11 days in Al Ain

I have only been away from the states for 18 days, but I feel like there is so much I want to say about my 11 days in Al Ain. I still feel like I am on vacation and the reality of living in another country still hasn't quite set in. I hear that is one of the common phases of expatriate life so for now I am enjoying not freaking out!

The days here seem to fly by, but it is much more relaxed than my life in the US. I am sure it might have something to do with not having a job and being finished with school. Although I am not working I have yet to be bored or run out of things to do.

Where to begin? My first few days were spent settling into our flat and enjoying getting to be with my husband again. We went to Carrefour (the European Wal Mart)and shopped for odds and ends and groceries and I began the process of making our room more of a home. For now we are sharing a flat with two other pilots and it is like I have three husbands since they actually cook and clean. I enjoy the company of other people since they are so much fun to be around. I spend a lot of time reading their lips since one is from the UK and the other is from Spain. We laugh about the differences in the words we use and talk about our culture. UK says we use funny words in the US - for instance we say cell phone and they say mobile (true for the UAE too), a shopping cart is a trolley, french fries are chips and chips are crisps...there are so many more, but those were the first ones that came to mind. Our room is the size of a apartment itself. We have our bedroom with an armoire and bed (there are no closets in the UAE), a living room with a TV (we don't have cable but our roomies both have sattelite cable from different companies each with a different amount of channels that are English), coffee table bookshelf and chair (we are getting a couch soon), and an office with plenty of room to spare.

The floors are all marble and it seems there is always sand somehow getting into the house so you never go barefoot unless you want dirty feet. Our bathroom has the most ridiculously ornate toilet and sink - everything here is sort of gaudy to me and over the top - and all toilets here have a spray nozzle that is used for personal hygiene. Apparently the nationals do not use toilet paper and instead use the nozzle. One of the quirks of our apartment is the water tank is gravity fed and sits on top of the house. This means that the cold water is never actually cold and is always instead the temperature of outside -- hot(I know all water tanks here are gravity fed and you can see them on the roofs of homes, but I am not sure if this is true of all houses or how they cool their water). One day I didn't take a shower until the afternoon because I was busy cleaning and I almost burnt my skin off. The water comes into a tank into the air conditioned house and is cool for about 2 minutes since that is all the tank holds. It almost immediately was scalding hot. I learned a very important lesson - showers only in the morning or at night if you want to keep your skin!

Our kitchen has terrible blue walls with blue trimmed cabinets. There are no dishwashers in the UAE (unless you hire one - no machines) and the stoves are small gas ones. Most of the rental properties do not have stoves or refrigerators so you have to buy them yourselves. There are four other flats in our building and I have been told that the building was originally supposed to be an emirate's home, but then they decided to turn it into four flats. It makes sense since all of the homes in our neighborhood are palatial and are inhabited by mostly Emirate nationals. Our neighbors are from the UK and two families are from South Africa. You can imagine all the different accents one has to get accustomed to. So far I have also met some people from Australia and Scotland - I think Scotland required the most lip reading so far.

Tyson bought a car so we have been getting used to the crazy roads. Lines on the roads and stop signs are more like suggestions and apparently the police don't pull people over, but there are speed cameras throughout Al Ain, but once you know where they are you can speed as you like and believe me people do! Since there aren't really addresses for homes (or businesses for that matter) you don't get mailed your speeding tickets, instead you have to pay the fines when you go to renew your registration. So if you miss some speed cameras you could be in for a rude awakening and several thousand dollars worth of tickets! The city is full of roundabouts and each time you enter one you have to be at the peak of your defensive driving skills. Most roundabouts have three lanes where the right lane is designed for an immediate right, the middle lane for a right and straight (second exit) and the left is meant for a left (third exit). The problem is that you have people constantly entering the roundabout at high speeds and you have to watch your left for someone cutting across all lanes to turn and your right because that person might not turn when they should and will most likely be moving into your lane! You can be driving along and look in your rear view mirror and suddenly an SUV is about to eat you for lunch. The speeding tinted window SUV's are usually nationals so it is usually best to just get out the way. And heaven forbid you hesitate at one of the few red lights that exist or don't throw yourself into a roundabout - horns are a common sound!

Tomorrow I will write about my adventures of obtaining my visa!