Now we’re in our new place, but it took several weeks to hook up internet service. (Apologies to any and all of you with whom we have missed contact—we hope to be up to speed in a few more weeks.) Overall, we have few complaints: we’re mostly tired from unpacking, moving furniture, and trying to be at least half attentive parents in the small spaces not covered by a cardboard box. But we are so happy to be back in Arlington; our Iranian friends would say Arlington has “shahriati,” or “town-ness” for lack of a better translation: a place with easy access to culture, facilities, transportation--decidedly not suburban. So, the price we pay is in space: the bedrooms are more the size of closets and Amy pointed out that the Kashmiri carpet that used to be in our entry way in Dubai covers almost the entire area of our living room! But it’s a price we’re glad to pay if it means being close to the Metro subway train and within walking distance of a few parks and a public library. And of course it won’t hurt if we are near the Apple Store. ☺

The day after Halloween (which, many of you know is the REAL holiday - All Saints' Day - which begat Halloween, or All Hallows' Eve) we visited an absolutely amazing display of tens of artistically carved pumpkins. The handiwork was truly spectacular, and there was a wide range: Hillary Clinton riding to the White House on her broomstick (Rich's favorite), a replica of Edward Hopper's famous "Nighthawks" painting, and of course sundry unnamed gouls, goblins, and monsters. (Check out http://connectionnewspapers.com/printarticle.asp?article=90353 if you are interested in a local article about Holtorf Pumpkin Carving Association.)

We also celebrated three out of five birthdays in November as Henry, Rich, and Christian’s birthdays fall exactly a week apart. Henry received some books about trucks and machines, a Weebalot castle. (Rich still thinks this is a “girly” toy, but I helped him try to compensate for it by also purchasing a GeoTrax quarry dump truck big boulder construction thing that no self-respecting girly princess would ever deign to play with. I’m still trying to talk “Santa” into buying a dollhouse for the boys for Christmas.) We threw an dinner birthday party for Rich and some of his friends whose birthday also falls on November ninth: Meagan Getz, Janae Huang, and Kevin Palmer. We had great fun guessing events from their childhoods and were entertained with all of Kevin’s run-ins with the law, Rich’s obsession with Act II of Fiddler on the Roof, Meagan’s childhood crushes on David Copperfield and her meeting with Mr. Rogers, and Janae’s ambitions to become a detective and get her dad to stop smoking. Christian received one of the best presents in the world on his birthday: he got an entire cup of root beer at Five Guys Hamburgers. (Keep their expectations low, baby!) He also received a kid camera that takes real digital pictures. For weeks before his birthday, he kept telling everyone that he was going to get one for his birthday as he was under the false impression that you tell your parents what you are going to get for your birthday instead of asking them for it. Subsequent birthdays, I'm sure, will set him straight on this point.

(The next section devolves into cute anecdotes about our children. Of course, 'cute' is definitely a relative adjective so you are more than welcome to quit now if you view our children in a different light.)

One of Christian’s favorite stories recently is a trickster tale called “Raven”. I