I was wondering what Halloween would look like in the UAE. I guess when your expat community is about 50% of your population, give or take a few, Halloween is sure to go on as planned.
The event wasn't trick-or-treating per say, although that happens in some of the communities. But the kids got dressed up as Spider-Man and Minnie Mouse and we went to the Rugby Club for a few hours. Jack actually wore his Spider-Man mask for a lot of the evening. I think he may have thought he was really Spider-Man:) As you can see in the picture, Millie had no problem pulling off Minnie Mouse. In fact, Walt Disney might have been a bit put off with her attitude.
We got up on Friday morning and went to Jack's school for a carnival. The kids were able to wear their costumes again. There were games and face painting, as well as trick-or-treating. It was well organized and the kids had a great time. We met a new couple with a girl Jack's age and a boy a little older than Millie. They are from Michigan and are both teachers here. The husband just walked over with a buddy of his and started talking to Stuart, which I found a little odd. I then realized he was attempting to recruit Stuart to join their American football recreational team. His wife later told me that her husband had said to her, 'Look how big that guy is. He would make a great defensive tackle for our team'. So guess who is going to meet the team on Sunday evening? Ha!
Friday evening we went to a under 17 world cup football (soccer) quarter final match. Stuart's head of faculty, Wade, his wife and kids, the new couple, Jamie and Joe, and their kids, were there and we all sat together. We are really starting to feel as if we belong here. We are meeting nice people who have kids our kids' age, which is really nice.
After the soccer match we visited the Flower Market, which you would think had a lot of flowers. Nope. They just have a lot of 'stuff', for lack of a better word. We bought some utility rugs to go in our foyer and our kitchen. They were cheap and should be easy to wash. If not they were the equivalent of $10 so could be tossed if they get super dirty. Easy!
Saturday we decided to make a run to Dubai to get some of our last items on our Ikea list. We would have gone to Abu Dhabi so that we could have seen Gina as well, but this weekend is the Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi and Ikea is practically on the race track. So we opted for the Ikea in Dubai. We got dishes, curtain rods, blinds, and a few other thigs needed to get us by for now. We run our kids ragged. You can see that Ilea exhausted them. We came back to Al Ain and headed for the apartment to unload.
Catching you up to speed on our apartment...In order to get electricity we had to have a company in town centre draw up a contract, have it stamped by ADEC (everyone has a stamp for something and gets paid to use it) and then we could go to Al Ain distribution center and have the electricity turned on. So finally, after a week and many visits to town centre and ADEC, we have power! Thank goodness Stuart sticks to a task. He has also ordered out Internet, television and landline package. So hopefully we will hear from them this weekend and will have no lapse in Internet service between moving from the hotel to the apartment. I love the techie side of Stuart for sure. He does all the things that I wouldn't have a clue how to do.
We had our appliances delivered last Sunday, our bed on Monday, and our big Ikea order will be delivered this coming week on Tuesday. We are then hoping to move in on Wednesday. We have until November 7 to get out of the hotel which will be just enough time.
We still need to order living room furniture, furniture for the spare room, and a few rugs to cut down the echoes in the apartment (which are super fun for Jack and Millie), but that will come in time. While in the hotel, because we had to eat out every night, our furniture allowance didn't all go for furniture. But in a couple of months we will be all set and established. For now we are just thrilled to have a place where we can have a regular routine of coming home, kids playing in their rooms with their toys, and being on a schedule of some sort. We want to get Jack involved in a sport and will probably do that after the winter break. That boy just needs to run. This being cooped up in a hotel for 9 weeks has not been great for either kid. Thank goodness Jack has a school where the playground is huge. He comes home just black from head to toe from the dirt, but to me that means he has had fun.
We are excited for our 'home'. The next blog post will be from our new home. Yippee!
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