I did get my resident visa last week put in my passport.....and it's official...I am a "Housewife"
Hopefully I won't last long with this title....When I do find employment this will change, but I do have to get permission from Nick to work, he will have to sign me away from my 'housewife' duties..maybe he won't let me work..haha

We went over to Dubai this weekend as Nick attended the TESOL Arabia conference. While it was a quick weekend and Nick had some presentation to attend we still got a chance to meet up with a couple colleagues from Japan and hit the spice and gold souk (market). We really didn't even do that much shopping, only one mall for us and only 5...10 stores were visited :)

It's about a 1 hour 1/2 ride to Dubai and Thursday afternoon there was very little traffic which made for smooth sailing. Thankfully our friend Tara drove and she's become quite the expert driving here. Nick did get his license though...so he's up next.

Compared to Abu Dhabi there is a lot more....a ton more building going on over there and when you hit the city it is much more sprawled out then AD and over all a much larger city. Although, lacking from Dubai which is a pleasant addition in AD, is the greenery, trees and flowers. Very few were seen in Dubai. I know that both cities are trying to increase the number of green areas.

Here are a few photos from our trip to the souks, more photos from Dubai can be seen on Picasa
The gold souk was filled with tons and tons of gold and diamonds...I am sure I won't have a problem picking out something from here in the future!

We weren't exactly sure what an 'articulated bus' was when we saw it this past weekend in Dubai or why we should take caution?But being good English teachers we figured the double bus with the accordian joint in the middle must have something to do with it being 'Articulated' :)

A little out of focus, but a bit different sign for the ladies toilet here in the UAE. The outline of an abaya for the women.

While the weather is still very pleasant in Abu Dhabi, around 85 everyday, we have been able to enjoy being at the beach during the day. It won't last for long though, they say that in a month the heat and humidity will really start to set in...

Here are a few snaps from Abu Dhabi Marina where I enjoyed lunch one afternoon, trying to get a sushi fix with a take away from Carrefour. Just not the same, but beautiful views!

In the need of some carpets for our apartments, Tara and I ventured to the Carpet Souk here in Abu Dhabi this weekend!

There are a ton of shops and they all have pretty much the same carpets and from what we saw, if they don't have one in their store they will go to the next store and get one then bring it back, so how commission or sales work is a wonder. At the same time how they start off with prices is hard to understand too! You really have to bargain hard for a good price on these carpets.

Most of the carpets they have are from Turkey, Belgium, Iran and Afghanistan. I thought most of them would be Persian type carpets, but they had a wide variety of more modern ones as well.

They invite you into their shop and start pulling out carpets for you even when you say no no no! They will unroll the carpets and I think in one shop we had about 10 carpets rolled out on the floor for us...I think they expected us to buy, but we didn't..oh well!

We actually went next door to look for more and I ended up buying 2 there.

This is how it went:

Salesman: How much you want to pay?

Me: 500dhs (3.5 dhs is about $1)

Salesman: No no, I give you good price 1500dhs.

Me: Way too much, I have only 500dhs.

Salesman: Okay okay I give you good offer 1100dhs. lowest price...good price, you take?

Me: No no no, too expensive (As I start to leave the shop)

Salesman: Give me your best price, what do you want to pay..please tell me!

Me: I want to pay 500dhs....

Well about 20 minutes later, more bargaining and looking at other carpets, I not only took home 1 carpet, but found another one as well. He asked 900dhs to start for that one. He kept saying 'good price for you, you come back with your friends' too funny.

So in the end I got two carpets one for our living room and one for our front hall bargained down from his cost of 1500+900 to 500+200...wow now that's a discount.

Even then we probably could've gone lower, although not sure...seemed like a pretty good deal and really couldn't convince him to take only 600 dhs. Just feel bad if people actually do pay what they ask or even half of what they ask for!


They will still unroll the carpets even when you say No...this was one of them :)


Carpets of all sizes and colors

We got a chance to go paintballing last weekend. Which was lots of fun shooting, not so much fun being hit :)

I found it strange that we were playing during prayer time and the field was quite close to the Grand Mosque where you hear one of the daily prayers being played over the loud speaker...

This past week I attended an event for the Expat Women in Abu Dhabi and was pretty lucky to walk away with the most dangerous raffle prize...a huge tray of some fancy dancy Patchi chocolates being given to me.....yikes!

We've experienced a few days so far here in Abu Dhabi so far where the dust and sand settles in for the day. It's not fog, but more of a dust, dirt and sand that blankets the city. By the end of the day you have a layer of silt on your skin and in your hair and it's time for a shower...

Our Japanese friends will find this amusing! We visited a furniture store here and in the back of the store was a Daiso hyaku en store (dollar store)! Seriously everything you would find even food! Funny enough the Japanese prices were still on them, but everything was double the price in Japan. We got a few things as pictured here :)

A bit hazy and hot, but the water is still cool and refreshing! We headed out to the public beach last week, something that we definitely will do more often and could quite possible do every day! It's a public beach, but surprisingly you have to pay to get in. It's cheap though only about $1.75. There is a family side and then a men's only side. You can see the partition in the picture. The family side allows men as long as they enter with women or children.

Supposedly when it was open to anyone many men would come down to look and stare at the females after work (mainly the labourers working on the many projects around town), still in their work clothes with no intentions of swimming or enjoying the beach, just the females! So sounds like now it is much more comfortable to lay out at the beach. And yes ladies can wear bikinis and don't have to cover up at the beach...thankfully! Although there are special swimsuits that Muslim women can wear that cover their entire body.

We got tickets to see Coldplay in March at the grand Emirates Palace, should be a pretty cool place to see a concert, we can't wait!