Cultural Center

Rooftop of the Cultural Center

Yesterday I went with five other women to an Emirati breakfast hosted by the Sheik Mohammed Center for Cultural Understanding. It's a lovely program, intended for tourists and expats to get a glimpse of Emirati and Arabic life, and a chance to ask questions of a local woman. We were seated on high cushions around a large beautiful carpet, and served the bitter Arabic coffee in small handle-less cups, our hostess explaining as she went. The coffee is strong but light in colour, brewed from unroasted green coffee beans, and flavoured with cardamom, cumin, cinnamon or other spices, according to each house's personal tastes. A silver coffee pot would brew from 6 am to midnight, always ready for guests. No milk or sugar is served with coffee, rather it's drunk while eating dates for sweetness. Our hostess, a woman from California who converted to the Muslim faith and moved to the UAE to be near friends from Al Ain, is now married to an Emirati man. She explained that a coffee server would always carry several small coffee cups in her hand, filling each for a guest, and returning to fetch more cups once she is down to holding one, so that a guest would always feel welcomed, and not ever feel the hostess was rushed or unprepared for them. The coffee cups are tiny, not because of a lack of generosity, but so that the cups can be constantly refilled by a dedicated coffee server, just a few sips at a time, so the coffee is always hot.

Emirati breakfast

We sipped our coffee and nibbled the sweet, fat dates, fresh and smooth, unlike the dried ones I'm used to, while our hostess explained the Emirati food displayed in dishes on the floor. It has similarities to other middle easter foods, but unlike the more familiar Lebanese foods, there are not many breads and dips. Only one bread is made, a puffy, flat round sprinkled with sesame seeds and flavoured with spices. I could taste cumin and cardamom in the whole-grain bread. She said it's not often served at breakfast, as it takes several hours to prepare and the cook would have to get up at 4 in the morning....this particular bread is not sold in stores. There were also little fried pastries, like large misshapen Timbits, sweetened with date syrup and served with honey. They were pretty darn good! Then there was a sweet pasta, vermicelli with date syrup and raisins, topped with a plain omelet. She said some people mixed in scrambled eggs, but this variation allowed you to avoid the egg if you didn't like it. The last dish was a very plain chick pea soup, with large plump chick peas and a thin broth at the bottom of the pan. She told us it is a favorite snack of emiratis, not just at breakfast time, but also for evening, and was served in movie theatres until recently. It was all delicious, a little plain, and pots of honey were available to add sweetness to everything. With our food, we were served hot black tea in small glass cups, and offered sugar cubes as sweetener, but no milk. I'm finding it's quite a British custom to have milk in your tea, and not that common elsewhere! Except for Canada, of course...and probably the other British colonies as well.

As we ate, we were able to ask questions about whatever...she encouraged us not to feel any question was invalid. The obvious things came up, the things that seem most to interest foreigners, the things we get a very slanted view on in the media, such as the way the women dress here, and idea behind it all. I'll try to explain a little of it here, it was so interesting to hear it from the perspective of someone who lives their life that way, especially someone who was not born to it, but chose it as a way of life.

Typical Abaya

The women in the Gulf region in general, and the UAE in particular, wear a full-length black cover-up dress called an ABAYA. It's loose through the body and sleeves, though fits through the shoulders. They are generally tailor-made to fit properly. The sleeves are wide, probably 24 inches around at the opening, and go to the wrists. The dress goes to the floor. It goes over normal street clothes, jeans, skirts, etc, and you often see fancy high-heeled shoes peeking out at the bottom, and the flash of the hem of what's being worn underneath as women walk. The abaya is topped by a head scarf called a SHAYLA. This is draped over the top of the head, and wrapped to cover the neck all around as well. In UAE, a BURQA (tranlates from Arabic as sheild) is only the face covering, not the whole garment as it is in other regions. Here, a burqa can be cloth or brass. The brass ones look quite sinister, with a horizontal covering the eyebrows, a wide mustache-shaped flat part covering the lips and tip of the nose, and a little bar coming down the bridge of the nose to connect them. Sometimes, inidigo powder is worn on the face underneath as a kind of talcum powder to soften the fit of the burqa, and it turns the skin dark purple. The purpose of all this clothing is for modesty; the Muslim women believe that they are supposed to cover themselves from head to foot for their faith. This custom is much-discussed by westerners, and is often perceived as oppressive or forced, but the message I get here is that it really is a woman's perogative and choice. At puberty, women begin to dress in the abaya and shayla, and at marriage can begin to cover their faces as well. The metal burqas I described are really only worn by older, traditional women. Much more common is a fabric veil worn over the lower half of the face, or even the shayla scarf draped to cover the whole face (the material is a little bit sheer, so I'm pretty sure they can see!). The abayas worn every day are traditionally plain black, but you definitely see lots of women wearing abayas and shaylas decorated with embroidery and crystals. That is, according to our cultural hostess, traditionally meant for special occasions, but is now worn by young women trying to look trendy. She said many young girls, rather than spurning the abayas like we might think, are anxious to begin wearing them, much like our teenagers chomping at the bit to start wearing lipstick to seem more grown up. You do see young teenage girls at the mall wearing abayas gaping open so you can see their cute outfits underneatch, their shaylas dropping off their heads. Apprently, if they saw their parents, they would tidy it up quickly.


The other interesting part of the discussions was about marriage here. The marriages are arranged, even if the couple might have a hand in the choosing. You might, for instance, see someone you are interested in at university. You might speak to them cordially, but you would not flirt or date. You would ask your family and friends about them, find out who they are, and perhaps work towards a match. Dating and flirting are for fun, and do not lead to marriage here. The perception is, if someone will flirt with you, who else have they already flirted with? This goes for men and women. They also have multiple spouses here, up to four wives are allowed. According to our guide, who is herself a second wife, around 80% of men have one wife, and some have two, but more than that is uncommon. She also said, in answer to our western objections over this, that there are pros to it...yes, you might be sharing your spouse with another woman, but by law he must provide equally for you. You may or may not have any interaction with the other spouse, according to the women's preferences. Time is divided fairly, and children decide with whom they spend their time. They might stay with their mother, travel back and forth with their father, or visit the other wife. For the most part, it sounds like it's run like separate households. It avoids the complications of mistresses, and keeps everyone at the same status level. The situation is not forced on any of the parties; if you are the first wife, and do not wish your husband to have a second wife, you can say no, or divorce him. Women here are able to divorce their husbands if they wish, and have clear guidlelines in the Koran. Women are allowed to work and be educated, and any money they earn is theirs to keep, while their husband is expected to support them and their children. They don't have the same concept of alimony in a divorce, but the men are obliged to provide for their children's well being and educations. (They are not allowed to take a second wife if they cannot prove they can afford to support them.) Men are also obliged to support their wived to whatever standard they are accustomed. If the standard is raised, they must keep to the new standard. Interesting to hear all of this from someone who lives this way; we all had lots of questions, but it seems, in the UAE at least, that women are fairly treated and in control of their own lives. It's awfully hard to judge them harshly for their customs, when our own customs of marriage and spousal support are so flawed and chaotic.

Man in Kandoora

We also heard about the "royal family" as we think of the sheik's family. The current sheik has only been ruling for a few years, since the death of his father, and I got the impression that he might be having some issues. The ruler here is not appointed for life, like I thought, but more or less elected by consensus, and can be ousted if the people want a new leader. There is a son here who seems to be the next in line, but I learned that even that is not necessarily so. The people can choose anyone they like from the sheik's family to rule. It would be interesting to know more about how that would come about; I wonder if anything like that will happen while I'm here. She also told us that the sheiks here have no bodyguards...the people just wouldn' t want to harm them. George W Bush presidential visit a few years ago raised eyebrows when he traveled with bodyguards...the locals couldn't understand the necessity. The reasoning was, if he was traveling with the Sheik, no one would harm him. This seems a little naive to me, as surely to god a would-be assassin could get through customs somehow, but hey. He survived.

All in all, an interesting morning that gave me some more insights into the culture here. It's easy to forget, as you wander through the endless malls here and shop for all the same brands you see everywhere else in the world, that only two generations ago this was mostly an area of Bedouins in the desert and some settled families of pearl and spice merchants. It must be an interesting experience for the Emiratis to share their small homeland with so many foreigners. It certainly is interesting from my end.

Ras Al Khaimah

To the main hotel from our suite

It was Chloe's spring break, and we didn't have the time (too early for Jim to take holidays) or the cash (hello, recession), for a trip away, so I booked us into the Hilton Resort and Spa in Ras Al Khaimah, about 70km north of Dubai. I spent hours on the internet, as you do, researching the options, reading gazillions of reviews, and comparing prices and deals, and it all paid off...except for a few clouds on Saturday, we had a glorious time. And the clouds probably saved us from worse sunburns. We sat by the pool, we sat on the beach, we swam and sunned, we read our books, Jim and Chloe jet-skied (while I read my book by the pool), total heaven. And I love that getting away from home for 2 nights can still feel like an entire vacation. We've all vowed to go on nearby mini-breaks several times a year. That's the good thing about living in an area with several small cities, lots of different types of terrain, and beaches on different bodies of water, you can get a good variety of mini-break!

Balcony view

The Hilton was lovely; we had a "beach villa junior suite", which turned out to be a one-bedroom decorated in lovely Arabian style (lots of heavy moorish wood and metal light fixtures) in a small building with 2 suites on the ground floor and 2 on the second. We were on the second floor, with a nice big balcony and a view of the private cove. The resort is quite new, and parts are still under construction, but it didn't bother us...the only construction you could hear was some rocks being dumped in the next bay where they were making a breakwater. There were several different restaurants and bars, extortionately priced of course, but we still liked the swim-up bar and the beachside cafe. This morning's buffet breakfast was nearly ruined by some very loud Italians, who seemed to all know each other but sat at different tables and shouted back and forth. I even knew enough Italian to know their conversation was totally inane. But then we soothed our souls on the beach for another couple of hours before checking out and all was fine. Ahhh.

We snagged a cabana by the pool

On the way back to Dubai we drove around in the desert some, and the area around Ras Al Khaimah is actually surprisingly green. There were lots of irrigated farms, and TONS of livestock; goats, cows, donkeys, sheep, and my favorite, camels. I get a total kick seeing camels by the side of the road. We even saw a camel racetrack, but sadly no races. Chloe drove in the sand some, she's quite good. I don't have much interest in actually driving off the roads, the whole 4-wheeling thing, except to take photos and enjoy the view. That's fun enough, I don't have to drive too.

Camel crossing

Mini Safari into Oman

Jim and the Jeep

After all the headache of getting settled in Dubai, we are finally starting to reap the rewards of the area. Chloe and I discovered a marvelous public beach not far from home, pictures to follow when the sun comes out again and I can remember to take my camera. And we had our first day-trip into the desert in Jim's new Jeep. This is one of the activities that makes being in the area worthwhile. In less than an hour, you can reach some pretty diverse areas: big sandy dunes for "dune bashing"(I think this means catching air off the tops of dunes and slamming down, sounds terrible), rocky desert for 4-wheeling, and beautiful fresh water pools for cooling off. Guess which one Jim chose to lure me out of the city?

Oman swimming hole

Um, yeah, pools! It had rained a few days earlier, so the pools were full of crystal-clear water. Not enough to do laps, but definitely enough water to sit yourself down under the tiny waterfall and cool off. We drove through the desert for a while, and then drove down a wadi, or dried out river bed, to the pools at the end. There were not many people about, a few Arab families picnicking, and a British group camping, but privacy at the nice pools. (And in case you think we're exploratory geniuses, we were following the excellent directions in the UAE Off-Road guide.) Jim is teaching Chloe to drive, and she successfully negotiated the rocks, bumps, twists and turns with minimal intervention.

Off-road Chloe

We hung about the pools for an hour or so, and drove on as the clouds gathered. You don't want to be caught in a wadi when it starts raining, apparently, and we saw evidence of the flooding on many of the paved roads -- the water must get pretty powerful, there were rocks all over the roads and in some places it looked like the asphalt was even torn up. (The paved roads themselves were in great shape otherwise, they looked brand-new). Chloe had fun figuring out how to get around the rockslides...

wash-out

We were happy to have found the first set of pools, as the next bunch of pools turned out to be very popular, and very crowded. The Hatta area is a kilometers-long gorge with many pool areas, but is also quite accessible by paved road and so very busy on the weekends. The gorge was filled with 4-wheel drive SUV's driving up and down, and lined with 2-wheel drive sedans whose owners were picnicking and hanging out. Given the locals' propensity for staring at white women, Chloe and I were not keen to go down and swim there. We happily headed back to Dubai, stopping halfway home to re-attach the Jeep's windows & protect us from the rising winds. A very successful first outing with our Off-Road guide, and it's definitely given Jim the bug to continue exploring the region. Next up, either a trip to the mountainous region to the north, where Jim's promised we can find a nice beach-front resort, or another trip into the desert...also to a resort for the night. He has my comforts in mind!

Nearly 2 months

Dhow boats cruising the creek

March 13, 2009

Finally getting around to an update! I put it off while we waited to get internet installed at home, but have now had internet for 2 weeks so no excuses!

All's well here...Jim is really enjoying his new job now that he's finally getting to focus on it. Chloe's been in school for a month now, and seems to have settled right in. She's off to Wild Wadi water park today with some new friends, and she has been busy every weekend since school started so I am very pleased! She's getting used to being the only white person at times, but that's not a bad experience to get coming from little Gibsons. Though 75% of the kids at her school are American citizens, most are of Arabic or Indian/Pakistani descent. It was actually a tough job to find a school here; there seemed to be dozens of schools using the American curriculum, but many cater exclusively to Arabic or Indian children. There were only 3 that had a more mixed, international student body, and 2 of those were completely full! I think we were lucky to get her a place at all. There is a home-based school here that gets used as a backup when kids can't find a place, but I'm thinking it would be a little harder to make friends that way. Anyway, the school she's in has a good proportion of Canadian and American teachers and a good student mix. Unfortunately, it's not as great as the school she attended in Moscow, but it does seem to be a good solid choice. It offers the International Baccalaureate, an advantageous addition to a regular high-school diploma which provides a boost when applying for university. Mainly, she is really missing the Moscow cafeteria, which opened for breakfast and served espresso, a sandwich bar, and sushi. I'm attaching a picture of her in her uniform, please don't tell her. She was fond of it at first (much quicker to get dressed in the morning), but is now hankering for some individuality.

I've found some organized Expat coffee mornings where I've met some nice women to explore the city with. Sadly, the one I've connected with most is moving back to England at the end of March, but hopefully I'll be working soon and won't get too lonely. There is certainly not as much to do here as there was in Moscow...I'm sure by the time my new friend Nikki goes home, I'll be pretty satisfied that I've had a good look around at the hotspots. We've checked out the main shopping areas (seems to be the top pastime here), and have some plans to get out some more. My friend Silver is visiting next week from Moscow, I'm very excited to get the chance to tour around some more with her, and just hang out a bit in the sun. It's still around 30 degrees here, so not horrifically hot yet. I hear that in the summer, it frequently hits 50 degrees and gets too hot to step outside. I'm hoping whatever job I find allows me to go home to Gibsons for the summer! Speaking of the job search, I have NO IDEA what kind of job I'll be looking for. I have an appointment to see a recruiter this coming week. I've been checking out the classifieds, and the jobs here seem to be either too poorly-paid (retail, coffee shops, etc), or require an actual profession and a gazillion years experience in the UAE. I'm guessing I'll be looking at some kind of retail management or customer service training...but maybe the recruiter will have other, better ideas for me.

A few thoughts on life in Dubai...generally, it's an easy place to live for an expat. My only comparison is Moscow, but the grocery shopping is easier here, getting around is quite easy (but you need a car), and, in theory, everyone speaks English. The population here is roughly 8% Emirati (local), 80% other Arabs and Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi and Philipino, and the rest Western Expats (LOTS from South Africa, Australia, England & less from the rest of Europe and North America). So the whole English thing breaks down fairly regularly; yes, it's the common language, but there are so many accents and varying degrees of proficiency that communication is not always easy. There are funny things too, like I've noticed the Indians don't seem to want to disappoint you, so the taxi driver will say he knows where you want to go but may have no idea what you said. I drove around for ages one day before I realized the cab driver thought I'd said "the place for driver's lessons", when I was trying to find the place to get my license. The other funny time was when a taxi driver said he couldn't understand Jim's accent. Um, hang on, Jim's the one who's a native speaker...

The other fun part of Dubai, and we are nearly out of the woods on this one, is the insane amount of red tape, paperwork and endless discussions involved in getting anything done (like all the things needed to set up a new home!). I stayed in our apartment for close to 2 weeks when we moved in, waiting for various repair and service people to show up. The cable guy promised to come "tomorrow" for a full seven days before I finally lost it on the phone & yelled at both the dispatcher and the cable hook-up guy about their appalling service and terrible communication. Now, you know me -- I don't like losing it and yelling at people! But it turned out to be the only way to actually get the guy to come to the house, because he arrived the next morning at 9am. The final straw had come when he was supposed to be here at 4pm on a certain day, and I was to phone him if he didn't arrive at 4. When I phoned, he was in Abu Dhabi, about 2 hours away! Then the dispatcher pulled out the famous and oft-repeated "Inshallah", which means "God willing", as in "he will be there tomorrow morning, Inshallah". This is when I shouted "Don't you Inshallah me! He'd better be here!". I've since learned that every new expat is driven to shout "don't you Inshallah me" at some point. Variations of this same process have been repeated for installing the phoneline, having appliances and furniture delivered (4 separate instances), getting water and gas hooked up, and dealing with ENDLESS visits from the building repair teams. When we moved in, Jim submitted a list of 6 or so things that needed fixing. Each item seemed to require several visits from packs of small men with bare feet, first to look and assess, then to attempt to fix. I got very tired of having these groups trooping through the house several times a day while I was home alone. My favorite, though, was when FIVE men came to get my signature saying a previous repair had been completed. At least they didn't have to come inside for that one. The last paperwork-heavy task is buying our cars, and we should be finished with that this week. Halleluia!

Living Room

Dining Room

That's all for now...check out the photos of a dinner cruise, the main rooms of our little apartment, and our terrible view from our balcony. We don't sit out there much, you'll see why. I did get a bouganvillea to cheer me up. There are nicer areas of Dubai for living, but we chose the area that would allow us to actually save money rather than get overdrawn to pay rent. I occaisionally get jealous of other people's fancy villas or Marina views, but I'll be ok. We all like our apartment, and the advantage to living in a mainly Indian neighbourhood is the fabulous, and fabulously cheap, Indian takeaway restaurants. At least once a week, we get Indian delivered...usually enough to feed an army for about $30. I'm having leftovers for lunch today.

Terrible View

2 Weeks In

Jim's birthday cruise

February 4, 2009

We've been here over 2 weeks now and finally have Chloe signed up for school! She will start school on Sunday (yes, Sunday -- the weekend here is Friday and Saturday, and apparently used to be only Friday!), and she's plenty nervous. I'm hoping it's anticipation nerves, but it can't be easy to start fresh in a new school. We got her uniform stuff yesterday: navy slacks and white golf shirts with navy trim, with gym shorts & top and a hoodie for these cold 20°C days. The other options for bottoms were so scary she's totally sticking with the pants. There were 2 skirt lengths available, the shorter option being mid-calf length. The so-called skort was a weird pleated confection that poufed out and went to the knee. I picture a skort as a mid-thigh short with a skirt-y flap in the front, but nope. She's not ecstatic, but it will make getting dressed in the morning less of a chore! I'm just glad we found a school that was ok and had spaces available for immediate start; that was a difficult task in spite of the dozens of schools here.

We hope to start moving in to our apartment this weekend. I ordered appliances today and we had a totally successful Dubizzle night last night. Dubizzle is like Craig's List, a classified ad website where people advertise to sell everything from household stuff to cars, and they have job listings as well. I spent several tortured hours combing the site for gently used furniture for our apartment, and after a few misses where I didn't get back to sellers in time and they sold the perfect sofa bed or whatever, and one totally fruitless trip way across town to see some ugly couches (ask for pictures, ask for pictures!!), we set up 3 appointments last night and had success at each one! For just under $1,000US, we got a queen-sized bed for Chloe that was only used as a guest bed, a 6-month old bedroom set for Jim and me with a really great mattress, and a sofa/love seat set with TV table, coffee table, end table and rug! It's great for furniture hunting here right now, as many people are moving around due to the crisis. Yes, we are profiting from others' misfortunes in one case; the other 2 sellers are just moving within Dubai. Anyway, it was great to score 3 for 3, and we celebrated with dinner out at Trader Vic's at Jumeirah Madinat, a beautiful outdoor plaza with shops and restaurants, built in the style of an old arabic madina (market thingy), complete with canals. It was fun! And as a bonus, they serve alcohol there so we celebrated with fancy drinks! Alcohol is only allowed to be served in hotel restaurants and certain other areas, not in every restaurant. You also have to get a special license to buy from the liquor stores. We have to wait for our visas to be all done, then we can apply and wait 2 weeks + to get the license. Jim has to give me permission to get a license! I think he'll let me...

It will be great to finally be in our own place, though our stuff doesn't arrive from Moscow until February 12th at the earliest. We'll just have to camp out with our beds & sofas until then, because none of us can stand staying in the temporary place much longer. The whole going down to the lobby to use the internet thing is really wearing on me, and made my Dubizzle shopping extra challenging. I will miss the man who cleans our room every day, though. I'll have to do my own dishes from now on, drat.

Last item on our to-do list (for now), is getting cars. We've hit a few roadblocks, but apparently Dubai is famous for its endless paperwork and red tape & we're just not used to it. We tried shopping for cars last Friday, but it was the holy day, so everything was shut. Then we tried again Saturday, only to arrive at the beginning of the 2-hour lunch break. We finally got to look at some cars later in the afternoon, and I fell in love with a tiny purple Peugeot hatchback, and Jim with a BMW convertible. We started all the paperwork to get quotes to take to the bank, and then found out you need your UAE driver's license before you can get a car. Jim thought he'd get his on Sunday, but then found out he needed some other thing from HR, plus an eye exam...it goes on and on, but he still doesn't have it. Car buying is on hold until that's all sorted so we thought we'd rent a car for a week, but you can't rent a car if your residency visa is either in effect or in process! This means you can't get the special tourist license, because you are living here. So we're still taking taxis everywhere. At least they're fairly cheap! And they have right-side driving here, so I won't have to get used to driving on the other side!

It's been fun checking out Dubai, it's a pretty fascinating city in all its shiny newness and ongoing construction. There are about 1.5 million people here, and the city's spread out along the Gulf, with a little extra inland growth around Dubai Creek. We took a dinner cruise along the creek for Jim's birthday last week, and even though it's a total tourist thing to do, we had a great time. Anyone who comes to visit will have to do this, and we'll come with! We haven't done much else in the way of exploring, aside from the seven or eight malls Chloe and I have seen in our school travels. There are A LOT of malls here, each fancier than the next. I get the feeling that it's so hot here most of the year that you really can't wander around outside, so the malls become social destinations. Lots of great restaurants and movie theaters in addition to the endless consumer goods. Chloe and I also checked out a shopping area called Karama, where they sell all the designer knock-offs. The salesmen follow you around offering "copy bags, copy watches", and if you are interested, or just too polite (ie, Canadian) to say no, they take you to the secret showrooms. Usually this means a hidden doorway that leads to an upstairs room filled with Louis Vuitton bags, but it can also be that they take you to their apartment! We were told about this in advance, and assured it's quite safe, so we weren't totally freaked out to go to a stranger's apartment to look at Prada sunglasses. It was kind of fun! But you have to have your shopping shields up to deal with all the guys trying to lure you into their shops. It can get a bit wearing.

That's all for now, I promise I'll send photos as soon as I feel more settled!

January arrival

January 23, 2009

We've now been in Dubai for several days & are starting to get settled in...we've found an apartment (papers to be signed after the weekend), but are still looking for a school for Chloe. Jim's been in to work a couple of times, and will start in earnest next week, with days off here and there to move, shop for cars etc. We will move into the apartment as soon as our stuff arrives from Moscow, probably around February 8th. Until then, we remain in our temporary apartment -- quite fine except for the fact you can only get internet access in the lobby, where I am now listening to screaming children and a video game that does a Bugs Bunny-style laugh every so often.

Dubai is interesting so far...we had a tour of the city with our relocation agent where we saw the famous 7-star hotel and drove onto the Palm Island residential area (kind of cool, kind of weird...no trees or greenery yet, just crammed in giant villas, with the whole "trunk" area of the tree filled with giant apartment blocks) and drove through the newer developments further inland. Parts of the city are so beautiful, amazing architecture for sure, but lots is pretty run-down looking too. We haven't really checked out all the fancy malls or more arabic-style markets yet, I guess that'll have to wait until we are settled in more. I promise to do all of that so that when visitors come, I'll be prepared with all the best sights!

Our new apartment is quite fine...not as big or well equipped as we were in Moscow -- that was a surprise to me! But our budget here is somewhat limited, and we opted to stay within our budget rather than go over -- we are here to save money after all! Our building is brand-new, with a gym and a rooftop pool. Our apartment is 2 bedroom, but set itself apart from other 2-bed apartments by having a little box room for storage, quite impressive! We have to furnish it ourselves, including all appliances -- another reason not to go over-budget on the rent. Luckily, there are good networks here for second-hand furniture, as it's such a transient population here. There is also an Ikea, and various other furniture and appliance stores. We'll have options! That'll be my next two weeks...shopping for furniture! We have all our house stuff coming from Moscow, so no need to buy dishes, linens, etc, and we do have a couple of bookshelves and a desk for Chloe. It's a start.

Quite a few things have to wait until we have our resident's permits... for instance, we can't shop for a car yet, or get cell phones. (Luckily Jim has one from work already!) We'll need 2 cars here; it's a driving city, and the public transport isn't really practical here considering the heat most of the year. We are also still shopping for schools... finding one that fits all our desires, plus is fairly close to home, plus has seats available is proving to be a little challenging. The 2 best schools are totally full, and not at all close to where we live (chosen for its proximity to Jim's work, and the fact that the area near Jim's work is much cheaper than other areas!). Many of the schools with American curriculum are really geared toward Arabic students; not a problem in itself, but I'd really like Chloe to have the chance to meet kids from all over. Almost none of the schools offer Spanish as a second language, which is what Chloe's been studying. Many have very expensive busing, which DHL is not paying for. ALL have uniforms, which Chloe is reconciling herself to. I've heard that most schools here are very high quality, but it's turning out to be pretty hard to judge! There are so many schools here that it's difficult to find people who know them all and have formed opinions. Can you tell it's turning out to be a little frustrating? Moscow was SO much easier, American or British, one of each at her grade level. And her school there is looking to be much better in terms of facilities and courses offered than anything we've seen here. We will keep looking this week, and probably choose one that is close to home, while looking into the 2 top recommended schools (both are full), with a view to getting on the wait list for the fall. Wish us luck!!

We're all enjoying the weather, though I'm a bit worried...it's absolutely perfect for me right now, low 20's and sunny, but apparently 8 months of the year it's 30-50 degrees. Since 40 is my official melting point, I might need a place to stay in Canada in the summer!