Photos

PS. I just added a few new pictures (the ones I've edited so far), so check out the link on the right. Also, if you open the album, you should click on the little "Photo Locations" map on the right. I had a bit of fun with that.

Enjoy.
~Nikki

Desert Safari, Take 3

Time for another post. :o) Did I mention it's report card week? I so thought the final reportcards were due on Thursday. No, no, they're due tomorrow. All 26 handwritten reports, due tomorrow. Oops! So, this post might be short, but I figured it was about due as well.

After National Day we were scheduled to go on a desert safari with some friends from church. Unfortunately our crowd--which included Luke and Cara Rumbaugh (who happen to be Grove City grads, I think two years ahead of me), their friend who was visiting from Canada, young Rachel Cousino (the Cousino's are the American family whose oldest daughter was an El. Ed major with me), myself and Neal, as well as Johani and Michelle (we all had buy-one-get-one vouchers)--ended up being two large for one vehicle. Since Cara is now pregnant, she skipped the dune bashing and went straight to the camp with the photographer, while the two guys got shuffled to a different vehicle with another group of people. I managed to get quite car sick again, which was too bad, and poor Neal had to spend half the time with people he didn't know. It wasn't the best safari ever, but the food at the camp was pretty good, and we got to dress up in local garb again.

Oh. And I got to both hold and pet a falcon. How cool is that?   :oD

National Day '09, and a History

December 2nd is the UAE National Day; here's some sparse history for you.

This area of the world is still quite tribal in many ways, which is true to its roots. Is-lamb spread to the region somewhere during the decade of 630 AD during the time that M' ham mad was still alive. One of the major wars of the time was acutally fought in Dibba, which is on the eastern coast of the country (Meka is next door in present day Sawdi A, which is not too far from here). Following the defeat of the non-mus lambs, the people began observing the new way of life.

 In the early 16th century, the area came under Portuguese rule after Vasco de Gama pushed through the territory. That rule last for 150 years.

Later the area became known as the  "Pirate Coast", largely referring to what is now the emirate of Ras Al-Khaimah in the north. Despite many partolling navies, raiders plagued the Brittish and Indian trade route. Eventually, in the 1850's, local sheiks (pronounced "shakes") signed a treaty with the Brittish agreeing not to engage in maritime hostilities. The skeikdoms then became known as the Trucial States in reference to the alliance.

The pearling industry rose during the 19th and early 20th century, then fell again with the depression of the 1920's and 30's, as well as with India's heavy taxations on Arab pearls, and even worse, the Japanese invention of the cultured pearl.

In the 60's, oil was discovered in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The seven ruling sheiks at the time agreed to create a joint council to deal with oil contracts and other matters. By the end of the decade, the United Kingdom had decided to end it's treaty of protection with the Trucial States (which included the seven sheikdoms, as well as Bahrain and Qatar). In September of 1971 Bahrain and Quatar became independent countries. On December 1st, at the termination of British protection, the ruling sheiks of Dubai and Abu Dhabi formed an agreement with one another and drew up a constituion, which was completed by December 2nd. They then invited the five other ruling sheiks to join their union, naming themselves the United Arab Emirates. The final emirate of Ras Al-Khaimah joined in early 1972.

Now that you know a bit about what National Day is, let me tell you what we did. Supposedly the world's largest fireworks display ever was to be held in the capital of Abu Dhabi. So, Neal, Johani, myself, and another teacher from school--Michelle, packed up the car with goodies and food to grill and ourselves and drove on down the coast. We checked out a mall in search of some charcoal and lighter fluid at the supermarket, but it seemed that everyone had the same idea we did, so they were out of lighter fluid. After that we picniced outside and watched this maaaasive UAE flag get flown around above the city, towed behind a helicopter.

Us eating the awesome cold pasta I made with pesto , spinich, chicken, and red and yellow cherry tomatoes.

This is the flying flag. Note the one on the pole in the foreground. It used to be the largest unsupported flagpole in the world, but then I believe and Asian country had to go and steal that record. So sad...

After lunch we headed for the beach. Sadly, when we got there, we found out that we weren't allowed to grill. So much for our dinner plans. But, a good time was had by all. We played in the water... and in the sand.

And we watched the sun set (over the Emirates Palace Hotel).

Finally it was time for fireworks. And pretty soon it was 15 minutes past time fore foreworks. Then it was 30 minutes... 45 minutes... Finally an hour and some change later, the first firey umbrella lit up the sky. I really don't think it was a record breaking show (we heard 100,000 devices in 45 minutes, coregraphed to music. That works out to over 37 fireworks per second, and that definitely wasn't the show that we saw), but it wasn't too bad. Here are a few of the somewhat decent picture I managed to take (thank goodness for the 8G memory card I'd just bought! 1G was soooo not enough).

I love the colors in this one.

At 45 minutes on the dot, the show finished and we made the hour and a half drive home. Not too bad a day.

100

Welcome to post number 100.  :o)

Following our trip to Al Ain (I believe Ain rhymes with "aim"), we headed the other direction and went north up the the Omani version of Alaska. There is a peninsula at the very tip of the Arabian Peninsula known as Musandam (see map), and while it is entirely surrounded by the UAE, it belongs to Oman (kind of like Alaska being attached to Canada).

The trip up took longer than we had hoped, and we began to realize how poor a job this country does with road signs. Eventally we made it to the border, though, which was another "experience". Clearly marked instructions or signs would just be too much to ask. After figuring out where to park, handing over passports, being sent out to the car for registration without getting the passports back, returning to the man who had our passports, being sent away again to go pay at another counter, being told our car insurance was expired, finally getting our passports back and walking back outside and driving through the first gate, getting car insurance (after finding out that our insurance wasn't expired), driving through another gate, filling out paperwork and walking back through the second gate to stand in line to get our visit visas, and lastly driving through yet another checkpoint, we made it onto Oman soil. It must have been 3:30 ish at that point, and Neal and I were starting to consider spending the night in Oman, which didn't thrill me. Too many complications. On top of that, we still needed to figure out exactly what we were going to do in Oman and how. Friends had told us that we should take a boat tour to see the "fjords" and hopefully some dolphins. I think we drove for another half our or so, at which point we were in the town of Kasab--our destination--and I needed to go to the bathroom. We pulled in to a little rest area and I headed over to the petrol station while Neal went into a little building that advertised dolphin tours. To make this long story short, after a frustrating experience getting there and being so late that we were worried we'd miss out on any possible tours, we had probably my favorite experience of this vacation handed to us. This dolphin tour company gave us 25% off, then took us on a speed boat out to the cruise boat that had left an hour or so before. We boarded the old dhow, which had cushions all over the floor and wonderful, hot sweet tea. We even saw a few cuddling couples, which meant we didn't have to keep total daylight between us at all times (more of a concern here). The scenery was amazing, and we did indeed get to see dolphins after a while. But just getting to motor around for a few hours, leisurely soaking up the sights and even watching the moon rise--that was just awesome. If you look at the little map above, it looks like there's a fairly large island just north of the peninsula. That land is actually attached, and it's the inlet on the north western side where we were touring around.

It looks like Oman is the only thing you get to read about tonight. I just finished chatting with my roommates, which took a bit, and my computer has been misbehaving, which means this post has been taking longer than expected. And now it's time for me to go to bed. But I promise another post tomorrow. Check back for details about the UAE National Day.

Thanks,

~Nikki

Take Off

Well, Neal's plane should be taking off right about now--it's 11:30 pm here. It was hard to say goodbye, but it was certainly a fantastic trip. I think I left off on the Friday after he got here, so I'll pick up on that Saturday (Nov 28).

Saturday we went to the Festival City Mall to do some grocery shopping etc. We had some good lunch, took a few pictures (like this one in front of a neat little waterfall thing in the mall--the water runs intermittently down this sea shell covered slope), then headed back to the apartment to grab our swim stuff so we could head to the beach for a bit.

The beach is always entertaining. I took him to the ok beach rather than the nicer beach, just because it was late and easier. The funny thing about the ok beach is that we automatically beaome the minority. That means we got stared at a lot, but I guess that's ok. Neal found some shells, and this hilarious little plastic figurine in the water. Neal was going to bring it home, but I convinced him that a picture would be just as good as the real thing, so I'll go ahead and put that up as well. Honestly, what are the odds of finding this thing in the water, here, of all places? Anyway, I liked this picture too.

Sunday was the day that we drove to Al Ain in the emirate of Abu Dhabi. It was down in the south eastern part of the country, which mean about an hour and a half or so of driving.

Not too bad. First we went to an oasis that someone had told us about, which was ok. Neal and I both got out and walked around and kind of wondered what the point was, but it was interesting to see. I believe someone told me after that the natural oasis are used to grow dates. I think we were just there in the wrong season. Someone at we met at Thanksgiving dinner had suggested it though, so we went. This is one of the the one-lane type roads that sort of mazed through the place.

There were also a few palms with some lingering dates, so we snapped a few pictures of those as well. 

After the oasis, we went to the zoo. That was a good time as well. We got to see a few big cats that were absolutely gorgeous, and even some giraffes. Neal and I both like the zoo.

Well, it's now midnight thirty, and I'm exhausted. Tomorrow I'm going to sleep in as late as possible, and thoroughly enjoy it. Along with being a wonderful two and a half weeks, it's also been very busy. I'm excited about some rest.

I promise the next update will come sooner, like hopefully tomorrow. So check back then.

~ Nikki

Eid Mubarak

Or, Happy Eid.

It has indeed been a very happy Eid break for me. Most of you probably don't know that "Eid Mubarak" means "Happy Eid", or that Eid is why I have a week off of school right now. This Eid--there are two Eid holidays--is what you could consider to be the largest Muslim holidays. Anyway, what you probably did know is that Neal is here visiting right now. Let me tell you, we have been having a fantastic time. It's been late to bed and early to rise pretty much every day, which is why it's taken a week for me to get any updates. So, at long last, here is what we have been up to the past seven days or so.

Neal flew in late Wednesday evening, and I got to pick him up in my new rental car instead of by taxi, so it was a doubly exciting arrival. We headed back to my apartment where I relinquished my nice comfy bed to him while I shuffled on over to Johani's room (ok, ok, she has an equally large and comfy bed), then I had one of those strange, newly-engaged-type experiences. There was this man, standing in front of me, and he was hungry. Now, I can have half a pack of Ramen and be good to go, but I pretty much figured that wasn't going to cut it for him. And I hadn't really been shopping for a bit--I was waiting for him to get here so he could go with me. So all of a sudden I have to figure out how I can make enough food to satiate this hungry man in front of me. Thankfully between Johani and I we managed to have some rice and chicken and salad and keep everyone from going to bed with empty stomachs.

I figured I'd have the whole next morning to get up and get some things done while Neal had some intense jet-lag sleep, so you can imagine my surprise when I heard someone in the kitchen around 7:30 the next morning. Yep. Neal was up at 5:30. Apparently he just couldn't sleep after that. Eventually I got up and we had some breakfast, and then got ready to go out and about for a bit. I took him past the beach and my school, then we were going to go grocery shopping before heading to the Thanksgiving Dinner we had been invited to. The first mall we tried going to was a disaster--no parking spaces, one ways and no turn signs, and then traffic driving all one direction down a two-way, which meant there was no getting out. Gross. We finally made it over to another area called Deira, which I later learned was nick-named "Darkest Deira", and rightfully so. We did some quick shopping, then were trying to quickly get back to my apartment to change and head to dinner. Did I mention I had just gotten my rental car? And therefore didn't know my way around so much? Well, let's just say the ride home involved a bridge crossing or two that it shouldn't have, and waiting at a stoplight for about half an hour because traffic is so bad. Dubai is certainly not known for having well marked streets; it's brutal. Anyway, we finally made it back, then out to Doug and Sharon Cousino's house for some really nice Thanksgiving. Doug and Sharon go to my church, and I met them because I went to Grove City with their oldest daughter--they're pretty great people. So, we had a full-on traditional Thanksgiving dinner, followed by some singing and some games. It was a full, interesting, but nice first holiday spent with my fiance.

Friday was church in the morning, followed by Neal's first meal of some regional food, which was thoroughly enjoyed by both of us. I have to say that was a big thing for me wanting him to come over--the food. Neal and I both like food, and I wanted him to experience things from this side of the world. I once worked with a girl whose parents were mishun-aries in Hungary, and she told me on several occasions how gross our bread was--that they had such good bread in Hungary and she missed it. I wondered how different her Wonder bread could be from ours, but whatever. And then I came here and experienced the regional flatbreads. I completely understand what she meant. We have nothing like the bread here, and it's delicious. You can't really explain it, you just have to try it. Needless to say, our Iranian meal was a fun experience. And interestingly enough, I think the bread might have been Neal's favorite part.

Lunch was at the Ibn Batutta mall, which is themed after places the Middle Eastern explorer Ibn Batutta traveled to. Neal took this picture in the Persia court. There is also Tunisia, Egypt, China, and India.

Unfortunately, I need to go get some lunch ready, then we are off for a desert safari this evening with Johani, Michelle, and two other Grove City grads--Luke and Cara Rumbaugh. Since I am trying to include lots of pictures in this update (which I haven't been doing enough of anyway), I'm going to save the rest for later--sorry!

Check back in a few days for more. :o)