The Karniks, Telfords and Cathy.
Once we had enough sun, we went back to our hotel. We had decided to stay a couple of night. We went to have pizza at the restaurant attached to the hotel. It was quite delicious.
Jack spent the night in the Karnik boys’ room, but ended up back in our room at 4 am. Cathy was on the sofa bed and woke up to let him in. Seems he woke up and the television was on and a scary movie was playing, so he was a bit scared. And, waking Cathy up was a bit dreadful, but she’s the one who decided not to get her own room and stay on the sofa in ours. I did feel bad, but I got over it and it didn’t seem to bother her.
We got up for breakfast at Aquarius. It was a continental breakfast so it wasn’t anything fancy. The food was okay. Millie wasn’t feeling so hot and had a fever in the night but we didn’t bring any Tylenol liquid. She tried to take a half of an adult pill, but there was drama, so Stuart crushed a pill into honey. She loved that and soon perked up.
We sat on our porch most of the rest of the morning. Millie got her swimmers on but the boys were all up in the Karnik’s room. Jack finally came to swim, and the others followed shortly.
Lara and Brian came downstairs just after noon. We had some snacks on the porch while the kids swam. Our neighbors, Alex and Jenny, had spent the night on Sunday and decided to stay on Monday night as well. They headed off to get food for the bar b que that would ensue a bit later in the day.
We were down close to the water. This particular place didn’t have a beach, but it was a retention wall that separated us from the water. We had corn on the cob, fresh off the grill. We had chicken and lamb skewers, potatoes, and burgers. The night ended with roasted marshmallows. Yummy!
Tuesday morning we were up for breakfast. We then packed and headed for home. We stopped in Dubai at Dragon Mart, the mall that has everything you never knew you needed. We ate lunch after a bit of shopping. We finally got home around 3 pm. We unpacked and got laundry started. Our house cleaner had stayed with the animals and also cleaned our house while we were in Um Al Quain. We chilled for the rest of the day. Stuart made pork belly and mashed potatoes for dinner and we headed to bed.
We were up and gone from the house by 10 am Wednesday morning. The kids were staying with Claire and we were heading to Fujeriah for a fishing trip with Reel Adventure, Brian’s fishing company.
We got to Fujeriah before the Karniks. We went to the mall and had a bite to eat before meeting up with Brian and Lara at the hotel. Cathy had come with us and we brought her car, since we had driven to Um Al Quain.
Once we got to the hotel, it was decided that the girls would go to the Sailor’s Club, while the boys got the boat in the water and took a run on it.
When the men returned we had dinner. A fellow fisherman had caught some fish that day and had the restaurant prepare it. The seared tuna and sashimi were shared with us. I prayed we actually caught some fish the following day so we could eat our own catch. After dinner we walked down by the water to look at the boats. We were back at the hotel just before 11 and decided to call it a night as we would be on the boat by 6 am Thursday morning.
The roads in Fujeriah are an absolute mess. It tools us about 15 minutes longer than it should have to get down to the dock on Thursday morning. We stopped to get ice and get Subway sandwiches for the boat. The ice would go in the hold in order to keep all the fish we caught nice and fresh.
The Subway run!
The bait fish were delivered.
The bait fish were delivered.
The ride out into the Arabian Sea was about 25 miles. Lara and I decided to start sunning our bodies. That proved to be a bad idea 8 hours later, even though we reapplied sunscreen.
The entire crew.
The captain!
And although we gave it our all, we didn’t catch one single fish. But we did see an amazing pod of dolphins. So not all was lost, and we enjoyed being with friends out on the water.
God’s glorious imagination with these creatures truly amazes me.
After many hours, no fish, fantastic dolphin sighting, burnt bodies, and a lot of laughs, we were off the boat and back in the car for the journey home. Once we were home we started unpacking and doing laundry. I changed our bed as Claire and Ashley had slept in it the previous night. After a shower and a lot of lotion on my legs, I settled in for a little nap on the sofa.
Friday morning we went to the vet to pick up this little girl. She has been hanging around the rugby club for several months now. We think she and her kitty siblings were dumped there by someone who didn’t want them. There is a huge problem in this country with stray cats. People don’t get their animals sterilized so there is a constant flow of kittens all over the place. Well, this little one came up pregnant. Our vet takes strays and sterilizes them for half price, and of course we felt obligated to have her fixed. Unfortunately, this meant euthanizing the kittens, which were not at full term anyway. It sounds awful that we would do that, but the municipality traps these cats and only the good Lord knows what they do with them. So we tried to do our part and at least help this mama.
Her name is Luna and we are hoping she will be able to go back to the club and be the club cat. As long as we can convince the patrons that she has been fixed and vaccinated, and is actually helping to keep away rodents, she will be fine. The lady who owns the clinic, Nadia, is putting together a proposal for the entire resort to consider doing a sterilization campaign with all the cats in the resort (golf club, rugby club, equestrian club, and shooting club). Then reintroduce them with a feeding station away from where humans eat. Hopefully this will be a solution.
Luna wasn’t exactly a fan of the dogs.
And Pumpkin bitch slapped Luna. They may not be the best of friends either. It will be best if we can return her to the club in a few days.
I may have gotten caught in the cross fire. Ouch!
We put her in the front bathroom for the night. She had food, a towel to lay on, a litter tray and water. When I got up Saturday morning, the bathroom wasn’t exactly tidy, but she was still alive and she had used the litter tray. Cats are so easy.
Luna stayed on the sofa most of the morning. Stuart went to get a tire of mine patched as it had a nail in it. He was then informed that all of my tires are a year older than my car. Huh? This country is terribly shady at times. At any rate, the garage told him I would need new tires in the next 6 months as mine we cracking because of the heat. Lovely!
Before he returned I brought the kids to Bounce for a couple of hours. In about a month we will be coming here a lot as it will be Ramadan. They run good specials during the month and we get bored because there is little to do during Ramadan. It’s hot and everything is closed early. We will only be in school from 8 am to 1:30 pm, so we will have a lot of ‘home time’, which can be a bit maddening.
Once we were home from Bounce, the kids played on their devices and Stuart and I watched television. Sean came over later in the afternoon but left before we ordered food from 101 restaurant, one of the cheapest and best Arabic restaurants. Cathy had come over and we decided to watch Mary Poppins Returns.
We paused the movie for about 30 minutes so we could Skype Clare and Scott Richardsons in the UK. We needed to schedule our ferry crossing for the summer. We have rented a camper van for our time in the UK and we are going to see our friends Gemma and Fechin in Ireland in August. We are so excited.
Once our conversation was finished we finished watching the movie. Millie and Jack stayed up until 10 pm. Jack hadn’t watched Mary Poppins, but Millie did. Cathy left after the movie and it was bed time. It was a wonderful week and the kids and I looked forward to another week of nothingness!
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