Hallelujah!

The old passport is back in my possession, I'm going to be an art teacher full-time still next year, and we are down to a mere 23 days before I blow this popsicle stand. Oh, and since I have to return to the consulate to pick up the new passport, I'm going to have to take ANOTHER day off school (oh darn). I'm thinking I'll park at Mall of the Emirates this time, take the metro from there, and afterwards play in the snow. Oh, and shop. Can't forget the shopping. Have two days in London at the end of this hell with a sexy man; I needs me some new threads. Party on, Wayne!

I've been working diligently to cram in as much fun, new experiences as possible before I go, with a little help from my friends. This Friday past we hit the Wafi rooftop for "Peanut Butter Jam" - a bunch of little expat bands playing rock covers (I knew I was going to enjoy it when the first full song we heard was the one about living next door to Alice...)

...

Sometime during the night someone said, "What do you think, you feel up to Atlantis tomorrow?" and thus Trish, Carol, and I ended up going to the waterpark out on the Jumeirah Palm. Well, I've gotta be honest with you - after making the hour+ trek down for the third time in 24 hours, not driving but navigating which is actually more stressful, and realizing it was REALLY hot and I was REALLY not up for a sunburn, I was not in the best mood and I'm afraid I ditched Carol and Trish for longer than I intended to (started heading down the lazy river, which, it turns out, is much longer than the one at Fun Plex). I sat for a while and read, wondering if they'd turn up, and then decided I'd man up and go down the "Leap of Faith" - the nearly-vertical waterslide that zips down the front of Aquaventure's distinctive ziggurat slide complex. This slide is particularly cool because before it spits you out with a major wedgie (and, in Trish's case, with your boobies exposed - yay for my one-piece!) it shoots you through a shark-infested aquarium. Not that you can see it, because you're going too fast, but if you can manage to keep your eyes open a slit whilst water is sluicing up from your feet, you can see a kinda blue-green blur during three-tenths of the second you're on the ride.

Well, when I made my way back down to the chairs, Trish and Carol were getting out of the water, and so we ended up doing the rest of the slides together and having a blast. We hit Dubai mall on the way past for Taco Bell (for the first time in almost a year...yum, yum, yum, said Max) and tickets for next Thursday to the top of Burj Khalifa. While we were there I imposed on them to stay for the fountain show, which was on my list of things to do before leaving. I gotta say, it was pretty spectacular - the fountain was timed to a piece of Arabic music and it was almost like the streams of water were liquid belly dancers, the way they spun and undulated. But as I was sitting there I couldn't help but remember sitting in the shadow of the Burj eating lunch a few months back with Evil and Socrates, and feeling a little lost. I may not be alone here, but the world is lonely when you don't have a best friend to look to.

Masalaam

This morning saw me sending the Evil One off to the Dubai airport in a bright pink taxi with a female Romanian driver. This afternoon saw me dragging my sick ass out of bed long enough to take the money she didn't have on her downstairs for her driver. Yes, I am now sad as well as sick.

It was a really good weekend, so good that come Saturday night I found myself having the Back-In-RAK blues again. I got turned around a lot, but Evil and Socrates both have excellent map reading skills, so we always got where we needed to be, although consequently I did spend a lot on SALIK tolls. We went to church and she got to experience white people giving talks again (ie, longer than 5 minutes), Filipinos singing along softly to a solo intermediate hymn, and MY fabulous youth Sunday school lesson (honestly? probably the most enjoyable calling I've had in a very long time). We went from there to Dubai Mall where we met Socrates (probably the most disorienting, surreal moment during my travels abroad...seeing Evil in a foreign land I've gotten used to, but having two completely unrelated yet significantly important individuals from different eras in my life meet up as if it ain't no thang in a mall in Dubai??? A small bit trippy, teacher, to say the least).
We returned our Burj Khalifa tickets (grr), had lunch,
experienced the wonders of a North American level bookstore in the reading desert that is Arabia, and went on our merry way to see the Palm Jumeirah...or to drive out to Atlantis, take a look around, see the lobby's Chihuly, and walk past the guard onto the back veranda...or rather, I did, Socrates failed the "pretend you belong here" test by incorrectly answering that most crucial of questions, "Are you staying at the hotel?" (he who hesitate is lost!), and the Evil One didn't even try. We met up again later for dinner and attempted to go out dancing or something, but the music at Long's "School Disco" was not the 80's pop tunes advertised in Time Out and somebody had jetlag, so we left Socrates to his own devices sometime around midnight.

We got up and did some shopping at the Mall of the Emirates where Socrates met us before we departed for RAK (via Festival City - I needed frames from IKEA, and I promised Evil Gourmet Burgers for lunch). The rental, Socrates' Mazda 3 from last fall, was making some interesting sounds and motions, but when he popped into the gas station for drinks just past Sharjah, I made Evil say a prayer (I also made her bless the food last night - as she pointed out, I have been making her say the prayers for most of our long association), and we made it home okay, even with the pit stop at Spinney's for ingredients for Greek night. Returning the car was a bit of drama - at first the woman checking it over had the wrong sheet, and I panicked a little bit because she thought the scratches and dings were my fault. Also, I had a lot of SALIK tolls from driving up and down Sheikh Zayed and over the Garhoud bridge so much...made me miss staying in Mankhool and taking taxis. But all in all, a good time.

Yesterday I was not feeling well, and when Stephanie suggested I leave as soon as my classes were finished, I complied. And when I got home, I chose to do my resting at the beach with Evil. In fact, the beach was so restful that we decided to cancel my little dinner party, eat a late lunch, and have Greek for dinner all by ourselves, and on our sunset walk back from Hilton, we had to agree that this had been an excellent plan. We spent quite a bit of time sitting in my living room, reading our separate books. This probably seems like a boring way to spend time together, but it's just the way we are. Actually, all of our girlfriends have been known to do this from time to time; I think it's one of the reasons we all get along so well. Later I made moussaka, dolmades, tzatziki, and Greek salad, which turned out to be a lot of food for two people, and I anticipate eating it for the rest of the week (oh, darn). And, eventually, it was time for bed, and now, after an afternoon of sleeping, vomiting, and diarrhea, it is time for the same. And all I can say is, Evil better bid on somewhere this go-round that I can get a job teaching, because it would be FANTASTIC to have the dynamic duo in action year-round, although I'm not sure anywhere in the world is ready for it.

Glinda comes to Kiamo Ko

I'm at the Dubai airport. While the international adventures of the Great One and the Evil One (part three) have not quite yet begun, my adventures for the night are well under way (go ahead...ask me about Socrates' powers of distraction). At any rate, it promises to be a great weekend, but blogging on Giancarlo is taxing my patience so I'm gonna wrap this up.

City of Gold

I've been back in the salt mine for a week now. I'm not going to lie about it - there was NOTHING in me that wanted to come in last Sunday, and I pretty much didn't want to again today. I felt the sort of panic I had five years ago on Sunday nights in Korea when I would linger at dinners with friends after church, putting off the moment when I hit the road to Bundang and it would become all too clear that before I was ready, I would be back in front of eight adorable Korean children that I was utterly unprepared to teach.

I spent a lot of time thinking about teaching over the week off, mostly because I didn't want to come in and put any work towards it. Don't get me wrong. I love children, but sometimes I wish I could just scrap the lesson plan and let us go wild, and who cares if we get paint all over ourselves and the school?

So I thought about it a lot and talked about it a little, and the mirage, the dream job of someday making my living by illustrating, is still wavering in the distance, and if I can just break out of my inertia, if I can build up that portfolio, I KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it wouldn't be a mirage, it would be as real as that city of gold down the coast there that I've now beaten footpaths down. Really.

Speaking of which, it really, TRULY was amazing. Some of y'all (hi Christa), have heard me boast on countless occasions about my navigational skills (in the dark, one hand tied behind my back, etc...) and it is good to know that they haven't suffered any in the last three months. Driving in, I missed our exit (the roads veer off at inopportune moments, and could be signed better), and yet I managed, with just one quick glance at the map to get turned around and find the way into Mankhool. There were moments in which I may have been approaching the state of "lost," but these came as a result of listening to my menfolk. Yeah, I should know better. At least Socrates actually knew where we were and was able to get me unlost when he was the responsible party...Tony, on the other hand, was pretty hopeless. Of my three objectives for going to Dubai (belly dancing, Korean food, and shopping), I only achieved one (but you should see how kick ass my bed looks with the red bedspread and new pillowcases.

Entertaining myself since returning to RAK hasn't proven too challenging. I cooked twice last week, chili on Monday for the lot of us, and curry on Tuesday because Socrates and I were both bitching about how we didn't have anything to eat...well, it turned out that I had everything I needed to make curry except chicken, and I knew that he had a ton of meat sitting unused in his freezer, so we collaborated. However, my last week's amusement also came at a cost paid out by others. Particularly...well, I have a bad habit of baiting people, particularly those who kind of annoy me (yes, I should know better, but what can I say, it entertains me). So when a certain friend sent out an email about doing a secret santa amongst our "friendship circle," there's a very good chance I might have hit "reply all" and got up on my soapbox about socially coerced gift giving (something which, as you may know, I feel quite passionately about). Which pissed the person in question off - they called me melodramatic (well, duh. that's one of my more endearing qualities) and questioned whether or not they were right in the first place about Americans. Christa, the two of you would have a lot to talk about, I think...but then, you always managed to maintain a good sense of humor about my quirks, so maybe not.

We actually had a little Christmas barbecue over at Dean and Michelle's new palace that night - it was lovely! Well, up until the part when I got stuck in the corner behind two people who had eyes for only one another. When they started sucking face I lost my patience and, when they came up for air, I told one of them to trade me spots so I could enjoy the conversation on the other side of the porch. In the process, that individual managed to miss the chair entirely and almost became the next round of barbecue. I won't spell out exactly why, but there may have been one glass bottle lying around that he was directly responsible for emptying.

The next morning found me up early if not bright for a grueling 6 hour marathon of church (8 if you count the ride to Sharjah and back). I call myself bad attitude girl and don't particularly like the fact that I have a sort of confrontational relationship with Mormon culture right now, but really? Sitting around for two hours afterwards doesn't make me want to be there. But I accepted the assignment to speak this Friday, anyways, and I accepted the calling to teach the youth Sunday school. The funny thing (well, not funny "ha ha" funny) is that after sacrament at 11:30 I gave a lot of thought to leaving, catching a taxi, and going home. After the fact, I wished I would have...but I was planning on going to Quiz Night at the Golf Club, and I thought the fact that I stayed the extra two (excuse me, four) hours when I wanted to leave might cancel out the fact that I was breaking the Sabbath. I guess that's what I get for justifying.

Quiz Night = EPIC WIN! For denizens of RAK that are Quiz Night fans, I just have to say this: don't take on a Mormon girl and her back-up (Socrates, John, and Melissa) on a Christmassy quiz, cause we will BEAT YOU DOWN. The end.

That said, I was in a good enough mood to put up with our Professional Development Super Saturday, which, as it turns out, was not as painful as I was expecting. A little shopping and lunch at Manar Mall, and a bit of beach time...but not too long, because I got a text from Trish asking if I was interested in going to the Dubai Film festival at Madinat Jumeirah. Can I get a "Hell, yeah!"??? Dude, the place was unreal, and don't even get me started on the view of the Burj al Arab looming up behind in the dark, I should have spent one of my afternoons there during the vacation, but I digress. We saw Mother and Child, which was one of those twisty movies that takes three storylines and weaves them together. It was good, but it made for a late night, and was followed by another late night, in which I attempted to be a good little trooper and go to a PD seminar on reading in Dubai, that we never actually made it to, and I'll spare you the recounted misery and tell you that at least I got to buy myself a book and found a Godiva chocolatier at which I bought one person's Christmas gift, so not a total loss, but I was definitely glad to spend the night at home (more or less) last night.