Taking a Break From the Sun!

Hello all,

The girls and I decided to take a little break from our cooler, 90* weather we've been having and spent the day at Magic Planet and Favorite Things. Magic Planet is located within the Mall of the Emirates, Dubai's current largest mall. The next largest mall has just officially opened, the Dubai Mall, but with most of it still under construction, and only about 500 of the 1200 stores open, I will still give Mall of the Emirates top billing!

Magic Planet, located close to Ski Dubai, is in the back upper part of the mall. You essentially get a Magic Planet debit card at the cashiers stand. You tell the worker how much money you want to put on the card, he/she loads up the card, and you're set up for some fun. As you can see from the pix there are quite a few rides for the kids to ride inside and we're not just talking kiddie rides! They have lots of the interactive video games, rides, and some Chucky Cheese type games where you earn tickets to get some cheap prizes. There was never a line and some of the rides after the ride stopped, the operator just let the girls stay on and started the ride again, of course after swiping my card again twice! That's the deal with the card, you or the operator of the ride just swipes the card through a small machine located at each ride/video game and it deducts the cost of the ride from your card.


After we had our thrill of Magic Planet and our card was pretty much depleted of all cash, we left and headed over to Favorite Things. I needed to put a deposit down for Lily's birthday party that we are going to have at a place called Favorite Things. A brilliant concept! This place you pay for your child or children to come and play for an hour or more. They have a separate section for 3 years and younger. The other rooms are all connected and your kids can meander through to there liking. One room is set up like a Hollywood dressing room, where kids get get into costumes and have their faces painted. One room is strictly for water play. One room is all arts and crafts. One room is all climbing equipment. One wall is a rock climbing wall (very small). And then they have the party room, where they serve food, play games, and presents.

The brilliant part, since I know there are places like this in the States, is that on one side of the rooms is the door etc..just like normal but the back wall of all the rooms is glass and on the other side of the glass is a small mother/child clothing store and a cafe with a coffee/drink (no not alcohol!) bar. So while you are having coffee, lunch, actually having a conversation with an adult, you can watch your children playing in all of the rooms! Now the 3 and under room, you actually have to be there, but they have a separate sitting area for you.

So I put Ava/Lily in the 3 and under room, went to the cafe, ordered a coffee, and then the waiter brought it back over to my section!I had my coffee sitting watching the girls play and then when finished actually went in to play with them. So not only do they have staff waiting on you at the cafe, they have staff working in all the rooms helping the kids do whatever it is they want to do, even in the toddler section.

Brilliant! Miss you all....Love, Jennifer

"YOU'RE GOING THE WRONG WAY"

Hello to all,

I thought we should talk a little about the traffic and driving here in Dubai. Can we all say, CRAZY... Today I had the lovely experience of driving behind this woman in a red 4 door Nissan sedan. I know this and remember this because she almost killed me and Ava this morning!

Ava and I had dropped the older girls off at school and then we stopped at the Park and Shop for some grocery essentials before heading home. The Park and Shop is located relatively close to Sheikh Zayed Road, which is the main highway here in the city, otherwise known as 11, but everyone calls it by the above. I decided it would be the quickest route home even though I hate to drive on it. Everyone thinks they are the next Jimmie Johnson on that highway. And if you saw and read about all the accidents you would know that they are all NOT the next up and coming Nascar driver. Anyway, the way our exit for the Palm Jumeirah is set up, is that Sheikh Zayed splits at one point and the 3 far right lanes can now access the Palm and Internet City exits. Even if you stay in the far left of the 3 lanes after the split you can still access the main part of Sheik Zayed by just staying in the far left of the three lanes and it will feed you back on to the main highway, (it is only separated by a small wall). Anyway I was following this woman in the far left lane after the split with traffic next to me in the middle lane and the far right lane. All of a sudden she decides to brake, oh and did I forget to tell you that there was no one in front of her, so her braking kind of caught me off guard. But what really caught me off guard was her deciding next to come to a complete STOP in the left lane of the freeway! I really don't ever honk at anyone but this time I laid on the horn. Then she had the audacity to turn slowly to the right and now she is perpendicular with the oncoming traffic in the middle lane. As I passed I'm looking behind me to see what the #$%^ she is doing and watching the car approaching her in the middle lane slam on his brakes while she is completing her turn to go the wrong way now in the far right lane. I knew exactly what she was trying to do, it was like she realized she wanted to stay on Sheikh Zayed and she didn't realize that if she had just stayed in the original lane that we both were in she would have been feed right back on to the main part of the highway. All I thought was that poor woman was either going to kill herself or someone else in the process of her crazy stunt.

People regularly go over 100 mph in the city, even in traffic. They weave in and out of lanes on the freeway going at such high speeds. They will ride literally in your back seat flashing their lights until you get out of there way. One of my friends had an Emirati comment to her that the government should make one lane designated to all the locals because only the locals were good at driving at fast speeds! I said I don't think he reads the newspapers with all the traffic accidents listed.

Every road has on the side or in the medians picture takers. So if you are speeding it will actually take a picture of your car and give you a ticket. Except you don't know that you've gotten a ticket until it comes time to renew your registration, when the woman behind the desk tells you that you've been fined X amount of Durham's for X amount of speeding tickets. We've heard of people having to fork over thousands of dollars to pay for the tickets to get there registration. The other negative about the picture takers is that we all know where they are located. Even I do it, once I know I'm approaching one I make sure I'm not going more than 10 km over the speed limit. Other people you will see pushing 100mph and then slam on the brakes to get by the picture taker and then resume speeding as soon as they've passed!

Everyone will tell you that it will be a miracle if you make it out of Dubai without an accident. Most will tell you to expect at least 1 during your time here! I could go on and on about the driving, like the saying here, "Even if you can see it doesn't mean you can get to it"! You could be driving down the road or freeway and lets say the shopping mall you want to get to is on the west side of the freeway and you are on the east side. 9 times out of 10 there will be no sign saying "exit here for Wafi Mall", you just have to guess and then there are very few roads going over the freeway to get you to the other side. I have literally spent 30 to 45 minutes trying to get to some building I can see but have not a clue as what road will get me over the freeway to there. And forget about Map Quest, they only just started naming all the streets. Everyone does mail at a PO Box, which is fine until you try and tell someone where you live or how to get to the grocery store, hair salon...I could go on and on. One person trying to get me to one of the government offices that I needed to go to for our resident visa printed me out the location from Google Earth! I could make out the streets and the dot that was supposedly the building but forget about street names etc...Oh well what adventures! Maybe by the time I get back to KC I'll be in the running for the next Jimmie Johnson!!

Love to all,

Jennifer

Ramadan Kareem/Eid Mubarak!

The month of Ramadan is now come and gone, thankfully! Starting September 1 and running through September 29 the whole of the UAE observes the holy month of Ramadan. Basically, there is no eating or drinking from sun up to sun down. The government has made it a law that anyone, even Westerners, are forbidden to eat in public during this month. If caught they won’t send you to jail but they will give you a hefty little fine to pay. Now that being said, I did still drink my coffee in the morning on the way to taking the girls to school. I just had to be aware of who was driving around me, police/Arabs, before I would take a sip of it! Most all of the restaurants are closed during the day and would open back up around 6:30/7pm and then stay open until 2/3am. You could find some establishments open during the day but it was very word of mouth, ”oh I heard at the back of the mall there is a place open but the shades will be drawn and it won’t look like it is open but go in, they are serving people” kind of thing. The hardest one for me to survive was Starbucks and Costa Coffee being closed. The one establishment that stayed open the whole month was McDonalds! Those golden arches were like a beacon in a dark night! You couldn’t eat inside but the drive through and the inside were open for take away, which meant I could at least get a coffee in the afternoon!

At night the Muslims would celebrate Iftar. The radio would announce throughout the day what time Iftar would be starting, usually around 6:15/6:30 and that is the time you could start eating, breaking your fast. Iftar every night is a big celebration. Either you would be getting together to have a big dinner with your family or all of the restaurants/hotels would have tents set up with lavish buffets. At the end of the month starting around the 28th, we were all waiting for the government to announce when Ramadan would be over and the start of Eid (pronounced like Eve but substitute a D where the V is). They have to see the full moon for Ramadan to be over and Eid to start. If by chance they don’t see the full moon, say it is cloudy then Ramadan would only last 30 days and would be over but this year they actually sited the full moon on the 28th, so Ramadan was officially over and the restaurants all opened on the 29th. As soon as the government pronounces Eid everything closes and most everyone goes on holiday. It would be the equivalent to our Christmas and the week following through our New Year’s. The girls all had the week off from school and most business/government offices are closed. We took the girls to a huge Eid Mubarak celebration at the Jebel Ali Beach Resort. It was all outside, so we sat at a round table for 10 right by the stage. They had a beautiful woman singing, periodically through the night, who was from Lebanon.

Every year Ramadan moves forward in the calendar by about 11 days. Which means, next year Ramadan should start sometime mid August and run through mid September, which has me thinking we might just have to stay a little longer this coming summer in Kansas City. Maybe we won’t return to Dubai until after Labor Day so we just hit the tail end of the holy month. I’m thinking my mom might like that idea the most since it will mean more time with her grandkids!

So if you ever find yourself in a Muslim country during Ramadan be sure to tell everyone Ramadan Kareem and when Ramadan is officially over be sure to tell everyone Eid Mubarak! Basically Happy Ramadan and Happy Eid, similar to Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Love to all,

Jennifer

Emma’s 8th Birthday

Hello all! I’m so sorry I haven’t been writing lately. We all know how life takes over and we get so busy! Emma celebrated her 8th birthday on September 13! It’s hard to believe she is 8! For her birthday we gave her a choice to have her birthday party at our house and she could invite all the girls from her class or she could choose to go somewhere to celebrate and then she could only choose a few of the girls to come. She chose to have it at our apartment and invite all the girls and even 2 girls from one of the other 2nd grade classrooms. Her birthday fell during the month of Ramadan so we decided to have her party from 6pm-9pm Friday night. Two of the girls in her class are Muslim and she didn’t want them not to be able to come or come and not eat if we had it during the day so we decided an evening party would be best.

So a few days before her party we went to Spinney’s (grocery store) to the bakery department to order her cake. She’s big into mermaids, from the show H2O..if anyone’s seen it? Anyway we are flipping through a book with all sorts of cake designs and we come across a mermaid cake. As soon as she saw it, it was a done deal we were having a mermaid cake. So we had the guy take our order and she asked him if he could make the mermaids hair red, he said yes, then she asked if the mermaid could have a purple bathing suit top, he said yes, a green tail, he said yes, and just to write her name on the tail, she didn’t want the Happy Birthday part…so we place the order and he tells us to pick it up around 1pm the day of her party. So the day of the party arrives and it just so happens that she only has a ½ day of school that day. I pick her up and then we head over to Spinney’s to get the cake. When we arrive in the bakery department and they figure out that we are the ones to pick up the mermaid cake, the bakers all get very excited to show Emma her cake. She takes one look at it and I can see it in her eyes as she’s looking at me and then again at the cake, she’s wondering, just as I am, why the whole mermaid’s body is purple! But I can also see that she notices that everyone is so excited that it is her birthday and what a wonderful huge cake she gets to have for her party, so she just keeps nodding and ½ smiling when they are all asking her if she likes it!

As soon as we head to the checkout counter she ask me exactly what I thought she was going to ask me, why is the mermaid purple? I said I know pumpkin, I think they just misunderstood that we only wanted her bathing suit purple. She seems mostly satisfied with that answer as we are leaving. Unfortunately looking at the pictures from the birthday the poor mermaid looks more like a harpooned whale/mermaid than the pretty mermaid I’m sure she was envisioning!

Emma decided for dinner we would have a “breakfast buffet”. We had pancakes, bacon, scrambled eggs, strawberries, grapes, and krispy kreme donuts. It was a huge success, they all loved it and everyone ate tons. After, we had the purple mermaid and presents and then they all watched the Hannah Montana DVD Concert while I painted their fingernails and toes! Not too bad for the 1st birthday party in the UAE.

Ten Pounds For Tampons

Assalaam Alaikum…Rich here, ghost writing for Jennifer…I guess it’s not really ghost writing if I am telling you I am ghost writing. Anyways, let me begin by saying how impressed I am with Jennifer as this is the first time since I met her sharing a taxi on that fateful St. Patrick’s day in 1995 that she has actually adopted a technology before me…this is the first blog I have ever written.

We have had many crazy stories/frustrations/laughs getting adjust to living in Dubai, but one that I thought was pretty funny actually happened on our first “looksee” visit to Dubai and summed up the cultural differences while at the same time also underscored for me that people are the same all over.
So Jennifer and I are getting ready to go out. As usual I started about 40 minutes after her, finished getting ready in 15 minutes and made the mistake of asking her when she was going to be ready. Unbeknownst to me, Jennifer had a surprised visit from what I think women sometimes refer to as “her little friend”…more like enemy to men and woman alike - for different reasons of course…and to think in the not to distance future I will be managing through this four times a month. Of course since I was pushing her to get ready she seized the opportunity to ask me to go downstairs to the shop in the hotel and get her some tampons.

Now keep in mind, as westernized as Dubai is, this was my first visit to Dubai and I am thinking you want me to buy what, where??? I wouldn’t do this in the good ol’ U.S. of A. let alone in Muslim country. Thankfully my male intuition took the back seat, and I realized my wife is visiting a foreign country I am asking her to move to and I should tell her I would be happy to go down and get her some tampons.

As such, 5 minutes later I find myself in a small gift shop in the hotel that is unfortunately staffed by a male (very tight quarters). My eyes avert his as I can sense he knows what I am there to buy, and I head right over the bathroom products section and find what I think looks similar to a tampon box, but all the brand names are written in Arabic, so I am not really sure.
My heart sinks as I now know, I am going to have to ask the guy behind the counter, who happens to be about 5 feet from me about what I am going to buy…picture a high school kid going to buy his first box of condoms from a woman working the pharmacy counter, and you will get a sense of the tension building in the shop. So I muster up the courage to turn to him and judging a book by its cover like we are all taught to do, I assume he doesn’t speak very good English and I ask him very slowly with in exaggerated facial/mouth expressions “Are these tampons???” With a look that says did you ride the short bus to school he replies back to me in broken English, “Ten pounds???? No no no…much less.”

So now I take my facial expressions to a new level using all 98 muscles in my face and speaking more slowly with an even greater level of embarrassment, I say, “No tttaaaammmmmpppooonnnnssszzz.” Again with a bewildered look he says, “You pay pounds??? I convert!”

So now my embarrassment starts to dissipate as I am no longer focused on what I am buying, but on how to convey a question any male would be embarrassed to ask another male who speaks the same language, let alone a male of another language, culture and religion that likely (per my new expat thinking) has less understanding of the female hygiene product category than I do, and I decide to ask the question again at the same speed and tone with the same level of facial expressions, but decide to add slow motion hand gestures as well (Trying to guess how these things work). This time he looks at me puzzled again, but then I see a sense of understanding come over his face along with a smile and he says – “Yes…dose tampons.”

Feeling a little better, I remember Jennifer mentioning something about type…light, medium, tall grande…who knows how they measure these things and to my horror, I look back down and see a wide variety. I think about how I am going to get this guy to help me pick out the right kind, ponder what I just went through, say forgetta bout it, close my eyes and grab a box from the middle.

Of course when I went upstairs after this emotional rollercoaster, the first things Jennifer says, when I give her the box is…you guessed it…”You got the wrong kind.” Needless to say, I think she could tell from the look on my face, she was going down this time or would get by on these for a couple of hours.

So no matter where you live, we are all just working/trying to get by to provide for and spend a little more time with our family and friends...and no matter where you are from or where you are, if you are male…you don’t like purchase or discussing female hygiene products.

Love to all - hope to see you soon - Maasalaamah,

H.H. Sheikh Richard Bin Richard Al Berner

Blessings!

Hi all,

Yesterday as I was sitting at a stop light waiting for it to turn green, a man rode by on a very old bicycle and on the back of the bicycle he had strapped a lawn mower. I'm not sure how you can even accomplish such a thing but he had. I could only imagine he was off to his next job of taking care of someones lawn for mere penny's. He had on flip flops, long pants, long sleeve shirt, and some cloth wrapped around his head and was just sweating profusely. Remember it is still well over a 100* here and the humidity is still getting up around 70% on some days. You still can't go outside without immediately starting to sweat and that's just standing, now imagine riding a bicycle with a lawn mower strapped to the back of your bike.

I thought to myself how blessed and lucky we all are and I do mean everyone reading this blog. Sure we might have a bad day now and then or a bad year. Money might be tight or you might have complaints about a little man in a little office but when it comes right down to it one of our biggest gifts we ever got in life and no one really ever thinks about it because it was given to us before we were ever born is to be born in the United States. A country where girls/women are valued and educated. A place where if you work hard you can accomplish so much, no matter your background or station in life. Seeing this man on the bike, working so hard, really made me appreciate everything that I have as an individual, as a family and as a country.

Another thing we have learned is that people are really all the same. We might have different religious views, speak different languages but at the end of the day most of us just want a good life for our children, food on the table and a roof over our heads. (And all our children like the crust cut off their sandwiches, even over here to!)

Just like the man riding the bike, I'm sure he was just trying to provide for his family. And that's the other crazy part imagine your husband, wife, mother having to leave the US to earn a living. Not being able to see him or her more than once a year. I can't even imagine not being able to see my husband or girls for one week. There are so many people here that have done just that and come to a country with very little laws in place to protect them from being taken advantage of...like the woman we met who came to Dubai from the Philippines to work for a cleaning company. They provided her a way to get here but once she was here paid her much less than what was promised, worked her 6 days a week, 15 hours a day and then let her go after about 3 months with no way to get back to her home country.

So lets give a moment of thanks for all of our blessings in our lives and I will say a prayer for the man with the lawn mower on the back of his bike that God give him the strength to get through another day.

Love,

Jennifer

The Gas Man

Hi all,

Well here I am again writing about this crazy place called Dubai. I told Rich that I was going to write something positive next post but this story just has to be told.

So we have been living for about 3 weeks with no gas in our apartment. Our stove/oven has one electric burner on it and the oven is electric as well, so that is how I've been cooking since we got here. I finally decided that now that I've got the kids settled in school, I am going to take on the job of getting the gas turned on. Now in Kansas City, and I'm sure most places around the US you would pretty much just make a phone call to your local gas company, maybe put down a credit card or even a credit card deposit and your gas would be switched on and you'd be in business..simple. Well here, not so much...

The securtiy guard downstairs gave me a "how to sheet" with the steps listed to get the gas turned on. 1st step, make a deposit of 1250 AED (dirhams), about $350 to M/s Nekheels bank account located at HSBC bank. Nekheel is the big developer in Dubai, they built the Palm Jumeirah we are living on. So I head to the closest HSBC bank and after waiting in line I am told that this bank was only a service center and to make this deposit I would have to go to an actual branch. He tells me where that is and I head to Jebel Ali, about 20 minutes down the freeway. I get to the Jebel Ali branch and it is crazy busy, which I can understand since the "service" centers don't really service anyone and everyone has to go to one of the very few branches located around Dubai to be serviced!

I get in the info line and the nice woman behind the desk tells me which form to fill out and which line to get in. I then ask if I can use a credit card to pay the deposit, now remember I'm at a bank, and she says no. Cash or check only to be deposited into "Mr" Nekheels bank account. I only have 1025 AED and have just withdrawn earlier in the day from our ATM account. So now I'm worried that my account won't let me withdraw anymore cash..the whole cash withdrawal limit thing (the nice woman behind the counter says that at HSBC they let there customers withdraw $4000 a day so I should be able to withdraw more from my bank if I've only taken out $300, she thought that seemed very low, I said I think they might do things a little differently in the U.S.!)...luckily it lets me take out 300AED more and we're back in business. I fill out my form, get in line and pay the cash deposit. At this point all of this seems very shady! And I am only left with 75 AED (about $20) until the next day. Which again in the States you would think no worries, who uses cash in the States anyway, everything is debit or credit card..well not here everybody wants cash and some places only take cash.

So I have my little pink deposit slip that is my receipt and head back to our building where I am now supposed to take it to an office in building #3. We are in building #6. I stop and park at building #3 (the 1st time) and go in and of course the little man in the little office is no where to be found. Rich says to me, I don't think he would like it if he knew you were calling him the little man, and I say I am so annoyed with this whole process that the gas man is now called the little man in the little office! I take my receipt back to the "little office" three times and each time the "little man" is not to be found. Finally I decide to camp out at the office this past Thursday right after I drop off Emma at school, which proved to be a good plan because after about a 10 minute wait, the "little man" shows up. (He's actually really normal looking but at this point after having been there so many times and him not there, he would not classify as one of my favorite people) I walk in and say I'm trying to connect my gas in our apartment and then I show him my pink slip and he says call this number and ask for Ibraham. I could not believe it, I have wasted over 2 days trying to track this guy down and all he gives me is a number! Do you think maybe it would be a good idea to put that as #3 on the "how to sheet", what do I need to be traipsing over to building 3 for in 110* heat if all I needed was a number to call! Aarrgghh I was so mad!

So I go home and make a call to Ibraham and he tells me to scan my receipt and email it to this email address and then someone will be contacting me. I of course do not have a scanner at the apartment, so I have to drive over to Rich's office and drop the little pink slip off. It gets scanned and emailed. Rich ask when are they coming, I say I have no clue, I was told to wait for a call! Ibraham says maybe Saturday, maybe Sunday we call you, we come turn your gas on..

Now it is Saturday morning and we are getting ready to leave the house in 15 minutes to go watch Emma's first tennis lesson and guess who calls...yep..Ibraham. He says they are in the building and can they come in 20 minutes. I tell him we were just about to leave for my daughter's tennis lesson and could they come later around lunch. He of course says no not good, so Rich decides to stay behind and I will take Emma. The guy arrives before I leave and starts telling me that I have the wrong stove for gas. As soon as he says that I am about ready to explode, I start yelling upstairs for Rich and tell him that he has to deal with this. The "little man" says that we have the wrong stove and that it will cost another 175 AED (cash) for them to hook up some converter so the gas will work. Now Rich is upset, saying what a racket this whole process is, just another way to squeeze a nickel out of us..and why didn't the lady at the store say anything about not being able to hook the gas up to this type of stove..the "little man" was just looking at Rich, like I know you're upset but I don't have a clue as to what you are saying! Rich finishes by saying whatever you have to do just do it...the guy says 175 dirhams cash..we agreed and when I got home from tennis lessons,

I finally had GAS!!

Just think, you make 1 phone call in the States and it only took me 1 week to have that switch turned on!

Love to all,

Jennifer