Friends of the Awesome Kind

Have you ever had a friend do something so amazing and selfless for you that you could never repay them, no matter how hard you tried for the rest of your life?

Meet Jessica and Hunter...

(back when we were happy and carefree in the Bahamas)

They have pretty much rocked our lives for the past four months.  I can't even explain how awesome they've been, so I'll just list a few of the many things they've put up with and guarantee you would have quit after about the second bullet.

• We naively thought we'd only need a month to get an apt, get settled and fly the kitties over, so they very graciously agreed to catsit for us.  This is a lot to ask, even if none of the other headaches existed... We all know how much I love my kitties and the thought of giving them to someone else permanently is just gross.
•  Day 1: Frankie and Leon get in a normal cat scuffle.  Frankie wins.  Leon's leg is bleeding but we don't think it's a big deal, plus it's 3:30 in the morning, so we just wait 'til the next morning to get it checked out.
• Day 2: We find out Leon needs staples and we have to postpone our drive to Texas one day because Leon ripped out his staples and had to be taken back to the vet to get stitches.  We also find out Owen needs to have a tooth removed, but they can't do it until we're in Texas, so Jessica has to take him.  He ends up getting two teeth removed (slobber kitty).  Jessica and Hunter have to give both kitties medicine every day, something I've never had to do in 7 years.
• Leon has to be taken to the vet every two weeks to check if his stitches are ready to be removed.  This seriously went on for over 2 months.  They've taken my cats to the vet more times than they've taken theirs...and more times than I've taken both of them in 7 years...and probably more times than she's taken Frankie and I've taken Leon and Owen combined!
• The lease for our apartment said we weren't allowed to have pets, even though the agent said we could.  Major breakdown moment.  Jessica and Hunter think they're never getting rid of the kitties.
• Leon rips down the shower curtain and pees on the baseboards.
• Casey hooks it up with the apartment owner and he changes his mind on the kitties - woot!  
• We CANNOT find an airline who will let us fly the kitties here (that doesn't have a record of killing or losing animals) without someone to fly with them... Time's ticking by and Jessica and Hunter STILL have our kitties.
• We find one - woot! - but they make us go through a pet agency.   It's so expensive I have another breakdown and don't think we can do it.  Casey talks me into my senses and we call the agency.
• We find out we have to have TWO agencies, one in America and one in Dubai.  Doubly expensive.  Freak out moment number 3.  Time's still ticking and they S-T-I-L-L have our kitties, who, by the way, are NOT getting along with Frankie.
• Leon and Owen start tag-team attacking Frankie :( 
• We finally organize the flight, vet appointments, pick up dates, etc.  Hope is near!!
• Nope, just kidding.  Turns out the pet agency in America is the most poorly run business in history with a dummyhead running it.  I can't even go into details because I'll get angry again, but he didn't do what he said he would do and tried to get Jessica to do it at the last minute.  Jessica has a breakdown.  He tries to charge us extra for his incompetence.  About 25 emails are written between the three of us in an hour, and Jessica ends up having to overnight the kitty documents to him so he can actually do what we're paying him to do.  What happens if he doesn't?  The kitties don't fly out on Monday like planned, and they're STIIIIIILL at Jessica and Hunter's.

Are you starting to see how stressful this is for them???  I can't even imagine.  Catsitting for a month is a lot to ask.  Catsitting for 4 months is like the work of a saint.  This has to be a world record for most things gone wrong in a four month time span.  I know it has been super stressful for them but they have been so amazing and accommodating and helpful beyond belief.  We will never be able to repay them or thank them enough, and I just hope Monday gets here super quickly so this gigantic never-ending headache will be over for them!

Put My Thing Down, Flip It and Reverse It

This is the blog in which I describe our "amazing" experience at a free concert on the beach in Abu Dhabi.

I don't know where to start...

I'll start in September.

Nicole told us about a free Missy Elliott concert way back in September, but it was on Casey's birthday so we didn't even consider it (because who wants to work all day, drive 3 hours and stay up all night on their birthday, especially when they have to work the next day?  Nobody, that's who).  

Weeeeeeeeeell, then Frankenstorm happened and Missy's flight was delayed.  Kelly and I were enjoying our amazing day at MAKE, and we got a text from Casey asking if we wanted to go.  I said no at first because he had to work the next day, but then we were on a megahigh from MAKE and realized that we did, indeed, want to go.  Team Missy Mission was formed.

We went home to rest up a bit, got to the beach around midnight and could NOT find a place to park.  Luckily, Kelly's blond hair charmed one of the police officers who gave us his parking spot.  He literally had a friend move his police car so we could park.  How nice is that?  We gave him two awkward high fives (I don't think Emiratis high five often) and strolled down to the beach totally pumped for some live music.  

Then Cee Lo happened. 

I've been to some embarrassing concerts in my life.  Creed.  Vince Gill.  Mandy Moore.  Some D-list boy band in the 90s at Six Flags (they were so bad I don't even remember their name).  I'm sure there are more I can't think of right now, but Cee Lo was BY FAR the worst.  I'm not the biggest Cee Lo fan to begin with, but I still expected him to be entertaining.  We tried to get into it the first two songs.  We danced and pretended to know the words, but his voice was mediocre and he had absolutely no energy.  His songs were a mix of 90s and bad disco, two things you don't want to mix.  We "watched" the rest of the concert on our bums in the sand.  

A few songs after we got there, he realized nobody was into it and started skipping words and even entire verses.  Then he pretty much gave up and sang only when he felt like it, which was never.  He was obviously expecting Abu Dhabi to love him and couldn't take it when they didn't.   THEN, my favorite part, he quit singing in the middle of his last song and just walked off stage.  No, "Thanks for coming, see you again Abu Dhabi!".   Nope, just walked off the stage and left his DJ spaceman guy to finish the song by himself.  Pouty baby.  

My overall grade for Cee Lo's performance - a big fat F.

We were completely relieved when his set was over because it was that bad and it meant that Missy Elliott was coming on soon.  She sounds like a fun concert, right?  Awesome 90s rap, sweet dance moves, someone other than Cee Lo.  

When she came out the crowd's energy instantly increased.  They were jumping and waving their hands in the air, Missy had tons of energy and sounded good, her dancers were awesome, all good factors in the formula for a good concert.  

And if she kept doing what she did the first song, it would have been.  

Instead, she kept yelling at us, trying to get us to scream and get louder, but I don't think that kind of crowd exists here.  She spent about 3 - 5 minutes between every song trying to make us louder and it totally killed the energy.  If she had just kept rapping the whole time, I think it would have been awesome because when she was rapping, people were pumped, but in between songs the energy level sank.  Yelling at a crowd probably isn't the best way to pump them up, but in her defense, she's probably used to crowds that know every word to every song, and that's just not how it was.  

Missy gets two grades - a B for actual song-singing (I only save the As for my faves like DMB and David Gray :)) and a big fat F for between-song pump-ups.  Overall it was a joke of a concert. 

We took a whopping 4 photos, all of very high quality.

The Missy Mission Trio.  This was before we decided we hated Cee Lo.

Waiting for something good to happen.

Nicole and Sam went to one of those murder mystery dinners before the concert.  Can you guess her costume?

Kelly's sweet dance moves.  

Aren't you jealous you didn't stay up until 4:30 last Saturday to experience this amazingness?  You should be.  Casey says he's never going to another concert in Dubai, but Kelly got a free ticket to Eminem last night and said it was amazing.  I think it just depends who you see.  Isn't it funny how our concert standards have gone down because we don't have access to good concerts?  Katy Perry and Usher are coming in December, and we actually considered spending 450 dirhams to see them.  I don't think Casey's down for that anymore...

P.S.  I totally just wrote this blog at MAKE!  I love MAKE!

HONK, HONK (honk, honk, honk) HOOOOOOONK

There are a lot of awesome things about Dubai.  Beach.  Ladies' Night.  Desert.  Beautiful buildings.  Shopping galore.  My job.  Camels.  This weekend's Eid celebration and the long weekend that came with it.  The patience we're gaining from living in foreign country in the Middle East...

What's not awesome is not sleeping from 2 - 5 am because the crazies are honking their horns and revving their Ferrari engines outside your apartment!

It literally sounded like this...
HONK!  HONK, HONK!  HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK!  HONK, HONK, HONK!  HONK!  HOOOOOOONK, HOOOOOOOONK!  HONK!  HONK, HONK!  (Random engine rev.)  HONK!!!

What they are honking at, we have no idea.  The street was a parking lot.  No one was moving and nobody could do anything about it.  There were just too many cars on the street at the same time.  Our street gets super busy on the weekends, and we usually hear a little honking, but three hours of continuous honking is a little excessive.  I feel like we've dealt with so many frustrations here that we're adopting the Kiwi way of life and learning to laugh off frustrations instead of getting angry.  If this happened two months ago, I would have been so annoyed wondering how people can be so inconsiderate and rude, but not last weekend!  Casey and I woke up, gawked at the insane traffic jam below and giggled as the drivers started honking tunes in unison...for 3 hours...What else could we do?  The cops were already down there and didn't seem to mind that they were waking up the entire neighborhood.

Laughing really is the only way to get through some of Dubai's frustrations, and even though we got 3 hours less sleep than we would have liked, we felt better laughing about it than we would have if we had gotten mad.  I think Dubai is preparing us for parenthood. 

MAKE

School work just got a lot awesomer!  

Kelly found an AMAZING cafe literally 200 yards away from our apartment.  It's called MAKE Business Hub ("business hub" sounds fancy, huh?) and it beats the heck out of working at school or home.

Check out the pictures I stole from their website, makebusinesshub.com

 

 

Doesn't it look like a cool place to hang out?  It's buzzing with the perfect combination of really good music, positive energy, and creative people, and their food is delicious, too!  Yesterday Kelly and I worked for 6 hours while we feasted on coffee, fresh juices, flat bread and chocolate.  We loved it so much we went back for more tonight!

On a side note, did I tell you I started grad school?  It will be totally worth it when we move back to Colorado because they actually compensate teachers for master's degrees (unlike Texas).  I'm not exactly excited to go back to school after 7.5 years, but now that I have an awesome hangout like MAKE, I'm actually excited to do my work!

Dubai is full of surprises.  Just when I think I'm not totally loving it, we find another awesome place to hang out or another fun thing to do.  :)

Brunchity Brunch

I've been saving up all of my blogging energy for a big brunch post today.  If I haven't told you already, brunch in Dubai is absolutely out of control.  It happens every Friday and costs anywhere between $55 and $200 for all you can eat and drink from 12 - 4 pm.  There's not actually any brunch food, but nobody goes for that anyway.  It's a huge party with crazy expats everywhere and by 4:00, everyone is completely wasted.  Sounds awesome, right?  Well, Casey has been dying to have this amazing brunch experience since we moved here, and this was his first weekend off (another Eid celebration) so we were pumped.  About 30 people from my school went today, the biggest group that has gone so far, and we both woke up sick.  What the frick.  I'm NEVER sick, unless of course I have a holiday from school with something awesome planned.  I tried really hard to pretend like I wasn't sick, but 3.5 hours of sleep + stuffy nose + headache + sore throat do not mix well with an all day drinking extravaganza.  When I told Casey I wasn't feeling well, he was relieved because he's not either, and even though we're really disappointed we had to miss it, it was actually kind of nice to have a lazy day together napping and taking it easy.

In other news, we did some apartment shopping this week, and that makes me really happy.  It's finally starting to feel like a home and not just a collection of tiny rooms.  I'll give you a photo tour when everything is done.

In the meantime, here's a sneak peek at our smiling camels...

:)

Rough Seas

Today was one of those days you dread as a teacher.  I was busy from 7:30 until 4:45, didn't have time to eat lunch and still have a mound of work waiting for me tomorrow.  We're on paperwork overload, and every time we think we're catching up, we get more work and more deadlines and it seems like it will never end.  

BUT, there is nothing better after a stressful day than coming home to the beach.  When I got home, the beach bag was already packed and my bathing suit was lying on the couch ready to go.  The sun sets super early here, around 6:15, so we got there just in time to relax a little bit and watch the sun go down.  It's amazing what a little beach can do for your mood!

You can't tell from these pictures, but the waves were crazy big, so big this happened...

Casey's head got slammed into the sand by a megawave, and we didn't think anything was really wrong at first.  Then he said, "I think it ripped out some of my hair." ... umm, yes, yes it did!

Pretty awesome, eh?  

Awesome evening all around.  Beach, sunset, sweet hair injury, salmon and sweet potatoes... Doesn't get much better than that!

Desert Safari

We finally went on a desert safari!  It's one of the things we wanted to do most when we moved here.  I psyched myself up for an AMAZING time, so it was a little underwhelming, but still awesome.  I'm too tired to write anymore, so you can make up your own story to go with our pictures :)

UAE proud, yo!

Daniela, Freya and Kai

 

My desert glamor shot

The sand was so soft and squishy beneath our feet!

 

Dune bashing was my favorite part of the trip.  I always wondered how they drove around the dunes like maniacs without tipping over, and the secret is this: they let air out of their tires so they're almost flat.  It creates a magical tire glue that sticks to the sand, even when you're sideways.  Pretty fancy.

The desert sun is amazing!

 

 

 

One of my favorite pictures ever :)

  

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeey!

 

Freya frolicking through the desert

 

I could totally be a falcon trainer if teaching doesn't work out.

The whirling dervish!  The only thing I could think of while watching him dance was, "She could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl."  Oh, Maria...

 

 

 

His dance moves were pretty awesome.

 

Casey taking the photo we see men everywhere taking.  They pose in front of strange things with a non-smile on their face and hold the pose for a ridiculous amount of time until their friend finally takes the picture.  He totally fits in now.

 

The camels we didn't ride.  I felt bad for them.  They didn't seem too pumped to be toting everyone around on their backs.  I will ride a camel someday, just not these guys.  They're pretty cute, though, aren't they?

One thing I learned from this awesomeness is I love the desert!  It was so beautiful and relaxing, and watching the sun set in the desert is one of the best things you can do.   We're planning a desert camping trip when it's not so steamy hot, and that just might the best thing you can do.