Hello all,

Hope this post finds you all in good health and surviving the first few days of Ramadan. Posting has been lagging a bit, however its a reflection of both the internet connection as well as overall lifestyle now days. We haven't been doing anything which would lead to an essay about the day, but rather just mulling around. We've found ourselves immersing ourselves into this holy month.. Shahin's been praying each prayers at the Masjid next door, and I've been spending most the day cooking for iftaar. We've been lucky to have Anders joining us for the past few nights ( though we aren't sure whether he feels obligated to do so and is being polite or he generally is enjoying the evenings and food- hopefully its the latter). So far we haven't had anything too exciting for iftaars. Cooking in the kitchen is exciting enough. The stove is quite tempermental and has a different heat at every moment making frying anything quite the challenge. One stove is too high, the other too weak, so its definitely a challenge of speed to get the food cooked without burning it. We've had a few different types of samosas- one keema which was a bit spicy due to my enthusiasm with the chili flakes- Chacha- I tried to make it like yours but the chilis pretty much killed any other flavor, until I doused the meat with coriander seed leaving you with a mouthful of seeds and chili and occassionaly the piece of ground beef. Oh well, you live and learn. My favorite was a feta cheese and mint which we tried tonight which worked nicely. I also got creative and tried a recipe for a modification of eggplant parmasean, by making sandwiches out of eggplant stuffed with cheese and herbs and then breaded and fried crisp. Those turned out quite well if I do say so myself. The rest of the food has been generic- cheese, meat, bread, fruit, and of course, some pasta. After iftaar tonight we went out for a bit and walked around and went to another hotel apartment. It was a bit rough, especially because the reality of this not being a vacation is starting to sink in and I must confess, I'm rather homesick. But Shahin and Anders keep encouraging me to wait it out and that things will pick up so lets hope for the best. For now, that's pretty much all on our end. Please keep us updated on whats going on in your lives, as I miss you all muchos. Hope to hear from you all soon!

With love,
Ash

Hello all...

I am now writing to you from our new house :) After a few ups and downs and a lot of packing and unpacking we're are now residents (not legally though haha, still got to work on that) of Abu Dhabi. Since we haven't really been doing that much, just fixing the place up, I'll leave most of the post space for pictures of the place. On the upside, Ramadan started today and we live right next to the masjid so we can hear the Adhan and Shahin went to pray Fajr there. Twas nice.. anways.. wishing you all Ramadan Kareem!

Love,
Ash

Our building- the shiny copper one in the middle

The entry way to our place

Entrance to the living room

Living room

Cute dishes :D

Bathroom

Bedroom

View from our room and the masjid next door

I hate bureaucracy. I don't think i can emphasize how much I hate it with ALL of my heart. Yesterday was quite possibly the worst day of our lives. This god foresaken country is definitely lacking some organization. It all started with wanting to rent a car. Simple no? Just wait. Apparently our American drivers licences aren't enough, we need a local license ( because clearly the sophisticated traffic system which exists in the third world is far superior to that that of the states). Fine, we think we can just go get a local license and then off to Dubai for our Gitex conference. We go get all the paperwork organized that we need to apply and head to the Abu Dhabi office. We get to the office after about an hour of hassle, and much to our dismay, they wont issue us a license because we aren't residents. But- they give us hope- and send us off to Dubai who will apparently give a license to anyone for a temporary period. With this, we're off and running in our business suits for the hour ride to Dubai.

How quickly our excited hearts are crushed. After about an hour and a half of traffic, 30 minutes spenting trying to get from one side on the road to the other because of some confusing system of traffic lights, our driver drops us off at the department of licensing. There we go toting our little folders with our information. Thinking something is finally going to go our way, we go to ask what counter we need to go to for our paperwork. Lucky us, the guard informs us the department decided to close early today. Right as we walk up mind you. And the people behind the counter drive off in their porsches and other expensive cars I don't recognize. Must be nice to work for the government here- definitely will note that to self when looking for career opportunities. But alas, all hope is not lost, we can go to the mall and go to the booth there, those people don't have the option of leaving early.

So we call our taxi, who doesn't know where we are, and Shahin decides is a lost cause so we walk all the way out to the street in my heels when our driver calls and says he found it and is where we were originally and we have to walk back. That irritation aside, we head to the mall with all of our paperwork with some small thread of hope left. When we arrive at the counter, that thread is quickly smashed and ripped apart in front of our eyes. Because we entered through Abu Dhabi, and not Dubai, they cannot issue us a temp license. But again, another option presents itself, the lady suggests we drive 3 hours to Oman so we technically have exited the country, and reenter with a Dubai stamp. When we think about it now, it seems a bit of a hassle, but at the moment we were ready to jump in the cab. Im suprised we both didn't start sobbing at the counter, as it looked like we were going to.

Anyways, the day picked up a bit I guess. We went to Gitex and got official tech badges which boosted our spirits a bit...always nice to have someone take you seriously. Unfortunately our driver wouldnt return until 8:30 and we finished Gitex by 6 so Shahin decides we should just walk to a nearby hotel since the taxi situation is outrageous due to the amount of people Gitex has brought it. While this seems like a harmless idea, this was potentially the proverbial straw that broke the camels back. While walking in 100* weather in humidity on unpaved roads, with heels through the main street, I realized I hate Dubai. Lets just say next time we need to go, Shahin can fly solo on that trip. On a positive note, my disdain for Dubai made me appreciate Abu Dhabi a bit more... not sure whether thats a good thing or not.

The night ended with some decent chinese food, and a much needed lemonade with mint. Shahin snored the whole way back from Dubai to Abu Dhabi, haha the cab driver kept giving us weird looks.. I told him if he only knew what we'd been through, he wouldn't think twice.

Anyways, that about sums up our day. I'm considering changing the blog name to adventures in lala land. But we'll say how today goes before I abandon my cute french/pink themed name.

As always, for your viewing pleasure, pics of the day:

Hello again..

What a day. By 9 am its already hitting 95* haha I have a new theory that since we have so many clothes on and its so hot that by just standing in the heat we may be able to lose weight. We'll see which happens first- heat stroke or weight loss. So far we've spent our day and a half wandering around the city looking for housing which has become the biggest joke we've seen. We found one place that we really liked but it turned out to be a scam. We met with some really aggressive real estate agents who it looks like we'll be using. The guy was from Palestine- we tried to score some points by talking about Shireen but it didn't get us very far :) I'll break down the quest in chronological order:

Saturday morning ( at 4 am thanks to jet lag) - the search commences. we call a million housing places at around 8.. only 3 actually answer their phones. Either way, the three that answer seem to have some good prospectives and we set up our time to go look

Saturday afternoon- we go to look at apartments- well it was supposed to be multiple but they only took us to one. The place was very well furnished and suprised us because the outside of the building looked like it was going to fall apart. The only downside was that it was extremely small.. but it was still the top of our list. We wander around looking at other buildings asking for vacancies but alas, no one has anything so we retreated to the Abu Dhabi mall to meet Anders and adjust to our new surroundings. While in the Abu Dhabi mall we found a Sweet Factory that had every candy Laila and Sabrina check the ingredients for everytime we go to the mall without gelatin! It was all halal haha quite possibly one of the most exciting finds in the last few days. However this excitement soon let do a meltdown in the mall as Shahin rubbed in the fact that we're not on vacation and I dont need to buy souvenirs for people. I also cannot find my benefiber here.. just some weird "natural tasting" stuff which Im choosing to leave for someone else. So far we've had our ups and downs...ups is that we blend in really well and I think we can fit into society well here. Down being that this is the only place in the world that a taxi driver will pull over, tell you he's hungry and hot and doesn't want to drive anymore. I was like excuse me? Haha, last I checked the job of a taxi driver entailed driving. This is where the standing in the heat comes in...we wait 15-20 mins to catch a taxi and usually end up walking in the end. A car has now become a priority for us.. big time.

Saturday night- we hung out with Anders which was nice.. first english speaking person we've encountered other than the doorman at our hotel. The night was fairly uneventful however since Shahin and I were passing out by 7pm

Sunday morning- Shahin wakes up at 4 and decides that I have to be up with him so we start looking for housing ads again. Today we saw 3 apartments. 2 were complete rubbish as our new agent would call it.. and the last one was nice but extremeley expensive for what it is. That's when we decided to go to the new agent who are actually running a business. The only problem was they informed us that anyone will to do monthly rent is subletting which is illegal and its pretty much all of a scam. Lovely huh? That information was confirmed by 4 other people we talked to.. joy haha

So that puts me at right now where we're pretty much waiting for people to finish their siesta ( these people leave for lunch at 12 and dont come back til 5.. must be nice huh?).. I've been craving pizza hut so I have a feeling we're going to just order in and crash early again. Housing is proving to be a much bigger challenge than we had realized. I think it comes from the fact that we're in a society that demands things now- like that commercial on tv where the girl orders the coffee and 2 seconds later wants to know where it is. Here everyone likes to take things a lot slower- I have yet to determine whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. While in the long run, it may be nice to live in a slower paced life considering we're so high strung, but since we want to finalize our house its definitely not a plus for us right now. On the positive note, all the walking has let us see the different areas and I've found some fabric stores and tailors and somewhere I can get my threading done. On the downside, everything looks exactly the same- every block is a copy of the other and so I can't remember where they actually were. Our walking adventure today left us looking like peasants by the time we got back to the hotel- something spilled on shahin ( he says it was water from and AC unit but anything falling from the building above us leaves me a bit suspicious) and I got so fed up with the sun I ended up wrapping my scarf around my face. Shahin wanted to make sure this picture was available for your viewing pleasure so here it is below. Hopefully I'll get some good pictures of the gulf at sunset tonight but that requires staying awake which im not sure will happen...

Anyways, we hope all of you are doing well and would love to hear from you.. we really miss having people we know in our life :)

<3 from abu dhabi - Ash