Winners

We've had a run of good luck in our family lately. When Andy bought his new car in June he was entered into a lucky draw. Thinking that nobody ever wins these things, he promptly forgot about it until the other day when he got a phone call from Arabian Automobiles telling him that he'd won a family holiday to Hawaii! Instead of calling me in an excited frenzy as I would have been sure to do, I received a one line email saying "I've won a holiday to Hawaii". Yeah, yeah I thought but nevertheless called him to get all the details and indeed we had won a holiday to Hawaii. The problem is that it would take a very, very long time to fly to Hawaii from Dubai in fact there aren't many places in the world that are further away. Doing the calculations, it would seem that we could fly Dubai - Singapore - Tokyo - Hawaii. Or..... Dubai - London - New York - Hawaii. Either way you look at it, not a fun prospect with 2 small children. Since our move from Asia, we were also kind of thinking that we'd give really long haul journeys a miss for a while. Luckily for us, the competition prize could also be taken as a cash equivalent which after a quick think we decided to take. Since moving into our lovely new house, we have realised that we need some new pieces of furniture so we're choosing to spend our windfall on that.

The same week, Andy and I joined some friends for a weekly quiz at a local golf club. We're proud to report that we won by a margin and the 4 ladies in the team were presented with jewellery vouchers to spend which was rather nice for a Tuesday night out. They say that good luck comes in threes so watch this space.

Playdoh Police.

One of the casualties of our move to Dubai were the tubs of playdoh belonging to the girls. The journey, the storage and the months since it was last played with rendered their tubs hard and impossible to play with. We are 'told' that the modelling medium is necessary for improvement of their fine motor skills and that, coupled with the fact that it's enormous fun, dictated that a trip to Toys R Us was necessary to replenish the stocks. Well, I was amazed. There is every hue in the spectrum. There are sparkles and there are sprinkles. And the tools available put my kitchen, which I previously considered to be well equipped, to shame. Of course, the sprinkles and sparkles won the day and we threw a couple of twisty and confetti makers (they look like sea salt grinders!) in for good measure. Once home, we opened all the pots and I spent a very stressful hour playing playdoh police because the first thing that Emily wanted to do was mix the colours and they had a fight over the purple pot. Emily's attention span is limited. It's a combination of her age and her personality and not much can engross her for longer than 10 minutes or so. It was lovely then to see her play for an extended period with Rosie. They cooperated and after the disagreement over the purple was arbitrated to everyone's satisfaction (we split it!), spent over an hour kneeding and rolling and generally making squidgy stuff. It was then that I realised that mixing the colours is just a sign that the stuff is being played with properly. After all, who wants a totally blue pizza or a caterpillar made from only pink? At that point, I stopped nagging and everybody was much happier. If many a happy hour results in sparkly brown playdoh streaked with blue and grey sprinkles, who am I stand in the way?

Life Moves On....

The girls are well settled into the school routine now. They're both making friends and we have the prospect of a playdate for Rosie and a birthday party for each of them to attend before the end of September. Andy and I met lots of our neighbours last night when we attended the monthly resident's drinks party at the bar in the hotel here at Desert Palm. With free flowing beer and wine, the atmosphere was definitely conducive to socialising and it was lovely to meet some people away from the child centered atmosphere of the pool and school environment. It will take time to make friends but we met some lovely people and we were made to feel extremely welcome which reinforced our decision to live here and become a part of this community. Everyone that we spoke to, without exception, loves it here and it was said more than once that this is THE best place in Dubai to live. The driving is getting easier and I'm actually using the map that Andy bought me to find my way around! I'm taking it one journey at a time and slowly but surely getting a feel for the roads and my brain is starting to compute what it must to navigate from the 'wrong' side of the road. Andy continues to be busy at work, but since we are all forced to leave the house very early in the morning (an underyeye bagging 7.00 a.m.!) to make it to school on time, he feels justified in leaving the office earlier and we're seeing much more of him in the evenings. All in all we're doing OK. I figure it takes 6 months to get a feel for a place and for it to start to feel like 'home' so it really is early days yet. Most importantly, we not regretting for one minute our decision to move here; our home is beautiful, the girls' school is outstanding and we're starting to meet some people. Result.

Twitching

Andy is turning into a bird watcher. Our new house in Dubai is in a bit of an oasis. It's situated in the middle of a polo club and stables so as we look outside we can see trees and grass and paddocks which is a real departure from most of the rest of Dubai which is just beige. Our house is upside down which means that the living space is on the top floor and the bedrooms are on the bottom and they lead out into our garden. Consequently when we're sat on our sofas we can see out to the tops of the trees (we have no curtains yet so the view is unimpeded) and the little time that Andy spends at home is punctuated by excited yelps at spotting another bird with "a brilliant blue underside" or "one with the spikes on it's head" or "that big one that looks like it can't fly". It's obviously not very scientific but it's given me a great idea for Christmas. What do you buy a man who needs nothing and wants even less? A pair of binoculars and a book on indigenous bird species of the UAE...... It's official, I married a geek.

Stumped

I think that I need to go back to school. Rosie is moving away from the usual 'Why' which plagues us for the first 4 or so years of a child's life. She's getting smarter and so are her questions. After breakfast this morning, at a mind numbingly early 6.45 a.m. she said to me that she had a very important question to ask. Floundering, I imagined that some sort of heaven vs hell or birds and bees analysis was to follow.... "Go on", I encouraged. "Why doesn't water just slip down your throat when you drink it?". I assured her that it does just slip down your throat. "No it doesn't, you have to swallow." I tried to recall my biology lessons of 20 years ago and managed to dredge something about having a valve that stops stuff going into your lungs and allows stuff only into your stomach when you swallow. That's why you cough when something 'goes down the wrong hole'. "That's rubbish", she replied. "You don't have to swallow candy floss, it just melts and slips down your throat so why doesn't water?". Hmmm, defeated by spun sugar. I briefly considered making this an afternoon project of internet searching and a trip to the bookshop to find a human biology encyclopedia suitable for a five year old but in the end said what any mum with a shred of self respect remaining in the face of daughter disdain at her lack of answers would say...."Ask your teacher, she knows everything."

Busy Days

We are slowly but surely getting organised. Most of the boxes are unpacked, some of the pictures are hung and we're finally getting on top of the sand and the dust. The weather in Dubai seems to be cooling down slowly. It's still cracking the flags during the day but within the next few weeks we should be able to hit the parks and the beach without becoming human barbeques. We're looking forward to getting to know the city and to spending time outdoors. The summers here are insufferable but the silver lining is that the rest of the year is warm, dry and perfect. To have some sense of changing seasons will be refreshing after Malaysia's androgynous months which roll into one without any significant change. And if we really feel like a change of temperature, we can always visit the indoor ski slope here which enjoys sub-zero temperatures all year round. There are so many things to explore in Dubai and we're excited at the prospect of road-testing all the attactions in our own time. Of course, our free time is limited since the girls are both in school now and after Ramadan (during which the school day is shorter than normal) they won't be home until mid afternoon after a very early start. That combined with Andy's long working week means that we'll really have to put the effort in to making sure that we use our weekends wisely.

Big School for Emily

If I was 3 years old and I walked into Emily's nursery I would think that I'd died and gone to heaven. Tables filled with playdough, puzzles, painting, wood shavings with hidden treasures, a dress up and play house, sand and water boxes and a ratio of 1 adult to every 4.5 children. Miss Balsom her teacher, is as pretty, blonde and soothing as her name implies and Emily took an instant shine to her. At her induction day, I left her getting stuck into bright yellow playdough and when I collected her an hour later she was sat in the same spot chatting away to the other little ones. On her first day proper, she needed to be reminded to say goodbye to me and was far too busy for a kiss. At pick up time, she bounced from the classroom, bunches askew sporting a very tired, very happy face. Emily takes most things in her stride and she has done much this week to make the first difficult days easier for us and allowed me to concentrate on her less socially confident sister. I was inordinately proud of Emily again this morning as she sauntered in amidst clinging classmates and crying contemporaries. The same spirit that exasperates and exhausts me sometimes has allowed her to pass this first test with flying colours. Way to go Emily!

Back to School for Rosie

One of the first jobs to tackle upon our arrival in Dubai was the purchase of school uniforms for our girls. The list was extensive and the pocket poorer when we left the shop with an enormous bag of essentials. Induction days for both Year 1 and Nursery newcomers were held giving both girls a chance to meet their new teachers and some other new children, the plan being that they would recognise a face or two on their first morning proper. Rosie started on the Sunday (the school week runs from Sunday to Thursday in Dubai according to the Islamic calendar) and on Saturday night she made us solemnly promise to wake her up really really early because she was so excited about starting her new school. There's not much danger of a sleep in these days with the alarm firmly set to full blast at 6.00am! We took her to the playground where her teacher came to meet the children to escort them to their classroom for registration. It's clear that parents are expected to efficiently say goodbye to their offspring and let the teaching staff do the rest. This is a departure for us after the intimate and informal atmosphere of Alice Smith School last year. At the end of the day when it was time to pick her up she was her usual evasive self claiming not to know the names of any of her new classmates and when grilled about what she'd been doing replied with a curt 'nothing'. A few tears the next morning at drop off did little to reassure me that she would have a happy day. Nevertheless she was a bit more forthcoming at pick up about what she'd been doing (arabic class, art projects and some reading) and who she'd been playing with (a little girl on her table had promised an invite to her birthday party). This morning she entered the playground cautiously and after a faux cheerful kiss goodbye from me I had no sooner turned around to wave than she was running hand in hand with another little girl who the day before had also been crying into her mum's skirts. What are you crying for now........Mum?

Here We Are

It's taken almost 2 weeks to get a fully functioning internet connection in our new house in Dubai. It's going to be a while therefore before I'm able to fully update on how and what we're up to as we start our new life here in the Middle East. We were very sad to say goodbye to our friends and family back home but it was high time that we moved on to the next chapter and it feels quite surreal to be living in a new country, in a new house and seeing Andy every night after work. There are a number of enormous changes for all of us. Rosie and Emily have started at their new school; watch this space for more details. The currency is obviously different and I'm still feeling a bit like mister mcgoo in the supermarket as I try to pay for groceries. The range and variety of groceries available is both refreshing and mind boggling. Who knows which type of hummus is the best? Which dates should I buy? Exactly where is the pork section (I found it behind a curtain at the back of the shop!)? The right side of the road is the wrong side for me (as I found to my cost earlier today when I had a near miss with a speeding taxi). The heat is stifling and if I ever thought that tropical heat was oppressive, now I know better. Ramadan is in full swing and the whole population is affected, muslim or otherwise.

So we're taking baby steps to settling in; unpacking boxes, hanging pictures, settling the girls into school, concentrating on driving on the correct side of the road and not getting lost and enjoying our lovely new home.