Holiday, Birthdays, and Sugar Highs!

The end of the trimester means assessment, grades, and a nice break is coming.  In contrast to the US school was over early every day through the week, little to know teaching or learning was really happening, and the last two days of the week almost none of my girls were coming.  We made some festive ornaments to decorate their rooms (they certainly had nothing to do with Christmas in this Muslim country!),

We have two glorious weeks off and by some miracle these two weeks happen to encompass Christmas and New Years for us westerners; my family couldn't be more happy to continue some form of tradition together this holiday season.  We have our Christmas tree up, a stocking for Gavin, and even a wreath to decorate our front door.  As per usual I am running around doing last minute Christmas shopping and procrastinating on getting all the wrapping done, although there is no rush as Gavin will simply tear them apart if I place them under the tree!  His favorite past time when mom and dad are involved and not paying attention is to toss all the ornaments around the house.

To get the holidays going my friend Abby held a cookie exchange and I have to admit that I was apprehensive and even felt a little like I was  a poser but low and behold I got my mom's snickerdoodle recipe and sat down to make them.  After driving all over the city I finally found all the ingredients minus the crisco which simply had to be supplemented by something called Ghee (pretty much the same but easier to stir and I am sure it is not quite the same).  Anyways by some miracle it turns out I can actually bake!

I was so proud of myself because I consider myself a flop and failure in the kitchen but as my friend Heather put it, "baking is an exact science, follow the recipe and you can't mess it up, cooking is more like an art; you just feel the ingredients and work and work until you create a masterpiece."  So my theory is I am a scientist in the kitchen and as long is there is a recipe I can follow it but I cannot simply taste a dish and recreate it like many artists I know!  So I took my plate full of cookies to my friend Abby's home and had a really great time!  It was wonderful chatting with other teachers and mothers and sharing our joys and frustrations with this change in our lives.  I had a lot of fun and look forward to more get togethers with these ladies.  The best part is I came home with a plate full of different decadent yummies that Michael and I had no trouble devouring over the weekend!

My husband and I have really gone overboard with the toys this year for Gavin for Christmas, but with the nephews so far away we can't spoil them as much.  Gavin has a nice toy workbench, toy kitchen, some puzzles, books, and clothing to look forward to.  On Christmas eve all the teachers and families that haven't left on holiday travels are planning to get together to eat at Chinese restaurant that rumor has is pretty fantastic so I am looking forward to some good Chinese food!  We are all bringing one small Christmas present for our children and one of the husbands is dressing up as Santa Clause and delivering the presents to the children.  We are hoping Gavin doesn't run away like he did from his last Santa encounter at the Hilton! 

We went to the annual lighting at the Christmas tree at the Hilton and it was quite the production with carolers singing all the must-hear-Christmas-songs, the lighting of the tree, complimentary wines and soft drinks, and then Santa of course repelling from the sixth floor balcony on a rope with drum rolls and spot lights, very exciting entrance.  Then we waited in line to see Santa and Gavin got his present and ran away after multiple attempts there was no picture for us to post on Facebook or the blog  of Gavin sitting like a good boy on Santa's lap.

My birthday was on Monday and I was so happy to see so many birthday wishes from family and friends new and old from all over the globe.  It really made me smile, social networking really helps to feel warm fuzzies on our birthdays doesn't it? I spent the morning and afternoon with three ladies getting pedicures, having a wonderful meal of Indian food and doing some light shopping at my favorite local mall, Bawadhi Mall.

For my birthday Mike, Gavin, and I took a trip about 70 miles to Dubai where we stayed in the Holiday Inn Express and I have to say after staying in a 5 stars hotel a 3 stars hotel simply is a place to sleep lol.  We went to the Dubai mall which is absolutely enormous and gorgeous and extravagant to say the least.  We had our first sushi in 6 months!  Gavin sat nicely believe it or not and snacked on fruit and a fresh fruit mango nectar, he loves the fresh juices in this country!  The sushi place had conveyor belts going around with color coded bowls filled with sushi.  You just grab what interests you and eat it, at the end they tally up how many bowls you have and give you your bill.  Michael and I proudly ingested around 264 dirhams worth of delicious sushi!  Or around 73 US dollars.  It was fantastic!  Then we strolled around the mall taking in the beauty of extravagant fountains, the tunnel of fish, and the enormous book store!

I will continue to risk my life driving to Dubai just to have monthly trips to the biggest most wonderful and a bit overpriced bookstore ever!  It is called Book World for good reason because it is a world of books!  The whole store s-curves into a huge circle of books galore!  They have every book that I could think of (although if you ask Michael their Sci Fi and Fantasy sections leave something to be desired).  Michael was really excited about the large selection of anime mangas and Naruto calendars (including other anime characters). They even have a huge geek display area in the back that would get any sci fi or comic book nerd oober excited.  Enormous lit up museum like displays of action figures. It couldn't help but make me laugh when Michael told me one day he aspires to have such a collection in his man cave...gotta love the nerd in him lol. 

We finished the evening at Cinnabon where we shared a mini cinnabon that wasn't really so mini, a piece of carrot cake, and oreo cake.  We also had a nice strawberry and banana shake that I thought was a smoothie when I ordered it!  Needless to say Gavin had more sugar in that one sitting than he has probably ever had at once and immediately became drunk by it.  He was being super chatty and silly making Michael and I laugh so hard, who needs entertainment when you can simply give a two year old sugar and watch him perform! 

As we were leaving the Dubai mall there is a section called Fashion row or something like that and it is a string of all the major designers that are referenced on Sex and the City, luxurious carpets line the floor that you sort of sink into!  I had to take my shoes off to squish the carpet in my toes.  As you are walking there is a runway in the middle that is a lit up floor and Gavin loved it!  He was running back and forth just cracking up loving it!  Unfortunately we had to pull him away kicking a little but due to his sugar overload his attention was easily averted to some pretty butterflies hanging from the ceiling lol.  After our fun filled trip to the Dubai mall we headed to our slumming three star accommodations (hopefully you understand the sarcasm here as the hotel was really nice and right in the category of where we usually stay in the US on vacations). 

Gavin, needless to say, had some trouble coming down from his sugar high and was literally bouncing around the room until some time after 12.  The next morning we barely made it to the breakfast that left something to be desired after what we were used to at Hilton.  It was the bare minimum with cereal, apples, a few danishes, juice, coffee, and milk, but it was nice!  Our plan was to go to the Dubai Outlet mall, check out the Dolphinarium, and then end our day with a dinner cruise.  But after the Outlet mall we were exhausted from our sugar-hungover-whiny-two-year-old-bundle-of-joy, not to mention we were located about 10 miles closer to Al Ain, it just seemed too easy to hop on the Dubai Al Ain road and be on our way home, and so we did!  We have decided our next trip to Dubai needs to be with out Gavin! 

Tattered Princess Dress

I suppose I cannot find much to complain about right now as we barely came back from a nice long break from Eid and were told not to bother teaching this week as the nation begins the many days of celebration for National Day commemorating 39 years as a nation.  The city saves no expense on lights and flags decorating the streets as almost every palm tree trickled down the street is dressed in lights.  Evenings here are beautiful and are helping me to feel a little of the holiday season that I miss from back home.  Never thought I would say I missed shopping to "Grandma got run over by a reindeer," but I do!  So this week my colleague Heather and I work all week long to put together an act for the National Day show.  Our "act" consists of 33 girls holding colored signs that spell out "We love United Arab Emirates"  The colors together make the flag as well and the rest of the girls spell out a cheer saying "We love United Arab Emirates," sort of YMCA style with their arms.  All in all very cute, but very discouraging and confusing with our lack of communication!  We wanted all the girls in the act!  Here are some pictures of practice:

At this time from what we knew the performance would be outdoors like last year after assembly all the girls would simply sit down and the whole school and mothers would enjoy the performance.  We are all excited about seeing the girls doing the hair dance and some of the Arabic teachers have some traditional songs the girls will be singing, how fun right?  I am told there will be henna and it will be a lot of fun.  Well then we are told on Monday no, the performance will be in the Theater.  The theater is so small, how will we all fit?  I am thinking well it will be close but we will all fit because of course all the mothers and children will get to see the performances! So we do a dry run of our act in the theater and it goes pretty well and looks pretty cute and we feel good.  Then Tuesday morning rolls around, we come in and had told the girls to not wear their uniforms and to dress in UAE colors.  They came in beautiful, some of them wearing princess dresses and make up and their hair in beautiful curls down their backs!  Many were wearing flag colored Kandoras and face painted flags and one girl even had flags on her eye lids!  All the mothers were here ready to see their girls performing and the show was set to start at 9 am....

So we line our girls up near the theater in the dingy dirty cement area covered in garbage and we wait....  Then I find out that we are waiting on these gentlemen from the Ministry of Education to come, there is a red carpet rolled out in front of the theater.  Then I see angry mothers grabbing their daughters and leaving.  I go to find out why?  Turns out many mothers have been turned away and they are not allowed to see the performance, either are the students!  The only people seeing this performance are these men, who are already over an hour late and the Arabic teachers and some of the more affluent mothers.  So we wait unsure when we perform, no direction, waiting for these men so we can start the show, no chairs in this cement almost parking lot behind the theater.  The girls are hot, the girls are hungry, the need the bathroom and we wait.  Finally the show starts some time after eleven.  I have sung every song I know, taught them hand clap games and even duck duck, goose, but we are still miserable!  What kind of party is this?  If you were to speak to almost any other teacher today from any other school they would share stories of jumping castles, amazing performances, the "hair dance", and they would share pictures of a wonderful day with you, but my girls were miserable!

So finally it is our turn to perform, we were very last, some time around 12!  As we file what is left of our classes on to the stage hair ties are broken, make up is running, and dresses are torn but they are smiling.  I look out to the audience and the men are leaving!  The Arabic teachers are leaving!  My faculty head proudly beams at my girls from the audience and a few of the women stay seated realizing there is one last performance.  My girls begin and they nailed it!  As they filed of the stage not a one of them seemed to notice the lack of audience and they all were smiling ear to ear as I gave them thumbs up, pats on the back, and told them how great they were.  My faculty head was to tears as she shared that many of these girls would never see a stage if it were not for English teachers as the Arabic teachers only allow the pretty, smart, and outgoing girls to be in acts.  So this makes me feel good.  Then one of my darling girls says to me in broken English, "Miss Leah, I thought today be good day...today bad day, very bad day."  I look at my sweet little Fatima, "today was very bad I am sorry honey, but you are so pretty and grade three did a great job,"  she forces a smile and saunters away in her tattered princess dress.