Experiences in Dubai #7 March 8, 2010
Dear Family and Friends,
Hello from Dubai! Here is my latest newsletter. I apologize if this took a long time to download, but I decided to send pictures. I'm working on the idea of a blog but need my kids here to help me figure it out! Maybe next time.
February 14 – Happy Valentines Day! Things have been very crazy around here as it looks like Kent’s job will be ending here pretty soon. Until all the details are worked out, I won’t go into it because it seems things change almost daily concerning what will happen next. But since we have already paid for our housing here for the next few months, we at least have a place to live until we figure out what is next.
But we’ve continued to have new experiences here as we explore a little more each week. Jen and Nick, our daughter and son-in-law, arrive tonight to visit for a week, so I’ll write about some of our adventures over the next week.
To back up a little, Kent and I both flew back to the US for Christmas in December. In the short time we were there we got to see a lot of friends and family that we have missed. We spent time in Idaho seeing Kent’s family, visiting Heidi and Alan and their two boys, going to my mom’s, then to Utah to have an evening with all my brothers and sisters, and finally flying up to Seattle to see Jen and Nick, Lindsay and Nate. Lindsay and Nate were up there from BYU-Provo visiting Nate’s family (the Duffy’s) for the holidays. The Duffy’s invited us to also stay with them at their house in Maple Valley. That was a blast! How many people could have such a great time staying with their daughter’s in-laws? We sure did!!! On New Year’s Day we had a tournament of Ping Pong, Foosball, Air Hockey, Bean Bag Toss and a dice game called Farkle. Of course, I won none of them, but it was fun anyway!
The day after New Year’s, Kent had to fly back to Dubai and I went to stay at Jen’s for a few days. I then flew back to Idaho to stay with Heidi’s boys while she and Alan went to Las Vegas where Heidi ran in a half-marathon (and placed First in her women’s age-group…again!)
I got back to Dubai on Jan. 12, but then Kent had to leave for Indonesia and China for 2 ½ weeks. So it was pretty quiet around here for a while! I seem to always find plenty to keep busy with. I read, work on scrapbooks, make cards, do email and go to the gym once or twice a day. I walk everywhere since we don’t have a car, so some things take longer that way. I don’t care much for TV, and most channels are in Arabic anyway! I do watch CNN or International news stations on occasion to keep in touch with the outside world a bit.
February 26 – We had a great time with Jen and Nick visiting. They were here for six days and we had something going on almost every hour that they were here. Here are some of the highlights of their visit and the sights we went to see…
We live in an apartment next to the Dubai Marina and there is a nice paved walkway around the Marina, so we strolled that a few times. The Marina Mall is only about 15 minutes away on the walk. This mall is fairly new and still doesn’t have all it’s stores opened yet, but it was their first taste of this “Mall-City”. They just kept saying how crazy it is that there are so many malls here! We didn’t even make it to one of my favorite malls ever…the Ibn Battuta Mall, which is designed to celebrate the travels of a famous Arabic Explorer of the same name. Each section of the mall represents one of the six countries that he traveled to and the décor makes you feel like you are walking the streets in that country.
We spent part of one afternoon at the pool we have access to outside our apartment building (we share it with 3 other buildings). There is a nice breeze to keep you cooled down since we aren’t far from the gulf beach (about 1 1/2 blocks away). We also got good use of the gym that the 3 buildings share as well, with treadmills, bikes, elliptical and rowing machines, and lots of weights, etc. (Yes, I feel spoiled here having access to all this stuff that I don’t have to do the upkeep on! There are some benefits to renting!)
The first night Jen and Nick were here we all went to my favorite place in Dubai…the Global Village (which I have written about in an earlier newsletter). It has vendors from over 45 different countries selling their wares, crafts and food. Our favorites to name a few were Yemen (for their honey), Turkey (for their beautiful hand painted dishes), Africa and Nepal (really cool wood and soapstone carvings), Palestine (where I bought an olive-wood nativity), papyrus from Egypt, and sand art from Jordan. And we all had some tasty shawarmas, a middle-eastern fast food (shaved meat wrapped in something like a tortilla).
The second day we took the monorail out to the Palm Island to the Atlantis Hotel and went to the Aquaventure Water Park that is next to the hotel. They have this super high slide called the Ziggurat (named after Mesopotamian terraced pyramids) that you can see in the picture below. Kent did it four times, and Nick did it five. (Jen and I didn’t care to try it!) The slide is more commonly called the “Leap of Faith”, but Kent and Nick called it the “Leap of Death!” They asked the lifeguard if people get pretty scared. He told them he had even seen people pee their pants before they went down, because they were so scared.
While they were waiting in line there were some adults at the front who were hesitating about going down and whining about how scary it looked, when a little girl about 7 or 8, who must have just barely met the height requirement, pushed her way to the front and said, “I’ll go!” Then she swung over the edge and dropped out of sight, squealing with delight!
We all did the river rides that included rapids and a torrent river with 1-meter tidal waves and also tried out some of the slide rides. A couple of them took you through completely dark tunnels with twists and turns. The temperature outside was 85 degrees that day…not bad for the middle of February! After we left the park, we went into the Atlantis Hotel and ate at the Kaleidoscope Buffet (we had buy-one-get-one free coupons!) It was a smorgasbord of all kinds of foods, Middle Eastern, Indian and other Asian (including sushi for Kent), Western, delicious fruits, and desserts. Yummm!
A section of Aquaventure Water Park and the "Ziggurat" slide (upper right), more commonly called the "Leap of Faith". Kent and Nick called it the "Leap of Death". It is more than a 90 foot drop.
Third day - Kent and Nick went golfing while Jen and I walked around Creekside Park, a huge park with lots of grass, trees, playgrounds, a Dolphinarium, bike paths, and lots of things for kids and families to do. You almost forget you are in a big city! Jen and I were going to ride the cable cars they have that go from one end of the park to the other, but the guys finished golfing early, so we grabbed a taxi, picked them up and went to the area of the city where the Spice Souk, Old Souk and Gold Souks are. (souks are markets). We weren’t really shopping for anything in particular, mostly just looking. We ate lunch at a tasty little hole-in-the-wall type place then wandered through the markets. I did buy a few spices and pashminas (lightweight wool/silk scarves) that are nice to stick in your purse to wrap around you when you are in an air-conditioned place that is too cold! We saw the world’s heaviest gold ring in the Gold Souk. It weighs over 140 lbs. That includes 11 lbs of “precious stones.” It looked like it would fit on a baby elephant’s leg! I don’t remember seeing a price on it…probably because it wasn’t for sale. (who would want it???)
After seeing the markets we taxied over to the Dubai Mall (largest mall in the world by total area and sixth largest by gross leasable area). Next to the Mall is the Burj Khalifa (tallest building in the world) Its name was changed from the Burj Dubai in January when they opened it. The reason was to honor the Sheik of Abu Dhabi (a neighboring Emirate state) that bailed out Dubai from its financial crisis in December. It is really difficult to get a picture of a building twice as high as the empire state building when you are that close to it, but we tried some angles that worked.
Something about being in a city with claims to the largest this or the largest that constantly reminds me how materialistic (and a bit over the top) this place is. And the longer I live here the more I see how so much is just for show here. It gives another meaning to the saying, “Beauty is only skin deep.” It is still, in many ways, like a third world country (but without the humility). But it has been a good learning experience!
Oh, I have to mention that in the Dubai Mall is a candy store called Candylicious that had every kind of candy you can imagine. We spent far too much time and money in there getting treats. It also has claimed to be the largest candy store in the world (10,000 sq ft store) but not sure what they are basing that on as I thought M&M World in Las Vegas was bigger. So I looked it up and M&M World is 28,000 square feet. So I’m not sure what they are basing that claim on! But I do know that they had ice cream in the Candylicious store that was one the best I’ve had anywhere… we all agreed that their best flavor was one called Cake Butter Oreo. (probably extremely high fat content, can you tell by it’s name?!) I didn’t take a picture of the inside of this store, but if you’re interested, you can see a little bit of it in a picture at this website.
http://blog.grapeshisha.com/2009/10/largest-candy-store-in-world-in-dubai.html (I didn’t see the cute girl in the picture working there though, but I’d love to get a dress like hers!)
Fourth day - We went to a fun shop here called The Antique Museum (also wrote about that earlier). It’s not a real museum, but more like a place where all the souvenir shops send their leftover stuff they couldn’t sell. There is dust on everything, but I guess that’s what makes them seem “antique”. If you look hard enough, you can find some cool things at cheap prices. Well, the Arabian sword Kent wanted to get wasn’t so cheap. It was several hundred dollars, so it still sits on the shelf at the Antique Museum.
That afternoon Kent and Nick decided to go to the Dubai Tennis Stadium to see the Women’s Tennis Tournament with Venus Williams and several other famous women tennis players. Tickets are cheap here compared to the US and you can get a front row seat just by showing up a couple of hours early. The kinds of things that would be sold out for weeks in the US are easy to do here at the last minute. Nick loved it because he loves tennis! By the way Nick, Roger Federer, who was supposed to be playing in Dubai after you left was out with a lung infection, so you didn’t miss out on him after all! We hope he’s better now!
While they were watching tennis, Jen and I tried out the new Dubai Metro and rode the train to the Mall of the Emirates (the one with the Ski Resort in it). Then we came home and walked down to the beach and ate at one of the numerous restaurants on “The Walk” and just relaxed.
Friday we all went to church. That was probably their first and last experience with attending church on a Friday. I thought Nick would enjoy it because more than half of the people in our ward are from the Philippines. (he served his mission there) So he could practice his Tagalog with them! Our ward is made up completely of people from other countries like us, just here for a temporary job stay. There are only about 14 families who have children, so the Primary and Youth groups are quite small. But everything runs just like back home! It is amazing how wherever you go in the world, we are all learning the same lessons and having similar experiences, sometimes just catered a bit to the different culture (like a change of day for church as we live the laws of the land here). I’m helping plan an Easter Egg Hunt for one of our quarterly Primary activities. We are combining with the Dubai LDS Branch (like a ward but smaller). They actually have more children than we do because the Ward has mostly single adults and older couples. The ward and branch boundary line is a major road called Sheik Zayed Road. If you live on the beach side of it you are in the ward. Those in the branch are on the desert side of the road. If you are on the north side of Dubai Creek then you are in another ward.
On their last day here we went to the Souk Madinat (indoor shopping market) a few miles down the road from where we live. The Madinat is an air-conditioned market made up of several buildings. It has a moat around it, and has a lot of interesting traditional architecture, including wind towers old-fashioned air-conditioning. They are open on all four sides with X-shaped channels, so they can catch whatever cool breeze there might be from any direction and channel it down into the rooms below. Then, because warm air rises, the warmer air goes up and out a different channel at the top. Very clever! When it gets 115 degrees here, I doubt they would have really helped too much in the old days, but better than nothing! Now days I think many are mostly for show, but still interesting.
From the Madinat, we walked a few blocks and took pictures in front of the Burj Al Arab (that luxury hotel on it’s own island). Then we went to a public beach nearby and tossed around a football for awhile (yes, even Jen and I played!)
Before taking them to the airport that night we ate at the Arz Lebanon Restaurant two floors below our apartment. Arz means cedars (the trees) You may remember how Isaiah writes about the cedars of Lebanon in his writings!
It has been an interesting experience living here in Dubai, but I’ve decided it’s a better place to visit than to live. When you actually live here you find that they are still a long way from being caught up with the modern world as far as technology and services. And you hope that it doesn’t rain because the building and construction codes don’t seem to accommodate for that. Example – The other day it rained for the second time since I’ve been here in 5 months (it wasn’t even in the forecast!) and after only a 1-hour rain-storm in the evening, roads were still closed the next day! Our apartment also has a whole new set of watermark stains in the ceilings! Luckily the balcony off our living room didn’t flood, like had happened to my friend in December because the builders hadn’t installed a drain! So after her disaster, I checked to see if I had a drain and found that I did (even though it was only 2 inches in diameter!) I found that it was full of sand and rocks though, but once I dug those out with a clothes hanger and spoon it actually worked!
Services don’t seem to get done in less than a few weeks time here. You just have to plan on it. We lived here for three weeks before our Internet worked, three weeks to get a second key to our apartment (they are “security” keys that you can’t just make copies), and four weeks before they gave us a key to our mailbox! We finally learned you just have to call the companies every day, then they’ll finally do something just to get you to quit calling.
Now, all that said, this is a GREAT place to visit. Tourists get better attention, and there certainly are some interesting things to see here! You may even think you are in a sci-fi movie at times…things are so extreme! I still can’t look at the Burj Khalifa (the TALL building) and not feel like I’m looking up at something from the movie “Independence Day” coming down at me from space. There’s a lot of interesting architecture here. One skyscraper going up down the road from us is called “Infinity” (we call it the “twisty building”). It will actually come to a flat point at the top (like a chisel) when it is finished. I'll try and attach a photo.
Now if any of you hoped to come see Dubai while we were here, we are sorry to say that unfortunately, it looks like we will not be here for very much longer. Kent's company, Environmental Energy Corp., (also called Sunshine Technology) filed for liquidation on February 19, and all the employees were terminated March 4. They'd known this was coming for some time, so it wasn't a surprise. Right now they are going through the liquidation process. Once that is complete, we’ll move on to something new. Not sure yet what that will be, but there are some good opportunities, so for now, we’re not worried. Stay tuned to see what happens. We'll most likely move back to Maple Valley in July, after our lease in Dubai ends (June 27).
Sorry this was so long. We are excited to have Heidi and Alan coming to visit us this week. Heidi is going to participate in a Triathlon in Abu Dhabi (a neighboring Emirate about 1 ½ hour drive away) on Saturday. She has been training for it for several months! So I’ll have a new place and experience to write about next newsletter.
We are sad that we weren't here long enough for Lindsay and Nate to visit us too. But they are happy and both working part time and in school at BYU in Utah. They both hope to get internships lined up soon.
A quick update on Preston in Peru. He is now back in Lima and is serving as the Personal Secretary to the Mission President, so that is keeping him challenged and very busy. He said the earthquake in Chile didn't cause any tsunami trouble for Lima.
We hope you are all well and happy!
Love, Karen
