You must have a Garmin!

So yesterday my friend Abby and I set off to find our schools.  I have my tiny samsung droid operated smartphone equipped with google maps.  For the record we could navigate anywhere with these in the states, but here there is no directions available this way, we only have this tiny little arrow pointing in the direction we are heading and the goal becomes to end up at the star.  So here two midwest girls go on our adventure to find out schools (Abby is from Illinois and actually went to college in Iowa, I want to say upper Iowa.  So let me try to illustrate what we were dealing with! 

So on my phone we have a map of where we are and where we are headed.  We are located at or around this blue dot/arrow (accurate up to 20 meters) and our schools are at or around the star in the far right hand corner.  So in theory this seems simple right?  Take the main road all in arabic south until we hit "truck" road and then hang a left. Now there are no connecting roads from "truck" road, but in theory we should be able get our little arrow near there and then figure it out, good plan right?  Now keep in mind this is after we asked everyone and their mother how to get there and realized we were on our own.  So off we go! 

So we see "truck" road on our map, which was quite literally filled with trucks driving to and fro and there we were trucking along in our little yaris.  As we continue down the road it becomes a bit of a dessert wasteland and we both comment on how smart we were to have a full tank of gas and bottled water.  We come upon some sickly looking camels and some huts and we joke that we may end up teaching in huts.  Drizzled between camel farms and humble looking huts and homes are these astonishingly large mansions, it is immensely contrasting to see such poverty and wealth all in the bling of the eye.  We attempt to turn off on some side roads to make it to our schools, the desirable star we can see on our map, but to no avail we can only circle the area!

So finally we find a road called Om Ghafa road which produces many shouts of joy and happy dances because this is our district!  There is a camel racing track and a few shops and a much more community feel with kids out riding their bikes.  There is still that contrast I mentioned before of the huge mansions and tiny houses, but no camel farms so we are feeling a little bit of relief.  Still haven't found our schools but we know we are close!  Then I see this huge sign and realize it is my school, naturally spelled differently then on the Abu Dhabi Education Council website because spelling is a huge inconsitency here (at least in English).  My school is pretty closed off so I could not go inside, but I did notice through the cracks in the fencing and walls there are portables and the building looks a bit old.  I am trying not to freak out quite yet as there are plenty of schools with portables (aka trailers) in the states, as long as I have airconditioning I can make any space work! 

Then we moved on to find Abby's school and we got to go inside, her school looks fantastic and I have to say I was a little jealous at how adorable and less prison like it is, but again trying to remain positive.  This is a huge initiative and I am a part of it and I am prepared to work from the ground up and rise up to the challenge, and best of all I have a friend to commute with every day! To see pictures of Abby's school check out her blog at http://themcalister4.blogspot.com/

So after we both saw our schools we headed back on Om Ghafa which connects directly to the main road through Al Ain that has the Al Bawadi mall on it, which is nice because I can hit up the mall on the way home from work.  We timed the commute with traffic and it was about 45 minutes (to our housing not the hotel where we started).  So we will commute daily from our housing in the upper northeast outskirts of Al Ain (called the Hili district) to the southeast outskirts of Al Ain (called the Om Ghafa district) which I suppose are like suburbs in the states.  The distance between the two districts is roughly 15 miles and we are looking at about 30 to 45 minutes once I get this whole aggressive driving/traffic circle thing down as we have to cut through the center of downtown everyday, although hoping with time we may find a quicker way around the city.

Today we plan to pick up some kind of navigation device and have heard as long as you have coordinates you can get turn by turn directions, and at this point I would give up my life savings for turn by turn directions!


So later in the evening.... We bought a Garmin and I love it!  I cannot tell you how fantastic it feels and how much stress is alleviated to know exactly where I need to turn to get where I am going.  However, we did discover it is important to know either a. the exact coordinates, or b. the exact name of the place you are going and it should be mildly important.  We were attempting to go to the Rugby Club for "family night" where there was bouncing, kids movie, and food, but unfortunately there are three clubs with Rugby in their title so we asked our Concierge and he said that it is part of the Equestrian Club and so we popped that into the Garmin and we were on our way out of the country nearly before we said, forget it, let's go to Chilis!  Which thanks to the Garmin was so easy to find, and then our route back to the Hilton was easy as pie!  Sorry no pictures here as I am currently tethered to my phone for an internet connection to save some money (nearly 20 USD a day for internet here at the Hilton) and uploading photos takes forever and a day or something like that...